Ignorance "A dog has the soul of the philosopher."    - Plato Disco Dharma Scintillating rays from a diamond-like source open the door of freedom. By Peter Holleran. "In whatever place you find truth, with whatever name it may be labelled, take it."   - Paul Brunton The Divine Path of Growing Old A feeling-contemplation through music, astrology, and philosophy. Allow approximately 60 minutes. By Peter Holleran. "In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically."   - Vincent Van Gogh The Dark Night of the Soul ****Revised and expanded 5-11-08**** Spiritual crises and breakthroughs in the Christian and Buddhist traditions. By Peter Holleran. "Therefore, O spiritual soul, when thy seest thy desire obscured, thy affections arid and constrained, and thy faculties bereft of their capacity for any interior exercise, be not afflicted by this, but rather consider it a great happiness, since God is freeing thee from thyself and taking the matter from thy hands."    - St. John of the Cross The Grandeur of A Sage ***NEW ***Revised 7-22-08*** A Plotinian view of the Godman. By Peter Holleran. Kundalini: Up, Down, or ? ***NEW The sahasrar and the heart. By Peter Holleran Those Amazing Christians ***NEW A potpourri of interestings, colorful characters. By Peter Holleran. A Comparative Analysis of Sant Mat ***Revised and expanded 7-27-08*** "The Path of the Masters" compared and contrasted with other spiritual schools such as advaita, non-duality, kriya yoga, Ramana Maharshi, etc.. By Peter Holleran Greek Views on the Soul ***forthcoming*** St. Augustine to Gandhi: The Sexual Dilemma ***forthcoming*** A Jeremiad on the Oprah-Tolle Phenomenon ***forthcoming*** Emanationism and Non-Duality ****Revised and expanded 7-27-08**** An attempt at clarifying and synthesizing diverse Gnostic, Christian, Sufi, Vedantic, and Buddhist views on spiritual questions of identity, union, individuality, and non-duality. A comparative analysis of Sant Mat. My experience with Sant Kirpal Singh. By Peter Holleran. "Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation." The Integrationalists and the Non-Dualists - 1 An imaginary conversation between contrasting points of view at Wisdom's Goldenrod Center for Philosophic Studies on the relationship between realization and transformation. By Peter Holleran. "A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn't the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn't flat.When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”      - Dresden James The Integrationalists and the Non-Dualists - 2 The debate continues......... "The gradation of the One, the One-Many [Nous], and the One and Many [Soul] is eternally fixed, and is an expression of reality."     - Plotinus The Integrationalists and the Non-Dualists - 3 "The Fall from Grace" "If there is no soul, does Buddhism then teach that death is the termination of all conscious existence? This question cannot be answered by a simple “yes” or “no”. The Integrationalists and the Non-Dualists - 4: "Last Gasp of the Puppet People" "None of us is thrown into this world against his will. All of us are here because we want to be here...Some are eager to descend into a body again, but others are reluctant and are half-dragged down."     - Paul Brunton Paramhansa Yogananda and Kriya Yoga ****Revised and expanded 7-06-08**** An appreciation and comparative analysis. Kriya yoga as contrasted with both shabd yoga and the path of jnana. Includes link to complete on-line version of Autobiography of a Yogi. By Peter Holleran. "The moment when Divine Mother beats you the hardest is the time you should cling tenaciously to Her skirt."    - Paramhansa Yogananda Sri Aurobindo and the Integral Yoga ***Revised and expanded 6-3-08*** "The Ultimate Construction Project." By Peter Holleran "At the very first sight I could realise he had been seeking for the Soul and had gained it, and through this long process of realisation had accumulated within him a silent power of inspiration. His face was radiant with an inner light."    - Rabindranath Tagore The Long and the Short of It ****Revised and expanded 5-21-08**** A representative sampling of quotes on the "Long Path" and the "Short Path", from   The Notebooks of Paul Brunton. Edited by Peter Holleran. Elvis Was Not a Mentalist ***Revised and Expanded 6-12-08*** Thoughts on the "I-thought". By Peter Holleran. ”His first mental act is to think himself into being. He is the maker of his own “I.” This does not mean that the ego is his own personal invention alone. The whole world-process brings everything about, including the ego and the ego’s own self-making.”   - Paul Brunton The "Lost Years" of Ramana Maharshi His two death experiences and their meaning in regards to self-realization, spiritual practice, the heart, jnana, bhakti, the World-Mind, and astrology. By Peter Holleran. " All that you can say of the Heart is that it is the very Core of your being." A Plutonian Septet Essays on Patience, Perseverance, Pressure, Trials, Tribulations, and Moxie. "The other-power is all-important, but this all-importantness is known only to those who have striven, by means of self-power, to attempt the impossible."     - D.T. Suzuki A P B ! The sands of time. Four short pieces plus a shocking video! "The unexamined life is not worth living."   - Socrates (470-399 BC) "The unlived life is not worth examining."     - Socrates (b. 1949) Patience, Perseverance, and Good News ***Revised and expanded 6-17-08*** Words from the wise on important virtues. Edited by Peter Holleran. "Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you." - Jesus Caught on the Path - the Master Trap Select quotes on reaching a spiritual state of helplessness and hopelessness. Edited by Peter Holleran. "I'm not okay, you're not okay, and that's okay."          - Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Goo-Goo Eyes "Tests" on the quest: humorous, painful, and informative, depending on point of view. Some adult content. Edited by Peter Holleran. [Note: References to the masculine gender were left unchanged so as not to interrupt the flow of the text; they should, however, be read as gender neutral. Also, while the humorous links appeal most directly to the male mind, with a little imagination they can apply equally well to that of the female.] Backdraft The fire of grace creates and fills a vacuum. By Peter Holleran. "One does not begin to know and to feel one’s spiritual miseries until they begin to be cured.” - Fenelon The Path of Wrath Samrambha Yoga - the way of the Asuras.   By Peter Holleran "You can meditate for fifteen years and get one inch closer to God; or you can be really angry and be with Him instantly."    - Sufi proverb Scare Tactics Traditional practice motivators. By Peter Holleran. “The experience one has at the time of death is as if a thorny bush were placed inside the rectum and extracted through the mouth." - Quran "When the soul leaves the body one feels pain as if bitten by a million scorpions at once.” - Bhagwad Purana Dying in the Master's Company The graceful passing of Ramana Maharshi's mother and Sant Kirpal Singh's wife. The influence of a saint or jnani at the time of death. Different views on dying. By Peter Holleran. " At the time of death the initiate will be as happy as a bride on her day of marriage!"   - Sant Kirpal Singh The Neo-Vedantic Origins of Christian Science Its influence on New-Age thinking, and fundamental misunderstanding. (Sounds boring, but believe me, it's not!). By Peter Holleran. "They are Vedantins; I mean they have picked up a few doctrines of the Advaita and grafted them upon the Bible."      - Swami Vivekananda Teachers, or Masters, of the One? Discriminative links on contemporary teachers and teachings. Edited by Theremusst B. Moore. "So what if you have dropped illusion? You didn't drop your pride. Pride has fooled the best sages, Pride devours all."   - Kabir, Bijak  "Without virtue, God is only a word.”       - Plotinus The Purpose of Spiritual Training The wisdom of Jack Nicholson. "Casablanca" A contemplation. Maybe THIS Time It Is Different Spiritual Revolution: the Mayan Calendar, 2012, Energy Shift, Golden Age, Brunler Scale, Morphogenic Fields, Planetary Ascension, Ashtar Command, Photon Belt, Kalki Avatar, Holographic Universe, Binary Sun, The Great Year, "Global Warming", and "Solar System Warming". Get ready, it's happening! ["For entertainment purposes only"]. Edited with commentary by Sirius. Spiritual Implications of Brain Research Brain-wave studies on TM and Buddhist meditators, Carmelite nuns, Primal Therapy patients, neurosurgical volunteers - and what it all means. Can enlightenment be proven in the laboratory? By Peter Holleran. "There is no machine that can measure a person’s realization." - Tsoknyi Rinpoche Hellenic Buddhism and Buddhist Christianity Theravada Buddhist and other Indian Influences on Greek Philosophy and early Christianity, and subsequent Hellenic and Christian Influence on the Rise of Mahayana Buddhism, as well as ancient esoteric streams running throughout.   By Peter Holleran. The Secret Doctrine Companion piece to the above. All you wanted to know about man's esoteric evolution but were afraid to ask. This article should help exhaust your seeking and also save you two thousand pages of reading or more. By Peter Holleran. "Nor is it, after all, necessary that anyone should believe in the Occult Sciences and the old teachings, before one knows anything or even believes in his own soul....Your experience is limited to a few thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of humanity and to the present types of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth Race. How can you tell what will or will not be?"      - H.P. Blavatsky The Two Krishnamurtis Paradox and contradiction in two modern iconoclasts, J. Krishnamurti and U.G. Krishnamurti. By Peter Holleran. Saga of the Disillusioned Seeker On how a noble soul was entranced by an enigmatic cult, struggled with the still, small voice within, was liberated from false authority, escaped the pod people, and found his way back home. Humorous and irreverant. Rated: PG-17 (some language). By "Morpheus". Mt. Tamalpais, the Sacred Mountain Take a spirit walk on a San Francisco Bay area treasure, visted by numerous saints and sages. By Peter Holleran. The Presidential Traverse "The road to Heaven may not be a road at all." A tale of risky adventure in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; trekking over one of the "19 sacred mountains of the world"; the spiritual virtues of hitch-hiking. A worthy pilgrimage in the northeastern United States. By Peter Holleran.