Ignorance Compiled by Peter Holleran "A dog has the soul of the philosopher."    - Plato Caught on the Path - the Master Trap ***Revised and expanded 4-11-09***. Select quotes on reaching a spiritual state of helplessness and hopelessness. Compiled by Peter Holleran. "I'm not okay, you're not okay, and that's okay."          - Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Patience, Perseverance, and Good News ***Revised and expanded 6-02-09*** Words from the wise on important virtues. Compiled by Peter Holleran. "Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you." - Jesus The Enigmatic Kabir The poet-saint Kabir, his Anurag Sagar, commentary on the throne room of God, and non-duality. By Peter Holleran. The Dark Night of the Soul ****Revised 6-08-10**** 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 St Teresa of Avila - to Hell and Back A second look at the Dark Night phenomena and the mystics of the Church. By Peter Holleran. PB and Plotinus: The Fallacy of Divine Identity Is sahaj samadhi realization of the Soul, or the One? By Peter Holleran. The Heart of the Lankavatara Sutra The Lanka in a nutshell. By Peter Holleran. Don't Expect To Know On the nature of awakening. Compiled by Peter Holleran. "Unless one becomes a six-month old baby, there is no hope for one in the realm of Self-knowledge." - Ramana Maharshi The Best of J.P. deCaussade Words of wisdom on classic purgation from an often overlooked master of the interior life. Edited by Peter Holleran 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 BE AS YOU ARE: The Core Direct Teaching of Ramana A selection from Talks with Ramana Maharshi. Compiled by Peter Holleran. "You are always in the Heart. You are never away from it in order that you should reach it." Elvis Was Not a Mentalist ***Revised and Expanded 5-17-09*** 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 ***Revised 4-30-09*** 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." Kundalini: Up, Down, or ? The sahasrar and the heart. By Peter Holleran The Long and the Short of It ****Revised and expanded 1-22-09**** A representative sampling of quotes on the "Long Path" and the "Short Path", from   The Notebooks of Paul Brunton. By Peter Holleran. The Dance of 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 Casablanca A contemplation. THE INTEGRATIONALISTS AND THE NON-DUALISTS -1: "The Opening Gambits." 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 Reply of Plotinus" 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 The Grandeur of A Sage ***Revised 5-10-09*** A Plotinian view of the Godman. By Peter Holleran. Those Amazing Christians A potpourri of interestings, colorful characters. By Peter Holleran. Religion Is A Disease Beware of being medicalized. Have You Ever Been 'Experienced'? On the issue of drugs and spirituality. By Peter Holleran A Brief Summary of Creation Views: Five creation views, from God created the world ex nihilo to the ajata (non-causality) view of Vedanta. By Peter Holleran. Sant Mat: A Comparative Analysis Sant Mat compared and contrasted with Advaita, Paul Brunton, Ramana Maharshi, non-duality, etc. Long and detailed. By Peter Holleran. Greek Views on the Soul On the nature of the body-mind-soul relationship. By Peter Holleran. St. Augustine to Gandhi: The Sexual Dilemma The battle with the flesh, as exemplified by St. Augustine and Mohandas K. Gandhi, and thoughts on the role of psychotherapy in spiritual practice. By Peter Holleran. Paramhansa Yogananda and Kriya Yoga ****Revised and expanded 2-28-09**** 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 Two Krishnamurtis ***Revised 3-23-09*** Paradox and contradiction in two modern iconoclasts, J. Krishnamurti and U.G. Krishnamurti. By Peter Holleran. "Don't Worry, Be Happy" Meher Baba and the Concept of the Avatar. By Peter Holleran. 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 on aging. "The unexamined life is not worth living."   - Socrates (470-399 BC) "The unlived life is not worth examining."     - Socrates (b. 1949) 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 ***Revised 3-08-09*** 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 ***Revised 5-24-09*** 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 The Neo-Vedantic Origins of Christian Science Its influence on New-Age thinking, and fundamental misunderstanding. 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. 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 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.