The idea is as old as human civilization: the notion that there is an ancient ‘secret wisdom’ that is available to the few and guarded by the fewer. And the search to gain access to this secret wisdom is part of the age-old initiatory quest. This quest is told over and over again in countless [...]
Here we are. At the end of 2025. At the end of the year. At the end of many things, for all things must pass. And in their passing, there is a revealing. And in this revealing there is revelation and renewal. Okay – this was not how I intended to begin my final essay [...]
‘Reality is a creation of our excesses, of our disproportions and derangements’ E.M. Cioran Modernity from a western perspective has been one of linear progress, as opposed to cyclic notions such as in the works of the Greek poet Hesiod, the Roman poet Ovid, and the Hindu Vedic yugas. Another popular historical narrative is [...]
‘Hope, when bold, is strength. Hope, with doubt, is cowardice. Hope, with fear, is weakness.’ G I Gurdjieff During the six months of winter-spring 2010-2011 I was busy writing what would eventually become my book New Revolutions for a Small Planet: How the Coming Years Will Transform Our Lives that was published in 2012 [...]
‘Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.’ Hazrat Ali ‘Make mankind your dwelling place.’ Hariri The purpose of any perennial psychology activity is to further the objective of its work alongside human development. People who are essentially interested in [...]
‘The world has no being except as an appearance; From end to end its state is a sport and a play.’ Shabistari The wind of God’s grace is always blowing, but you must raise your sail. Vivekananda The term ‘spiritualty’ is nowadays more or less redundant of its essential value because it comes [...]
“I saw a child carrying a light. I asked him where he had brought it from. He put it out and said: ‘Now you tell me where it is gone.’” Hasan of Basra The perennial psychology provides a path to a deeper truth, to a more expansive perceptive capacity, without disturbing a person’s [...]
To all of us falls one heritage - Wisdom. All of us inherit of it equally. But one man makes the best of his heritage, and another does not; one buries it, lets it die, and passes over it; another draws profit from it — one more, one less. According to how we invest, use, [...]
‘There is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but did not forget that, then there would be no cause to worry; whereas if you performed and remembered and did not forget every single thing, but forget that one thing, then you would have done [...]
‘Man, we say we know, originates from far away; so far, indeed, that in speaking of his origin, such phrases as “beyond the stars” are frequently employed. Man is estranged from his origins. Some of his feelings (but not all of them) are slight indicators of this…Man has the opportunity of returning to his [...]
‘… it can be said in all truth that “the end of a world” never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion.’ Rene Guenon Transmutation and transfiguration can still occur within a realm of illusion. Illusion does not necessarily mean that something is intrinsically wrong but rather that something [...]
Sometimes in order to advance along a train of thought it is necessary to be shaken away from the main highway and to take a different track – to receive a ‘shock’ (such as in a thought experiment). This is one of those, as it helps to provide an energetic impetus for the continuation [...]
