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Neo-Advaita
Neo-Advaita, also called the Satsang-movement, is a new religious movement, emphasizing the direct recognition of the non-existence of the "I" or "ego," without the need of preparatory practice. Its teachings are derived from, but not authorised by, the teachings of the 20th century sage Ramana Maharshi, as interpreted and popularized by H. W. L. Poonja and several of his western students. It is part of a larger religious current called '' immediatism'' by Arthur Versluis, which has its roots in both western and eastern spirituality. Western influences are western esoteric traditions like Transcendentalism, and " New Age millennialism, self-empowerment and self-therapy". Neo-Advaita makes little use of the "traditional language or cultural frames of Advaita Vedanta", and some have criticised it for its lack of preparatory training, and regard enlightenment-experiences induced by Neo-Advaita as superficial. Teachings The basic practice of neo-Advaita is self-inquiry, via the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramana Maharshi
Ramana Maharshi (; ; 30 December 1879 – 14 April 1950) was an Indian Hindu Sage (philosophy), sage and ''jivanmukta'' (liberated being). He was born Venkataraman Iyer, but is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. He was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, India in 1879. In 1895, an attraction to the sacred hill Arunachala and the 63 Nayanmars was aroused in him, and in 1896, at the age of 16, he had a "death-experience" in which he became aware of a "current" or "force" (''avesam'') which he recognized as his true "I" or "self",David godman (7 May 2008), ''Bhagavan's death experience'' The Mountain Path, 1981, pp. 67–69. and which he later identified with "the personal God, or Ishvara, Iswara", [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Cohen (spiritual Teacher)
Andrew Cohen (October 23, 1955 – March 25, 2025) was an American controversial self-declared spiritual teacher, who was accused by former students, including his mother, of mental, physical, and financial abuse. Biography and beliefs Cohen was born in New York City on October 23, 1955 into an upper-middle class secular Jewish family. Cohen recounts that his life was changed by a spontaneous experience of " cosmic consciousness" at the age of sixteen. At 22 years of age and after pursuing a career as a jazz musician, he began a fulltime quest to recover his earlier spiritual experience, enabled by "financial resources, derived from a significant inheritance."Chrisopher TitmussAndrew Cohen. An Obituary./ref> Being sent there by his teacher Christopher Titmuss, he met H. W. L. Poonja in 1986, a teacher inspired by Ramana Maharshi, who taught that no mind effort is needed to attain enlightenment "because it is merely the realisation of what one already has". At their first meeti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immediatism (spirituality)
Arthur Versluis (born 1959) is a professor and Department Chair of Religious Studies in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Academic career Versluis did his Ph.D research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His thesis ''Ex oriente lux: American Transcendentalism and the Orient'' (1990) was published in 1993 as ''American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions''. Research topics Versluis' research focuses on western esotericism and magic, with a special interest in the influence of Platonism on western mysticism and American Transcendentalism.''American Gurus: Seven Questions for Arthur Versluis'' Transcendentalism and American esotericism Versluis has published a "trilogy" on American Tra ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perennial Philosophy
The perennial philosophy (), also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a school of thought in philosophy and spirituality that posits that the recurrence of common themes across world religions illuminates universal truths about the nature of reality, humanity, ethics, and consciousness. Some perennialists emphasize common themes in religious experiences and Mysticism, mystical traditions across time and cultures; others argue that religious traditions share a single Metaphysics, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine have developed. Perennialism has its roots in the Renaissance, Renaissance-era interest in neo-Platonism and its Theory of Forms, idea of Neo-Platonism#The One, the One from which all existence emerges. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) sought to integrate ''Corpus Hermeticum, Hermeticism'' with Hellenistic philosophy, Greek and Christian philosophy, Christian thought, discerning a ''prisca theologia'' f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (; 5 September 188817 April 1975; natively Radhakrishna) was an Indian academician, philosopher and statesman who served as the President of India from 1962 to 1967. He previously served as the vice president of India from 1952 to 1962. He was the ambassador of India to the Soviet Union from 1949 to 1952. He was also the vice-chancellor of Banaras Hindu University from 1939 to 1948 and the vice-chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. Radhakrishnan is considered one of the most influential and distinguished 20th century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, he held the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta from 1921 to 1932 and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics, Spalding Chair of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford from 1936 to 1952. Radhakrishnan's philosophy was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, reinterpreting this tradition for a contemporary understanding. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Doors Of Perception
''The Doors of Perception'' is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. In 1956, he published '' Heaven and Hell'', another essay which elaborates these reflections further. The two works have since often been published together as one book; the title of both comes from William Blake's 1793 book '' The Marriage of Heaven and Hell''. ''The Doors of Perception'' provoked strong reactions for its evaluation of psychedelic drugs as facilitators of mystical insight with great potential benefits for science, art, and religion. While many found the argument compelling, others including German writer Thomas Mann, Vedantic monk Swami Prabhavananda, Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, and Orientalist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zen Buddhism
Zen (; from Chinese: '' Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka philosophies, with Chinese Taoist thought, especially Neo-Daoist. Zen originated as the Chan School (禪宗, ''chánzōng'', 'meditation school') or the Buddha-mind school (佛心宗'', fóxīnzōng''), and later developed into various sub-schools and branches. Chan is traditionally believed to have been brought to China by the semi-legendary figure Bodhidharma, an Indian (or Central Asian) monk who is said to have introduced dhyana teachings to China. From China, Chán spread south to Vietnam and became Vietnamese Thiền, northeast to Korea to become Seon Buddhism, and east to Japan, becoming Japanese Zen. Zen emphasizes meditation practice, direct insight into one's own Buddha nature (見性, Ch. ''jiànxìng,'' Jp. '' kenshō ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley ( ; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction novel, non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine ''Oxford Poetry'', before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Perennial Philosophy
''The Perennial Philosophy'' is a comparative study of mysticism by the British writer and novelist Aldous Huxley. Its title derives from the theological tradition of ''perennial philosophy''. Context ''The Perennial Philosophy'' was published in 1945 immediately after the Second World War by Harper & Brothers in the United States (1946 by Chatto & Windus in the United Kingdom). The jacket text of the British first edition explains: The book offers readers, who are assumed to be familiar with the Christian religion and the Bible, a fresh approach employing Eastern and Western mysticism: The final paragraph of the jacket text states: Scope In the words of poet and anthologist John Robert Colombo: Style Huxley chose less well-known quotations because "familiarity with traditionally hallowed writings tends to breed, not indeed contempt, but ... a kind of reverential insensibility, ... an inward deafness to the meaning of the sacred words." So, for example, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transpersonal Psychology
Transpersonal psychology, or spiritual psychology, is an area of psychology that seeks to integrate the spiritual and transcendent human experiences within the framework of modern psychology. Evolving from the humanistic psychology movement, transpersonal psychology emerged in the late 1960s, integrating spirituality and consciousness studies into psychological theory, as a response to perceived limitations of mainstream psychological approaches. The empirical validity and recognition of transpersonal psychology remains contentious in modern psychology. Early critics such as Ernest Hilgard have viewed it as a fringe movement that attracted extreme followers of humanistic psychology, while scholars such as Eugene Taylor have acknowledged the field's interdisciplinary approach, at the same time noting its epistemological and practical challenges. The field's connections to psychedelic substances, religious ideas, and the new age movement have also further fueled controver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Wilber
Kenneth Earl Wilber II (born January 31, 1949) is an American theorist and writer on transpersonal psychology and his own integral theory, a four-quadrant grid which purports to encompass all human knowledge and experience. Starting publishing in the 1970s, his works were popular among a section of readers in the 1980s, but have lost popularity since the 1990s, retaining some popularity at dedicated web forums. Life and career Wilber was born in 1949 in Oklahoma City. In 1967 he enrolled as a pre-med student at Duke University. He became interested in psychology and Eastern spirituality. He left Duke and enrolled at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln studying biochemistry, but after a few years dropped out of university and began studying his own curriculum and writing. In 1973 Wilber completed his first book, ''The Spectrum of Consciousness'', in which he sought to integrate knowledge from disparate fields. After rejections by more than 20 publishers it was accepted in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
