Eastern Spirituality

Religious thinker, yogi and poet, author of 20 books, Sri Anirvan (1896-1978) said, "My ambition is not very great. It is to live a life rich in impressions, luminous to the end, to leave behind a few books embodying my lifelong search for Truth, and a few souls who have caught my fire." One was Lizelle Reymond who documents their relationship in her To Live Within.

Austin, a clinical neurologist, researcher, and Zen practitioner, examines the evolving psychological processes and brain changes associated with long-range meditation. He draws not only on the latest neuroscience research and new neuroimaging studies but also on Zen literature and his personal experience with alternate states of consciousness.

Noted Sufi scholar William Chittick translates for the first time certain aspects of Rumi's teachings, selecting and rearranging Rumi's poetry and prose in order to leave aside unnecessary complications and to present his ideas in his own words in an orderly fashion. It surveys the basic Sufi and Islamic doctrines concerning God and the world, the role of man in the cosmos, the need for religion, man's ultimate becoming, the states and stations of the mystical ascent to God, and the means whereby literature employs symbols to express "unseen" realities.

A new East-West approach to transforming the singing and speaking voice.

One of the most distinguished Orientalists of the last century, Daniélou explores the significance of the most prominent Hindu deities as they are envisioned by the Hindus themselves. Hinduism recognizes for each age and each country a new form of revelation, and also for each person.

An important book, heretofore virtually unobtainable in the West, it traces the development of musical scales from their origins in China and India, through the merging in ancient Greece of these two systems, and on to the development of the Western musical traditions of modal and polyphonic music.The musicians of antiquity understood scales to be either cycles of simple intervals, as in China; arrays of varying intervals around a central pitch, as in India; or a combination of the two, as in Greece. Any one of these methods of construction resulted in a multitude of contrasting scales, each capable of expressing distinct emotional and spiritual states. Those scales, says Daniélou, not only reflected but also influenced the spiritual values of their parent civilizations.

Celebrating the masculine symbol of creative energy in the religious traditions of East and West, Daniélou surveys its expression through the phallic Neolithic amulets, obelisks and the ithyphallic pharaohs, mukha lingams of India, and European standing stones. Considered also are diverse mythologies of the Celts (Cernunnos, the Horned God, Greek [Pan, Hermes, Priapus] and Hindus [Ardhanarishhvara, the androgyne]). Manifestation of the creator, a source of bliss and transcendence, Daniélou argues, the phallus must assume this symbolic role again, if the link to the divine is not to be sundered.

Exploring the relationship between Shaivism and the West, Daniélou—who lived in India for 15 years, using only Sanskrit and Hindi and studying music and philosophy with eminent scholars—provides an extensive examination of the chief tenets underlying Shaivsim and how they relate and bridge the gap between science and religion.

Based entirely on original published and unpublished Sanskrit sources, Daniélou, a distinguished Orientalist who lived in India for over 20 years, explores the methods of yoga in its different forms, including techniques of the "left-hand" paths.

With just the right voice and page after page of hand-drawn images matched with his own handwriting, the author traces the unusual life of Alfred Julius Emmanuel Sorensen who, though born into ego-consciousness in 1890 in Denmark, never lost the non-dual mystic consciousness of what he called "the Invisible Real." Invited to India "to teach Silence" by the poet Tagore, Brother Alfred, as he was known then, felt a kindred consciousness in India. After much travel, he arrived in the hill town of Almora, where on a high ridge he built a stone hut. It had no running water, no electricity, no heat. What he did have was solitude, pure air and a 23-mile vista of Himalayan mountain peaks. He lived on five rupees a month given to him by a devotee. In researching his book Search in Secret India, Paul Brunton met Brother Alfred and introduced him to the great Indian Advaita sage Ramana Maharshi who gave him the name "Sunyata," meaning full solid emptiness. Sunyata lived in Almora until 1979, when friends of Alan Watts brought him to Sausalito. There, aboard Alan Watts' houseboat, he gave a weekly darshan, always insisting he had "Nothing to teach, nothing to sell." In 1984 at the age of 94, "Mr. Nobody," as his American devotees affectionately referred to him, passed into the Invisible Real.

Dürckheim spent eight years in Japan before World War studying the age-old techniques of Zen Buddhism so deeply as to become one of its first Western authorities. In this classic now retranslated, the focus is on a belly-centered posture and attitude of Hara, the center of the vital force, rather than the "chest-out-belly in" posture and attitude of the West.

Tracing Tantrism and Shaktism from the fourth century onward, Evola focuses on the perilous practices of the Vamachara which uses human passions and the power of Nature to control the senses. He draws on original texts to divine methods of self-mastery.

Noted Indologist and former Adi Da disciple, Georg Feuerstein explores the narrow line between radical spirituality, mental health, and sound morality.

Silent except for two newsreel soundtracks. Archival research booklet included. Films of Ramana Maharshi's devotees taken over the years at Sri Ramanasraman and the sacred hill of Arunachala. Among the devotees seen are Miss Ethel Merston, an early English student of Gurdjieff's and Guy Hague who is believed to be the model for Larry in Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge.

Mudras, yoga positions for you hands and fingers, can prevent illness and support the healing of a great variety of physical and emotional problems.

This small volume brings together a number of Guénon's early articles on Sufism and the particularities of its initiation by defining its fundamental elements. Articles include: "The Influence of Islamic Civilization in the West," "The Science of Hand-Reading in Sufism," "Notes on Angelic Number Symbolism in the Arabic Alphabet," and "Taoism and Confucianism."

Based on Arabic sources of the eighth and ninth centuries, the noted Islamic scholar Martin Lings brings a vast erudition and gift for narrative that gives a freshness and directness to the words of those who heard Muhammad speak and who witnessed the events of his life. Given the current reciprocal destruction, this would make a good beginning to understanding Islam.

Discovering the writings of René Guénon, the writer became a Cistercian monk and, studying Dionysius the Areopagite, Eriugena, Eckhart, and even Dante, found there was no incompatibility between Christianity and Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism).

A compendium of the seminal Advaita sage's original works. It includes the Five Hymns to Arunachala, as well as the two sets of Forty Verses along with miscellaneous works including Aatma Vidya. An inclusive overview of the purest of the ancient Hindu teachings. A must read for the serious Advaita Student.

This companion volume to Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self-Knowledge contains many of his actual conversations with students and seekers. He taught the purest form of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism) through the discipline of Self-Enquiry. No previous knowledge of Hinduism is needed to understand what is being discussed.

A profound philosophical and esoteric text inspiring deep devotion and a practical way to enter the path of liberation that is parsed verse by verse by Sri Krishna Prem (1898-1965), an Englishman who became one of the outstanding figures of India's spiritual life.

Like her My Life With a Brahman Family and Shakti Lizelle Reymond gives an account of her five years of communal living with Sri Anirvan, a spiritual master of Samkhya, whose teachings were much in accord with Gurdjieff. Included are a number of his talks and essays showing a rare depth and precision of spiritual understanding.

A celebration of the erotic in which sexual energy is redirected toward coming to a higher awareness beyond intercourse as given in the Tantric art of sexual sublimation.