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About the Importance of Religious Symbols

The first ‘lecture’ I ever gave, I gave for a very private audience: a few members of the Groningen lodge of the Theosophical Society. I was about 19 and still, ostensibly, studying chemistry. One of my fellow students went along. My main point that evening was that the importance of symbols was as a starting [...]

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Man the Measure of All Things, Sri Krishna Prem and Sri Madhava Ashish

I’ve just discovered an old classic whose title I have heard and read mentioned time and again. It’s a classic for a reason. There’s hardly a sentence that doesn’t add insight or new perspective. I’m talking about Man The Measure of All Things, by Sri Krishna Prem and Sri Madhava Ashish. I suspect this book [...]

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Managing the unconscious – about possession and mediumship

I’m working on a post about channeling and mediumship, but it’s a hard delivery. One of the topics it relates to though is that of managing the unconscious. Our psychologists are learning a lot about this topic. For instance, in learning anything we’ve always been told repetition is important. What we now know is that [...]

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Desire & spiritual development, some thoughts

Desire has a bad name in certain spiritual circles – but in others it’s hailed as the fundamental source of all spiritual growth. In that debate I’ve always stood in the first group, but from reading I.K. Taimni’s ‘The Science of Yoga’ (a commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali), I see that it’s really [...]

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Bliss, Atman, Brahman – Jnana Yoga Q&A

Today I got a Jnana Yoga question from Roy: “How can Bliss be part of the essence of Brahman? The ego seeks bliss, i.e. to feel good (at minimum a feeling of well being), even at the expense of truth. Doesn’t the concept of Bliss being part of the essence of Brahman ultimately fulfill the [...]

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Learning from contrasts or sticking to ONE spiritual path?

This post was sparked by a fellow theosophist who apparently hadn’t read the first lines of my review of Susan Blackmore’s Consciousness, an Introduction. He e-mailed me incensed at my reviewing so positively a lady who has decided that parapsychology is a foolish pursuit. To be fair: he turned around totally when I wrote something [...]

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Tidbits about enlightenment – neurologically & spiritually

Still reading Consciousness: an introduction. Still thrilled The book closes with two chapters about spiritual aspects of the subject: awareness and Buddhism. Just some interesting tidbits thrown our way: People who start out meditating are more neurotic than average. People who continue their practice are more extroverted than those who quit (us introvert people naturally [...]

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Inspiration and intuition – spiritual value no.6

Intuition is perhaps the most central of spiritual values. I was reading a piece about a college graduate business man who was into reiki and such. Why was he doing all that? Because he wanted to get in touch with a wisdom beyond intelligence. The fact is that our culture stimulates thinking. We learn by [...]

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Blavatsky a medium? about consciousness, channeling and more

Warning: this is going to be a rambling post. I’ve got too many thoughts singing through my head about this – and they aren’t organized into anything clearcut yet. Let me start by sharing a fascinating book I’ve started reading yesterday: Consciousness: an introduction, by Susan Blackmore. I read fast – so I’ve already started [...]

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States of consciousness: from divine to normal

[Warning: a lot of technical language in this piece.] My usual Friday piece about Blavatsky is based on The Key to Theosophy. ‘The Key’, as theosophists call this book, is the one book by Blavatsky with a traditional linear setup. In other words: the ordering of the subjects is like you would expect in an [...]

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