Category: Spirituality

Paul Brunton: Perspectives, 2

The Timeless Way of Wisdom

Volume One

The Notebooks of Paul Brunton

A Creative Synthesis of Eastern and Western Ideas

Larson, 1984; third printing, 1987

Back Cover:

Those immense silences of the Himalayas…helped me to quet the mind as nothing else…The sharp air freshened the mind, the endless space gave it new perspectives.

Paul Brunton

Perspectives is an inspiring insight into the essence of East-West spiritual philosophy. Going to the heart of virtually every aspect of the spiritual quest, it introduces a major series: The Notebooks of Paul Brunton.

Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was one of this century’s most dynamic spiritual authors. His ten early books (1934-1952) awakened millions in the West to the treasures of oriental wisdom and mystical practice. From 1952 to 1981 he sought relative anonymity and compiled extensive notebooks dedicated to synthesizing Eastern and Western, ancient and modern approaches to the discovery of the Soul. Perspectives is an introductory survey of those mature writings, which he reserved for posthumous publication.

“His ‘Notebooks’ provide a veritable treasure trove of philosophic-spiritual wisdom.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“A simple, straightforward guide to how philosophical insights of East and West can help to create beauty, joy, and meaning in our lives.”

“An ethical, sane, and compelling approach to spiritual practice. His keynote is balance, and his uplifting message encompasses all phases of human experience.”

East West Journal

“…a person of rare intelligence…thoroughly alive, and whole in the most significant, ‘holy’ sense of the word.”

Yoga Journal

“Sensible and compelling. His work can stand beside that of such East-West ‘bridges’ as Merton, Suzuki, Watts, and Radhakrishnan.”

Choice

JOB’s Comment:

The only difference from the first printing is the front cover, and an added quote from East West Journal.

Paul Brunton: Perspectives

The Timeless Way of Wisdom

Volume One

The Notebooks of Paul Brunton

A Creative Synthesis of Eastern and Western Ideas

Larson, 1984

Back Cover:

Those immense silences of the Himalayas…helped me to quet the mind as nothing else…The sharp air freshened the mind, the endless space gave it new perspectives.

Paul Brunton

Perspectives is an inspiring insight into the essence of East-West spiritual philosophy. Going to the heart of virtually every aspect of the spiritual quest, it introduces a major series: The Notebooks of Paul Brunton.

Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was one of this century’s most dynamic spiritual authors. His ten early books (1934-1952) awakened millions in the West to the treasures of oriental wisdom and mystical practice. From 1952 to 1981 he sought relative anonymity and compiled extensive notebooks dedicated to synthesizing Eastern and Western, ancient and modern approaches to the discovery of the Soul. Perspectives is an introductory survey of those mature writings, which he reserved for posthumous publication.

“His ‘Notebooks’ provide a veritable treasure trove of philosophic-spiritual wisdom.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“A simple, straightforward guide to how philosophical insights of East and West can help to create beauty, joy, and meaning in our lives.”

East-West Journal

“…a person of rare intelligence…thoroughly alive, and whole in the most significant, ‘holy’ sense of the word.”

Yoga Journal

“Sensible and compelling. His work can stand beside that of such East-West ‘bridges’ as Merton, Suzuki, Watts, and Radhakrishnan.”

Choice

Julius Evola: The Path of Cinnabar

An Intellectual Autobiography of Julius Evola

Integral Tradition Publishing, 2009 (Il cammino del cinabro, 1963)

Amazon.com

Back cover:

Julius Evola was a renowned Dadaist artist, Idealist philosopher, critic of politics and Fascism, ‘mystic,’ anti-modernist, and scholar of world religions. Evola was all of these things, but he saw each of them as no more than stops along the path to life’s true goal: the realisation of oneself as a truly absolute and free individual living one’s life in accordance with the eternal doctrines of the Primordial Tradition.

Much more than an autobiography, The Path of Cinnabar, in describing the course of Evola’s life, illuminates how the traditionally-oriented individual might avoid the many pitfalls awaiting him in the modern world. More a record of Evola’s thought process than a recitation of biographical facts, one will here find the distilled essence of a lifetime spent in pursuit of wisdom, in what is surely one of his most important works.

Roelof van den Broek & Wouter J. Hanegraaff, eds: Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times

State University of New York Press, 1998

Amazon.com

Back cover:

“This collection presents in a clear and concise way a series of critical distinctions that collectively map the field: Hermetism, Gnosticism, gnosis, Manichaeism, Hermeticism, Catharism, Esotericism, Romanticism, and the New Age. These often confused and misperceived phenomena have been delineated crisply, in a way that permits this collection to serve nicely as a general introduction to the field. This book articulates a new standard of precision and clarity.”

Dan Merkur, author of Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions

This volume introduces what has sometimes been called “the third component of western culture.” It traces the historical development of those religious traditions which have rejected a world view based on the primacy of pure rationality or doctrinal faith, emphasizing instead the importance of inner enlightenment or gnosis: a revelatory experience which was typically believed to entail an encounter with one’s true self as well as with the ground of being, God.

The contributors to this book demonstrate this perspective as fundamental to a variety of interconnected traditions. In Antiquity, one finds the gnostics and hermetics; in the Middle Ages several Christian sects. The medieval Cathars can, to a certain extent, be considered part of the same tradition. Starting with the Italian humanist Renaissance, hermetic philosophy became of central importance to a new religious synthesis that can be referred to as Western Esotericism.” The development of this tradition is described from Renaissance hermeticists and practitioners of spiritual alchemy to the emergence of Rosicrucianism and Christian theosophy in the seventeenth century, and from post-enlightenment aspects of Romanticism and occultism to the present-day New Age movement.

“This work meets the current demand for scholarly, empirico-historical research in what editors rightly denominate the ‘third current’ (the others are biblical faith and Greek rationality) of Occidental thought, i.e., Western Esotericism.”

Ralph Slotten, Dickinson College

Roelof van den Broek is Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He has also written The Myth of the Phoenix: According to Clasical and Early Christian Traditions and Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity. Also at the University of Utrecht, Wouter J. Hanegraaff is a Research Fellow in the Study of Religions. He is author of New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought.

Roelof van den Broek

Wouter J. Hanegraaff