Category: Spirituality

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

I think Da Avabhasa was what he called himself at this time (although it may still have been Da Free John). See also the essay in which I explain what I find to be his significance.

An Intellectual Autobiography of Julius Evola

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

Amazon.com

Back cover:

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

I think Da Avabhasa was what he called himself at this time (although it may still have been Da Free John). See also the essay in which I explain what I find to be his significance.

Original video replaced with later reupping on other channel.

The Early Life and Radical Spiritual Teachings of Franklin Jones

The Dawn Horse Press, 1972 (second printing, 1973)

Foreword by Alan Watts

From the rear cover and the inside of rear cover:

The Knee of Listening contains Franklin’s essential wisdom regarding the ordinary dilemma and search which nearly all human beings are living. He teaches that seeking by any means, even traditional spiritual, philosophic, religious and yogic means, is an inappropriate and fruitless approach to Truth. Truth is not realized as a result of any action. Truth is always already the case. He says: “All seeking is unnecessary. Only understand your own search. Bodies and worlds are only full. All power is at the Heart. Joyous Light surrounds your head. Truth is consciousness itself. The one who was to come is always already here.”

Hidden in The Knee of Listening, like a symbol in a childbook illustration, is an image of That which I have come to show and teach to those who will resort to me.

Franklin Jones

Franklin Jones, known to his devotees as Bubba Free John, is one of those rare beings who descend into the material and human planes of existence already conscious of spiritual illumination, and with the destiny of rapid evolution for the sake of the spiritual service of mankind. In his own words, he is a “man of understanding”. He has described his own human spiritual adventure in The Knee of Listening. He has said that his early life was a manifestation of the lesson he has come to teach mankind about the fruitlessness of seeking in any form. He says that the years of trial were a means of transforming the psycho-physical functions he is animating, so they could be an instrument for the conscious communication of Truth: “The man of understanding is the Truth of mankind. He is not merely the evolutionary goal and fulfillment of man. He is already Truth, prior to man. He is Truth alive, drawing men into the prior Truth and real functions that are their nature in Reality.”

“It is obvious, from all sorts of subtle details, that he knows what IT’s all about…a rare being.”

“What he says, and says very well, is something that I have been trying to express for thirty-five years, but which most people seem quite reluctant to understand. He has simply realized that he himself as he is…is a perfect and authentic manifestation of eternal energy of the universe, and thus is no longer disposed to be in conflict with himself.”

Alan Watts [not from the his foreword]

Dear Franklin,

Chiti Shakti, the Kundalini, which brings about Siddha Yoga, is activated in you. The Inner Self which is the secret of Vedanta, the basis of religion, the realization of which is the ultimate object of human life, is awakened in you.

Swami Muktananda

A great teacher with a dynamic ability to awaken in his listeners something of the Divine Reality in which he is grounded, with which he is identified and which in fact he is. He is a man of both the East and the West; perhaps in him they merge and are organized as the One that he is.

Israel Regardie

JOB’s Comment:

Jones’s first and still best known book.

The Significance of Franklin Jones