Motivational training techniques often focus mindlessly on “positive thinking”, glossing over the need for people to engage in soul-search­ing and self-renewal. John O’Neil, past-president of the Califor­nia School of Professional Psychology, discusses the unfor­tunate trend to treat “success” as an all-con­suming end in itself, without regard to the consequences of this attitude. O’Neil is author of The [...]

When the guru teaches, says Joseph Chilton Pearce, he does so not through the intellect but by opening the heart to spiritual experience. Pearce was a devotee of Siddha Yoga as taught by Swami Muktananda and his successor Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. He compares the guru-disciple relationship to the bonding relationship which occurs between parent and child.

Human beings are capable of extraordinary transformations that often go unrecognized in contemporary thought. Michael Murphy summarizes scientific efforts to document extraordinary human capabilities. He draws upon research in hypnosis, parapsychology, and biofeedback as well as medical accounts of the placebo effect and the uncanny remission of disease. Murphy suggests that programs of transformative training [...]

Here he emphasizes the importance of understanding the soul-eviscerating forces that underly civilization’s rush toward technological control.

Here he explains how he teaches college students about the possibility of life after death.

June Singer, PhD, an analytic psychologist, was author of Seeing Through the Visible World: Jung, Gnosis and Chaos; A Gnostic Book of Hours; and Boundaries of the Soul.  Here she discusses Gnosticism as a practice that involved a fusion of Judaism, Christianity and Manicheanism. The Gnostic texts found in the Nag Hamadi scrolls appear to satirize traditional [...]