The Real Rasputin?
The story of Gregory Rasputin—the Siberian “mad monk,” healer, profligate, unwitting destroyer of the Romanov dynasty—is well known. He has been the subject of innumerable books and several films. Yet none of them seem to have fathomed him fully. His…
A Higher Power
In 1940, Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, a man who knew sin and failure like he knew the back of his hand, was living with his wife, Lois, in a tiny room at the Alcoholics Anonymous “clubhouse” in downtown…
Rated “Condemned”
We sat, unmoving, in the darkness of the movie theater as the first notes of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s overture played—a foreboding orchestra followed by sinister electric guitar. It was the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, and we had been forbidden…
Journey of the Rainbow Serpent
Oceans of time support the earth; and deep within this space-filled sea, in a moment as incredulous as one’s own birth, the universe began cooling. The genesis of everything had just begun, three-hundred-and-eighty-thousand years previously, in a feverish instant, and…
La Llorona
In the fall of 1988, I was given a second grant for two months at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. The foundation owns several acres at the center of Taos, a few blocks from the Plaza. A dozen…
Finding the Path, by Tracy Cochran
Painting by Emma Tapley Among the tasks or “yogi jobs” a participant can volunteer for during silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, a Buddhist meditation…
Amma, by Lillian Firestone
Amma, 2009 The Hindu spiritual teacher known as Amma (“Mother”), or Mata Amritanandamayi, was born to a family of fishermen in southern India in 1953. Today…
Spiritual Principles in Action, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Glastonbury Festival, England, 1971. Photograph by Paul Townsend A Sufi master on taking responsibility for our world In answer to a question from a thirty-one-year-old person, “What advice do you…
Rewilding: A Conversation with Staffan Widstrand, by Eleanor O’Hanlon
European bison bull, Bison bonasus, in Zuid Kennemerland National Park, The Netherlands. This is Europe’s largest herbivore, weighing in at over one thousand kilograms. It was once hunted as close…
Days with Michel Conge, Part One, by Rami Kalfon
MICHEL CONGE AT LESIAU C. 1980, DURING A SUMMER WORK SESSION. Michel Conge was a physician and a disciple of G. I. Gurdjieff in Paris in…
Rising from the Fire: The Art of Transformation
“If you look in the eyes of the young, you see flame. If you look in the eyes of the old, you see light.”—Victor Hugo How can we reconcile the…
My Journey to Qigong Master, by Robert Peng
The Horse Stance. Suzhou, China The Legendary Monk Xiao Yao Sometime around the year 1889, a baby boy was born to a poor family in a…
The Deepest Silence, by John Roger Barrie
Alphonse Osbert (1857-1939) Au coucher du soleil, 1894 The eloquence of the deepest silence echoes from the eternal. Originating there and reverberating through the ripples of…
Gastronomy in Ancient China, by Donald Harper
Photo by Tim Chow (@timchowdoingthings) Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating. —Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, M.F.K. Fisher…
Silence of the Heart, by Richard Temple
Andrei-Rublev, The-Old-Testament Trinity, 1422-–-1427, Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery Many things in the Philokalia are said about “passions.” This word has not quite the same meaning as it…
Healing the Wounds of War
In contrast to our modern situation, traditional and indigenous peoples had extensive spiritually and communally based warrior medicine, practices and lineages. They lived immersed in and part of nature and…
Fusterlandia, by Tracy Cochran
Havana. Photograph by Augustin de Montesquiou A tour of Havana leads to a priceless discovery I stood on the upper deck of a cruise ship at…
The Esoteric Shakespeare, by Michael White
The Plays of William Shakespeare. John Gilbert, oil on canvas, 1849. Dahesh Museum of Art, New York City “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely…
To Hold One’s Own
There is a stone from a shore at home that I carry with me wherever I travel. It has a hole through it, which makes it lucky, and it was…