Buddha at the Gas Pump

Marjorie Hines Woollacott, Ph. D., has been a neuroscience professor at the University of Oregon for more than three decades and a meditator for almost four. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for 35 years, she has co-authored a popular textbook for health professionals that is in its 5th edition, and has written more than 180 peer...

Anne Baring, born 1931. MA Oxon. Jungian analyst. Author and co-author of 7 books. The ground of all her work is a deep interest in history and the spiritual, mythological, shamanic and artistic traditions of different cultures. Her website is devoted to the affirmation of a new vision of reality and the challenges facing us at this crucial time of choice. It includes her many talks, lectures and...

Terry Patten was a philosopher, teacher, activist, consultant, social entrepreneur, and author. Over the last fifteen years he has devoted his efforts to the evolution of consciousness by facing, examining, and healing our global crisis through the marriage of spirit and activism. He co-wrote the book "Integral Life Practice" with Ken Wilber and a core team at the Integral Institute. As a teacher...

Andrew B. Newberg, M.D. is currently the Associate Director in Charge of Research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia. He is also a Professor in the Departments of Emergency Medicine and Radiology at Thomas Jefferson University and he is adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. New...

Lama Tsomo is an American lama, author, and co-founder of the Namchak Foundation. She followed a path of spiritual inquiry and study that ultimately led to her ordination as one of the few American lamas in Tibetan Buddhism. Lama Tsomo learned Tibetan to study with her teacher Tulku Sangak Rinpoche, and now shares the teachings of the Namchak lineage in the US and abroad. Lama Tsomo holds an M.A....

Swami Sarvapriyananda has been  Minister and Spiritual Leader of the Vedanta Society of New York since January 6, 2017. Prior to this, he served as assistant minister of the Vedanta Society of Southern California for 13 months, beginning on December 3, 2015. Swami joined the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in 1994 and received Sannyas in 2004. Before being posted to the VSSC’s Hollywood Temple, Swami...

Kimberly Braun, Minister, M.A., CSP and Meditation Coach has been impelled from and within her contemplative experiences from the age of 5, with over ten of her years spent as a Carmelite monastic nun. Her Masters in theology was completed in 2001 in Washington D.C., and is concentrated upon the adult spiritual journey. As a CSP, keynote presentations are a primary tool in her personal mission to...

Shakti Caterina Maggi has been sharing a message of awakening to our true nature as One Consciousness since 2003, with workshops and meetings held in Italy, Europe, and around the world. Although in the vein of the Advaita and non dual tantric tradition, Shakti shares a very contemporary approach to self-realization and reveals the real possibility of seeing what we are and embodying it in our eve...

Paul Selig is considered to be one of the foremost spiritual channels working today. In his breakthrough works of channeled literature author and medium Paul Selig has recorded an extraordinary program for personal and planetary evolution as humankind awakens to its own divine nature. Paul was born in New York City and received his master’s degree from Yale. A spiritual experience in 1987 left him...

Sadhviji was raised in an American family in Hollywood, California and graduated from Stanford University. She was completing her Ph. D. when she left America in 1996 to come and live permanently at Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, India. She has been living there for the last twenty-one years, engaged in spiritual practice and dedicated service. She was officially initiated into the order of...

One night in 1997 Richard Schoeller thought he was dying because he found himself surrounded by both sets of deceased grandparents. They reassured him that it wasn’t his time to join them in the afterlife and that their visit was to help him understand that he could now "see them." Who could ignore a visit like that? Richard had to learn more about what had just happened, so he began taking classe...

When I was 11 years old our school took a bus trip to the local library. While most of the children were off exploring the mysteries of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, for some reason I found myself in the row of books called Philosophy and Religion. I recall pulling a hardbound book off the shelf and directly opening it to an old black and white photograph of the Portola Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. At...

Kavitha Chinnaiyan, MD, is a cardiologist, meditation teacher and tantrika. She became drawn to the Direct Path through the teachings of Greg Goode and Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon, and has studied yoga, Sri Vidya Sadhana, Vedanta and Tantra through the teachings of Chinmaya Mission, Sri Premananda, Sally Kempton, Paul Muller-Ortega and Sri Chaitanyananda Natha Saraswati. She blends her expertise i...

Natalie Sudman is an author, artist and psychic intuitive. Natalie worked as an archeologist in the Great Basin states for 16 years before accepting a position managing construction contracts in Iraq. In 2007 Natalie was injured by a roadside bomb. During this incident, she had a near-death experience that she details in her book Application of Impossible Things. After recovering from her injuries...

A completely spontaneous, life-altering experience of satori or enlightenment shook Lesley Skylar’s world at about age 9 or 10. Everything, in every facet, shifted unimaginably - nothing was ever the same again. This set her on a life course dedicated to understanding, honoring and living what had been revealed. Lesley has spent years as a renunciate, living in ashrams and working deeply with dire...

Joi was aware of the unseen magic of Presence at a very early age. She remembers being more drawn to this mystery than anything else. This led her to delve into many traditions of spirituality. After a spontaneous awakening at age 28, Joi spent two years on a blissful honeymoon of Spirit before plunging into a deep period of emotional purging and healing. Among her healers were a powerful Lakota m...

When John Samsen first contacted us several months ago, he said, "I'm 90 years old, I've had both my feet amputated, and I've never been happier". We soon learned that John designed the Ford Thunderbird, Plymouth Barracuda, and other "muscle cars", and later had a profound and abiding spiritual awakening. Over a course of many decades, John Samsen followed a quest to understand the “big questions”...

Paul was born in 1961 and lived most of life in the coastal county of Pembrokeshire, UK. He always loved the sea and aspired to be a professional football (soccer) player. One day, at the age of 15, while playing football, unbounded awareness dawned. Everything was the "ocean". He didn't know what this was, or whether anyone else had experienced it, but later on he discovered the Upanishads in a b...

Kabir Helminski is a Shaikh in the lineage of Rumi, and co-director of The Threshold Society. His translations of Rumi and books on spirituality, Living Presence and The Knowing Heart, have been published in at least eight languages. In 2009 and subsequent years Kabir was named as one of the "500 Most Influential Muslims in the World" by the Royal Strategic Studies Center (Jordan). He has toured N...

Matthew Fox is a spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest, and an activist.  As a spiritual theologian he has written 34 books that have been translated into over 60 languages. Among them are Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, A Spirituality Named Compassion, The Reinvention of Work, The Hidden Spirituality of Men, Christian Mystics, and The Pope's War. He has contributed much to...

Amoda Maa is a contemporary spiritual teacher, author, and speaker. After years of spiritual seeking, meditation, and immersion in psychospiritual practices, an experience of the dark night of the soul led her to a profound inner awakening. Then, after a long period of integration, she began speaking from silence in small gatherings. Today she offers meetings and retreats, and is a frequent speake...

Kittisaro and Thanissara have been married since 1992. They spent 7 years as guiding teachers of the Buddhist Retreat Centre KwaZulu S. Africa and then went on to found Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat on the border of Lesotho and South Africa. They co-founded several HIV/Aids Outreach Programs and currently support Kuluingile Project, a home for children left vulnerable due to HIV/Aids run by S...

Recorded at the Science and Nonduality Conference. There is a perennial debate in spiritual traditions regarding whether realization is direct (sudden) or progressive (gradual). But is this a false distinction? Realization is often sudden, no matter how many years of practice may have led up to it, and even after realization, most people find that refinement, clarification, and the working out of...

Presentation at the Science and Nonduality Conference. Many well-known spiritual teachers and gurus have been accused, credibly, of sexual, financial, and behavioral abuse, despite their own spiritual attainment having seemed significant, and their teachings beneficial. As a result, some people have concluded that higher consciousness and ethical behavior are not correlated, that we are governed b...

T!M FREKE is a pioneering philosopher, Gnostic scholar and spiritual guide who speaks and runs ‘Deep Awakening’ retreats internationally. He is the author of 35 books, translated into more than 15 languages, including The Jesus Mysteries on Gnostic Christianity, which was a top 10 bestseller in the USA and UK, and 'Book of the Year' in the UK Daily Telegraph. Over the last 15 years, Tim has been a...