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History rhymes: it moves in cycles of growth, destruction and then further growth; we see intense conflict followed by loving peace, leading to complacency and the withering of what brought the beauty and success to begin with, only to give birth to something greater. Another common historical rhyme is that each age has a wealthy establishment which attempts to suppress information or people that threatens its control: Emperors, Tsars and tycoons. Any serious student of world history, mythology and ideas knows these things to be true.                                                                                                               The Nag Hammadi Scriptures have captured the imagination of seekers ar...

There are two ways in which the ascension (spiritual liberation) argument typically occurs. The first is that humans were once grand or at least at a relatively decent level of peace and stability, but have fallen, and to ascend is to take our rightful place by being and acting in accordance with our designed nature (leaving aside the question of the designer). The other is that we act in alignment with the lowly state we are by nature, and ascension is rising above our lot. Gurdjieff sits in the second category, with the general purpose of human life being to act as an energetic resource for planetary forces in the same way as sheep and cows are resources for humanity; however, just as some animals may avoid capture for food and materials or death by another animal, an individual human may escape their bondage by separating psychologically from the herd.    Gurdjieff states that human beings are in a type of hypnosis, with the added suggestion that this is by design:  ...

A curious fact about the history of ethical theory is that the ancient Greeks did not have a word for happiness; it made no sense for them to speak about the final goal of human action as individual or general human happiness. The Greeks used the word eudaimonia , which is generally translated as flourishing. To flourish, in the eyes of Aristotle, is to fulfil one’s potential as a human being, or to be excellent at being what one truly is.                                                                                                                                                              ...

Erving Goffman established the groundwork for the analysis of the relationship between mental illness and social control in his classic texts Stigma and Asylums. For Goffman, humans live in, and emerge from, interconnected social networks; moreover, individuals within these social networks hold shared expectations about how people will act. Goffman notes that we do not merely expect individuals to live in accordance with these assumptions, but we demand that they do: "We lean on these anticipations that we have, transforming them into normative expectations, into righteously presented demands."  In this way humans transfer conventions or conveniences into implicit behavioural demands, and thereby regulate each other’s conduct.                                                                          ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson always struck me as cutting to the heart of human weakness: the tendency to ignore the advice coming from our hearts due to the desire to obtain the approval of other people. We are here for a reason, and it is our intuitive voice that will guide us towards our rightful destiny, not the judgements or demands of other people: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”                                                                                                                                                                      ...