Some Items from a Reading List

[ecosophia]

Having completed a couple of fairly demanding research projects -- the results in question will be published over the next two years -- I've finally had the time to catch my breath a little and start reading some of the pile of books that have come my way this year. A fair number of those may be of interest to my readers, so a few notes here seem like a good idea.

Mouni Sadhu's been a name I've mentioned rather more than once in my blogging, and for good reason. His real name was Mieczyslaw Demetriusz Sudowski.  Born in Poland in 1897, he got involved in the thriving Polish occult scene after the First World War, and also studied in Paris with French occultists. After the Second World War he lived in Brazil for a while, then spent some time in India studying with the great Hindu teacher Sri Ramana Maharshi, before settling in Melbourne, Australia for the rest of his life. A lifelong Roman Catholic, he wrote a series of books on Christian occultism and mysticism that drew from Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as well as Hermeticism and Hindu traditions.  Most of these have been out of print for many years, but that's now changing.

The two volumes I want to talk about here are old favorites of mine, and are also  among the works of his that show the most influence of his time with Maharshi. Meditation: An Outline for Practical Study is one of the few guides to the Western tradition of meditation I know of; it's a good solid book on the subject, and worth reading. I learned quite a bit by studying it back in the day, when you could get it (if at all) only in highly overpriced secondhand editions or from a good library system. Samadhi: The Superconsciousness of the Future and Ways to its Achievement is less practically oriented but it sets out  the core ideas of Sadhu's Hindu-influenced Christian mysticism and provides the groundwork for most of his other books.

These are both valuable books, and I'm glad to have them in new editions, since my old copies long since fell apart through age and use. Both are now in print again from Aeon Books --

Meditation

Samadhi

-- and Aeon has also announced an even more welcome pair of Mouni Sadhu reprints in the works: Concentration, Sadhu's basic guide to mental training, and The Tarot, a hundred-lesson course in Hermetic occultism, building on the work of Eliphas Lévi and Papus. I wore out my copies of both books even before Meditation and Samadhi fell apart into stacks of loose pages, and it will be a very good thing to see them in print again.

Comments

Meditation/Concentration for Druids

[(Anonymous)]

Some time ago I asked about following Sadhu's Concentration and Meditation courses while not subscribing to his worldview that the material world needed to be permanently ditched like a bad date. Your recommendation was to do everything in each course up to a specific step, but despite using Ctrl + F to trawl a previous year of posts, I can't seem to find that reply.
Can you post again what you recommend for druids who don't want to dissolve their ego into nothingness, but want to get the maximum benefit from Sadhu's training?

Re: Meditation/Concentration for Druids

[ecosophia]

The book discussed in that previous conversation was Concentration, and the rule for practice if you're not pursuing samadhi is to do the first three series of exercises, but stop there. The rule for Meditation is the same -- the first three series of meditations are well worth practicing no matter what your goal may be.

[(Anonymous)]

Have Aeon Books mixed up the synopsis on both of these?

[ecosophia]

Nope.

[boccaccio]

Thank you for the heads up. I'm looking forward to read the books. A while back you announced the re-print of Theurgy. I'm reading it and it is *awesome*. Mouni Sadhu writes really clear and it just makes so much sense. It's really good news that his other books are coming back in print too.