United Wisdom

Archive of publications

And That's How You Are: Advaita Vedanta as a Formula of Recognition

A father repeats one sentence to his son nine times over, explaining nothing and proving nothing. Tat tvam asi, and that's how you are. Two and a half thousand years later the sentence is still repeated on four continents. Advaita offers neither faith nor philosophy, but a way of reading one's own experience.

The Dichotomy of Control: Stoicism and the Formula of Inner Freedom

At one end — Epictetus, born a slave, lame for life after his master broke his leg. At the other — the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Between them a gulf of status, and one shared formula: only what depends on us is free.

Prometheus: Fire as a Symbol of Consciousness

A figure walking down from the mountains at night. Inside a hollow fennel stalk an ember smolders, stolen from the hearth of the gods. Prometheus carries to human beings the thing without which they were not human — and pays for it with a liver that grows back every night.

The Mandala: The Circle as a Map of Wholeness

Today the mandala is an anti-stress coloring book in the esoterica section. It is the shallowest thing that has happened to one of the oldest symbols we have: a circle with a center, arrived at independently in Tibetan monasteries, in Gothic roses, in Navajo sandpaintings, and in the drawings of Jung's patients.

The Neuroscience of Meditation: What the MRI Shows

For thousands of years the traditions said one thing: there is a place inside a person that does not depend on circumstances. Advaita called it the witness, the Stoics prohairesis, myth the fire of Prometheus. These were words. Then came the scanner.