C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

For a while now, I've been wanting to do a "best of" series where I post links to what I consider to be some of the best web posts/articles that you can find on the internet. Lately, I've been very busy writing articles, and so my posts here on my blog have taken a bit of a back seat to the rest of my writing. But since I've found time tonight to sit down and actually do something here, I thought it would be a good time to start this "best of" series. My first pick comes from Carl McColman's delightful mystical Christian blog Anamchara: The Website of Unknowing . The post is entitled "Christian Mysticism of the Future" and its my favorite of all of Carl's posts. (And he's written quite a lot.) By the way, after you've read this, be sure to check out the rest of his site. His last few blog posts alone are wonderful reading. Christian Mysticism of the Future One of my gripes with Phyllis Tickle’s book The Great Emergence is t

     A writer on mysticism whose books have influenced me greatly is the modern day Vedanta master Swami Abhayananda.  His books "The Supreme Self" and "The Wisdom of Vedanta" are two of the clearest expositions on the philosophy of Vedanta that you will ever read.  A book of his that I read recently was "History of Mysticism."  It is exactly what its title implies: A history of mysticism down through the ages (with an always Vedantic slant, of course.)      Whether you agree (or not) with the conclusion that the Buddha was a Vedantic revisionist—as Abhayananda concludes—his brief summary of the Buddha's life and teachings is well worth the read.  The following is the section on "The Buddha" from the book  "History of Mysticism."  (If you want to read more from this yogic sage, visit his website at www.swami-abhyananda.com.) The Buddha In the 6th century B.C.E. the main center of Indian civilization was in the Ganges plain, or the