In this new year we will bring you much that is new at OCOY.org, and we have already begun the process.
New articles
The first of several new articles which we have posted on spiritual life is an extensive interview with Swami Chidananda, the late president of the Divine Life Society, on the subject of Brahmacharya (celibacy) as it applies to those who seek to live a serious life of meditation. Read The Role of Celibacy in Spiritual Life.
The next is an excerpt from the book The Seventh World of Chan Buddhism by Min Zhen Shakya. In this article is found an interesting delineation of various types of meditators according to their evolutionary level. For serious meditators this contains valuable information: first, so they can determine what class they fall into and work to get out of it, and second, to understand the truth about their fellow-yogis and respond to them accordingly. Read The Yogis of Samsara.
The ongoing series of commentaries on the The Aquarian Gospel, the Tao Teh King, and the The Gospel of Thomas will be updated with new chapters in the coming weeks.
New Books
We will be adding new books, both in print and in digital format for ebook reading devices of various types. The first is The Word That Is God: Scriptures and Masters on Om, which is available as a PDF on our E-Library page. Abbot George says about the book in its Preface,
“As I compiled the material on Om from the scriptures and the Masters of Wisdom I was astounded at the amount I discovered, and even more astounded at how little of it is known to any but the most scholarly. The panorama of these texts provided me with a vista regarding Om that awed and inspired me.”
“Consequently I wrote Om Yoga to share with others what I had learned from both my own experience in meditation and my researches in the age-old lore of Om. However, it seemed to me that serious students of yoga would benefit from having access to the entire range of material on which it was based. And so this book was put into shape for your study along with some brief comments of my own.”
The next book in the works is The Gospel of Thomas for Awakening, the print version of the commentary on the Gospel of Thomas which is already being posted on our site. We hope to have this book printed in the next month or so.
Website improvements
In the coming weeks we will begin working on a behind-the-scenes reworking of the structure of OCOY.org to increase the speed with which pages load, and making slight tweaks in the appearance and functionality of the site which should make it a more pleasant experience for our readers.
Podcasts
Lastly, we hope soon to introduce a series of podcasts by Abbot George Burke on various aspects of spiritual life, beginning with recordings of Abbot George’s memories of his time with the great Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh.
We hope that the coming year will be a time of renewed spiritual growth for all, and that we may be a help in that effort.