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Most ancient spiritual texts are of unknown or uncertain origin, but few are as deeply shrouded in myth, legend and mystery as The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean, and the closely associated, and more well-known Emerald Tablet, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. The Emerald Tablets of Thoth did not surface until 1925, but the Emerald Tablet of Hermes has a rich history weaving through much of antiquity.Scholars speak of the Emerald Tablet as one of the most mysterious documents ever put before the eyes of man, and describe it as everything from a succinct summary of Neoplatonic philosophy, to an extraterrestrial artifact, to a gift from Atlantis. The Tablet is attributed to the legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus, said to be an ancient philosopher, healer and sage. References to Trismegistus can be found in Renaissance, Christian, Islamic, Roman and Greek literature, and the Tablet appears and disappears across the ancient world before and after the birth of Christ.No one knows what became of the original Tablet. Historic accounts describe it as a slab of brilliant, crystalline green stone covered with bas-relief Phoenician text. What we are left with are numerous translations and translations of translations, some of which were penned by historical figures like Isaac Newton, Roger Bacon, and Madame Blavatsky. For this book I have created my own version that considers and incorporates twenty or so existing translations.The Tablet teaches that "All is One," and that direct experience of the Divine is possible through meditation and psychological exercise. In modern times it became the foundation of Freemasonry, Theosophy, and esoteric schools such as The Golden Dawn. It is considered the original source of hermeticism, gnosticism, alchemy and science. Some hold that the Tablet holds the secrets of the universe. It is said that those who come to it are destined to read this ancient cryptic work, and if one is spiritually aware, he will be able to read between the lines.The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean are shrouded in even more mystery, and their story requires one to set aside traditional beliefs and keep an open mind. They are said to have been written many millennia ago by an Atlantean priest/king/god named Thoth, who, along with many others of his race, came to earth from another planet. He lived for thousands of years, and when the great flood came upon earth that destroyed Atlantis, he escaped in his ship, then later landed in a land he called Khem, which is now Egypt. He ruled Egypt for 16,000 years, and in Egyptian art is pictured as having the head of an ibis-a sacred bird of Africa.He was a great writer and "keeper of records," and it is said that he authored 36,525 manuscripts. It was Thoth who built the Great Pyramid of Giza as a repository for this Atlantean knowledge, and a place for initiating great souls into the Mysteries. In legend, deep beneath the Great Pyramid are the Halls of Amenti spoken of in The Emerald Tablets, the halls of the gods, where the soul passed after death for judgment. During the many centuries of his life, Thoth raised the people of Egypt from barbarians to a great civilization. When he left that incarnation Thoth was deified as the God of Wisdom, the Recorder, by those in the age of darkness that followed his passing.

The first four books of the New Testament-Matthew, Mark, Luke and John-form the core of Christianity in much the same way as the first five books of the Old Testament-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy-form the core of Judaism. The books of Matthew, Mark and Luke are known as the synoptic gospels because they are so alike. They tell mostly the same stories in similar wording and chronology. By contrast, over 90% of the material in John is unique, and John is sometimes referred to as the spiritual gospel.The Gospel of Thomas is also included here because it contains valuable sayings of Jesus that echo and expand upon the teachings in the other gospels. It deserves to have been included in the New Testament, but was not known until 1945, when it was unearthed as part of the discovery near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, of thirteen leather-bound codices, containing 52 early Christian treatises, mostly gnostic. I have also included The Book of Revelation because it purports to contain words of Jesus heard in a vision, and has become a key text in Christian literature.The Five Gospels is excerpted from a larger work-in-progress, The Holy Bible: King James Reader's Version (KJRV), which I hope to complete and publish in 2022. In the meantime, I have also published three other works excerpted from the KJRV: The Torah, The Book of Psalms, and Poetry and Wisdom of the Old Testament.The KJRV is formatted like an epic poem, which it is, with the verse numbers in a separate column so as to not be in the way while reading. My purpose in creating the KJRV is to provide the clearest, most faithful, most accurate, and hopefully most poetic version of the Bible possible. It is my intention that it speak directly to the reader, and provide a clear understanding of what's being said, without the need for "expert" commentary or agenda-driven interpretations. I do not take on this task as a Christian "believer," though I greatly admire Jesus of Nazareth. I see the Bible as an incredible collection of ancient religious literature, that has had an incalculable influence on western culture, and on world history. No education is complete without knowing what's in the Bible. But reading it can be tough going, particularly the King James Version (KJV), which is pretty much the gold standard of Bible versions. Other versions that are easier to read and understand have been created, but in the process a certain magic and mystique present in the KJV has been lost. In the KJRV I have tried to create a version with the best of both worlds-an easily understood version that retains the poetry and magic of the KJV. I hope you find it valuable.

Logline: "In the midst of war in 1967 Vietnam, a young Green Beret becomes involved in opium smuggling and a CIA-led Montagnard revolution while navigating a love triangle with a beautiful-but-deadly Dragon Lady and a mysterious young nightclub singer--all the while struggling to understand a transformative spiritual experience that overcame him in battle." Pearl of the Orient is an un-produced screenplay inspired by a true story-highly dramatized and hyperbolized, of course. It had a shot at Hollywood a number of years ago, being passed on by name-brand directors and such, and since has been collecting dust in the virtual bottom drawer of my laptop. Recently, in a moment of nostalgia for Vietnam, I pulled it up, reread it, and still liked it-a lot. I realized, though, that I bring to my reading of it a huge amount of background and imagery that is not on the page, and began giving serious consideration to making the movie myself, even planning a trip to Vietnam to scout locations and talk with a production company I found there. Through a series of mistakes on my part, and cosmic intervention, that trip did not happen. In the aftermath, I had a "What was I thinking?" moment. At age 72 with no prior experience directing films, just who did I think would finance me? My flight of fancy was fun while it lasted, and to be honest, mixed with my disappointment was great relief. A burden had been lifted. For decades I had felt like I had a "responsibility" to create some kind of art from what was a unique and compelling experience of the Vietnam War. When my "heroic" effort to do it all myself fell through, that all went away. What I decided, though, was to create an artifact of that obsession, something I could hold in my hand. Hence, this book. It is the screenplay slightly rewritten into what I hope is a more readable format than a shooting script, sort of a cross between a screenplay and a novella. It is all I need to feel done and complete with this story. However, if this book should find its way into the hands of someone who somehow sees what I see in it, and would like to put it on the screen, please let me know. Hope springs eternal, and all that.¿¿¿

From Magic, White and Black: The only true religion is the religion of Love, and Love does not quarrel. If you wish to progress on the road to perfection, take lessons in Love. There is nothing higher than Man obtaining a perfect knowledge of Self. The beginning of all real knowledge is the knowledge of Self. The renunciation of self is necessarily followed by spiritual growth. The true religion of universal Love knows of no "self." The greatest of all illusions is the illusion of "self." Man's only true friend and redeemer is the God he carries within himself. Belief in external gods strengthens the illusions of self. God is good or evil according to the conditions under which he acts, for if God did not include evil as well as good, he would not be universal. Nothing is permanent but the real ideal, the Truth. To know Truth in its fullness is to become alive and immortal. The highest state of spiritual consciousness is the full and complete realization of Divine Truth. Thought is the creative power in the universe. Thought is the great power by which forms are called into existence. Concentration of thought gives shape to ideas and condenses the formless into forms. To give pure and perfect expression to thought is White Magic. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of Man are ultimately identical. He who knows himself knows God. To learn to know God means to learn to know your own Divine Self. All during his life, man creates the condition wherein he will live in the hereafter. Physical death is no gain. It cannot give us that which we do not already possess. We should enter the higher life now, instead of waiting for it to come to us in the hereafter.

Richard Rose was an unlikely Zen master: A rugged, plainspoken, ornery West Virginian, he scraped out a living raising goats, planting crops and painting houses. But Richard Rose had a secret: Having once vowed to "find the Truth or die trying," Rose experienced a cataclysmic spiritual awakening at age 30 that thrust him into "Everything-ness and Nothing-ness," or what he called "the Absolute." The experience left him with only one earthly desire: to do anything, for anyone, on a similar quest for Truth. David Gold was an unlikely student: An arrogant, ambitious and egotistical law-student, Gold only agreed to meet the "enlightened hillbilly" in the hopes of showing him up. But when Rose turned the tables by seeing right through Gold and painting a devastatingly accurate picture of the fears and obsessions that ruled his life, a humbled Gold found himself hungry to know more. Thus began a remarkable 15-year adventure-part spiritual odyssey, part legal thriller-in which death threats, corrupt politicians, and life-threatening cancer run parallel to glimpses of the divine and extraordinary manifestations of timeless wisdom. "After the Absolute is one of the most gripping, intensely interesting, dramatic, and indeed romantic-heroic-mythic, yet poignantly human accounts I have ever read. It would make a fantastic, if unbelievable film, and is a profoundly important document. This book throws light on the perennial what-and-why enigma of our species, reveals the makings of a "new cosmology," and surely gives glimpses into as-yet undeveloped potentials we humans hold within us. That all this is found in an utterly absorbing narrative proves the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction." -Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, and Magical Child.

Certain books should be required reading for serious spiritual seekers, I think, and The Conquest of Illusion is one of them. Knowledge of its existence came down to me through my primary spiritual mentor, Richard Rose, who used to crisscross the country in the 1930s in search of teachers and information about spiritual enlightenment. The story goes that one day he was talking to a cab driver who had similar spiritual interests and asked him if he'd found any teachers or books of value. The cabbie said, "Yeah. One teacher, Alfred Pulyan, and one book, The Conquest of Illusion." By the time I came to know Rose I was in my forties and had twenty years of spiritual seeking under my belt, but I'd not heard of The Conquest of Illusion. It was out of print but I found a used copy and eagerly dug in. My reading was slow going at first. Van der Leeuw was writing in the 1920's and I had to get used to his formal, erudite style and long periodic sentences. The impact of the book, however, was immediate and powerful. It was as if the most logical, intelligent, clear-headed, well-educated philosopher imaginable got enlightened and wrote a book. Actually, more than as if-apparently that is what happened. At any rate, the result is a jewel that belongs on every earnest spiritual seeker's bookshelf.Van der Leeuw writes with the unmistakable perspective of an enlightened master, always grounded in a personal experience of Truth. No matter how deeply into the details of philosophy he leads us, he always circles back to That Which Is. He expounds on each problem of philosophy so evenly and so well you think he's putting forth his own belief. Then he comes back to Truth and pulls the rug out from under everything he just carefully explained. Beautiful, really.I have lightly edited this version to read slightly more smoothly to modern ears, but nothing has been deleted and Van der Leeuw's engaging style remains completely intact. Everything else about this 90th Anniversary Edition, including the front matter and illustrations, are as they were in the 1928 first edition. Bart Marshall

Preface to the Expanded Edition In the years since publication of The Perennial Way, I've been humbled and gratified by the reception it has received, and by the wonderful comments from readers about the essential place it has found in their lives and search for Truth. I have also received suggestions about other spiritual works readers would like me to tackle in a similar way, most often the Bhagavad Gita, which I have since published separately, and also two lesser known Advaita classics, Avadhuta Gita and Atma Shatakam, which I've included in this edition. I've also included two other works, Three Books of the Absolute, and Book of Yeshua. Three Books of the Absolute is an epic poem by the modern mystic Richard Rose that dramatically describes his Realization and what was realized. Book of Yeshua contains selected sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, who's name in his native language of Aramaic, is Yeshua. It is excerpted from my book Christ Sutras: The Complete Sayings of Jesus from All Sources Arranged as Sermons, and conveys the inner teachings of Jesus in his own words, teachings that are very similar to those of Advaita, Buddhism, Zen, and the other traditions anthologized here. Readers have also asked why I haven't written about the similarities between all these great teachings and provided more commentary in the introductions. My feeling is that commentary often gets in the way of a reader's direct communion with the masters, and my intention with these translations is that they speak clearly and directly for themselves, with a powerful self-evidence that needs no commentary.Better for you to discover for yourself the similarities between Jesus and Lao Tsu, than for me or anyone else to point them out. Better for you to be caught off-guard and struck speechless by a profound verse in Ashtavakra Gita, than for me or anyone else to tell you what to feel or hear in it-or worse, how to "understand" it. There is nothing in these spiritual masterworks that you don't already know in the deep recesses of your heart and soul. Reading them is a journey into Self. Have at it, and Godspeed.

The Torah is Judaism's most important text. It contains the first five books of the Hebrew Bible-the Tanakh-which are also the first five books of the Christian Bible. The Tanakh is essentially the same as what Christians call the Old Testament, with slight differences in the order and structure of the included books. The Torah begins with the creation of the world and ends with the death of Moses. The first full draft of the Torah is believed to have been completed in the 6th or 7th century B.C., and has been revised numerous times over subsequent centuries. Jewish tradition teaches that the Torah is the revelation of God, given to Moses, and written down by Moses. It is the document that contains all the rules by which the Jewish people structure their spiritual lives. The word torah means "to teach," and it can mean different things in different contexts. In its most common usage, the Torah refers to the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. But the word torah is also sometimes used to refer to the entire Hebrew Bible-the Tanakh, or Written Torah-and sometimes even the entire body of Jewish law and teachings. Traditionally, each synagogue has a copy of the Torah written on a scroll that is wound around two wooden poles. This is known as a Sefer Torah and it is handwritten by a sofer (scribe) who must copy the text perfectly. In modern printed form, as in this volume, the Torah is usually called a Chumash, which comes from the Hebrew word for the number five.This book, The Torah: The Five Books of Moses, is excerpted from a larger work in progress, The Holy Bible: King James Readers' Version. As you will see, it is formatted like an epic poem-which it is-and feels like you are reading the King James Bible-which you are-but more smoothly, and with more immediate understanding. It also contains details and names missing from the King James Version that turn up in other versions of the Bible. Needless to say, I hope it increases your enjoyment and comprehension of this keystone document, whose influence on Western civilization and culture is without equal. No education is complete without reading it. Twice.

The Book of Psalms is the longest book in the Bible, and arguably the most cherished. For centuries people have sought comfort and counsel in its 150 lyric poems, and the 23rd Psalm is perhaps the most well-known and oft-quoted passage in the Bible. When the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, the quote is from Psalms over a third of the time.The Psalms are the ancient hymnal of the Jewish people. The poetry was often set to music, but not always. They express the emotion of the individual poet about God, and his relationship to God. There are many different types of psalms: psalms of affliction, lamentation, praise, remorse over sin, thanksgiving, gratitude, pilgrimage. There are wisdom psalms, royal psalms, victory psalms, law psalms, and psalms of Zion. About half the psalms are attributed to King David. The rest are attributed to other psalmists, or the psalmist is not known. Some of the psalms attributed to David have details connecting them with documented events in his life. Individual psalms were written as far back as the time of Moses-who is credited with writing Psalm 90-through the time of David, Asaph, and Solomon, up to the time of the Ezrahites, meaning the writing of the Book of Psalms spanned a thousand years. Psalms were an ancient art form, combining poetry and performance. As such, we might imagine "open mic" nights around a fire, sort of a pass the guitar affair, a poetry slam with poets and musicians performing their favorites, as young maidens danced about with timbrels. Poets would try to outdo each other with paeans of praise, and seek to see who could describe the most excruciating dark night of the soul. Some of these psalms were sung and performed for a thousand years before being included in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible-which became the Old Testament in the Christian Bible. So, for a thousand years they were mainly an oral tradition, undergoing countless changes and variations before being entombed as scripture. Then once they became a part of the Tanakh and the Bible, they underwent myriad translations and versions over ever more centuries, right up to today-including this one!What, you might then ask, is left of the original psalms? No way of knowing. But does it matter? What has come down to us is of inestimable value. Perhaps some things were lost or distorted as these psalms made their way through the centuries. Or perhaps the waters of time have been kind to them, removing the superfluous and polishing the essence. Again, no way of knowing.My personal connection with The Psalms began when I used to visit a Trappist monastery and chant psalms at all hours with the monks. Many years later, for no particular reason, I was moved to memorize the 23rd psalm. During the following year I had occasion to recite it at the deathbeds of my father, my mother, and my spiritual mentor as they passed.This book, The Book of Psalms: A Psalter for Seekers in Extraordinary Times, is excerpted from a larger work-in-progress, The Holy Bible: King James Reader's Version. My method in this work is to start with the King James Version of the Bible, then consult 40 other versions as I create what I believe to be the most faithful and poetic version of each verse, while retaining the lilt and rhythms of the King James Version that we have come to associate with biblical passages.