Can philosophy be useful? I think it can, provided it is both comprehensive and precise. To do this, it must move beyond mere mental gymnastics. It must be based on experience. That experience must be far-reaching and focused. The mental part of philosophy must accord closely with experience. It must be able to solve both everyday problems and unusual problems. Do such philosophies exist? Here are some that I think are highly qualified. ↖

The Word Foundation, featuring the writings of Harold Percival.  •  thewordfoundation.org  •  Here is a man whose writings I have found to be very useful. Harold Percival writes about Consciousness and its development through the human being. He describes what the human being was before being born into the body, how the human develops while he is in the body, and what the human may be after he leaves the body. He emphasizes over and over again how important it is to recognize that a person is not a body, but rather a developing intelligence.

Percival’s view of this developing intelligence is that it has a Triune Self, consisting of a Doer, a Thinker, and a Knower. The human body is occupied by the Doer, while the Thinker and Knower are usually just barely in contact with the body. A human can be confused about the right course of action because the Doer incorrectly identifies with the body instead of indentifying with his Thinker and Knower. The human can overcome this confusion by ceasing to identify with the body and learning to contact and identify with his or her Thinker and Knower.

Percival’s main work, Thinking and Destiny, was once recommended by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation program, for supplemental reading on one of his Transcendental Meditation Teacher Training Courses. This and many other books and essays by the same author are available as free downloads, or in printed form.

“On Conciousness”  •  PDF file  •  100K  •  An introductory article by Harold Percival that was written as a letter to a student.

“Spiritual Beings”  •  PDF file  •  100K  •  A student asks a question about spirit, and Harold Percival answers it by describing the involution and evolution of an individual spirit.

“Flying”  •  PDF file  •  100K  •  An article by Harold Percival that describes the mechanics of flight by birds and humans. ↖

Peace Pilgrim  •  peacepilgrim.org  •  From 1953 to 1981 a woman who took the name of Peace Pilgrim walked across the United States promoting peace. She accepted no money, carried all her possessions in her tunic, fasted until someone offerred her food, and slept outdoors unless someone offerred her a room. At the time of her death, she was on her seventh trip across the country.

Peace Pilgrim promoted inner peace for every individual as the key to making all of our institutions peaceful. She attained a remarkable degree of insight and wisdom using a technique of simply walking outdoors.

Her site includes a book of her writings edited by her friends, available as a free download or a free printed book. ↖

The Great Space Center, featuring the writings of Franklin Merrell-Wolff  •  integralscience.org/gsc  •  Franklin Merrell-Wolff got a bachelor’s in mathematics from Stanford and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard. He then went to teach mathematics at Stanford. But a few months later, he left Stanford to search for enlightenment.

After 20 years, he found what he was looking for. He says: “I found myself in sight of the limits to which our present egoistic consciousness has reached, and also had found adumbrations of another kind of consciousness where alone, it seemed, solutions of the antinomies of the subject-object consciousness could be found.” ↖

“Is Consciousness a Number?”  •  PDF file  •  100K  •  How Maharishi Vedic Mathematics resolves problems in the foundations and philosophy of mathematics. Based on my Masters thesis for a degree in Maharishi Vedic Science at Maharishi University of Management.  •  Revised 8 January 2005.

Summaries of Published Sources by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on Mathematics, including modern mathematics and Vedic mathematics  •  PDF file  •  200K  •  Summaries of sections of publications and press conferences in which Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has addressed any subject in modern or Vedic mathematics.  •  Revised 1 February 2012. ↖