The Wisdom of the Ancients

Nasalam is a Tantric Essene community, but neither of those traditions is very well known in the modern western world.

Here are a few good books to read to help understand the tantric teachings: The Dawn of Tantra by Herbert V. Guenther and Chogyam Trungpa, The Tantric View of Life by Guenther, The Lion's Roar, by Trungpa, Secret of the Vajra World by Reginal Ray, and The Tantric Path of Purification by Lama Yeshe. There are many more, of course, these are just a few that are in our library.

Essene principles were first established by the High Priest Melchizedek thousands of years ago. While there are no direct written records of that original community, but there are some historical records from later years. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain records of the Essene Community at Qumron, although they are incomplete. The writing of Philo, Josephus and others early in the modern era provide us with a great deal of what is known about the Essenes at that time. That knowledge can be found in many places on the internet or in books like The Essene Heritage by Martin A. Larson.

The books by Edmund Szekeley on the Essenes are quite lovely, though perhaps overly romanticized: The Discovery of the Essene Gospel of Peace, The Essene Gospel of Peace, Books 1-4, From Enoch to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A couple of interesting books that portray Essene life are The Essenes: Children of the Light by Stuart Wilson and Joanna Prentis, and Jesus and the Essenes by Dolores Cannon. These are both the product of past life regressions and contain material, particularly about the man Jesus, that is questionable. Refer to the list of the incarnations of Melchizedek for a different perespective.

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As is noted in the incarnations of Melchizedek, he also manifested as Zarathustra (Zoroaster). While his teachings are not well known in the west, but it was he who first formulated the need to create spiritual warriors to battle ignorance and it's attempts to destroy humankind's potential. A fine book on Zoroaster is The Zoroastrian Tradition by Farhang Mehr. The most generally accessible books on Zoroaster are those by Edmund Szekeley: Essene Teachings of Zarathustra, The Zend Avesta of Zarathustra, The Essene Book of Asha,

As a community, an important goal is to harmonize teachings from various sources with our larger goals of creating a new spiritual understanding as we enter a new period of human develpment. That this is basic to the work of the Order is indicated by the fact that in Melchizedek's incarnation as Mani he incorporated the thoughts of the Buddhists into his own teachings. We have a fairly good library to aid members in their studies and are ready to offer suggestions to those needing help in deciding on a course of study.

One of the more intriguing books about the potential of monastic life is the novel The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg. Another book that has an interesting perspective on the kind of society we would build is portrayed in the fantasy novels of the Wraeththu by Storm Constantine.

Other books important to help understand the paradigm embraced by the Order include:

Isaac Asimov - Foundation Trilogy.

Murray Bookchin - Post-Scarcity Anarchism and others

Ernest Callenbach - Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging

Aleister Crowley - Magick in Theory and Practice

Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

Graham Hancock - Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind

Thom Hartman - The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

John Major Jenkins - Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 and Galactic Alignment

Robert Lawlor - Voices of the First Day (about Australian aborigines)

Ursula LeGuin - The Dispossessed

Charles Mann - 1491 (The Americas before Columbus)

Terrence McKenna - True Hallucinations, Archaic Revival and others

Jeremy Narby - The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

Daniel Pinchbeck - Breaking Open the Head and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (adventures in shamanistic cultures)

Malidoma Patrice Some - Ritual: Power, Healing and Community

Starhawk - The Fifth Sacred Thing

Michael Talbot - The Holographic Universe

John Zerzan - Future Primitive and Other Essays