Mariana Caplan, Ph.D.

I began my spiritual life as a hard core practitioner. I was one of those young women who, when I bought my one-way ticket to India, decided it would be cheating to have a guidebook as it might interfere with my inner guidance, or a suitcase, as I needed to...

As a young writer in my 20s, one of my mentors, bestselling author and sociologist Joseph Chilton Pearce, said to me, "When I really want to learn about something, I write a book on it. Then the real research begins as I begin to hear people's stories, and huge amounts...

If somebody had to live my life, why did it have to be me?!

As a young woman on the spiritual path, I was always both intrigued and bothered by the concept of karma. It just didn't seem accurate that everyone I knew who remembered a past life was a...

We become skillful actors, and while playing deaf and dumb to the real meaning of the teachings, we find some comfort in pretending to follow the path. ~Chogyam Trunpga Rinpoche

Given that global culture has been turned toward materialistic values in a way unprecedented in human history, it is inevitable...

There is great debate, and in many cases a sharp divide, between practitioners of psychology and those of spirituality. On one end of the spectrum, most of mainstream psychology does not concern itself with issues of consciousness and spirit and rejects what is not scientifically quantifiable. On the other end,...

Many people get disillusioned on the spiritual path, and it is not because spiritual practices and approaches are not effective -- they are. If we sincerely engage spiritual disciplines -- whether meditation, contemplation, yoga or prayer -- our practices will bear fruits. We will have more experiences, insights, moments of...

When I was 21, as a student at the University of Michigan, I went for a semester with a group of students to live in the woods of Maine to "learn to live deliberately," as we followed in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. One of...

Another saint has passed. Spiritual leader and Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba died on April 24, 2011. Was he more saint or more sinner, who can ultimately say? He was, above all, a human being, just like every other significant spiritual teacher on the planet.

Although I never met Sathya...

Some things just don't want to die. Much to my surprise, a little piece I published over 10 years ago, about a certain type of spiritual guy I found myself dating in my early twenties, set alight a dormant flame throughout the world. Originally published in the anthology "Radical Spirit,"...

The can of worms is open. Opening up the question on my last blog of "How To Find a Spiritual Teacher," or whether we need a teacher at all, tends to incite even the most dormant of creatures. We have strong reactions, powerful opinions and oftentimes righteous convictions regarding this...

Rarely does a week of my life go by, without someone writing to me either looking for a spiritual teacher, confused about a spiritual teacher, or upset by a deep disillusionment by their spiritual teacher. The question of the spiritual teacher is a perennial question that in many ways is...

It is a jungle out there, and it is no less true about spiritual life than any other aspect of life. Do we really think that just because someone has been meditating for five years, or doing 10 years of yoga practice, that they will be any less neurotic than...