Thanks to Nick for permission to begin the readers contributions with the very kind and perceptive email he has sent. I'm sure you (as I) wish to hear from him much more. He certainly has a lot to contribute and an honesty that is more than refreshing. If you get some good email from him, please send them to me to post here so all can enjoy his thoughts.

FIRST EMAIL (MARCH 3, 1999)

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate you taking the time to send me the password. I just wanted to mention briefly that I found the piece about the prayers of the unsaved very interesting. I had never really looked at the issue from this angle before and I am glad to have seen this perspective and the questions it raises about our assumptions about faith and salvation. This is just one of the many interesting things I have had the pleasure of coming across on your website in the past few days.

I would also like to say that I found your identification of the Tree of Life with the pattern of brain circuits you described, which I am familiar with from reading Robert Anton Wilson's books, very intriguing. Much of my studies in the past have been in the areas of Qabalah and Western Magic and for a long time I had difficulty piecing them together with other teachings, Eastern and modern, that I have studied, but thinking of the Tree of Life as identical with the circuits has helped me to see it as a part of the larger pattern of psychic growth. For instance, I know see that the Initiations of the Golden Dawn are the introduction of the Initiate to his own psychic centers; as he is led symbolically up the paths he is introduced to the aspects and functions of his own being. The identifaction of Malkuth and the Bio-survival circuit seems to explain why physical threats are so often a part of Neophyte initiation rituals.

Anyways, I had always seen Western Magic as a very mystical (in a medieval, arcane way) thing, distinct from the other philsophies I am familiar with that seem much more concrete and less "fanciful". You have given me a unique perspective on what has been a puzzle to me for some time and I shall enjoy studying your thoughts in more detail.
Nick
nick@auto-performance.com

EMAIL OF MARCH 6, 1999

Sorry for taking so long to write back, as you guessed I have been kind of busy in the last few days. I would like to thank you for writing such a kind letter to me. It is always nice to hear that others think well of your ideas and I am glad you think others could benefit from them. So of course you have my permission to put my letter up on your site. It doesn't really matter to me if my name is on it or not, but I do enjoy discussing these matters with people so I would like to have my email address mentioned.
[nick@auto-performance.com]

Click here to email Nick.

Your letter was very heart warming. However, I would just lke to say that in reviewing the material you have put up on the site I can see a wealth of personel experience and understanding that is so different from the intellectual studies I have done. I have been, as you described it on one page, a spiritual coach potato for a long time, weighed down by intellectual knowledge without the ballast of daily practice. But I have found your pages very accessible and have begun doing some of the basic exercises and I have found them very beneficial, even in the short time I have been doing them for. In particular, I have become almost addicted to the pranayama exercise and a day hardly goes by when I only do it once. Well anyway, I would just like to thank you again for providing so much really useful information in such an accessible form. I hope to be able to make more use of it in the time to come, and I would be more than happy to share any other observations I have with you or anyone else that might benefit from them.
Nick

nick@auto-performance.com