The Antibody Network
The Perennial Map

The Perennial Map

The full corpus of teachings, cross-linked across traditions and themes. The interactive constellation mounts on top of this index — every teaching below opens its node on the Map.

This is the whole library, laid flat. Every teaching on the Map, drawn from twenty traditions — Buddhist and Christian, Vedic and Taoist, Stoic and Sufi, the physicists and the poets — set beside each other so the lines between them show. The wager of the Map is that these are not twenty answers to twenty questions, but one recognition arriving in many voices, and that you can see it more clearly when the voices are in the same room.

This is what the site means by the perennial philosophy: not that every tradition says the same thing in the same way, but that the recognitions keep converging.

There are two ways in. The Themes gather teachings by what they're reaching for — the self that isn't what you think it is, the death that isn't what you fear, the return that carries something back. The Corpus lays them all out by tradition, for when you want to walk one lineage end to end. Every teaching is cross-linked to its neighbours, so any door opens onto the others; and the interactive constellation mounts on top of this index — each teaching below is also a node you can open on the living Map.

Themes

The Corpus — 177 Teachings across 20 Traditions

Karma Yoga — The Yoga of Your KarmaBhagavad Gita 3:35Action Without AttachmentBhagavad Gita 2:47Abandon All and SurrenderBhagavad Gita 18:66Tat Tvam Asi — Thou Art ThatChandogya Upanishad 6.8.7The Self in All Things — Aham BrahmasmiBrihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10The Four States — TuriyaMandukya UpanishadThe Cosmic Form — VishvarupaBhagavad Gita, Chapter 11Karma: The True MeaningBhagavad Gita, Chapter 4 / UpanishadsThe Kali Yuga — The Age of DissolutionRendered for this site from the Vishnu Purana IV.24 and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa XII.2; H. H. Wilson's translation (1840) quoted beneathNada Brahma — The World Is SoundVedic tradition; the Mandukya Upanishad; the Sama VedaThe Avatara — The Ground DescendingBhagavad Gita 4:7-8; the Bhagavata PuranaThe SiddhisPatanjali, Yoga Sutras, Book III (Vibhuti Pada)The Dance of ShivaNataraja iconography; Alan Watts, The Two Hands of God (1963)Kali — Facing the DarknessKali iconography; Tantric and Bengali devotional traditionLila — The Divine PlayVedanta; Alan Watts, The Two Hands of GodNan Yar — Who Am IRamana Maharshi, Nan Yar (Who Am I?), c. 1902Yayati — Fire Fed with ButterMahabharata, Adi Parva, Sambhava Parva, Section LXXXV (trans. K. M. Ganguli, 1883–96); Manusmriti 2.94 (trans. G. Bühler, 1886)Feeding the DepartedGaruda Purana, Preta Khanda, ch. I and XIII (trans. E. Wood & S. V. Subrahmanyam, 1911); Manusmriti 3.267 (trans. G. Bühler, 1886)Salt in Water — Taste It from the MiddleChāndogya Upanishad 6.13, trans. F. Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East vol. 1 (1879)
Indra's NetAvatamsaka Sutra / Hindu cosmologyThe Universe Is PeoplingAlan Watts, The Way of Zen (1957) / various lecturesThe Observer Is the ObservedJ. Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom (1954) / various talksThis Is ItAlan Watts, This Is It (1958) / various lecturesThe Cosmic Game of Hide and SeekAlan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)Be Here NowRam Dass, Be Here Now (1971) / various talksWe're All Just Walking Each Other HomeRam Dass, various talks and writingsThe Vicious CircleAlan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951) & Man and Nature lecture, SMU (1965)Here Is the ChoiceAlan Watts, Man and Nature lecture, SMU (1965)The Power That Comes the Other WayAlan Watts, Man and Nature lecture, SMU (1965)Life Is SchoolEmmanuel / Ram Dass, "An Evening with Ram Dass" (The Sun Magazine) / Becoming NobodyThe RiverAlan Watts (various lectures)The TorchAlan Watts, "Acceptance of Death" lectureThe WaterfallAlan Watts, "Acceptance of Death" / "Redemption" lecturesThe PersonaCarl Jung, drawing on Greek theatrical tradition; also Erving Goffman (1956)The Code of HammurabiThe Code of Hammurabi, c. 1754 BCEThe MonomythJoseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)The Hero's ReturnJoseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1988); The Hero with a Thousand FacesThe Myth of SisyphusAlbert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)The Stranger — The Accidental BuddhistAlbert Camus, The Stranger / L'Étranger (1942)The Taboo Against Knowing Who You AreAlan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)Ram Dass and the TurnRam Dass, Be Here Now (1971); Becoming Nobody (documentary, 2019)Can't You See It's All PerfectNeem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji); transmitted through Ram Dass and Larry BrilliantYou Are An ApertureAlan Watts, various lectures and writings (1960s–1973)The AntibodyTerence McKenna / Alan Watts / Ram Dass / Neem Karoli Baba — synthesizedThe World Is Made of WordsTerence McKenna — "Alien Dreamtime" (1993) and collected talksThe Cosmic GiggleRam Dass, "Seeing Humor in Our Predicament"Bearing the UnbearableRam Dass, "Dealing With Suffering and Seeing It as Grace"Letter to RachelRam Dass, "A Letter to Rachel"The Same MachineryJohn Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, Episode 36 (2019)Right in TwoTool, "Right in Two," 10,000 Days (2006)Knowing What Is EnoughDhammapada · Mahabharata · Tao Te Ching · Pirkei Avot · Luke · Qur'an · Seneca · Epicurus · Mencius — synthesizedThe Antibodies, NamedTerence McKenna, Eros and the Eschaton, lecture at Kane Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, 25 March 1994The Antibody SuppressedTerence McKenna, "The Edge Runner" (talk, May 1990); Food of the Gods (1992), Introduction; Eros and the Eschaton (Seattle, 25 March 1994)Carrying OverJohn Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, Episode 2 (2019); Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S. Rendall (1984), ch. IX; Ram Dass, address to the American Psychological Association, Montreal, 3 September 1980EulogyTool, "Eulogy," from Ænima (1996)