we dig more deeply, however, we find within each of these religious traditions an inner, or esoteric, stream of teachings given by their mystics—those men and women who claim to have had a direct Realization, or Gnosis, of the Ultimate Nature of Reality. Moreover, if we compare the testimonies of these mystics about the Nature of this Reality, we find that, despite vast separations in time, place, language, and culture, they are strikingly similar—so much so that many scholars have come to view their teachings as constituting a single perennial philosophy which, like some irrepressible flower, keeps blooming again and again in the human psyche.