Douglas Lockhart was born in Scotland in 1938.

His writing career started by accident in 1959 when, while serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Germany, he was invited to be features editor of his unit’s in-house magazine.

After some years in advertising he published two novels, Skirmish (1975) and Song of the Man Who Came Through (1978), and wrote articles and short stories for London newspapers and magazines. (The aforementioned novels have been published under the title Sabazius.)

Biography

Douglas Lockhart has been an Honorary Research Associate with the University of Tasmanian’s School of Philosophy in Australia for nine years, is an Associate Member of the Westar Institute in the US, and Writer in Residence with the Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania. During the seventies, in London (1969-1979), he served for three years on the central committee of the Association for Humanistic Psychology and helped set up awareness groups for deprived children in the city’s East End. During this period he also taught Meditation in Action at the Franklin School of Contemporary Studies in London, and was involved in experimental biofeedback work with a leading UK specialist involved in the development of pain control techniques. This was done in conjunction with a cancer specialist at Bart’s hospital in London, and resulted in his being part of a thermo-photographic experimental project at Bart’s to do with Hatha Yoga postures. This project also involved Douglas in Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) registrations in connection with meditational states.

Throughout this period Douglas worked as a freelance journalist, and that, basically, is what Douglas is, a journalist fortunate enough to have gained academic recognition on the basis of his published works and their orientation. In this vein his writing style is investigative, his conclusions experientially based, his intention the presentation of a point of view born not only from experience but also from wide intellectual engagement.

Literary endorsement for differing portions of his published works have come from:

• Lawrence Durrell
• Brian Aldiss
• Colin Wilson
• Anne Rice
• Richard Leigh

Academic endorsement from:

• Jeff Malpas
• Jan Pakulski
• Marcello Stamm
• Warwick Fox
• Ravi Vindra
• Jean Curthoys

Some of the aforementioned  have already read and evaluated the first two volumes of The Perennial Philosophy Revisited, their conclusions added to those particular volumes and other earlier writings. Further endorsement will be forthcoming for volume three.

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Forthcoming Books:

NON-FICTION:

THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY REVISITED (a trilogy)
Author’s Synopsis

FICTION:

Forthcoming Novels

Published Works

Skirmish: The Cosmological Vision of Alexis Sabazius.
Hardback novel, 182 pages published by Peter Owen Limited, London 1975. This book deals in a no-nonsense manner with the phenomenon of the teacher /pupil relationship.

Sabazius 
Second (updated) paperback edition of Song of the Man, 313 pages published by Element Books, UK in 1997 due to continuing demand.

The Paradise Complex:
An Exploration of the Forbidden. Hardback novel, 327 pages published by Element Books, UK 1997. This book was a tongue-in-cheek examination of ideas found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Richard Leigh’s international best seller published by Cape.   

Jesus the Heretic:
Hardback nonfiction, 394 pages published by Elements Books, UK 1997. This book dealt with the problem of Jesus’ Jewish, sectarian background, and Christianity’s historical/theological dilemma in attempting to deal with this thorny issue.

The Dark Side of God:
Hardback nonfiction, 331 pages published by Element Books, UK 1999. This book dealt with the problem of evil as perceived through the Christian imagination, and attempted to correct what the author perceived as a psychological/historical faultline in Christian thinking.    

Going Beyond the Jesus Story: An Examination of Christian Belief, Mystical Experience and the Ongoing Development of Conscious Awareness.
Paperback edition, 380 pages published by O-Books, UK,  2011. This book was a study of the meditative/contemplative tradition stemming from the early Christian monasteries in conjunction with present-day studies of the same in psychology and philosophy.
Sample Chapter – Going Beyond the Jesus Story

 The Mar Saba Codex : A New Kind of Fiction for the New Century.
Paperback novel, 662 pages published by O-Books UK, 2011. This book is a fictional study of Catholicism’s claim to ultimate truth through the eyes of multiple characters both for and against such a claim. It is, in essence, an intellectual thriller whose cliff-hangers are ideas as well as situations.

“This is a new kind of fiction for the new century, one that engages both narrative and ideas at the same time. Well-written and well-crafted, Codex harks back to the intellectual fiction that characterised some of the most important novelists of the last century.”

 Jeff Malpas
Professor of Philosophy, and ARC Professorial Fellow, University of Tasmania,
Distinguished Professor, LaTrobe University

• Review of the Mar Saba Codex

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Questions of Philosophy

Time and Timelessness – The Enigma of Time and timelessness, or Non-Time, in relation to our ongoing sense of self and its origin in experience.

Modernism’s Implacable Presence – George Steiner and the Necessities of Ordered Feeling

Rediscovering the Already Known – Champions of a Person-Centred Psychology

Plato’s Royal Road of Mysticism – Psyche’s Thresholds and Entry Points

The Eleusinian Mysteries – Another look at the Greek Mysteries

The Gap Between Subject & Object – Transparency Versus Nothingness

The Mutual Dilemma of East & West – An Alternative Approach to Greek Philosophy

On Our NOT being disabled by the Reductionist Argument – Thomas Nagel Stirs the Philosophical Pot

The Schleiermacher-Manichaean Synthesis – On our Having the Capacity to Realise a Consummate Self-Consciousness

The  Ubiquitous Architypes – The Ecstasy of D. H. Lawrence

The Dawkins-Hitchens Dilemma – The Polarisation or Science and Religion

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Questions Miscellaneous

Out of Body Experiences – An examination of ‘out-of-body experience’ and the subconscious will.

Reincarnation – Fact or Fallacy

Pell Mell To Hell – Cardinal Pell’s Apostolic Assumptions – Getting Down to the Historical Basics.

Rebel with a Cause – George Pell and the brothers Jensen.

The Price of Christmas – Reconnecting with the innocence of childhood.

Tracking Down Jesus in Santa Rosa – with Karen Armstrong, Don Cupitt, John Shelby Spong and Lloyd Geering.

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Interviews

Famous Reporter Interview – With Richard Wessman

Tim Cox – ABC Radio Interview transcript

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Plays and Readings

Julia Flips her Lid:
Stage play dealing with awareness and consciousness performed in Hobart, Tasmania, through Theatre Works in conjunction with the Australia Arts Council, 1994.
Download Complete Script of Julia Flips Her Lid (PDF)
(Anyone interested in putting this play on should contact the author through this site. Other plays and readings will be added at a later date.)

PERDURABO – The story of Aleister Crowley, Magician. A reading in 2 Acts.

The Ecstasy of D.H. Lawrence – A reading in 2 Acts

On Being Frank – A Play in 2 Acts

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Questions of Religion

The Myth of Apostolic Authority – The power of a lie when it is a thumping big one.

The Historical Whitewash – An examination of the historical origins of the Roman Catholic Church.

Homo Mysticus – The anti-conventional, anti-collective and anti-dogmatic nature of mysticism.

The Lost Secret of Christianity – A technical reappraisal of ‘attention and ‘awareness’ in a Christian context.

Rescuing Jesus From the Church

The Resurrection of Jesus – Comments on Joan Bakewell’s BBC Documentary on the Resurrection of Jesus

The Nazoraean Sect and its Independence from Christianity

The Underneath of Things – The Church’s masterstroke in defining the human psyche as the underworld.

What I Used To Believe – What I Used To Believe about Jesus