Kabbalah, also spelled Kabala or Cabala (Hebrew: קַבָּלָה‎ literally "receiving"), is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought. Its definition varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its religious origin as an integral part of Judaism, to Christian, New Age, or Occultist syncretic adaptions. Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between an unchanging, eternal and mysterious Ein Sof (no end) and the mortal and finite universe (his creation). While it is heavily used by some denominations, it is not a religious denomination in itself. Inside Judaism, it forms the foundations of mystical religious interpretation. Outside Judaism, its scriptures are read outside the traditional canons of organised religion. Kabbalah seeks to define the nature of the universe and the human being, the nature and purpose of existence, and various other ontological questions. It also presents methods to aid understanding of these concepts and to thereby attain spiritual realisation.

Jack Gariss ( /ˈɡærɨs/; October 19, 1920 – January 19, 1985) was an American spiritual teacher and meditation instructor, and a radio personality on KPFK in Los Angeles from the 1960s until his death in Los Angeles in 1985. He was born in Nebraska.

As a young man, in the 1950s, Jack Gariss attended University of Southern California and worked for Cecil B. DeMille. Most notably, he has a co-writing credit on DeMille's The Ten Commandments.

In the late 1960s, Gariss began teaching meditation and started recording radio shows for KPFK about meditation and spiritual topics. Over the years, the shows were variously titled The Mystic Circle, then The Wayless Way, then Bio Meditation, then Bio-Cosmology, but are now routinely rebroadcast as Bio Meditation on Roy of Hollywood's KPFK show, on most Thursday nights / Friday mornings.

Shinzen Young (真善, Shinzen^?) is an American meditation teacher. He leads residential meditation retreats for students interested in learning the Vipassana (mindfulness) tradition of Buddhism. Although Vipassana is traditionally a Theravada technique, Shinzen was originally ordained in Japan as a monk in the Shingon (Japanese Vajrayana) tradition. He has studied and practiced extensively in other traditions, including Zen and Native American traditions.

He frequently uses concepts from mathematics as a metaphor to illustrate the abstract concepts of meditation. As a result, his teachings tend to be popular among academics and professionals. His interest in integrating meditation with scientific paradigms has led to collaborations with neuroscientists at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is working on various ways to bring a secular mindfulness practice to a wider audience, using revamped terminology and techniques and automated expert systems.

Shinzen was born Steve Young in Los Angeles, California. He had a strong interest in Japanese language and Asian culture in high school, which led to him living as an exchange student in Japan. There he was exposed to Buddhism and Buddhist teachers, which eventually led him to become a monk.

Hans Jonas (10 May 1903 – 5 February 1993) was a German-born philosopher who was, from 1955 to 1976, Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Jonas's writings were very influential in different spheres. For example, The Gnostic Religion, first published in 1958, was for many years the standard work in English on the subject of Gnosticism. The Imperative of Responsibility (German 1979, English 1984) centers on social and ethical problems created by technology. Jonas insists that human survival depends on our efforts to care for our planet and its future. He formulated a new and distinctive supreme principle of morality: "Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life".

While The Imperative of Responsibility has been credited with catalyzing the environmental movement in Germany, his work The Phenomenon of Life (1966) forms the philosophical undergirding of one major school of bioethics in America. Murray Bookchin and Leon Kass both referred to Hans Jonas's work as major, or primary, inspiration. Heavily influenced by Heidegger, The Phenomenon of Life attempts to synthesize the philosophy of matter with the philosophy of mind, producing a rich existential understanding of biology, which ultimately argues for a simultaneously material and moral human nature.

Boaz Huss (born 1959) is a scholar of Kabbalah. He is associate professor in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev.

Boaz Huss was born in Jerusalem, in 1959. He studied Philosophy and History of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, and earned his PhD in 1993. Since 1996 he teaches at the Goldstein-Goren department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University.

Huss studies the history of Kabbalah from a cultural studies perspective. He published several studies about the Zohar and its` reception history. His first monograph was dedicated to the Kabbalah of Rabbi Shimon Lavi, one of the first commentators of the Zohar. In his second monograph he examined the reception of the Zohar and the construction of its symbolic value. Huss was one of the first scholars to research modern and contemporary forms of Kabbalah which were neglected in Kabbalah scholarship. He wrote about the communist Kabbalah of Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, about Kabbalistic motifs used by Madonna, and about the New Age and Postmodern characteristic of contemporary Kabbalah. He is currently engaged in a research project of Kabbalah and the Theosophical Society. Huss also studied the history of Kabbalah research, and criticized the use of the term "Mysticism" as the defining category of Kabbalah and Hasidism, and the theological framework of the academic study of Jewish Mysticism.