The Sages family of apps.
One catalog of spoken wisdom, met in two ways: on the go with an iPhone and earbuds, or fully immersed in a quiet virtual room through a virtual-reality headset.
Sages for iPhone Download on the App Store
Sages is a meditation player for the iPhone built around one idea: press play, close your eyes, and let a sage speak. There is no course to complete, no streak to protect, and no account to create. Choose a tradition, or let the app choose for you, and sit.
What you can listen to
Meditations
Passages from a single source text, read slowly and faithfully, with long silences between sections so each thought has room to settle. Most run twenty to forty minutes.
Deep meditations
Fully guided practices drawn from a tradition's own instructions: breath awareness from the Anapanasati Sutta, kasina gazing from the Visuddhimagga, self-enquiry in the manner of Ramana Maharshi.
Stories
Teaching tales and parables told end to end: the Conference of the Birds, the Wizard of Oz, Layla and Majnun, Tolstoy's Three Questions, the Velveteen Rabbit. Contemplation disguised as a bedtime story.
Satsangs
Two-voice dialogues between teacher and student, taken from recorded conversations and dialogues in the source texts, from the Upanishads to Vivekananda.
Tradition introductions
A short spoken orientation to each tradition, so a first-time listener to Kashmir Shaivism or Pure Land Buddhism knows where they have arrived.
Sages originals
Our own woven contemplations, composed from several classic sources on a single theme, always with the sources named.
Designed for deep listening
- Spatial audio on AirPods. The sage's voice sits in front of you in a gentle hall, and stays there when you turn your head. Music and nature beds surround you.
- Ambiance you control. Ambient music, brown noise, rain and wind beds, a soft "Breathe" swell, a low drone, and a "Sleep" setting that lets the sitting fade into rain instead of waking you with a bell. Each one is a single toggle you can turn off.
- More Silence. Lengthens the pauses and salts in a few long silences of two to three minutes for experienced sitters.
- Subtitles. Read along with the exact words being spoken, useful for dense texts and for listeners who are hard of hearing.
- Walking meditations. Playback continues with the screen locked, with full lock-screen and Control Center controls, so you can sit or walk.
- Autoplay and random. Let the catalog carry you from one sage to the next, or shuffle across all traditions.
- Private. No accounts, no analytics, no tracking. Preferences stay on your device. Read the privacy policy.
Sages is free to begin, with a curated free shelf across every tradition. An optional premium subscription unlocks the full catalog. Purchases are handled entirely by Apple.
Sage Presence In development
Sage Presence brings the same teachings into a place. It is a standalone meditation experience for virtual-reality headsets: put one on, and you are somewhere quiet, with a sage speaking from a fixed spot in the room around you.
The design starts from a simple observation: a meditator's eyes want darkness and a single point of light. So Sage Presence is built as night. You sit in a moonlit rock garden with three lanterns, a cave hermitage with a fire at its mouth, or a traditional Japanese room with a single candle. Turn your head and the world stays where it was. Lean toward the flame and it grows nearer. Every sound in the space, a cricket, a stream, the wind in the pines, has a small light that belongs to it, so what you hear and what you see are one thing.
Sage Presence is being built and refined in the founder's own sitting practice before release. If you work in virtual reality or contemplative research and would like to follow along, please get in touch.
On the road ahead
- Offline downloads for the iPhone app, so a sitting never depends on a signal.
- Listening history and favorites kept privately on your device.
- New sittings every week: the catalog has grown from a few dozen pieces to more than a thousand in under a year, and the shelf of unread public-domain wisdom is very deep.
- Additional platforms as the audience asks for them.
Questions about the apps, the sources we use, or partnership ideas are always welcome at [email protected].