If there is one central category in Buber's thought and life, it is that of dialogue

Buber's contribution to the unfinished contestation between the two great branches of Biblical faith has by no means been exhausted. ... PHILOSOPHER ON THE NARROW EDGE OF FAITH By PETER L. BERGER; New York Times: July 31, 1983 MARTIN BUBER'S LIFE AND WORK The Middle Years 1923-45. By Maurice Friedman. Illustrated. 398 pp. New York: E.P. Dutton. $29.95.

MAURICE FRIEDMAN, who teaches at the University of California at San Diego, brings to his biography of the late Martin Buber the results of many years of working with Buber and studying his writings. The biography, of a man who is by common agreement one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the century, is a work of careful scholarship, both in terms of the external facts of Buber's life and of the development of his thought.

It is also a work of discipleship. Mr. Friedman's deep respect and affection for Buber are evident on every page and the portrait that emerges is of a virtually flawless man. If he were writing about anyone else, one would have to wonder to what extent this portrait is a product of bias; in the business of biography one might then expect that, sooner or later, some revisionist would come along to alter a disciple's portrait. In the case of Buber, such revisionism seems unlikely. One knows enough about Buber from other sources to incline to the view that, in all likelihood, Mr. Friedman's depiction is close to the reality.

This second installment of what will eventually be a three-volume work covers a period of immense productivity in Buber's career that was also a time of soul-shaking drama and tragedy. In Germany in the 1920's Buber became a key figure within the Jewish community and on the Christian religious scene as well. It was during these years that he, in collaboration with Franz Rosenzweig, began the monumental task of retranslating the Hebrew Bible into German. During the same years he wrote several of his own influential books, was active in educational and journalistic ventures of various sorts, and was politically engaged both as a Zionist and as what was then called a ''religious socialist.''

Following the rise to power of the Nazi regime in 1933, Buber stayed on in Germany for five more years, continuing to write under increasingly forbidding circumstances and devoting much of his energy to Jewish educational activities, which he saw as a form of spiritual resistance. He finally immigrated to Palestine in the spring of 1938, to become a professor at the Hebrew University. He was 60 years old at the time, yet much of his important work was then still in the future, for he continued to write and teach almost to the day of his death in 1965.

If there is one central category in Buber's thought and life, it is that of dialogue. The word has become hackneyed in recent times, especially in religious circles. Thus it is all the more important to recapture the freshness of Buber's early writings on dialogue, by which he successfully sought to integrate his thinking on a broad variety of topics. Mr. Friedman believes (probably correctly) that Buber's major contribution was in the area of philosophical anthropology, where, very broadly speaking, he belongs with the existentialist tradition (it should be noted, though, that he was very critical of both Kierkegaard and Heidegger).

Dialogue is at the core of Buber's philosophical anthropology, as expresssed both in his most famous book, ''I and Thou,'' and in many other works. Man is defined in his very essence by his capacity for dialogue - mundanely, in the dialogue between man and man; ultimately, in the eternal dialogue between God and man. Buber's understanding of society flows from this underlying philosophical conception, as does his approach to the different problems of society with which he occupied himself during his long life. But while this view of man led Buber to emphasize community, he also insisted on the primacy of the solitary individual. He abhorred collectivism of every ideological coloration. Both authentic existence and genuine insight could only be found on what he called the ''narrow ridge,'' where a free individual, alone, tries to come to terms with truth.

It is this dialogic understanding of man that Buber found in the Biblical tradition. But dialogue also characterized his own relation to that tradition, to Judaism and to other religious possibilities. Unlike Franz Rosenzweig and many other friends of his, Buber could never fully identify with orthodox Judaism. Although passionately committed to Judaism and to his own self-understanding as a Jew, he continued to be in dialogue with Judaism from his own ''narrow ridge'' and, to that extent, he always stood both within and outside the tradition (a fact that was perceived and resented by the Orthodox). He was always a man on the margin, a man of boundaries.

The same dialogic relation characterizes his appropriation and reinterpretation of Hasidism. Buber had been greatly influenced by Hasidic mysticism, but his rendition of Hasidism, especially in his early works, has been criticized on scholarly grounds (among others, by his friend and colleague Gershom Scholem), and Buber was apparently hurt by these criticisms. The nonspecialist cannot take a position on these controversies, and, in the final analysis, they do not touch on Buber's innermost concern, which was not primarily historical but existential - the rekindling of Jewish piety in the present age.

Dialogue was also, for most of his life, his concern in terms of the relation between Judaism and Christianity - or, more precisely, between Jews and Christians. He conversed, collaborated and corresponded with some of the leading Protestant and Catholic theologians of this century, and he believed that this particular dialogue was one of the most important intellectual and spiritual challenges of the age. Buber's contribution to the unfinished contestation between the two great branches of Biblical faith has by no means been exhausted. The Jewish-Christian dialogue, in which Buber was so interested, is still in its beginnings. There is a considerable agenda still ahead and there is also very much to learn from Buber.

BUBER was not exactly a political man, and it is not unfair to say that his political engagements had an element of innocence. What is one to say, for example, of the definition of socialism, attributed to Buber by his friend Leonhard Ragaz, as ''state-free and nonviolent ... in the sense of a genuine community of men built upon love''? Yet his political activities were protected from slipping into any sort of fanaticism by his unwavering respect for the individual and his liberty, which also made him a critic of all forms of utopianism and totalitarianism.

He rejected Marxism, along with the collectivism of both right and left. He rejected the more virulently nationalistic versions of Zionism, and, from the beginning of his involvement with the Zionist movement to his final years as a citizen of Israel, he was deeply troubled by the question of Arab rights and was instrumental in fostering an Arab-Jewish dialogue late in his life. The same insistence on dialogue dominates Buber's extensive work on education (in pre-Nazi Germany he was close to a number of reform experiments in education) and psychotherapy (he influenced a considerable number of outstanding psychiatrists, among them Ludwig Binswanger). He understood both teaching and healing as dialogic activities, ''between man and man,'' and he was sharply critical of all mechanistic or technical approaches in these fields. For the same reason, he was antagonistic to those schools of sociology that understood human interaction in mechanistic terms. (There is a certain irony in the fact that Buber's professorship in Jerusalem was in sociology; there had been Orthodox objection to his professing in any field defined as religious.)

IN their translation of the Bible, Buber and Rosenzweig rendered the Hebrew kadosh not as ''holy,'' but as ''hallowing.'' Holiness, in other words, is not to be understood as a condition, but as a process. Thus, if men are called to be holy, this means that they are called to hallow the world. Dialogue is at the core of this hallowing activity. But what about those who refuse all dialogue? Buber saw Hitler as the supreme monologist, who demonically attracted men to himself but was totally incapable of responding to them. Mr. Friedman reports a curious disagreement between himself and Buber. In an earlier work about Buber, written during the latter's lifetime, Mr. Friedman had written: ''One's antagonist may, indeed, be the Devil or Hitler, but even such a one must be faithfully answered, contended with.'' In a comment Buber disagreed: One cannot answer Hitler, because in no sense could he be a partner in conversation.

No doubt Buber was correct. But Buber did respond, not to Hitler as an individual, but to the world of horror that Hitler created. Buber responded by drawing even that world into the dialogue between man and God, using the most powerful symbols by which Jewish tradition has hallowed suffering, and thereby answering the horror by the faith that the secret of all worlds is redemption. On that ''narrow ridge'' of faith Buber continues to be in dialogue with us, Jews and Christians both. PETER L. BERGER, A UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY, IS THE AUTHOR OF ''THE HERETICAL IMPERATIVE: CONTEMPORARY POSSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS AFFIRMATION.''

The global missionary business is one of the largest, perhaps even the largest business in the world

David Frawley's Speech, in Debate with Christian Missionaries
9/3/2007 11:34:38 AM delivered at a public discussion organised by Prajna Bharati A.P., on "The Ethics of Religious Conversions" at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Hyderabad.

I was raised as a Catholic and went to Catholicschool. My uncle was, and still is, a missionary. We were told that he was going to South America to save the souls of the Native Americans, people we were told were non-Christian and without conversion would suffer eternal damnation. This is the background that I came from. Today, throughout the world, and in the United States, with very little exception, there is no "Sarvadharma Samabhava" taught in religion. It is something I never encountered in my Christian education in the West. We were taught that Hinduism was a religion of idolatry; it was a religion of polytheism and superstition and that there was no place for Hindus in heaven. Even a great Hindu like Mahatma Gandhi might be revered on a certain level, but he was not given the type of religious credit that he would have been given had he been a Christian. These attitudes still exist throughout the world and India does not exist in isolation. And Hindus in India are, and India as a whole is, still being targeted for conversion. Why is this so? If all the religions teach the same thing, why is it that certain religions are seeking to convert the members of other religions to their beliefs? These attitudes still exist throughout the world and India does not exist in isolation. And Hindus in India are, and India as a whole is, still being targeted for conversion. Why is this so? If all the religions teach the same thing, why is it that certain religions are seeking to convert the members of other religions to their beliefs? Hinduism is a pluralistic tradition. It teaches that there are many paths, many scriptures, many sages, many ways to come to the Divine to gain self-realization and it should be free for the individual to find and follow whatever way he or she thinks or feels works best. But not all religions are pluralistic.

In fact, most religions are exclusive in their mentality and in their beliefs. The two largest religions in the world, with a few notable exceptions, teach that theirs is the only true faith. The average Christian throughout the world has been taught to believe that only Christians gain salvation. The idea has been projected as an eternal heaven for the Christians and an eternal hell for the non-Christians, particularly for idol-worshipping Hindus. And so far, we do not have major Christian leaders in the world contradicting that statement. To date, there is no major Christian leader, or Moslem leader, in the world, who is saying that Hinduism is as good as Christianity or Islam. I do not know of any Christian leaders in the West who would say that a Rama or a Krishna is equal to a Jesus. I do not know of any of them who would honor a Ramana Maharshi, a Sri Aurobindo or a Mahatma Gandhi as a God-realized or self-realized sage. I realize there may be some exceptions to this, in the Indian context. But this is not the case with, and it is also not the official policy of the Vatican. It is not the policy of the Pope at all! I want to read a statement, from "The Coming of the Third Millennium", which was issued very recently by the Pope, in relation to the situation in Asia:

"The Asia Synod will deal with the challenge for evangelization posed by the encounter with ancient religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. While expressing esteem for the elements of truth in these religions, the Church must make it clear that Christ is the one mediator between God and man and the sole Redeemer of humanity."

This is a direct quote. Now, what is it saying about religious tolerance? Christ is the only way. The pope is saying that we accept what is true in these religions, but we do not accept them if they do not follow Jesus as the only way. We still have to convert them. That is the message. This is not a message of tolerance and live and let live. It is not a message of let Hindus have their way and we have our and both are good. It is not a statement that Buddha or Krishna is equal to Jesus. It is a statement of exclusivism and my contention is that such exclusivism must breed intolerance. If I think that mine is the only way, how can I be really tolerant and accepting of you, if you follow another way? And such intolerance is going to end up causing conflict, division, disharmony and poor communication. It is going to divide communities and cause problems. So, please bear in mind that, in the Indian context, as Hindus, you have to deal with these religions as the majority of the people in the world are practicing and believing in them, and this conversion process is continuing. I also think that we should have a free, open, friendly dialogue and discussion on all religious matters, both in terms of social interaction and relative to doctrinal matters. There should be complete freedom of discussion, freedom of criticism and freedom of debate just as we have in science. What generally happens in the field of conversion is that certain groups are targeted for conversion activity. I would like to discriminate between two different things. One is the change of religion, which people may opt for, based upon open and friendly discussion, debate, dialogue and studies. Nothing is wrong with that. But I would discriminate that from what I would call the "global missionary business". The global missionary business is one of the largest, perhaps even the largest business in the world. Not only the Catholic Church, but also various Protestant organizations have set aside billions of dollars to convert non-Christians to Christianity. They have trained thousands of workers, have formed various plans of evangelization and conversion and have targeted certain communities for that particular purpose. This multi-national conversion business is like any multi-national economic business. It is not something that is simply fair and open. It is not simply a dialogue or a discussion.

So what we see with this missionary business is a definite strategy for one religion to convert the members of other religions. This conversion business is not about religious freedom. It is about one religion triumphing over all the other religions. It is about making all the members of humanity follow one religion, giving up and, generally, denigrating the religion they had previously been following. Why is this conversion business so big in India? Because India is the largest non-Christian country in the world where missionaries have the freedom to act and to propagate. Islamic countries -- Pakistan, Bangladesh -- do not allow this missionary activity at all. In Saudi Arabia, you cannot even bring a Bible or a picture of Jesus into the country. China, also, does not allow such wide-scale missionary conversion activities. So India, because of its very openness to and tolerance of these missionaries, has become the target. You know from recent newspapers that one missionary was killed in India, which is unfortunate. But in that same week, fifty Christians were massacred in Indonesia by the Moslems there. The religious violence is going on all over the world and Christians are not always the victims...

So let there be a dialogue. Let there be open, friendly and also critical communication in religion just as in science. But please let us expose and put an end to this missionary business and let us not think that the missionary business is tolerant. The missionary business is not about freedom of religion. It is about the triumph of one religion. It is not about secularism. The missionary business accepts that only one religion is true. It is a religious war aimed at religious control. The way to challenge this is not through violence or through intolerance, but through being properly informed. It is through being open, friendly, dialoguing and talking to people, so they understand what the Hindu point of view is, so that any distortions about Hinduism are removed. We are all the same Divine being. We all share the same human nature and we must recognise that in all human beings for harmony to exist. At the same time, we should not be naive about the forces of the world and the forces that are trying to disintegrate this society and this culture. I think it would be a tremendous loss if India gave up Hinduism and became another Christian or Islamic country. We have enough of these already. India has a wealth of its own spiritual traditions that the rest of the world needs. Why do Westerners come here? They come here for this wealth of spiritual knowledge. In fact, you should be exporting your religion. That is one thing you have enough of. There are other more important things that you need to import. David Frawley's Speech, in Debate with Christian Missionaries No comment Links to this post The Conversion Agenda Thursday, September 06, 2007

The same system Leonardo used was the basis for our Hindu Temples

The myths are elements of the soul which is eternal. In India, myth is very much alive still today bhavans journal Vol.No.54 Issue No. 2 Contents August 31, 2007 Back to Periodicals India’s True History is in its Myths - II An Interview with Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Q. You’ve said India’s history is its myths.

Yes, of course; India did not record history as we understand it in the West. Historians will scream at this statement, but it is a fact. What the civilisation considered important is found in the myths that were preserved; and the verses that go back to the Vedic Age. This country understood what should be preserved; everything else was peripheral. I successfully used the same Vedic method applied to contemporary politics and history to prove the point in the new Indo-centric cosmology. There was this underlying eternal myth that continued playing itself out. The Gods and Goddesses are the symbols of those energies as they evolved through time. Rudra might become Shiva, but they are still the same original energies. They are the foundation that fortunately still exists in the country. This is the history that has been preserved. Yes, today we are recording history as we know it, and that has its place. But the heart and soul of the civilisation is to be found elsewhere. For example, in the Vishnu line of Ten Avatars with accompanying Epics we have history, Indian style, pure and simple. And, let us be clear, it is cosmology without superstition.

Q. You were talking about a survey published recently that showed India’s fixation with numbers. What’s your take on India’s great love of the 9?

This is the number that could be said to encapsulate the whole destiny of the country; but here is another example of superstition versus knowledge: this fixation to have number plates on vehicles that equal 9. OK, I’m happy to see it, but it is superstition entirely. Nobody who has the 9 on their plates understands the profound depths of what it means to be carrying that number. You may like it because it is your ‘lucky number’, but still it is superstition. The number 9 is the key. It is a fact. All my new cosmology was born out of that realisation: the zero and the nine are equal. I am amused by it, and yes, it is a fixation, but I could say that that is why I am doing my work here because of fixations like this. Maybe people who are obsessed with that number, if they read an interview like this would come to realise there is much more to the number 9. As it stands it is simply a superstition, – but an enjoyable one.

Q: But why particularly the 9?

Often through periods of darkness and great vicissitudes, methods are used to preserve important elements of the knowledge. One such is the number 9. Another example is that you have the Navagrahas in every temple; at the entrance are the 9 planets. Perambulation is performed around them before all else. The interesting thing is that at the time this practice was established there were known to be only six planets plus the sun. Science steps in to criticise and says Rahu and Ketu do not belong there – they are not planets, nor is the Sun and the Moon. Yes, true, they are not. But Rahu and Ketu are important elements; they are intersections of orbits that produce eclipses. Taken together I call them the axis of a horoscope. But what interests me is that this is how they kept the 9 alive until the time when the system would really consist of the 9 planets, which means the complete harmony of 3 x 3. India gave the world the zero; the sun is the zero. The last three planets, including Pluto, were all discovered when this new cosmology had to come forward to unveil India at the centre. To achieve this, the system must equal 9. What may happen tomorrow, who can say? They may eliminate Pluto – but I doubt it.

In India no one is going to accept that they knock out the ninth planet. They want their 9!The Navagrahas may be astronomically wrong but they make sense from another point of view: somebody way back had the vision that the harmony of 9 was important. In India even if they celebrate the wrong day, the wrong time, they fall right! Even with the chaos in this country it gets it right at the end of the day. Elsewhere we would not even have this interview; you would not be discussing these elements as lively topics in the country. You would not be talking about this depth of knowledge – this is what India must offer to the world – and that is certainly not superstition.

Q. You recently published an article on Leonardo Da Vinci saying that he uses these ancient systems as well. You write that in his great fresco in Milan, The Last Supper, he hid the Tropical Zodiac and the script it contains. Can you comment on this?

His fresco contains the exact system that you find in the Hindu Temple; the same cosmological basis – the same tropical zodiac. There is one school of knowledge; the Earth travels on that ecliptic pathway which has no boundaries; it is neither Italian, nor Indian, nor French, nor Arabic. If you awaken to that as Leonardo had, you will come up with the same system. India has that system; all Hindu Temples incorporate it, though it may be forgotten now. From time to time I remind them, often to the delight of devotees and temple administration. It is a fact - perhaps 1500 or 2000 years ago the same system Leonardo used was the basis for our Hindu Temples. Specifically it was the knowledge contained in the zodiac. It goes even deeper here. The whole astrological system is the foundation of the Hindu Temple, and the myths they contain. Leonardo used the same tropical zodiac with its symbols as in the Hindu Temple. However, in the painting he focuses on a very particular element - the sign/symbol Scorpio of the 12 - because in Europe it encapsulates the questions that needed to be addressed. In India you don’t have that emphasised as much as in the West because here there is no tradition of a crucified Divine Son.

For example, Kartikeya, rather, is the victorious God of War. In the high Renaissance, Europe was enraptured with the passion and the image of a crucified Saviour. Now, that is the sign Scorpio that Leonardo made central to the theme of his paintings. The point I make in the article is there are two aspects to Scorpio: the higher one of the Eagle, and the lower, the Scorpion. In India, the Eagle is Garuda, Vishnu’s carrier. In ancient India they did not know the lowly scorpion. They did not and do not have the tradition of a crucified Son, - hence no lower symbolism, only the higher.

Originally in early Christianity, for several hundred years that was true as well. Leonardo was conveying this fact. He did not accept as finality the crucifixion. In his famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man in the Circle and the Square, he makes that very clear. The higher and lower both are right here on Earth, in mankind. There is the possibility of overcoming the pull of this lower force and finally conquering death. So all of this is contained in his paintings; but to recognise it you have to have the same foundation of knowledge. He was not hiding anything; but no one understood this by the 15th century.

It is the same in India; nobody understands the relationship between the Tropical Zodiac and its symbols and what we have in temples built across several thousand years based on the same system. The correlation needs to be made; but that can only be done if you adopt the Sayana/Tropical Zodiac system. When we say, Leonardo hid ‘codes’, it is not so. It is that no one was in the position to grasp what he was conveying. No one understood. The same can be said about India today: it is all ‘written’ in the Hindu Temple, exactly as Leonardo depicted in his famous fresco; but similarly, one ‘looks’, but does not ‘see’.

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet is the Director of Aeon Centre of Cosmology and has resided in South India since 1971. She is author of the three volumes of ‘The New Way’, as well as ‘The Gnostic Circle’, and numerous other books and publications. She can be contacted at aeon1@eth.net BACK Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet [from Lori Tompkins lotus@saber.net]

My personal opinion is that Theresa did over-glorify suffering. But I'm from the Masculine Path

Indistinct Union: Christianity, Integral Philosophy, and Politics Exploration of Unity Consciousness, Christian Life, Integral Thought, and the Future of Politics in a Post-Postmodern World Thursday, September 06, 2007 Mother Theresa Again Again: Promise Last Time Chris Dierkes

Just one more thought worth considering that I have not seen anyone in this on-going thread mention. The New Atheist Crew have jumped on this new piece of phenomenological evidence---i.e. that Mother Theresa felt God absent for something like 4 decades--as proof that God does not exist.

What they do not deal with is that the feelings of her absence followed feelings of presence. Deep presence. I.e. Mother Theresa had a famous mystical experience of Christ hanging on the cross and accepting her to be with him forever in that suffering. Her mystical marriage, as opposed to say Catherine of Sienna or Teresa of Avila, was about being married to Jesus' suffering.Which is exactly what happened by the way. She saw Jesus everywhere, in everyone in the world but never inside herself. Just as Jesus on the Cross felt God everywhere but in his own suffering (My God, My God why have you abandoned ME....not them).

So the New Atheists are playing both sides (or perhaps neither side well). Here's their conundrum. They immediately seize upon and believe wholeheartedly (for their own purposes) Theresa's description of her inner feeling of emptiness. But if they are going to do they to be in any way consistent, have to by her description of her inner mystical experience of God's presence/vision. Which obviously they won't do because it undermines their entire project. Instead, if they were being honest (which they won't but for the sake of the argument) they would be in a bind. If they tried saying the vision experience was either a hallucination, lie, or a random by-product of biochemistry, then so is the experience of emptiness & absence of God. In other words, as always, we return to the central dilemma---interior experience.

If someone is a true reductionist, then even the realization of reductionism (say Daniel Dennett) is itself simply a product of the reduction. And therefore is wrong. Or as useless or equal to any other experience. A reductionist model does not allow for judgment of better or worse. So no one is ever truly a reductionist, as evidenced by Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins among others. They obviously have values they favor over others. They just do not usually have a solid basis for making the judgments that they do, in my estimation. Nor are they particularly insightful and/or honest (since they themselves don't know) why they hold what they hold. They have their own story about why they hold what they hold, but deeper study shows other factors at work I maintain.

They can't have it both ways here. Either we give Theresa the benefit of the doubt on her own experience and therefore she had years of feeling God and years of not feeling God--why is the latter right and the former wrong? Or for "defenders" of God--the opposite? Who makes that decision? What does the "fact" of her feeling God then not feeling God mean? How do we determine the answer to that question? [Much more important than any answer/suggestion itself because the answer to the question of how reveals the person's real existential/intellectual affiliations and hunches].

From a post-metaphysical pov, which I'm arguing helps solve these dilemma (or rather dissolves them), I say that you have to look into Theresa's background to understand what was happening. Namely in a quadratic, intersubjective view, one's background filters helps shape the content of one's own spiritual experience.

No Eastern Orthodox Christian mystic would ever have a vision of becoming wedded to Jesus suffering on the Cross. Theresa's own devotion, which is a product of her training in the Roman Catholic Feminine Spiritual Path, helped shape the experience she had. God is real. Consciousness Is anyway. But God also forms depending on our mode and vision of who/what God is. God (not Godhead) is "God as God is For Us". Often without us ever being aware of that reality. I'm not criticizing her per se for her affiliation. But it is worth asking in Christian theology, whether suffering should be glorified in the spiritual path. My personal opinion (and that's all it is) is that Theresa did over-glorify suffering. But I'm from the Masculine Path, so that determines my own opinions on the matter.

Suffering will come. I don't think we need to seek it out or glorify it. I don't think we should fear it and do everything we can simply to avoid it either. Suffering is as inherently (from the Absolute view) liberated as health. And as inherently addicting, from the relative point of view, as well.What she did to was bring it to light and by not making the poor victims (as too many liberals do), she showed that even in their suffering, they were often happier than rich Westerners. I.e. the Real poverty was spiritual poverty and the West is drenched in that poverty. That to my mind, was her greatest gift, for those who are fortunate materially. But back to the absence....

So on the relative side, the absence is explained as the truth of the assertion of Jesus: you will be with me in my suffering. Which itself does not exist separate from her own perspective. (Love relationship=Two Partners, though asymmetrical in influence). On the absolute side, Theresa could have realized that in the presence and the absence, there is AWARENESS. She was locked totally into the content of the experience (the feeling of God being absent). At least that is how she comes across in her own reflection/letters. What she could have done was to realize and identify with the one that was Aware of her feeling God's absent.

That voice, the voice of I AM ("Before Abraham was, I AM"), is the voice of Nonduality, as experienced in the first person mode of awareness. Indistinct Union. Then the question of God's relative absence would have been less important than the non-separate nature of any content that arises. Presence or Absence. Visions or suffering. Consolation or Desolation. The One that is Aware is Free of both the (relatively) good and bad. Of course that kind of discussion you will not hear from either the defenders or attackers of Theresa, theists, atheists, whoever. posted by CJ Smith @ 10:08 AM 0 comments

The obligatory atheist is essentially fixated on the finger while barking at the moon

Thursday, September 06, 2007 On Giving the Finger to Atheist Wonkers

One Cosmos Under God Robert W. Godwin

Yesterday reader Magnus made an excellent point: "On the commute I read an article about the co-evolution of the dog. It seems man's best friend has lost a part of its brain that kept much of its wolf instincts. On the other hand [paw?], it has gained the ability to understand pointing. When we point at something, a fellow human automatically transfers its attention to the object we point to, rather than just staring at the hand. So does a dog with just a little training. Wolves do not, and neither do chimps or any other species known to man."I wonder if 'religiosity' is not something equivalent. We have gained an ability to understand God's pointing and this alone can replace a multitude of instincts that would be necessary if living apart from God."Imagine a dog trying to explain the concept of pointing to a wolf. The wolf would just look dumbly and say: 'It's a hand. No matter how it moves, it is still just a hand. Can we eat it already?'"I replied that, in a way, the capacity to point and to understand pointing is everything, for it is what lifts us out of our engulfment in matter and imprisonment in the senses.

It is the essence of Polanyi's philosophy, what he calls the distinction between subsidiary (the finger) and focal (the moon) knowledge. The obligatory atheist is essentially fixated on the finger while barking at the moon. Continuing along the lines of yesterday's theme, how does one establish faith, anyway? For me, it really started not so much with me knowing, but knowing with increasing certainty that someone else knew. By immersing myself in that person's knowledge and reading their wrotetrails, I eventually came to assimilate a bit of personal knowledge, but that's another storey of a complex ediface. When you think about it, most of our knowledge of reality ultimately falls into this category.

For example, few of us really have much personal understanding of economics, so we put our faith in someone else who seems to know, and who appeals to our Reason. A leftist will put his faith in a Paul Krugman or Robert Reich, while I put my faith in Tom Sowell or Friedrich Hayek. Immediately you realize that many people who profess to know what they are talking about, really don’t -- not just the “followers” (necessarily) but the experts themselves. Thus, despite my rudimentary knowledge of economics, if Tom Sowell is right, then I know much more about economics than Paul Krugman does. (Here I am using “know” in the naively old-fashioned way of connoting truth; we need a different word for all the untrue things that people, especially experts and wackademics such as Krugman, “know”... maybe the opposite of know, which is w-o-n-k... Krugman is not a knower, but a big wonker. But you knew that already.)Given what I have outlined, if the Creator exists, then the most humble and unsophisticated churchgoer who has an intuitive acceptance and understanding of that to which faith points, knows infinitely more -- literally -- than a Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, to cite a couple of famous godless wonkers.

But atheism is an outrageously grandiose enterprise. One thing you notice immediately is the false humility of the atheist, who at once ridicules the notion that human beings are of any cosmic significance whatsoever, and then proceeds to confidently reveal the Ultimate Truth of existence to the rest of us. In my view, any being that may possess Ultimate Truth -- even if it is only to set Ultimate Limits on what the Mind may know, as does the atheist -- is pretty special. Such a being is most definitely “the center of the universe,” but only if we shift our perspective from a horizontal to a vertical view -- which is demanded by the atheist’s own metaphysic.That is, if you begin with the premise that all is random and that everything is equally meaningless, then you truly have a horizontal cosmos with no possibility of rising above it and knowing any objective truth. Not only are human beings not the center in such a flatland cosmos, but there is no possibility of a center or of knowedge. Nothing points to anything else.However, verticality implies hierarchy, origin, and increased centration as we ascend the scale. Imagine a pyramid, with each level representing a new degree of complexity and depth in the cosmos. On the bottom floor there is mere matter or energy. On top of that is a second floor, biology. Obviously biology is a narrower subset of matter, but it is not “off to the side” like a little growth, but right at the center -- if viewed vertically. Likewise, human psychological and spiritual development represent increased degrees of both verticality and centration, which is why God is the only entity that can truly say “I AM” with a straight face. According to Rabbi Mo, we cannot see this face -- and therefore know I AM -- and live. And this is why the key to spiritual growth -- and vision -- is to “die before you get old and die,” so Pete Towenshend was half right.

In ether worlds, ego death -- or transcendence, if you prefer -- is the road to the toppermost of the poppermost of the universe, the center and Origin of existence, the mysterious within of withinness, the Truth of truth, the El Supremo at the Top of the Stairs, the Starman Waiting in the Sky, for all hierarchies are conditioned top to bottom, and there is no incomplete hierarchy. Atheists are bothered by such ideas. Again, they do not merely reject metaphysics, they are hostile to it. An anonymous poster on Dr. Sanity confessed that “this is something which never ceases to bug me”:“While it is true that this universe is indeed marvelous, beautiful, coherent and logical, vast and detailed, and so on, it is also very clear (or at least should be by now) that it's not set up for our benefit. Mankind is not the center of the universe. We're not it's focus. (Every time people stumble over this fact, they react in shock and indignation). It is not adapted to suit us. Rather, mankind is adapted to be able to survive in the universe.)”

I would respond: who says the universe is beautiful? Is that true? Why should a universe in which we are completely beside the point convey its beauty to us? In order for something to be beautiful or true, mustn’t there be a subject capable of knowing those things? In other words, the cosmos is neither true nor beautiful without a subject that may love beauty and know truth. If we are not the focus - -and therefore center -- of the world’s beauty and truth, what is?

As Magnus suggested yesterday, the cosmos is always pointing at something else, and only humans are able to discern the direction and content of this pointing. For example, other animals merely see a world, not the beauty or truth that radiate through it. It reminds me of what liberals say about Iraq having nothing to do with the war on global jihad. Oh really? Then why are terrorists from all over the world flocking there? You may not think it is the center of the war on Islamofascism, but Islamofascists certainly do. Likewise, you may not think that human beings are the center of cosmic truth and beauty, but the cosmos clearly feels otherwise. You are the only way for the cosmos to say "I AM... and damn, I sure am beautiful. And dignified. And coherent" (and whatever other category you choose to add). Our ways of knowing the the cosmos are freakishly adapted to the way it is -- unlike other animals, who cannot escape their subjectivity and know objective truth about existence. Another commenter on Dr. Sanity said that “My schema starts with the fact that the Universe -- a concept of the Everything, not just our little Steven Hawking, Big Bang Universe -- is infinite.”Hold it right there, wonker. Your schema actually begins with the faith that there is a cosmos -- a strict totality of coherently interacting objects and events, despite the fact that you have never seen it -- and a mysterious ability to know the truth of this cosmic order, to have a tacit vision of where the cosmic finger is pointing.

As I have mentioned before, the philosopher of science Stanley Jaki pointed out that philosophers constantly get into trouble because they try to get to second base before they have gotten to first. As all baseball fans know, “you can’t steal first base.” But this is what philosophers habitually do. Therefore, once this larcenous wonker has assumed first base, he proceeds to steal second and third: the cosmos “never ‘began’, and nothing can be ‘outside’ of it. So I consider the concept of the ‘Supernatural’ to be literal nonsense -- a connection of words which look sensible, but are not, unless the term refers to something actually going on within the Universe. Or unless it refers to the Universe itself.”There you go. He has stolen home without ever having hit a real ball. He possesses Truth -- which is by definition supernatural -- without having to acknowledge that inconvenient fact. For every physicist worth his NaCl knows that nature herself is supernatural. Every great mathematician is a platonist, either explicitly or implicitly. This is the great truth disclosed by Gödel’s theorems, which demonstrate that any logical system can be either complete or consistent, but not both. But Gödel never intended for this fact to be used as a blunt instrument by deconstructionists to undermine the reality of truth. Rather, he was merely attempting to account for the obvious fact that human knowing vastly exceeds the limits of reason. Duh!

Most of the comments left by angry atheists yesterday (actually, it was now last year) on Dr. Sanity -- for example, those of the aptly named "Arational Human" -- were either logically self-refuting or were adequately addressed by other commenters. There was one other comment by Lionel, who wrote that, “The concept of god is a grab bag of inconsistent floating abstractions that is intended to stop thought and rational discussion.... That is what I hate and will do whatever I can to undercut its existence. I hate it because its anti-mind, anti-reason, anti-human, and anti-life. Reason, reality, and logic are of prime importance to me. Emotion is simply the way we experience our values. God, being a nonexistent, has nothing to do with it one way or the other.”If Lionel wishes to be logically consistent, then he must concede that his hatred of God is nothing more than “the way he experiences his values.” He claims to hate God because the concept is “anti-mind, anti-reason, anti-human, and anti-life.”

In each case, his emotional rejection of God causes him to invert reality and to believe things that are patently illogical and untrue. For reason is only a faculty of knowing something indirectly in the absence of direct vision, while God is known directly, the same way one knows one is alive, perceives reality, or is aware of free will. In order to see something, it is not necessary to logically prove the existence of sight. Many of the most important truths are known simply by their “superabundance of clarity,” by pure intellect, not by the reason which us its servant. Reason is not Intelligence in itself, only an instrument of intelligence. Few things create more mischief than reason in the hands of an unintelligent or immoral wonker. Likewise, any form of pure rationalism is an attack on mind itself, because it reduces the cause -- intelligence -- to an effect -- reason. In the words of Schuon, rationalism is “perhaps the most intelligent way of being unintelligent.”

For “Existence is a reality in some respects comparable to a living organism; it cannot with impunity be reduced, in man’s consciousness... to proportions that do violence to its nature; pulsations of the 'extra-rational' pass through it from every quarter. Now religion and all forms of supra-rational wisdom belong to this extra-rational order, the presence of which we observe around us, unless we are blinded by a mathematician’s prejudice; to attempt to treat existence as a purely arithmetical and physical reality is to falsify it in relation to ourselves and within ourselves, and in the end it is to blow it to pieces.” Not for nothing did Richard Weaver say that “every attack upon religion is inevitably an attack upon mind.” Naturally there are many forms of stupid religion, for there is nothing touched by humans wonkers that cannot be made stupid. But at least religion as such does not exclude the possibility and priority of Intelligence, and therefore, Truth. posted by Gagdad Bob at 9/06/2007 07:28:00 AM

Shakespeare once again, uses vivid imagery to show the fading of our lives

Commentary on Sonnet 146 Shawn September 4th, 2007

This poem is a typical Shakespearean sonnet consisting of three quatrains and a couplet. However, what makes this sonnet so unique and meaningful to me is the imagery and metaphors created by the diction. Shakespeare managed to create vivid images that strikes my heart as well as my mind which proves it to be a meaningful and creative piece that allows us to ponder about ourselves.
Line 11, “buy terms divine in selling hours of dross” is slowed down with the slight difference in scansion for words “in selling”, this causes us to have a slight pause when we come to that part. It also sounds smooth because of the slight consonance sound of “s” in “hours of dross”. The use of this sound makes the line serious and gloom at the mention of dross. When I read it, I feel the speaker’s feelings of loss and how s/he wants to change the way of living because the current life we have is worthless. What we all have now would be nothing when we are devoured by death. So the use of “dross” was significant and well placed to give me such an emotion. Shakespeare further emphasizes the importance of “sinful earth” by repetition in line one and line two; the word “My” starts of the second line and we read it with a stronger tone because of the repetition as well as the iambic pentameter which causes “my” to be in a more emphasized tone. This word reflects the image of ourselves once again as the speaker states this “earth” to be owned by ourselves, and we have a responsibility to keep this “earth” well, yet it isn’t.
The structure of this poem is a little interesting because it is placed in such a way where the speaker talks about his/her “soul” which is within, then slowly moving out into the exterior “walls” then the big “mansion”. Thus the structure of this poem influences the strong imagery it gives. The structure slowly reveals to us the “soul” which resides beneath the “walls” which are part of a “mansion”. This makes the imagery sink into our head deeply as we gradually would understand how this metaphoric “body” of ourselves work. Since this is a poem which tells us about our lives and how we should respond to it, Shakespeare did a good job on structuring the poem so that we can understand the basis of our life, and then move on to the more religious areas of the sonnet which talks about hours of dross and divine hours which we can benefit from. In a way, it is as if the speaker is showing us a house, from the inside out, to see how our inner self is and how our outer self is. It is also interesting to note the amount of questions raised in the lines 4, 6 and 8. Just like how a real estate agent does, the speaker asks of our thoughts on this subject. Though in the poem the speaker asks him/herself, the questions are really for the reader to answer. This affected me because when we are interacting with the poem, we will really start to think about the proposed questions. Are our bodies really just for the worms to consume in the end? Is this life? Placing these questions then answering them right after replies the questions in the beginning, which we are pondering about. This shows the carefully planned structure that interacts as well as stimulates our minds as we read through this poem.
The most important metaphor is “my sinful earth” mentioned in line one. It is an interesting metaphor of ourselves; earth represents the place we live in. From seeing the first two words of the sonnet “poor soul”, we can assume that the soul resides in this earth. The words “poor” and “sinful” are both negative words, which show us, what the speaker is thinking about. “Poor” gives us a feeling of pity towards a subject; in this case, we will pity the “soul” residing in this “earth”. This proves that the “earth” in this sonnet is a bad place, and the speaker describes this “earth” as “sinful” which can be linked to ungodliness, which is what the sonnet’s topic is about. Thus we can see that this “sinful earth” is in fact, ourselves, we are not perfect and therefore, we are sinful and not righteous. Line 11, “buy terms divine in selling hours of dross” is the line, which makes me feel inspired. This line is a good way of showing how we can become more moral rather than starving our soul in our “sinful earth”. This line makes the idea of Christianity living very easy to grasp as it portray it in a business manner where we exchange divine hours with “hours of dross” which is our worthless time spent on earth. The line after this is the image of feeding “within” which is referring to our inner self, our soul. In Christianity this is known as our spiritual food, which is meditation on the bible so that we are able to have better judgments and morals. Another imagery we have is of a mansion and its walls. Line 4 says “Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?” This refers to the decorating of us, the walls representing our outer body. This tends to be true as we do spend on ourselves and we do spend on our houses. Yet, we understand that we are spending all our time and effort for something with “so short a lease”. Just like our houses, we will be gone eventually, and all that we have done will be for nothing when we enter our new house, or end physically. Thus what the speaker is trying to convey is the short life span of life, this can also be observed by “fading mansion” in line six. The word fade indicates discolor of the mansion and this gives an idea of dullness of color in our lives.

Shakespeare once again, uses vivid imagery to show the fading of our lives and make us understand that life isn’t long. What we do to ourselves will not last forever, eventually it will become dull. The metaphors gives me a sense of emptiness when I think about how we act as humans, though we are civilized and intelligent, we still neglect basic morals and will always be flawed. When reading through this poem I found myself pondering about one’s existence and what will happen after the death of us, though the speaker does answer the question on our existence religiously, un-religiously speaking it still proposes that we make the best use of our time and work on our soul instead of our external self. This idea can be related to every reader and we will always find truth in it. Sonnet 146 is undeniably a sonnet that works well and creates a strong message for everyone. Sonnets , Shawn Trackback URI Comments RSS

Thoughts related to God cultivate cooperative behaviour and generosity

Source: University of British Columbia Date: August 29, 2007 More on: Spirituality, Psychology, Social Psychology, Consumer Behavior, Relationships, Child Development
Thinking About God Leads To Generosity, Study Suggests Science Daily — Thoughts related to God cultivate cooperative behaviour and generosity, according to University of British Columbia psychology researchers.

In a study to be published in the September issue of Psychological Science journal, researchers investigated how thinking about God and notions of a higher power influenced positive social behaviour, specifically cooperation with others and generosity to strangers.
UBC PhD graduate Azim Shariff and UBC Assoc. Prof. Ara Norenzayan found that priming people with 'god concepts' -- by activating subconscious thoughts through word games -- promoted altruism. In addition, the researchers found that this effect was consistent in behaviour whether people declared themselves believers or not. The researchers also found that secular notions of civic responsibility promote cooperation and generosity.
"This is a twist on an age old question -- does a belief in God influence moral behaviour?" says Shariff. "We asked, does the concept of god influence cooperative behaviour? Previous attempts to answer this question have been driven by speculation and anecdote."
The research, conducted between September 2005 and July 2006 with 125 participants, is the first of its kind in North America. According to the researchers, there is little replicable empirical data using moral behaviour and religion as measures. As Shariff notes, UBC is the first to apply an implicit priming technique to capture and assess subconscious motives or goals, and their associated behavioural outcomes, to this area of concern.
Priming is an experimental procedure used by cognitive and social scientists, mainly in psychology and economics, to obtain indicators of social tendencies by implicitly inducing relevant thoughts. As priming operates largely outside explicit awareness, subjects are unlikely to consciously revise their behaviours or beliefs, the researchers say.
The researchers undertook two related studies. In both studies, groups were randomly assigned to the religious prime or to the control group. Participants in the religious prime group were given a word game and had to unscramble sentences (using spirit, divine, God, sacred and prophet). Those in the control group were given the same task with non-spiritual words. After this task, all participants played an anonymous dictator game, whereby subjects were given 10 one-dollar coins and asked to make a decision of what to keep and what to share with an anonymous recipient.
The researchers were surprised by the magnitude of the positive results for the religious prime in both studies. Sixty-eight per cent of subjects from the religious prime groups allocated $5 or more to anonymous strangers, compared to 22 per cent from groups where neutral or no concepts were activated.
In the second study the researchers also investigated the strength of the religious prime relative to a secular prime. They used concepts of civic responsibility and social justice to prime subjects (with target words civic, jury, court, police and contract) and obtained almost identical results.
"We did not anticipate such a subtle prime, simply getting participants to unscramble sentences with a few key words, having such a large effect on people's willingness to give money to strangers," said Shariff. "These are compelling findings that have substantial impact on the study of social behaviour because they draw a causal relationship between religion and acting morally -- a topic of some debate. They by no means indicate that religion is necessary for moral behaviour, but it can make a substantial contribution."
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of British Columbia.

Vivekananda’s doctrine of Maya is not like that of Sankara

Pertinence of Vivekananda’s Apotheosis in Indian Social Diaspora

Dr. Ravindra Kumar - 8/29/2007

Rabindra Nath Tagore once wrote that “he who wants to understand Indian society must read Vivekananda for he awakens in the younger generation the devotion and love for their motherland, their pride in its past and hope for its illuminating future”. William Jones, the Harvard philosopher called the Swami as the “paragon of Vedantists”. Max Muller and Paul Deussen, the famous orientalists of the nineteenth century, held him in genuine respect and affection. Romain Rolland writes Swami’s words “are of great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handal choruses”.

The intuitive mind of Vivekananda has been inspired by the juxtapose thought and theism of various pantheists and epistemologists.

• He was first moved by reading John Stuarts Mills “Essays on Religion”, which caused his optimistic surface theism, gleaned in fashionable Brahmo Samajist circles to crumble away. The face of evil in nature appeared to him and he revolted against it.
• Afterwards he tried to adopt the theories of Spencer with whom he had corresponded, went in vein and
• then for sometimes the soul of Vivekananda bathed in the aerial waves of Shelley’s pantheism.
• But the deepest influence upon his thought is obviously of ancient Hindu philosophy – especially of Vedanta. As a Vedantist his main body of thought is derived from the Hindu scriptures Upanishads and Vedanta. His doctrine of Maya is derived from this source.
• It is believed that he was also influenced by Buddhist philosophy because the three ideas of Buddhist thought like mass liberation, worth of humanitarian and altruistic work, Samyak Karmanta and Ajiva have inspired Vivekananda’s philosophy to a great deal.
• He was also quite impressed by the strength of character; forgive the oppressor and the ideal of service and love of the Christianity thought.
• He also influenced by the indeterminate nature of reality, the quality of fearlessness and selfless work of Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s thought.
• But the profoundest influence, in the light of which every other influence was remodelled and shaped, was that of his teacher Swami Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Swami Nikhilananda who has written a biography on Vivekananda speaking about this says “it was his duality of God head, the unity of existence, the universality or harmony of all different regions”.

The philosophy of Vivekananda is idealistic in more senses than one. His metaphysical idealism believes that the reality is ultimately spiritual or ideal in character. So, he thought that the ultimate reality is essentially spiritual in character. His idealism is also monistic, because an idealistic philosophy that is strictly monistic becomes abstract and comes to assert that reality has to be indeterminate. He described absolute as Sat (existence), Cit (consciousness) and Ananda (bliss and love). That’s why he believes God is supremely real, is also object of our devotion and worship, so God is present everywhere and in everything. On doctrine of Maya he says is a simple statement of facts as they exists, that the every basis of our being is contradiction, that wherever there is good, there must also be evil and where ever there is evil, there must be some good, wherever there is life, death must follow as its shadow and every one who smiles will have to weep and vice-versa. Vivekananda’s doctrine of Maya is not like that of Sankara who believes it as a power that creates illusion but accordingly to Swamiji it is a fact about the nature of the world.

Vivekananda was a strong believer of the Law of karma where he feels that man normally performs his actions out of ignorance and man’s karma determines his nature and karma does not contradict man’s freedom. By his own good deeds man can win over his ignorance and suffering. He means freedom as a self-determination, which represents the essence of soul, and soul is not really in bondage, because due its simplicity the soul is immortal. According him the desire to win over death is also taken as a sign of our immortality and through yoga soul can realise immortality. Yoga he means, the path leading to the realisation is the path of discipline and union. We have lacked the path of discipline, that’s why he criticised our people for having lost touch with the rest of the world and become stagnant and mummified. He remarked that “the fact of our isolation from all countries of the world is the cause of our degeneration and its only remedy is to getting back into the current of the rest of the world. Dr. Ravindra Kumar is a universally renowned Gandhian scholar, Indologist and writer. He is the Former Vice-Chancellor of University of Meerut. globalpolitician.com

Read Augustine as a historical figure and as a contemporary

Vox Nova Tuesday, August 28, 2007 On Reading Augustine By Michael Joseph

Happy Memorial of St. Augustine of Hippo!

"Lord, renew in your Church the spirit you gave Saint Augustine. Filled with this spirit, may we thirst for you alone as the fountain of wisdom and seek you as the source of eternal life." (Morning Prayer, Memorial of Augustine, Bishop and Doctor)

To commemorate who is arguably the single most significant Bishop, Father and Doctor of Catholic tradition, I decided to write a few tips on how to read Augustine. Please excuse the presumption! For years I struggled with Augustine. Questions from other Christians stumped me:

• Did he prefer symbolic explanations of the Eucharistic?
• Did he produce a nascent Calvinism?
• Is Augustine responsible for producing every 'heresy of the West'?
• Internal questions plagued me: Do we encounter the real Augustine in the Confessions?
• Should we privilege Augustine's later writings, such as the ant-Pelagian tracts or his Retractiones, over his earlier works?
• Did Augustine properly distinguish between Neoplatonism and Christian doctrine?
• Did Augustine really have a full-blown just war theory as many presume?
• This is only a sampling of the questions that every serious student of Augustine must face.

Here, I offer some tips on approaching Augustine's work and dealing with the complexities that lie within his texts.

TIP #1: Start with Augustine's Confessions. Sure, this work appears in the middle of his writing career, but it is the only time Augustine gives us an extended glimpse of his own soul. Not only does Confessions mark the first true instance of introspective and existential writing in Western literature, but it also provides the first intellectual autobiography by a saint. By starting here, you will understand and appreciate the academic formation of the Bishop of Hippo, which will pay huge dividends when you attempt to plow through his much more difficult works. Plus, Confessions provides that needed spiritual boost with its emphasis on sin, grace and conversion from a personal, and not abstract, point of view.

TIP #2: Unlike many of the others Fathers of the Church, Augustine wrote a handbook and summary of the faith, the Enchiridion. This is available in English from New City Press and is titled The Augustine Catechism. The Enchiridion is a later work from Augustine and covers what he believes to be the most essential aspects of the Christian faith. This little work will give you his mature reflections not only on grace, but also on how grace and salvation work themselves out within the context of the Church and the sacraments. Here you will get a taste of the whole Augustine. The Enchiridion will help you get your bearings for Augustine's other treatments on more specific theological issues.

TIP #3: Get to know Augustine's intellectual roots in Neoplatonism. I cannot recommend you do this enough. Cicero, Plotinus and Porphyry were always in Augustine's head. Try to get your hands on his more philosophical pieces, which were written early in his career, such as Against the Academics, Soliloquies, and On Free Choice of the Will. These are short writings in dialogue form, no doubt inspired by the Socratic dialogues. These are for the most part dry, but they will give you an orientation toward Augustine's intellectual milieu, as well as a familiarity with a framework of thought which stayed with Augustine to the last spill of ink.

TIP #4: Once you have an acquaintance with Augustine's philosophical foundations, his greatest works, De Trinitate (The Trinity) and De Civitate Dei (The City of God), will make a lot more sense and your reading of them will be more fruitful. Do not neglect these works! One will lack a true appreciation for Augustine and his influence on Western Christianity until one has tackled these tomes. I also have to metion his De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine/Teaching Christianity) for its development of hermeneutics and catechetics.

TIP #5: Don't forget about the secondary literature on Augustine. Essential reading in this regard is John J. O'Meara, The Young Augustine. O'Meara will introduce you to Augustine's intellectual formation in rhetoric and Neoplatonism while guiding you through the Confessions. I also recommend Mary T. Clark's Augustine for a good overview of the complexities of Augustine's thought. Last, but not least, Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia is quite good for researching any topic about or from Augustine.

TIP #6: Read Augustine as a historical figure AND as a contemporary. Augustine has much to say in terms of Christian living that is immediately applicable to today's world of faith. Don't underestimate the value of reading Augustine for spiritual and practical guidance! Posted by Michael Joseph at 7:32 AM Labels: Liturgical Year, Michael Joseph, Saints Comments (7) Trackback

Outside the normal educational process and outside the myriads of media images

Schall: Another Sort of Learning July 4th, 2007 by JLT

A perfect book to begin the reviews (and your reading) is James V. Schall’s Another Sort of Learning. It is a perfect selection because it is about everything. It is a books of essays, “contrary essays” it claims in a subtitle too long to type and too fun to read aloud, about reading, studying, teaching, longing, thinking, evil, sanity, values, lectures, devotion, prayer, sports, and a few other things. Easily, Schall could have entitled his book “On Everything” if only Hilaire Belloc had not used that one for a book of essays in 1909.
The book begins with a quotation from Mad Magazine, and ends with a reference to Aristotle. In between the end-pages you will repeatedly encounter names such as Samuel Johnson, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Russell Kirk, Augustine, Plato, Machiavelli, Josef Pieper, Eric Voegelin, Thomas Aquinas, Flannery O’Connor, Stanley Jaki, John Henry Newman, Dorothy Sayers, and Maurice Baring. It is a book largely about reading and thinking.
What keeps one going back to the book, if not only to reread the essays, is to consult the book lists. Part of the beautiful subtitle states “Sundry Book Lists Nowhere Else in Captivity to Be Found”. Each chapter contains at least one delightful book list; and then there is the bibliography. You will find “Eight Books on Evil and Suffering”, “Five Books Addressed to the Heart of Things”, “Sixteen Books on Belief and Disbelief”, “Eight Collections of Essays and Letters Not To Be Missed”, and so on.
It is easily read, in any chapter order, and at any speed. It is a perfect start to a journey in worthwhile books. Schall’s Another Sort of Learning is “Not To Be Missed”. This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 8:07 pm and is filed under reviews.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007 Schall's "Sort of Learning"

Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Fr. James V. Schall's delightful book, Another Sort of Learning, which bears, I think it is safe to say, the longest subtitle of any Ignatius Press book: Selected Contrary Essays on How Finally to Acquire an Education While Still in College or Anywhere Else, Containing Some Belated Advice About How to Employ Your Leisure Time When Ultimate Questions Remain Perplexing in Spite of your Highest Earned Academic Degree, Together With Sundry Book Lists Nowhere Else In Captivity to be Found.
Another Sort of Learning was the first Schall book I ever read, and it remains my favorite. The many attractive qualities of the book, which is a combination of essays and book lists, is captured well in this 1988 Touchstone review, written by John Thompson, and recently made available on the Touchstone website:

Long subtitles are apparently “in,” and so is the reconsideration of the declining role of the humanities in our society, à la Bennett, Bloom, Alder, Hirsch, et al. Fr. Schall is a bona fide enthusiast for the humanitites, but he’s no mere antiquarian. He is listening not only to the great minds of the past., but also to the questions raised by contemporary students in his political philosophy classes at Georgetown University. The result is a readable, challenging, and (necessarily) idiosyncratic book. Fr. Schall’s book stands out all the more for his willingness to flaunt contemporary taboos like belief in a deity who is more than merely a philosophical necessity.
His thesis is simple: “I believe that we are in a world today where most of this seeking must take place outside the normal educational process and outside the myriads of media images with which we are constantly confronted.” Another Sort of Learning helps to frame the questions that a moderately inquisitive person should be asking about the world, human nauture, and God. This is no “Cliff’s Notes” on philosophy; rather, it is an often tantalizing and useful guide to some of the great minds, (both Christian and non-Christian), with whom Fr. Schall vigorously interacts throughout his book.
This book, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. The first, “So You’re Still Perplexed even in College?” is essentially an apology for launching into a quest for the meaning of “what is.” The second, “Books You will Never Be Assigned,” focuses on seven contemporary titles that provide a convenient sounding board, ranging from Ralph McInerney on St. Thomas Aquinas to Jeffrey Russell on Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. The third part, “Have You Thought About It This Way?” deals with what he calls “higher order concerns”: those things that we “must read and know just because they are true”—and on the impact that a serious pursuit of these things should have, among other things, on one’s political, intellectual, and spiritual life.
Even though it is almost passé for so-called “conservative thinkers” to issue educational manifestoes and agendas calling us back from contemporary chaos to the great minds of the Western tradition, this three-hundred-page book makes a worthwhile contribution. It is much more likely to be read and used because Fr. Schall’s style is relatively light, definitely personal, and even whimsical at points. Its appeal comes not so much from what he introduces, but from the way in which he introduces the subjects and the great thinkers.
As an unabashedly personal statement, Another Sort of Learning will certainly not satisfy everyone. It will in fact invite the sneers of those who are looking for an utterly serious, systematic, high-brow treatise. For many a concerned Christian, however, it will be an enjoyable, sometimes pungent treatment of spritual and intellectual issues. It’s a friendly introduction to classics like Aristotle, Aquinas, Dr. Johnson, Belloc, as well as to contemporaries Muggeridge, Russell Kirk, and (even) Mad Magazine.
You can order the book here. Fr. Schall has been writing regular essays for IgnatiusInsight.com for three years now. Visit his author page or do a search on IgnatiusInsight.com. Posted by Carl Olson on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 07:19 PM Permalink

A rationally informed faith requires the imaginary perspectives of literature as well as human history

Faith, Reason and Imagination: the Study of Theology and Philosophy in the 21st Century John Milbank The Centre of Theology and Philosophy; Nottingham and Southwell, Nottinghamshire, UK

Recovery however, is not enough, because, as Pope Benedict also indicated, modernity is not simply to be rejected. The modern emphases upon strict logical identity, the independence of thought from being, the scope of possibility and freedom, have indeed increased our sense, albeit in a distorted because Promethean or else relativistic fashion, of the primacy of cultural mediation – the way human beings through sign, image and artefact create their own world and are in turn shaped by this world. There is no avoiding this new awareness by longing for the impossible return of a totally fixed, hierarchical social order wherein all knew their place.

On the other hand, as Bruno Latour has pointed out, modernity rests upon one supreme contradiction. Nature is supposed to be given and fixed and to run according to immutable laws, while culture is supposed to be entirely mutable and to pursue no pre-assigned ends whatsoever.[1] Yet today we realise that there may be nothing fixed about nature and that her supposed ‘laws’ may merely apply to certain regional natural republics within a more fundamental sea of chaos. Moreover, we have discovered that there may be no intrinsic limit to our capacity to transform also the physical world for good or ill. Nature, too, it seems, turns out to be cultural. But on the other hand, if that is the case, then our cultural reality is conversely entirely natural – it exhibits, as it were, on the surface of the earth, a strange fusion of nature’s capacity both for unpredictable fluidity and for the imposition of order.

Once again, in postmodern terms one can read this scenario either nihilistically or theologically. In the latter perspective the question ‘how should we be?’ turns out to make no sense if does not also mean ‘how should the whole of nature be?’, since nature is no more given than culture. On the other hand, the discovery that there is after all no ‘nature’ in the sense of a given order, can lead us back to the view that all finite reality is not ‘nature’ but rather ‘creation’. As created, all things participate in the divine creative power which is at once order-making and yet unpredictable, like the flow of music. Human beings simple command this power more intensely and consciously and this is the valid sense in which they are cultural beings.

A renewed metaphysics should not seek to suppress the primacy of becoming and the event either in nature or culture. It should not recognise divine order in the world despite the flux but through and because of it, albeit in its series of complex ans always relatively stable and consistent punctuations. The participation of finite being and intelligence in the godhead needs now to be re-thought in terms of the vital flow of historical becoming which will take account of the way in which, while ontological structures provide the setting for events, the latter can also exceed the import of pre-given structures. This is in fact allowed for by Aquinas’s view that essentia is actualised by esse, but the implication needs much further drawing out.[2] One can say here that the neoplatonic sense of metaphysical genealogy, namely that the ‘how’ of the way things are must be traced back to the ‘why’ of their ultimate ontological derivation (whereas for Scotus and his legacy the ‘how’ of things is complete as a description without advertence to origin)[3] needs to be infused also with a sense of historicist genealogy, namely that the ‘how’ of things must also be traced back to their temporal derivation.

The issue then is to understand just how the process of temporal becoming participates in the eternal procession of the creation from the divine Trinity which is itself a kind of eternal and perfected process of emanation and yet equally a process of internal becoming. The Son emanates perfectly from the Father, but the latter ‘becomes’ Father retrospectively (as it were) only through this perfect imaging. The Spirit then expresses, one could say, the perfect unity of metaphysical origination from the perfect with ‘historical’ evolution from an origin to further explication (even though, in God, this explicatio is perfect eternal complicatio which renders the origin replete from the outset).

In this way, one could speculate, creation is atemporally and emanatively given to us always through the eschatological achievement of the new Jerusalem, the perfected heaven and earth, and all our lesser, spoiled historical realities depend for their very existence upon this mediating source. On the other hand, a slow coming to be from Adam, contingently interrupted by the fact of sin and the process of redemption always at work (for even our ontological sustaining), unfolds through time the ‘becoming’ aspect of the Trinitarian life.

A more historicised metaphysics must also give more attention to the role of the imagination. As Aquinas already knew, the latter is for us the threshold between matter and spirit: it is the mysterious alchemical point at which mind, in order to think at all, must produce its own shadowy sensations that must always be ‘returned to’ in order to complete a thought (conversio ad phantasmata). Normally we see ‘right through’ these phantasms in order to re-establish contact, via our senses, with the physical world outside us. And yet they are always secretly at work and this is exhibited in the way we not only sense the world and all it includes, but necessarily and ‘fantastically’ sense it ‘as something’. It is just this capacity which renders us consciously historical creatures and one can say that ‘history happens in the primary imagination’, in Coleridgean terms.[4]

What makes a historical event an event is precisely the fusion of sensation and thought which imagination, and not reason alone, brings about. And to this is added the work of the secondary imagination when the mind, in the absence of present physical realities, is capable of projecting its shadowy sensations back out into the sensorily perceived world in order to modify it. This gives rise, in the first place, to those fictions that we believe in, those fictions that we inhabit, and which also, along with imaginatively perceived natural realities, help to compose our human history.

And then there are those fictions that we do not inhabit, or not fully, or which we know that we could never inhabit. Pictures of what has never been; symbols of the intrinsically absent and ineffably secret; stories that are simply ‘made up’ and may never be fully enacted. This is the realm of literature, where the secondary imagination absolutely rules. But together with the historical, now intrinsic for both philosophy and theology, the literary is also, in postmodernity, inescapable.

Why should this be? It has to do with the double import of the imagination. The latter, as I have said, is the mediating twilight threshold between spirit and matter, or between reason and the senses. Its strangest characteristic as a ‘between’ phenomenon is that it resides ‘in the middle voice’, at once passive and active.[5] Whereas we can control even where we direct our gaze, images flood into our mind when our eyes are shut, often unprovoked. All the same we can to some degree learn to conjure these images at will and to shape the precise from which they take. However, at the point of seemingly most control, when we are being ‘creative’, it is more as if we must find the trick of ‘summonsing’ in to the chamber of our mind elusive hidden realities that are seemingly in some sense ‘already there’. (This is why, in Sufi thought, the imagination is seen as opening onto a realm of intermediate beings, rather as rarefied reason opens upon the angelic realm;[6] similar considerations are found fragmentarily within Christendom in terms of the intrinsic link between imagination and ‘faerie’.).

But this double aspect both renders thought more real, and reality more spectral. And this is exactly why modernity, which ever since the Renaissance has more and more opened up the power of the imagination (including the technical imagination), is at once more historical and more fantastic than were the Middle Ages. For a greater sense of our reliance upon the primary imagination grounds thought back in sensation and image, and makes us realise that our thinking is inseparable from our corporeal living and from all that has really happened to us. On the other hand, the further release of the secondary imagination (escaping from ecclesiastical, political and sexual censorship), reveals to us the fluidity of physical nature as such and the way that form and image is far more intrinsically spectral than even rational speculation.

This release can, of course, be part of a scenario whereby ‘art’ usurps the place of religion. On the other hand, it can also serve to point up the very core of the religious impulse in a clearer way than for the often more abstract reason-dominated Middle Ages. (And it is probably the case that only an appeal to the logic of the imagination allows the ‘great tradition’ of theology from Origen to Aquinas adequately to counter the more consistent rationalism of the nominalist revolution.) For the secondary imagination is also the very point at which reason and faith become conjoined. This is because the theological necessarily links rational reflection with the contemplative regard of historical events and visualised pictures or symbols. Its elusive blend of idea and image belongs precisely to the realm of the imaginative ‘between’.

Moreover, it is by exercise of the secondary imagination that we have to try to connect historical becoming (including the Incarnation and the emergence of the Church) with the descending emanation of all of nature and culture from the perfect Godhead. Rationally informed faith therefore, is the exact place at which thinking about history (inhabited fictions and real-ideal occurrences) and thinking about literature (uninhabited fictions) comes together. Since religion concerns ‘believed-in fictions’ or fictions that might be inhabited or in some sense already dimly are, it transcends the contrast between literature and history, just as, in the life of Christ, mythos, as narrative saturated with meaning, and historia, as real event deficient in meaning, really (and not just in our supposing) come together.[7]

In the light of faith therefore, history and fiction both appear as different kinds of ontologically real realms, since they are both situated in the more all-embracing world disclosed by the light of faith: the world in which imagination discerns the link between emanative derivation (which we can only ‘fantasize’) on the one hand, and historical becoming on the other. Merely fideistic faith, by contrast, tends to ape a rationalistic reason without faith and a positivistically-conceived history, ignoring its constitutively ideal dimension (the way in which ‘what happens’ is always in part ‘what people think has happened’). Fideisms or fundamentalisms always notably downgrade imagination, or go for the kitsch, because they reduce revelata to factual assumptions and theology to a few simple and rigid rational deductions from those assumptions.

The reflections in this third section are intended to try to explain why, in the modern era from Hamann through to Tolkien via Claudel and Péguy, it has been literary works which have often most successfully defended and rethought the orthodox Christian legacy. Having understood this, we can in future take more systematic account of the literary-imaginative dimension.

By the agenda of ‘theology, philosophy and literature’ therefore, I propose in the first place a reflection on the theological origins of modern philosophy. In the second place a theological critique of modern philosophy. In the third place an attempt further to incorporate temporality into metaphysics. And in the fourth a realisation that a rationally informed faith requires the imaginary perspectives of literature as well as the imaginative perspectives of human history.

[1] Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy trans Catherine Porter (Cambridge Mass: Harvard UP 2004). See also Michel Serres, L’Incandescent (Paris: Le Pommier, 2003)
[2] See Philipp W. Rosemann, Omne ens est aliquid ( Louvain-Paris: Peeters, 1996), for an important attempt to do so.
[3] On this point see Emmanuel Perrier OP ‘Duns Scotus Facing Reality: Between Absolute Contingency and Unquestionable Consistency’ in Modern Theology Vol 21 No 4 October 2005, 619-643
[4] For Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the imagination see his Biographia Literaria (London: Everyman, 1965)
[5] For ‘the between’ (metaxu) see William Desmond, Being and the Between (New York: Suny, 1995) For ‘the middle voice’ see Catherine Pickstock, After Writing (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) passim.
[6] See Henri Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn’Arabi (Prineton NJ: Princeton UP 1997)
[7] For this thesis see John Milbank, ‘Atonement: Christ the Exception’ in Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (London: Routledge, 2003), 94-5