June 3rd, 2010
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May 13th, 2010
Why am I writing this paper?
When I was 18 years old I encountered a religious form that felt like it had the potential to fill my post-Catholic existential void: an individualized spiritual path of simultaneous inner (cognitive) and outer (behavioral) transformation. I became immediately drawn to Gnosticism through the writings of Philip K. Dick. Two years later I was drawn to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy through a college history professor who knows Robert McDermott and eventually pointed me in the direction of CIIS. I then spent a semester in India studying Buddhism where I was drawn to the Tibetan Dzogchen teachings. Each of these religious forms regards itself as “esoteric” and is regarded by scholars in the same way. But what does this enigmatic word mean? And what exactly is it about these traditions that warrant denotation with this word? The answer to these questions...
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May 11th, 2010
Introduction: As Above, So Below
The human is a spiritual being of universal significance. If my reader lacks the courage required for such an affirmation, they need read no further, because though one may have ears to hear and eyes to see, without an open heart these sensory organs will remain deaf and blind to the wisdom I wish to share.
I repeat, the human is a spiritual being of universal significance. History leaves record of a few special individuals who have realized the meaning of this essential truth, but their teachings have often been obscure and shrouded in secrecy. In what follows, I share my still limited understanding of the insights of two such illumined beings with you because I feel the time has come for the mysteries to be opened and made accessible to everyone. For both of these men, Rudolf Steiner and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, human consciousness and...
Posted in Integral, Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Spirituality | 1 Comment »
May 11th, 2010
The evolution of consciousness is a difficult subject. There are so many facets and dimensions to it that it’s important to always try to understand it in context of the world today. It is also true, that our understanding of the past helps us with the present, and ends up helping us acquire a vision of the future. Jean Gebser wrote about time being like a quality and not a quantity, so that it renders the past and the future “transparent” in an ever-present illumination. The past and future meet in a spiritual present that everyone has access to, so that what is going on now is a cosmic theme that plays out throughout all time. This is the mystical and also mythical meaning of time as a circle or a cycle; it is the eternal return.
I’d like to start off by sharing with you a vision W.I. Thompson has, considering what a future humanity might be like further along the evolution...
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May 10th, 2010
Benton: When you first visit kheper.net the first thing one notices is the attention to visual images and graphs. Usually when one encounters similar visuals as they relate to the Wisdom traditions it feels forced, but with your site the attention is to quality over quantity, and the relation of content to the image is almost overwhelming at first. It achieves a delicate balance by sparking intuition enough to deepen one's understanding of the transdisciplinary approach in the comparative doctrines, whether that be religion or metaphysics. How did you find such a balance between the imaginative and the cerebral?
Alan: I just play around until I get something that aesthetically feels right.
B: How do we achieve a "science" of approaching consciousness studies without falling into the traps of purely quantitative "stages" "grades" and "levels" that are often mistaken for the territory...
Posted in Art, Films, Integral, Mythology, Philosophy, Practice, Religion, Science, Society, Spirituality, Technology | 1 Comment »
May 5th, 2010
Having participated in and checked out a number of "integral" forums and on-line communities, I am intrigued by the fact that there is one thing that seems to be missing. Gnosis.
By Gnosis I mean an inner certainty and spiritual knowing that goes beyond the endless futile turnings of rational argument.
These words - when divorced from the content of their experience - appear shallow and new agey and thus can be misinterpreted by those who lack Gnosis and coming only from the sceptical rational mind. Because, as with all things, they have meaning through experience. You need to have Gnosis to understand Gnosis. Elitism? Perhaps. But if that's how it is, that's how it is. You cannot say that the state of gnosis is the same as the state of lacking gnosis. When there is an lack of gnosis, all that understanding has to rely on are endless intellectual theories, abstractions, dogmas, of which...
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April 30th, 2010
The internet age has provided us with a seemingly ambiguous opportunity. The technology has, on the one hand, the potential to become another form of television -- an opportunity for mass media to consolidate its power not only from the top down, but from the bottom-up. On the other hand, this new media technology provides an outlet and a forum, like never before in history, to reach out to others on a planetary scale and form living, spiritually vital communities. Like no other technology before, it allows for an increasing degree of transparency and speed, so that the secrets of today are completely available for world within a matter of minutes. It is harder for traditional, top-down authority, whether corporate or governmental, to keep their agendas and shadows hidden. Once the word slips, it belongs to the world.
This new power does not come without new responsibility. In the words...
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April 29th, 2010
I. The Eye
Who watches the Watchmen?
The all-seeing Eye of God, of course. This was a common motif of Renaissance iconography--for instance in the imagery associated with Jakob Boehme--which was meant to connote that human beings are always watched over by the provident eye of God which sees everything they do. Nowadays, of course, this ancient mythological motif has disappeared and been replaced by its mechanized counterpart in the form of the sundry video monitors and camera eyes that gaze down upon us from the roofs of Wal-marts, atop traffic lights and from the orbital spaces surrounding the earth, which is now swarming with mechanized eyes that restlessly scan the ground below for everything from targeted drone assassinations to Google Earth maps.
But there is another connotation to the motif of the Eye, found mainly in esoteric teachings, where it is symbolic of the ubiquity...
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April 22nd, 2010
Setting the Stage
There were no eyes to see it happen, and even if there were, there was not yet any light for them to see, nor even any space in which to look. The universe was born out of an infinitely creative quantum womb poised somewhere (or is it nowhere?) between being and non-being. In an instant, since there was “not yet” any time for it to hesitate about its future, with a flash of warmth and light the cosmic embryo began to grow…
Though there is undoubtedly an organic integrity to space-time, perhaps “grow” is here a bit of an understatement. The universe began with a BANG! From 10-33 cm3 —the smallest volume physicists can measure—the universe inflated to the size of a human being within 10-32 seconds. To put this in perspective, it has taken another 13 billion years for the universe to grow by the same order of magnitude that it did in this initial fraction...
Posted in Mythology, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion, Science, Spirituality | 3 Comments »
April 22nd, 2010
This essay began as annotations to Martin Lings text "Symbol and Archetype" and evolved into a broader appreciation for the perennial doctrine of symbols and images. For now, please take it as a short piece to a larger, forthcoming essay eventually incorporating the importance and function of Sacred Art & Architecture, Mythology, Spiritual Initiation, and Ancient Metaphysics as they relate to one another.
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"The whole world is but a glass, full of lights representing the divine wisdom."
St. Bonaventura
“God made this world in the image of the world above; thus, all which is found above has its analogy below…and everything constitutes a unity.”
Zohar
“Every metaphysician may be said to share in Divine jealously in as much as he is jealous for God, refusing to let the relative be given that which is due to the absolute.”
Martin Lings
Where imagination...
Posted in Initiation, Music, Mythology, Philosophy, Practice, Religion, Spirituality | 7 Comments »