Silly Moderns Claiming to be 'Non-dualists'

The undermeaning of the story related by Menelaus of his encounter with Proteus in Book 4 of the Odyssey is explicated showing that it teaches the three Platonic hypostases of soul, nous and the One or the Good combined with contemplative ascetic practice. Homer, Plato and Plotinus all present the same metaphysics and renunciation and this underlies the whole Odyssey and the Path it describes.

The formal practice of contemplation is the central transformative practice of the Path to liberation. This is especially so in a spiritual system based on an idealist metaphysic. (Conversely, such a metaphysic is implied by the fact that all the systems of the philosophia perennis, even non-idealist ones, consider that the practice of "meditation" or contemplation is the means of changing one's mode or state of being.) Since all is mind or spirit or thought, experience without referent; since Reality is, in fact, contemplation, and knowing or experience is not possible without the Absolute, the absolutely essential practices of moral discipline, renunciation, and asceticism, and the necessary ancillary study and reading and thought and reflection may all be taken as also being forms of contemplation. Contrary to the prevailing view and practice in these darkest of times, when "meditation practice" is "taken up" by worldlings all and sundry without philosophical understanding, without giving up anything, and with a view just towards being healthy, wealthy, and wise, genuine spiritual contemplation is a difficult practice of contemplative ascetics requiring renunciation of the world and worldly pursuits and desires, strict moral discipline, and the ability to think and discern clearly, and is based on a definite metaphysical or philosophical understanding or view of the nature of Reality, and has a definite aim or telos. In this short essay, I would like to try and present a very brief discussion of Platonist contemplation practice.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore how Evagrius' apophatic approach to the knowledge of God informs his ascetical concept of apatheia, a fusion of doctrinal reflection and spirituality. I examined Evagrius' texts using the methods of Gadamer and Kierkegaardliterary and philosophical analysis. Evagrius constructed his theology by writing axioms meant to be meditated. I found that Evagrius' apophatic framework is undergirded by his doctrine of God's incomprehensibility/indescribability, monist theory of mind, theory of contemplative prayer, and spiritual exegesis of scripture. This involves negating multiple disordered thoughts in order to participate in divine simplicity, in the oneness of God. I concluded that Evagrius' apophatic, contemplative approach to theology/doctrine facilitates his teaching of apatheiathe practice of negating multiple desires to mystically experience divine union. Essentially in doing so, Evagrius unites mysticism and asceticism, theological construction and spiritual experience. His apophatic asceticism is a fully integrated theology consisting of spiritualized thought and action.

Exploring the meeting of mystical and philosophical theology, Partakers of the Divine shows that Christian philosophical and contemplative practices arose together and that throughout much of Christian history, philosophy, theology, and contemplation remained internal to one another. Sherman demonstrates that the relation of philosophy, theology, and contemplation to one another provides theologians and philosophers of religion today with a way forward beyond many of the stalemates that have beset discussions about faith and reason, the role of religion in contemporary culture, and the challenges of modernity and postmodernity.

This article provides a philosophical - anthropological analysis ofhesychasm reveals its essence and meaning. There are determined basic criteriaof hesychasm: quietude; smart doing, the practice of inner prayer, catharsis of mind and heart, and a thereof combination; bodily techniques, aiming at union with God, contemplation of Tabor light from the Divine. Hesychasm also appearsin two ways - as a meta-organic phenomenon, which is a compound ofanthropological (individual) practice and historical (collectively, united) tradition, and, as a kind of monastic life. Key words: Lord, divine energy, anthropology, catharsis, mind, heart, mind-heart, smart doing, the practice of inner prayer, quietude, contemplation,uncreated light, deification, psychosomatic method, asceticism.

We live in a time of the most immense and profound spiritual and philosophical confusion. Despite the self-infatuated notion of the age that it represents the pinnacle of historical "progress" ("progress" being, incidentally, a notion entirely of its own creation), the modern world is the darkest and most lacking in wisdom in at least the last 2500 years. Materialism, positivism, subjectivism, antiintellectualism, in the more profound sense of the term, and worldliness are prevalent everywhere and in all institutions. The notions of conforming oneself to an objective divine reality or structure, and that it is the objective divine reality that is important, and otherworldliness, more available in the premodern world, have been almost entirely forgotten or dismissed as antiquated, and this-worldliness, concern only for this phenomenal world, and concern only with individual subjective experiences and desires as being valid and important has more or less entirely pervaded even things that are designated as "spiritual"--a natural consequence of the belief that only the things of the senses and matter are real, which has, consciously or unconsciously, been steamrolling further and further since the inception of the modern world. Yet, otherworldliness, concern with and adapting to an objective divine reality, renunciation, and ascent through divine intellect are what any real spiritual practice and spirituality are about, whether this goes with the prejudices, thoughts, and tendencies of the present day or not. Since the opposite attitude seems to be found in virtually all writings, publications, teachers, organizations, practices, etc. currently advertised as spiritual, the result is that there is very little real spiritual stuff going on anywhere, and the spiritual seeker is unlikely to ever encounter any real spiritual teaching unless he turns directly to the writings of the ancients and has the ability to understand them directly and correctly on his own without help. One greatly important area where this mess manifests itself is in the understanding, or lack thereof, of what constitutes genuine spiritual experience and the methods and nature of its attainment, despite, or because, of the present exclusive concern with subjective or phenomenal experience and gain. It is pretentious for a poor slob to try to descant on such a subject, but given the enormous confusion prevalent, perhaps it is worth daring to try to say a few words on the matter based on the teachings of Homer, Plato, and Plotinus.

Religious Studies, 2018

‘Interested non-belief’ in God is now a common attitude, and one religious outlook such non-believers should take seriously is the Christian contemplative tradition. Drawing on C. S. Lewis, I identify the familiar phenomenon of ‘worldly union desire’: elicited by worldly things, and aimed at union with some beauty or goodness therein. I examine specifically Thomas Merton’s contemplative outlook, arguing that by his lights worldly union desires manifest a desire for God and aid spiritual openness. Merton’s picture extends any purely secular value in worldly union desire-experiences, giving union with God – and the spirituality aimed at this goal – a deep existential appeal for non-believers.

proceedings of Symposium Magic and Monotheism, 2024

Archaeology provides very limited evidence for the verbal culture of early humans. However, oral traditions, often dismissed pejoratively as folklore, show striking parallels between those recorded for Europe and accounts of ethnographic experience in Sub-Saharan Africa and NE India. The paper illustrates parallels between narratives of encounters with spirits in Nigeria and those in Ireland. In another striking example, the eschatology of the Idu in Arunachal Pradesh involves a ferryman carrying a dead soul across a river to the land of the dead, closely resembling the figure Charon in Greek mythology. Narratives of contests between shape-changers are embedded in European folk tales and songs and show strong similarities to the accounts of the contests of shamans in India. The argument is that this is neither convergence nor diffusion, that the parallels in these accounts go back to a period of shared culture, i.e. far back into the Palaeolithic. Case studies of tradition in aboriginal Australia show that oral tradition can be conserved over very long periods.

Star Açık Görüş, 2014

O aynı zamanda İmam-Hatip neslinin önderi, Yüksek İslâm Enstitülerinin sembol ismidir. Akademideki pek çok ilim insanının ama özellikle de İslâm Hukuku alanında çalışanların hocasıdır. Bu topraklarda, ibadetinden hukukuna, siyasetinden ekonomisine İslâm’ın yaşaması ve yaşatılması sevdasına sahip olanların mutlaka semtine uğradığı ve kanaatini merak ettiği bir değerdir. Yani bir anlamda sendir ve bendir. Hayreddin Karaman Türkiye’dir.