- In our civilization the chasm that stretches between mind and heart yawns deep and wide and, as the mind flies on from discovery to discovery in the realms of science, the gulf becomes ever deeper and wider and the heart is left further and further behind.
Only when that co-operation is attained and perfected will man attain the higher, truer understanding of himself and of the world of which he is a part; only that can give him a broad mind and a great heart.
Comment:
I began my first studies in the symbolism of astrology from the works of Dr. Max Heindel, a Rosicrucian physician, who was also inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy. I still consider his books some of the most useful writing on the western ‘wisdom’ tradition.
I know that you are not kidding.
All these roseries, spirits, and wisdom teachers wearing thick rose colored glasses.
All so special and spiritual.
All so childish and magical.
Lila, do you really expect an intelligent person to have anything to do with this foolishness?
I believe I am an intelligent person.
I don’t understand anyone’s problem with studying the history of some of the most powerful symbols of western culture. Symbols that permeate all of literature, art and religion.
The rosy-cross is a reference to rosicrucian not to the rosary.The “vision” I refer to here is no different from talking about “the vision” of say George Bush.
I simply mean it this way: what the ‘wisdom tradition’ foresees.
I consider astrology to be a sophisticated form of psychology at present. Whether it is anything else, I don’t know. But since most psychology is not very sophisticated, that’s a good beginning.
Astrological symbols are also extremely aesthetic.
I can contemplate them just as one would would look at Notre Dame or listen to a symphony, for the pleasure.
I find many so-called rational sceptics have a psychological problem with religion not a rational one. I don’t.
So, I find it all interesting, am often sceptical, sometimes convinced. My approach is both rational and aesthetic.
However, many militant atheists have already made up their mind about everything. That is the very essence of not being scientific.
They rarely know anything about the things they are criticizing.
I, on the other hand, have read quite widely in criticism of religion — and agree with a lot of it …on a number of things. Just not on all. And I am not advocating anything here. I just said that Max Heindel’s Rosicrucian writings on the symbolism of astrology have always been interesting to me.
I hear a lot of name calling from you but no arguments.
Sorry to be blunt.
By the way, a very sketchy list off the top of my head of the kinds of intelligent people who have been immersed in religious/psycho-spiritua/paranormal(whatever you want to call it) studies.
Arthur Conan Doyle (para normal, spritualism)
Arthur Koestler (parapsychology, occult)
William Butler Yeats (hermeticism, occult, rosicrucianism. astrology,chanelling)
Mohandas Gandhi (Tantrism, occult,Christianity, Hinduism)
Taylor Caldwell (parapsychology)
T. S. Eliot (Christianity, Hinduism, Western occult tradition)
Flannery O’Connor (Catholicism, mysticism)
Katherine Ann Porter (Gurdjieff)
Wassily Kandinsky (ditto)
D. H. Lawrence (mysticism, yoga, Christianity, Druidism, Mexican/Mayan beliefs)
Aurobindo (yoga, paranormal, occult, Tantra, Hinduism, Christianity, mysticism)
A. K. Ramanujan (Hinduism, mysticism, goddess Namagiri of whom he had dreams/visions)
Several geniuses here (including a mathematical genius of the highest caliber), polymaths… and of course this is only a small sample picked at random.
It is one of the most persistent pieces of mis- or dis- information that interest or belief in religion/metaphysics/paranormal/psychospiritual matters is vestigial superstition caused by ignorance.
That misinformation reflects a complete confusion of two different modalities — aesthetic experience versus scientific knowledge.
By the way, “wisdom tradition” is just a term, like “occult” or esoteric, used to refer to non-orthodox interpretations which emphasize the non-literal, metaphorical meanings of orthodox rituals.
I certainly prefer a non-literal approach to ritual and symbols.
Hi Lila – I studied Anthroposophy for many years and in fact owe much to it.
I felt you were/are a kindred spirit.
It is more and more necessary to re-integrate the spiritual and the practical worlds.
Good for you and God bless.
Thanks, Carol.
It’s taken me a while to be outspoken about interests I have had since childhood — even while growing up in a rational, liberal family of medical doctors and researchers – none of whom really shared this interest until recently.
Not exactly fruitful soil for unbridled superstition.
I am glad to see the social sciences trying to come to grips with all of this human experience through complexity and chaos theory and mindbody research. That’s where my interest lies, since if we can’t put things into the language of science we will all have to remain behind the walls of our own personal beliefs.
(which is also fine. but not great for civic life).
The delineation of the aspects in Heindel’s text on the subject is still one of my favourites.
It’s very difficult to explain how one “thinks” in symbolism to someone who persists in mistaking what is an experience for some kind of “incorrect” prescientific knowledge. It might be that too, but that’s not what it is primarily for me.
You either see a color or you don’t. You hear the tone of a chord or you don’t.
Steiner wrote his dissertation on Goethe by the way..
So much for the lack of intelligence of people interested in such things..
Lila – I recommend Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” for an extended meditation on just the topics you raise. He believes that the primordial response to the world is through “Quality,” which initiates the encounter of the subject with the object. We in the modern West are so accustomed to seeing the world in bifucated terms – “inner experience of liking/disliking” vs. “outer experience of objective fact/truth” that it is an effort to engage the world through perception of “Quality.” Yet this is what Steiner’s cognitive path involves, and really, any honest encounter with the world, for example, the discovery of a creative hypothesis in science or a living metaphor in poetry.
The experience of “Quality” cannot be mapped to Science. Science is a derivative of Quality, not its parent or source.
Don’t apologize or feel you have to defend your spiritual interests.
Carol –
Pirsig has been one of my favorite writers, ever since I came across “Zen etc.” I was about 18…I’d just read Herrigel’s “Zen and the Art of Archery” and several Zen (or quasi-Zen) writers and the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as well, via Lama Anagarika Govinda – a German monk. That was a while back. It was also when I first read Mircea Eliade (who is more of a scholar and wasn’t that nice a guy, frankly) – whose ” Myth of the Eternal Return” – is a very useful piece of writing on time that I see you blogged recently….
[Eliade was a remarkable man but I took a dislike to him after reading that he seduced the 15 yr old daughter of the Sanskrit scholar who hosted him in India when he was an 18 yr old student at the time. It was a regular Heloise and Abelard business…and then he wrote about the affair in a popular book, Les Nuits Bengali. Fortunately, she was literary too and retaliated with her own version… in Bengali…]
Pirsig’s next book, “Lila” (my favorite now, for obvious reasons) is also fascinating – although it doesn’t seem to have received as much praise…
Lila…I want to try to write something about Pirsig and actually get it published – I think the whole subject of Quality is highly relevant today and I sense that, beyond a loyal following in England, Pirsig has dropped off the radar screen in the USA.
I also like “Lila” the best and think that the exposition of static vs. dynamic Quality is very useful and creative and important, esp. in America we have much too little appreciation for the factors that make up static quality. Because we slight its importance, we are beginning to lose our dynamic quality.
I don’t think I’ve written on Eliade…? I also recall hearing bad things about him.
I’m in Philadelphia – I’d love to meet you if you ever get up this way.
Carol –
Would love to meet too.
I’ll put Philadelphia on my schedule, for sure. Right now, I am on my way out of the country.
Whom have you approached about Pirsig? He seems to have been an unusual man, not just a thinker. He turned down lucrative offers to make his book a film because he thought they would distort it.
Probably right about that.
Lila
Pingback: true religion jeans myspace layouts