Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Mysticism

  • Was Moses High on Mount Sinai? If Yes, What Follows?

    Benny Shanon is quoted by The Guardian as saying:      As far as Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a     supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend,     which I don't believe either. Or finally, and this is very     probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel…

  • Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom

    Dennis E. Bradford sent me three comments via e-mail on my recent Butchvarov post.  I omit the first and the third which are more technical in nature, and which I may address in later posts.    Bradford writes, Second, and this separates me from Butch, Larry [Blackman], and you, I reject your assumption concerning the narrowness of philosophy.  You mention…

  • Buber on Buddhism and Other Forms of Mysticism

    Robert Gray e-mails: Dear Bill, I am appreciating Kerouac month. Here is something on Buddhism in Buber's I and Thou that may be of use. Nor does he [Buddha] lead the unified being further to that supreme You-saying that is open to it. His inmost decision seems to aim at the annulment of the ability…

  • Hitchens on Mother Teresa’s Dark Night of the Soul

    In some measure one must admire that professional contrarian, Christopher Hitchens, whose mind is incandescent in its brilliance, and whose speech is preternatural in its articulateness, and who has the audacity to go after anyone, including Mother Teresa. In a  piece in Newsweek he comments on her Dark Night of the Soul. But what are…

  • Incarnation: A Mystical Approach?

    I have been, and will continue,  discussing Trinity and Incarnation objectively, that is, in an objectifying manner.  Now what do I mean by that?  Well, with respect to the Trinity, the central conundrum, to put it in a very crude and quick way is this:  How can three things be one thing?  With respect to the…

  • How to Become Wealthy Overnight

    John Blofeld, Beyond the Gods: Buddhist and Taoist Mysticism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974), p. 153: For the sake of wealth, people already well above the poverty line slave all their lives, not realising that withdrawal from the rat-race would immediately increase rather than diminish their wealth. Obviously anyone who finds the full satisfaction of…

  • Joubert on Mystical Experience

    From The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, p. 29, tr. Paul Auster: Forgetfulness of all earthly things, desire for heavenly things, immunity from all intensity and all disquiet, from all cares and all worries, from all trouble and all effort, the plenitude of work without agitation. The delights of feeling without the work of thought. The…

  • François Fénelon

    François Fénelon the Christian sounds like a Buddhist when he speaks of the annihilation of the soul in God: Nothing would give us more delight than that God should do all his pleasure with us, provided it should always be to magnify and perfect us in our own eyes. But if we are not willing…

  • The Inconceivable

    It is arguable that all religions and salvation-paths point to the Inconceivable and terminate in it if terminus they have. The Nibbana of the Pali Buddhists. The ontologically simple God of Thomas Aquinas. A theory of the Inconceivable would have to show that it is rationally admissible that there be something that cannot be grasped…