Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Unseen Order

  • Rod Dreher on Fr. Carlos Martins, Spiritual Warrior

    Dreher quotes Martins: Between these two goals—tempting man and gaining him for eternity—there is another evil desire that the Devil aims to satisfy: the possession of his victim. Possession is the state where the victim is under demonic control from the inside. The demon takes over the body of the one he possesses. During possession, a…

  • Jeffrey Long, M. D. on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

    Here (under 5 minutes). 'Coded' as used by Dr. Long in this video clip is medical jargon. For a patient to 'code' is for the patient to suffer cardiac arrest.  It is a mistake to think that if an episode of experiencing is real, then  the intentional object of that episode of experiencing is also…

  • Near-Death Experiences

    Do they prove anything? The case of Richard Neuhaus. Substack latest.

  • Is the Real a Tricycle?

    Had enough of doom and gloom, politics and perfidy? Try this Substack article on for size.  I examine a point of dispute between Alvin Plantinga and John Hick,  two distinguished contributors to the philosophy of religion. The Substack article also relates to my earlier discussion with Tom the Canadian, here. (I am protective of my…

  • Intimations of Elsewhere: Sensible Reminders of Hidden Beauty

    Salzburg, Austria, December 1971. A young Austrian girl, radiant and beautiful, walked into the kitchen. I lost all desire for the food I had prepared.  My soul sprouted wings. The visible beauty triggered a memory of a timeless Beauty. Anamnesis pierced for a moment the amnesia induced by the bodily senses. Dayton, Ohio, 1978. Gripped…

  • Karl Barth, Divine Revelation, and Mystical Experience

    "It [divine revelation] is the opening of a door that can only be unlocked from the inside." Quoted by Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image Books, 1965, p. 10) from a Christmas sermon preached by Karl Barth in 1931. I am going to take this ball and run with it. Imagine someone…

  • Intimations of Elsewhere Ignored

    A colleague once reported an out-of-body experience.  He had been resting on his back on a couch when he came suddenly to view himself from the perspective of the ceiling.   He dismissed the experience. He had too much class to use the phrase 'brain fart,' but that is what I suspect he thought it was:…

  • The Sensus Divinitatis Waxes and Wanes

    Our sense of the reality of the Unseen Order and the Unseen Other waxes in the measure that we detach our love from the objects of the senses and the pleasures they promise but never quite deliver. It wanes as we lose ourselves in the diaspora of the sensory manifold and its multiple temptations and…

  • Metaphysical Joy and Sadness

    There is a rare form of joy that some of us have experienced, a joy that suggests that at the back of this life is something marvellous and that one day this life may open out onto it.  It goes together with a kind of sadness, call it metaphysical nostalgia, a sort of longing for…