The Heart of Reason
The Good and the Authentic Life
The Heart of Reason
What is Tantra?
There is much confusion around Tantra and its practices. Here, this ancient practice is contrasted with yoga
and clarified in terms of left- and right-handed versions, as well as the use of the practice today.
What is Tantra?
From the beginning of time, we humans have been fascinated by the power of sexuality. In the Western tradition, this fascination was early dispatched with the story of Adam and Eve, in ... << MORE >>
What is Tantra?
From the beginning of time, we humans have been fascinated by the power of sexuality. In the Western tradition, this fascination was early dispatched with the story of Adam and Eve, in ... << MORE >>
OSAMA BIN LADEN: An American Heresy
May Day 2011 saw the ignominious end of Osama bin Laden, American public enemy #1. The “justice done,” however, was the ancient Semitic kind, “an eye for an eye.” The swift dispatch of Osama to the bottom of the sea without fair trial violated the keystones of the Enlightenment, the very principles upon which the nation was founded, the Rights of Man and justice for all. But these ethical ideals call for an even higher enlightenment, whose prophet Americans idolize every Martin Luther King Day. The much-vaunted “dream” of Dr King called the nation to the real outcome of enlightened sanctity -- compassion and non-violence -- whose true meaning, as Dr King clarified, is “to see the enemy’s point of view.” Aside from the spiritual and moral value of this dream, it is pragmatic: “For from this view we may… see the basic weakness of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of…the opposition.” Was America’s finest moment of the decade actually a grievous regression from its true aspiration and opportunity?
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THE RAPE OF INNOCENCE: The Catholic Crisis
Summary
The sex scandal within the Catholic Church has reached epic proportions. There is much heated discussion of this crisis and how the problem of pedophilia should be handled on a political and disciplinary level, but the questions about its real cause are rarely approached. The crisis is so grotesque and monumental that only the most basic questioning may lead to an understanding of its underlying causes. These go back to the foundations of the Church’s attitude towards vitality ... << MORE >>
"The Gospel of Judas" Who Betrayed Christ?
The recent discovery of "The Gospel of Judas" seems to turn Christianity on its head. It raises Judas to the status of the most gifted and heroic of Jesus' disciples and even seems to be mocking ritual. The document is authentic. What does it tell us about the early history of Christianity, the true nature of Christ, and the truth of betrayal?
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The Big Lie and the Great Truth
The split between the spirit and the flesh is a subtle fallacy which has had fundamental and dire consequences in the development of Western Culture from the beginnings of Semitic culture. Bodily consciousness and spiritual awareness are essentially one, and this is the ontological base for realizing the oneness of God.
The Big ...
<< MORE >>South America and Beyond March-April 2009
The AMSTERDAM
Journey from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Seattle, Washington
12 March to 24 April 2009
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Journey from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Seattle, Washington
12 March to 24 April 2009
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What If Jesus Never Existed?
The new atheism assaults the
excesses of religious zeal, which in our time have become a destructive
force. In its convincing proof that Jesus never existed and its
gleeful rush towards liberation, however, the new atheism overlooks
entirely the existential root of Christianity, which is truer than the
facts.
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excesses of religious zeal, which in our time have become a destructive
force. In its convincing proof that Jesus never existed and its
gleeful rush towards liberation, however, the new atheism overlooks
entirely the existential root of Christianity, which is truer than the
facts.
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Gay Marriage: Church and State
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The Christmas Tree
one of our most beloved traditions, we may have lost our sense of its
essential meaning. The true Gift of Christmas is ecumenical: that our
Source, ever-present but forgotten, may reveal itself to us.
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The Dignity of Final Choice
The medical model for dealing with death is expensive, degrading, and unnatural. In the matter of leaving this life how did nature provide?
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Lessons We Learned from W
Lessons We Learned from W
The disastrous state of the union is the consequence of our country's choice of the W Man as president. What has he taught us?
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The disastrous state of the union is the consequence of our country's choice of the W Man as president. What has he taught us?
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The Basic Error of Western Thought
The Basic Error of Western Thought:
Final or absolute reality is conceptually based
The dream of a final, scientifically based explanation of reality and God has displaced and concealed the authentic contemplative means to attain true understanding.
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The Real Price of a Yale Education
This article was written shortly after GW Bush became president and before the shock and awe of his administration became apparent. I believe that it describes the underlying flaw in the entire project which has brought America to a nadir of respect in the world.<< MORE >>
Foundational Dissent and British Nihilism - Addendum 2008
In April of 2008, Cambridge in America produced a complementary event in San Francisco, which focused on the humanities. What was demonstrated is that human nature and values can also be treated as an object (the proper study of man) and that no one does it better than Cambridge. << MORE >>
Foundational Dissent and British Nihilism
FOUNDATIONAL DISSENT
The Iconography of Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking, the world famous Cambridge cosmologist almost completely incapacitated by severe motor neurone disease, is at once the most courageous, the most vulnerable, and the most brilliant person I have ever encountered, an icon of human aspiration and of Cambridge itself. To me however, he and his condition symbolize the scientific project to penetrate into the mystery of Being, a crumpled and attenuated attempt to understand our universe when we have overlooked the robust nature of our true home.
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The Real Intelligence about Iraq
Written in 2003, this essay attempts to articulate the real Intelligence that should have prevented the invasion and the reasons we are losing our great war.
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What is the Heart of Reason? A Biography
What is the Heart of Reason? A bio
William Pennell Rock
In 1959, I formally entered Yale with the Matriculation Ceremonies for the class of '63. Among 1000 other classmates in attendance were David Gergen, future media pundit; L Paul Bremer, future Proconsul of Iraq; Lex Hixon, future Brahmin of all true faiths; and Dick Cheney, future fist of American Imperialism. In the matriculation address delivered by then President Griswold, I was astonished to hear that we were to be trained to become prophets…
Here we are half a century later.
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1. THE HEART OF THE MATTER Summary, Outline, Introduction
| CONTENTS (1) Introduction (2) Nihilism (3) The Essential is Known as Gnosis (4) Ignosis ...<< MORE >> 2. NihilismWhat is the essence? What is Truth? There is no such thing. At least, after the conflagration of two world wars, it became fashionable to the point of political correctness to deny essence or Truth. This is a sacred tenet of Western thought from existentialism through post-modernism. How did this happen? In the wake of the nineteenth century love affair with science, what we can call "scientism", we thought that the world was composed of facts, and that any scientific ...<< MORE >> 3. The Essential is Known through GnosisDeconstruction is a stunning device for uprooting relative ideas that have been taken as basic truth. But just as scientism was an excess of faith in science, so post-modernist nihilism is an excess of deconstruction. It is overkill. Devotees of deconstruction have basically refuted the modern concept of knowledge, of science as a faith leading to any kind of ultimate truth. The whole concept of factuality, which stands behind science and technology and pervades all knowledge in the West, is limited and culturally relative. However in the case of Heidegger and ...<< MORE >> 4, IgnosisWhen we value accrued knowledge and information above all else, we are blind. This blindness, the preoccupation with the non-essential, is not ignorance. (Who could call us ignorant in the information age?) We have no word for this essential ignorance, but many words existed in the ancient cultures that knew gnosis. One of those words is ignosis. The need for a word such as ignosis tells part of the story. Originally it meant incomprehension of the essential, but as the apprehension of ...<< MORE >> 5. The Body as the Primordial FormIn every healthy baby we see the potential renewal of the essential. There is an essential body. Yoga is the age-old Asian discipline in which the body is regarded as the incarnation and primordial temple of gnosis and is cultivated through care and practice as the vehicle for its realization. Our bodily manifestation is an essential whole with its own integrity, which we sometimes describe as "psychosomatic" and also "spiritual". These words, however, come from our fragmented view of essential truth. ...<< MORE >> 6. Institutions of the Essential: ReligionWhat is essential has a mysterious center, which is the organizing principle of the whole. We call it the origin. It is as though our essential make-up is a kind of gyroscope. Each of us has this mysterious center and any collective of us has it as well. The only real advance corrects Error by referring back to this origin and revising it as an innovative way of doing things. If “progress” does not regard the whole and accord with its ...<< MORE >> 7, Religion: Symbol and MythIn traditional art the imagery of gnosis in the great religions is deployed. The renaissance madonnas and child express the caring nurture of the seed of gnosis within as it is germinating. Paintings of the crucifixion display the death of the ego as gnosis transcends into pure light. The various positions in which the Buddha is sculpted express the inner postures of bodhi or the pure states of gnosis. These works grow out of contemplation and are intended to facilitate contemplation in order to nurture the process by which consciousness matures into gnosis. ...<< MORE >> 8. Religion: Deity YogaAlthough any real religion potentially connects to the essential, one must commit to a connection with the imagery in order for it to become charged with the essential. The Tibetans know all about this technology. They call it “deity yoga”. One learns about a deity and the vision it projects, immerses oneself in it, enters into a complete relationship with it, becomes one with it, opens to the revelation of its essential nature, and is thereby “completed” through realizing as one's own nature the essential qualities of the deity. The gnosis has happened, ...<< MORE >> 9. Institutions of the Essential: EducationEducation in America is viewed primarily in quantitative terms. Gathering information and learning skills to prevail in a competitive capitalist world certainly is useful. In fact, it generally is regarded as all that is necessary. Education in this culture is basically a factory operation for generating contributors to our bottom line, the profit motive and the ultimately fatal principle of capitalist economics--that only through growth can the economy be sustained. The Latin educare means, "to draw out ...<< MORE >> 10. Our Culture and CivilizationThere is in the end and the beginning the origin. It is a subtle organizing field in every living being, including the cultures of the earth, and indeed the earth itself. This origin is a coherent center which organizes and harmonizes the physical, emotional, and mental into a whole. The central organizing is foundational, constituted of innate awareness, and emanating from that basic awareness. We however tend to marginalize it and call it “spiritual” as though it were something that has to be added after everything real ...<< MORE >> 11. The Virtual and the EssentialSince the beginning of the century I have had the sense we are drifting further and further from the essential. Reflecting on this I come to the following observation. Our inherent referent for the essential is nature. It is our teacher, our existential comfort. We feel joyous and purified by it. Nature is the essential food of the soul, because it is where we come from and our true home. Its pristine being nourishes us. From our human beginnings, ...<< MORE >> |
