Sonnet (10): “These verses lifted from the stream of time…”

These verses lifted from the stream of time And placed with care upon the page to dry Like written blossoms underneath the sky Sung through by a gentle breeze of rhyme Melted in the midday height and prime And meted by the sunlit fields of rye So word by word and verse by verse to…

An attempt to answer a question that I have contemplated for years

“What does it mean that a given community of Jews accepted him as the Messiah (which is the Hebrew word for “the Redeemer” or “the Anointed One,” for which the Greek word is Χριστός or “Christ”) while the rest refused him?” Introduction When we reflect on the concept of history, we find that it is…

Sonnet (9): The Gold of the Alpha & the Omega

The clutching leaves, once green with greed, now fall In solemn showers, Nature’s second gold, Verdure perfected, venerable and old; A onetime fire, held in seasoned thrall Whose ancestor was gold celestial: Daughter of warmth amidst the bitter cold Of light in darkness, neither young nor old Ever budding out of death: renewal A gold…

Consciousness and its Transformations (3): The Reversal of the Will and its Apotheosis

A third stage of enhancement of consciousness consummates the reversal of the will that was discovered as a possibility in the last post. At that time, the will was largely regarded implicitly. It was conceptualised as the active force that lent life and purposefulness to the activity of thinking. Now, however, the roles of thinking…

Consciousness and its Transformations (2): Second Enhancement, the Reverse-Will, Narcissism

A second stage of heightened attention provides for the discovery of another state of consciousness beyond the first enhancement, which was treated in an earlier post.  The former will be the topic of the present post. Ordinary thinking is both ephemeral and capricious. One may, however, take initiative to transform this condition. Such an initiative…

Consciousness and its Transformations (1): Introduction, Preliminaries, Ordinary Consciousness and the First Enhancement

Introduction Attention is a condition for consciousness and experience, which in turn ground all other endeavours of human life. Below follows a three-part inquiry into what may follow if one succeeds in intensifying one’s attention beyond its usual condition. The results of such an intensification consist in three states of consciousness that transcend the ordinary…

A Vision of Sophia, Michaël, and the Dragon

Behold! Before the Æons were engendered Long before the worlds were first conceived, The still white Light (Aur) alone Had infused all primordial space, And there was no vacancy in that unbounded place, But all was filled with infinite and æviternal Light, And many ages past unnumbered, blissful, resplendent. Then there arose within that archetypal…

Bread or Stones: To what degree does modern physics take reality as its object? Now in English, Español, et Français!

Please find a translation of the present article into Spanish below the original, thanks to the kind efforts of Diego Milillo. And an anonymous soul has generously donated her time to offer a French translation, which has been included below as well. Preface That one should criticise something does not preclude that one should hold…

Sonnet (8): Harvest Moon

ABOVE the hills, a rising amber face Keeps quiet watch on the descending gloam. A perfect silence falls about the place; The weary workers bend their footsteps home Homewards on their paths, well-wrought, of trodden loam, That wend along through fertile fields of grain; The stalks a-bowed beneath the burthen sweet Of fruit, full-ripe by…

A Critique of Chris Firth’s Aeon essay “Our illusory sense of agency has a deeply important social purpose”

Chris Frith, emeritus professor of neuropsychology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London, has recently weighed in on the perennial philosophical question of free will. One is tempted to comment on the insouciance with which contemporary scientists, on the assumption that their special expertise qualifies them for such a task, set…