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The Meeting

On or about this date in 1244 C.E., Jalal-e-Din Rumi met Shams-e-Tabriz in Konya. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

Just Whirl

via GIPHY

An Emersonian Meditation Upon A Line Of Aldous Huxley's

But it is a fact, confirmed and re-confirmed during two or three thousand years of religious history, that the ultimate Reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended, except by those who have made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit.

~ Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, x.

I must confess to a certain irritation when very smart people use their words injudiciously. This irritation is no doubt due to a certain proclivity I detect in myself to injudicious verbiage.

In the present instance, Aldous Huxley shamelessly overstates his case. It is difficult to imagine how one might go about substantiating his claim (or any claim) that (1) there is such a thing as "ultimate Reality," (2) that said Reality has been or can be "clearly and immediately apprehended," or (3) that such clear and immediate apprehension can only be achieved by individuals who have somehow "made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit." Moreover, while purity of heart and poverty of spirit are lovely epithets, how does one decide what those terms even mean?

Contrary to Huxley, no philosophy worthy of the name consists of such claims but, rather, in their interrogation.

And yet: once the interrogation has been successfully carried out and the inherent weakness of the historical claim exposed, philosophy's work is done. What follows then is the life the philosopher (and non-philosopher) must lead. Put another way, where critical analysis ends, the Great & Holy Experiment begins.

Let Huxley's "fact" be "demoted" (or is it "promoted"?) to a working hypothesis, and let all who wish to clearly and immediately apprehend ultimate Reality make themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit--defining those terms by means of personal example.

Then let us gather the evidence--not to decide the historical question (which will no longer matter) but to measure our own lived proximity to the ideals we claim to espouse.



Nota Bene: The Great & Holy Experiment is not the stuff of the academic discipline of Religious Studies, but of Religion itself. Religious Studies occupies itself with the historical question which only matters because the Great & Holy Experiment remains largely untried. At its best (i.e., most productive), Religious Studies can remind us of this perennial omission; at its worst (i.e., least productive), it pretends that there is no Great & Holy Experiment to try.

The Journeyman

Originally published in Quaker Theology #10: Spring-Summer 2004.

Emersonian Perfectionism

Jeffrey Stout, Part One.

Part Two.

Bearing Silence

The laws of bearing silence are higher than those of any logic.

~ Martin Heidegger, Contributions, p. 63.

A Man Out Of Time

Lawrence Buell is perhaps the greatest living scholar of Emerson and his monograph on the Sage of the Way, the fruit of many decades of reading, thinking about, and teaching Emerson, is without peer.

The Mazeppist cannot claim to be a scholar of Emerson; but he has been, from his early teens (when he inherited his grandmother's copy of The Complete Writings, pub. 1929), an Emersonian. Since then, he has investigated the various lines of Emersonian descent: Emerson-Thoreau; Emerson-Whitman; Emerson-Melville; Emerson-Dickinson; Emerson-Nietzsche, etc. But, to what end?

Emerson was a walking University of the Spirit, admonishing all to find the creative spark within (what he wished to call "the Divine").

The religio-political radicalism that finds its impetus in this School is no longer legible in our contemporary confusion. The Mazeppist, like one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, is--admittedly--a man out of time.

Society Of Friends

Transgressive Transcendentalist

Melvillean Dervish with a dash of Liberal Quaker in homage to Marshall Hodgson...

Why I Am A Quaker And A Muslim

A Pilgrim & A Stranger

Jack Fate

Who Is A Sufi?

Somebody asked Abu Hafs, "Who is a Sufi?"

Abu Hafs replied: "A Sufi never asks 'Who is a Sufi?'"

Like A Bird...

Like a bird which alights nowhere, but hops perpetually from bough to bough, is the Power which abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for another moment from that one.

~R. W. Emerson, Experience.

Bulkingtonianism

And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, "The Fountain."