Showing posts with label Spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spirituality. Show all posts

2021/09/23

Unitive/mystical experiences and life changes. Schneeberger. PhD thesis 2010.

Unitive/mystical experiences and life changes

Unitive/mystical experiences and life changes
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Psychology 
Susan F. Schneeberger
=== 

ABSTRACT 

Schneeberger, Susan F. Unitive/Mystical Experiences and Life Changes. Published Doctor of Psychology dissertation, 
University of Northern Colorado, 2010. 

The purpose of this study was to explore life changes in beliefs, philosophy, and behavior in individuals who reported having a unitive/mystical experience (U/ME). A unitive mystical experience is a generally spontaneously occurring state of consciousness characterized by a sense of unity or “oneness” that transcends sensory or cognitive apprehension (Stace, 1960). 

There is often an ineffable certainty that an ultimate truth has been perceived and can be applied to one’s life. The experience may be accompanied or followed by feelings of joy and bliss. 

One hundred sixty adults from a broad range of demographic characteristics participated in a one-time web-based survey. 

The concept of a unitive mystical experience was based on the mysticism theory of Stace. Hood’s Scale-Research Form D (1975, 2005) was used to assess the intensity and degree of reported unitive mystical experiences since it is an operationalization of Stace’s theory. Life changes were assessed using Greyson’s Life Changes Inventory-Revised (Greyson & Ring, 2004). Participants also answered 10 demographic questions. 

Four research questions were addressed using correlational methodology. These questions explored the type of changes reported after a unitive mystical experience, the relationship of the intensity of the U/ME to the changes, perceptions of the overall quality of respondents’ lives after the U/ME, and the relationship of the changes to selected demographic variables. iv 

Results of the study indicated that there were significant increases in participants’ concern with social and planetary values, self-acceptance, spirituality, quest for meaning and sense of purpose, concern for others, and appreciation for life.

 Respondents reported a significant decrease in concern with worldly achievement. The area of religiousness showed no change. Results also indicated that a more intense unitive/mystical experience was associated with a greater degree of change overall and with a significant increase in appreciation for life specifically.

 Participants indicated that their overall quality of life had changed significantly after their unitive/mystical experience in a direction perceived as beneficial. There was no significant relationship between reported changes and demographic variables. Limitations of the study, suggestions for future research, and implications of the findings were discussed


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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................... 1 
Rationale for the Study.......................................................................... 5 
Purpose of the Study ............................................................................ 9
Research Questions.......................................................................... 9 Delimitations of the Study............................................................... 9 
Definition of Terms.................................................................. 10 

CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE.................................. 12 
Definitions of Unitive/Mystical Experience..................................... 12 Examples of Unitive/Mystical Experiences ........................................ 14 
Theoretical Conceptualizations and Characteristics of Unitive/Mystical Experiences...... 18 
Shamanism, Paleolithic Cave Art, and the Earliest Unitive/Mystical Experiences... 22 
 Prevalence and Predisposing Factors of Unitive/Mystical Experiences......... 27 The Good Friday Experiment .................................... 28 
Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork.......................................... 29 
Rhea White: Exceptional Human Experiences.......................... 30 Understanding Unitive/Mystical Experiences............................................... 36 Transpersonal Psychology.............................................................. 38 Neurophysiological Aspects of Unitive/Mystical Experiences...................... 39 Psychopathology and Unitive/Mystical Experiences..................................... 44 Research on the Effects of Unitive/Mystical Experiences............................. 45 Conclusion................................................................................ 51

===
References
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  • Hood, R. W. (2006). The common core thesis in the study of mysticism. In P. McNamara (Ed.), Where God and science meet (pp. 119-138). Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press.
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  • Underhill, E. (1999). Mysticism: The nature and development of spiritual consciousness. Oxford, England: Oneworld Publications.
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  • Wulff, D. M. (2000). Mystical experience. In E. Cardena, S. J. Lynn, & S. Krippner (Eds.), Varieties of anomalous experience (pp. 397-440). Washington, DC: The American Psychological Association.
  • Yamane, D., & Polzer, M. (1994). Ways of seeing ecstasy in modern society: Experimental-expressive and cultural-linguistic views. Sociology of Religion, 55, 1-25
===

2010. 

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William Law - Wikipedia

William Law - Wikipedia

William Law
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This article is about the British theological writer. For other people, see William Law (disambiguation).

William Law
Born 1686
Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire
Died 9 April 1761
Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire
Venerated in Anglican Communion
Feast 10 April


William Law (1686 – 9 April 1761) was a Church of England priest who lost his position at Emmanuel College, Cambridge when his conscience would not allow him to take the required oath of allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch, King George I. Previously William Law had given his allegiance to the House of Stuart and is sometimes considered a second-generation non-juror. Thereafter, Law first continued as a simple priest (curate) and when that too became impossible without the required oath, Law taught privately, as well as wrote extensively. His personal integrity, as well as his mystic and theological writing greatly influenced the evangelical movement of his day as well as Enlightenment thinkers such as the writer Dr Samuel Johnson and the historian Edward Gibbon. In 1784 William Wilberforce (1759–1833), the politician, philanthropist and leader of the movement to stop the slave trade, was deeply touched by reading William Law's book A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729).[1] Law's spiritual writings remain in print today.


Contents
1Early life
2Bangorian controversy and after
3Writings on practical divinity
4Mysticism
4.1Law's Admiration for Isaac Newton and Jakob Böhme
5Veneration
6List of works
7Notes
8References
9External links


Early life[edit]

Law was born at Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire, in 1686. In 1705 he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge as a sizar, where he studied the classics, Hebrew, philosophy and mathematics. In 1711 he was elected fellow of his college and was ordained. He resided at Cambridge, teaching and taking occasional duty until the accession of George I, when his conscience forbade him to take the oaths of allegiance to the new government and of abjuration of the Stuarts. His Jacobitism had already been betrayed in a tripos speech. As a non-juror, he was deprived of his fellowship.[2]

For the next few years Law is said to have been a curate in London. By 1727 he lived with Edward Gibbon (1666–1736) at Putney as tutor to his son Edward, father of the historian, who says that Law became the much-honoured friend and spiritual director of the family. In the same year he accompanied his pupil to Cambridge and lived with him as governor, in term time, for the next four years. His pupil then went abroad but Law was left at Putney, where he remained in Gibbon's house for more than 10 years, acting as a religious guide not only to the family but to a number of earnest-minded people who came to consult him. The most eminent of these were the two brothers, John and Charles Wesley, John Byrom the poet, George Cheyne the Newtonian physician, and Archibald Hutcheson, MP for Hastings.[2]

The household dispersed in 1737. Law by 1740 retired to Kings Cliffe, where he had inherited from his father a house and a small property. There he was joined by Elizabeth Hutcheson, the rich widow of his old friend (who recommended on his death-bed that she place herself under Law's spiritual guidance) and Hester Gibbon, sister to his late pupil. For the next 21 years, the trio devoted themselves to worship, study and charity, until Law died on 9 April 1761.[2]
Bangorian controversy and after[edit]
Further information: Bangorian controversy

The first of Law's controversial works was Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor (1717), a contribution to the Bangorian controversy on the high church side. It was followed by Remarks on Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1723), in which he vindicated morality; it was praised by John Sterling, and republished by F. D. Maurice. Law's Case of Reason (1732), in answer to Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation is to some extent an anticipation of Joseph Butler's argument in the Analogy of Religion. His Letters to a Lady inclined to enter the Church of Rome are specimens of the attitude of a High Church Anglican towards Roman Catholicism.[2]

Writings on practical divinity[edit]

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), together with its predecessor, A Practical Treatise Upon Christian Perfection (1726), deeply influenced the chief actors in the great Evangelical revival.[3] John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Henry Venn, Thomas Scott, and Thomas Adam all express their deep obligation to the author. The Serious Call also affected others deeply. Samuel Johnson,[4] Gibbon, Lord Lyttelton and Bishop Home all spoke enthusiastically of its merits; and it is still the work by which its author is popularly known. It has high merits of style, being lucid and pointed to a degree.[2]

In a tract entitled The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment (1726) Law was agitated by the corruptions of the stage to preach against all plays, and incurred some criticism the same year from John Dennis in The Stage Defended.[2]

His writing is anthologised by various denominations, including in the Classics of Western Spirituality series by the Catholic Paulist Press.

The devotional writer Andrew Murray was so impressed by Law's writings that he republished a number of his works, stating "I do not know where to find anywhere else the same clear and powerful statement of the truth which the Church needs at the present day."[5]
Mysticism[edit]

Böhme's cosmogony: The Philosophical Sphere or the Wonder Eye of Eternity (1620).

In his later years, Law became an admirer of the German Christian mystic Jakob Böhme. The journal of Law's friend John Byrom mentions that, probably around 1735 or 1736, the physician and Behmenist George Cheyne had drawn Law's attention to the book Fides et Ratio, written in 1708 by the French Protestant theologian Pierre Poiret. It was in this book that Law came across the name of the mystic Jakob Böhme.[6][7] From then on Law's writings such as A Demonstration of the Errors of a late Book (1737) and The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739), began to contain a mystical note.[8] In 1740 appeared An Earnest and Serious Answer to Dr. Trapp and in 1742 An Appeal to All that Doubt. The Appeal was greatly admired by Law's friend George Cheyne, who wrote on 9 March 1742 to his good friend, the printer and novelist Samuel Richardson: "Have you seen Law's Appeal ... it is admirable and unanswerable". John Byrom wrote a poem based on An Earnest and Serious Answer, which was found among the manuscripts of Samuel Richardson after his death in 1761.[9]

Law's mystical tendencies caused the first breach in 1738 between Law and the practical-minded John Wesley after an exchange of four letters in which each explained his own position.[10] After eighteen years of silence Wesley attacked Law and his Behmenist philosophy once again in an open letter in 1756 in which Wesley wrote:

Lime Grove Putney (1846), home of the Gibbon family where William Law walked with John Byrom and other friends.


I have scarce met with a greater friend to darkness except 'the illuminated Jacob Behmen'. But, Sir, have you not done him an irreparable injury? I do not mean by misrepresenting his sentiments; (though some of his profound admirers are positive that you misunderstand and murder him throughout) but by dragging him out of his awful obscurity; by pouring light upon his venerable darkness. Men may admire the deepness of the well, and the excellence of the water it contains: But if some officious person puts a light into it, it will appear to be both very shallow and very dirty. I could not have borne to spend so many words on so egregious trifles, but that they are mischievous trifles: ... bad philosophy has, by insensible degrees, paved the way for bad divinity.[11]

Law never responded to this open letter, though he had been deeply upset, as was testified by John Byrom.[12]

After seven years of silence Law further explored Böhme's ideas in The Spirit of Prayer (1749–1750), followed by The Way to Divine Knowledge (1752) and The Spirit of Love (1752–1754). He worked on a new translation of Böhme's works for which The Way to Divine Knowledge had been the preparation.[13] Samuel Richardson had been involved in the printing of some of Law's works, e.g. A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (second edition of 1728), and The Way to Divine Knowledge (1752), since Law's publishers William and John Innys worked closely with Samuel Richardson.[14]

Title page of the Johann Georg Gichtel (1638–1710) edition of 1682, printed in Amsterdam.

Law had taught himself the "High Dutch Language" to be able to read the original text of the "blessed Jacob". He owned a quarto edition of 1715, which had been carefully printed from the Johann Georg Gichtel edition of 1682, printed in Amsterdam where Gichtel (1638–1710) lived and worked.[15]

After the death of both Law and Richardson in 1761, Law's friends George Ward and Thomas Langcake published between 1764 and 1781 a four-volume version of the works of Jakob Böhme. It was paid for by Elizabeth Hutcheson. This version became known as the Law-edition of Böhme, even though Law had never found the time to contribute to this new edition.[16] As a result of this it was ultimately based on the original translations made by John Ellistone and John Sparrow between 1645 and 1662,[17] with only a few changes.[18] This edition was greatly admired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Blake. Law had found some illustrations made by the German early Böhme exegetist Dionysius Andreas Freher (1649–1728) which had been included in this edition. Upon seeing these symbolic drawings Blake said during a dinner party in 1825 "Michel Angelo could not have surpassed them".[19]

Law's Admiration for Isaac Newton and Jakob Böhme[edit]

Law greatly admired both Isaac Newton, whom he called "this great philosopher" and Jakob Böhme, "the illuminated instrument of God". In part I of The Spirit of Love (1752) Law wrote that in the three properties of desire one can see the "Ground and Reason" of the three great "laws of matter and motion lately discovered [by Sir Isaac Newton]". Law added that he "need[ed] no more to be told that the illustrious Sir Isaac [had] ploughed with Behmen's heifer" which had led to the discovery of these laws.[20]

Law added that in the mathematical system of Newton these three properties of desire, i.e. "attraction, equal resistance, and the orbicular motion of the planets as the effect of them", are treated as facts and appearances, whose ground appears not to be known. However, Law wrote, it is in "our Behmen, the illuminated Instrument of God" that:


Their Birth and Power in Eternity are opened; their eternal Beginning is shown, and how and why all Worlds, and every Life of every Creature, whether it be heavenly, earthly, or hellish, must be in them, and from them, and can have no Nature, either spiritual or material, no kind of Happiness or Misery, but according to the working Power and State of these Properties. All outward Nature, all inward Life, is what it is, and works as it works, from this unceasing powerful Attraction, Resistance, and Whirling."[21]

Aldous Huxley quotes admiringly and at length from Law's writings on mysticism in his anthology The Perennial Philosophy, pointing out remarkable parallels between his ( Law's ) mystical insights and those of Mahayana Buddhism, Vedanta, Sufism, Taoism and other traditions encompassed by Leibniz's concept of the Philosophia Perennis. 

Huxley wrote:

Granted that the ground of the individual soul is akin to...the divine Ground of all existence...what is the ultimate nature of good and evil, and what the true purpose and end of life? The answers to these questions will be given to a great extent in the words of that most surprising product of the English eighteenth century, William Law...a man who was not only a master of English prose, but also one of the most interesting thinkers of his period and one of the most endearingly saintly figures in the whole history of Anglicanism.[22]

Veneration[edit]

Law is honoured on 10 April with a feast day on the Calendar of saints, the Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church in the United States of America) and other Anglican churches.

William is remembered in the Church of England with a Lesser Festival on 10 April.[23]

List of works[edit]

-----
Notes[edit]

^ "BBC - Religions - Christianity: William Wilberforce".
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Chisholm 1911.
^ In A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life Law urges that every day should be viewed as a day of humility by learning to serve others. Foster, Richard J., Celebration Of Discipline, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988, p.131.
^ "I became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not think much against it; and this lasted until I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up Law's Serious Call, expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of rational inquiry.", Samuel Johnson, recounted in James Boswell's, Life of Johnson, ch. 1.
^ Murray, Andrew (1896). The Power of the Spirit. London: James Nisbet. pp. ix.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 112–113.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2006, pp. 442–465.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 120 ff.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2006, pp. 454–456.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2006, pp. 448–452.
^ J. Wesley, Works, Vol. IX, pp. 477-478.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2006, pp. 460–463.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 138 ff.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 118–120, 138.
^ This edition is the Theosophia Revelata. Das isst: Alle Göttliche Schriften des Gottseligen und hocherleuchteten Deutschen Theosophi Jacob Böhmens, 2 Vols., Johann Otto Glüssing, Hamburg, 1715.
^ This William Law edition is available online, see http://www.jacobboehmeonline.com/william_law.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, p. 144.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 138–141.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, p. 140.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, p. 133.
^ William Law, Works, 9 volumes, (reprint of the Moreton ed., Brockenhurst, Setley, 1892-93 which was a reprint of London edition of 1762), Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, U.S.A., 2001, Vol. VIII, pp. 19-20.
^ Huxley, Aldous 'The Perennial Philosophy', first edition pub. Chatto and Windus 1946.
^ "The Calendar". The Church of England. Retrieved 27 March 2021.


References[edit]

Abby, Charles J., The English Church in the 18th Century, 1887.
Foster, Richard J., Celebration Of Discipline, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.
Huxley, Aldous, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945.
Joling-van der Sar, Gerda J. (2006). "The controversy between William Law and John Wesley". English Studies. Informa UK Limited. 87 (4): 442–465. doi:10.1080/00138380600757810. ISSN 0013-838X.
Joling-van der Sar, Gerda J. (2003). The spiritual side of Samuel Richardson : mysticism, Behmenism and millenarianism in an eighteenth-century English novelist (Thesis). University of Leiden. ISBN 90-90-17087-1. OCLC 783182681. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
Lecky, W.E.H, History of England in the 18th Century, 1878–90.
Overton, John Henry, William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic, 1881.
Stephen, Leslie, English Thought in the 18th century.
Stephen, Leslie (1892). "Law, William" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 32. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Tighe, Richard, A Short Account of the Life and Writings of the Late Rev. William Law, 1813.
Walker, A.Keith. William Law: His Life and Work SPCK, 1973.
Walton, Christopher, Notes and Materials for a Complete Biography of W Law, 1848.

Attribution:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Law, William". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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2021/09/22

When Einstein Met Tagore: A Remarkable Meeting of Minds on the Edge of Science and Spirituality – Brain Pickings

When Einstein Met Tagore: A Remarkable Meeting of Minds on the Edge of Science and Spirituality – Brain Pickings



When Einstein Met Tagore: A Remarkable Meeting of Minds on the Edge of Science and Spirituality
Collision and convergence in Truth and Beauty.
BY MARIA POPOVA


On July 14, 1930, Albert Einstein welcomed into his home on the outskirts of Berlin the Indian philosopher, musician, and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. The two proceeded to have one of the most stimulating, intellectually riveting conversations in history, exploring the age-old friction between science and religion. Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore (public library) recounts the historic encounter, amidst a broader discussion of the intellectual renaissance that swept India in the early twentieth century, germinating a curious osmosis of Indian traditions and secular Western scientific doctrine.

The following excerpt from one of Einstein and Tagore’s conversations dances between previously examined definitions of science, beauty, consciousness, and philosophy in a masterful meditation on the most fundamental questions of human existence.




EINSTEIN: Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world?

TAGORE: Not isolated. The infinite personality of Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the Truth of the Universe is human Truth.

I have taken a scientific fact to explain this — Matter is composed of protons and electrons, with gaps between them; but matter may seem to be solid. Similarly humanity is composed of individuals, yet they have their interconnection of human relationship, which gives living unity to man’s world. The entire universe is linked up with us in a similar manner, it is a human universe. I have pursued this thought through art, literature and the religious consciousness of man.

EINSTEIN: There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe: (1) The world as a unity dependent on humanity. (2) The world as a reality independent of the human factor.

TAGORE: When our universe is in harmony with Man, the eternal, we know it as Truth, we feel it as beauty.

EINSTEIN: This is the purely human conception of the universe.

TAGORE: There can be no other conception. This world is a human world — the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it Truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose experiences are through our experiences.

EINSTEIN: This is a realization of the human entity.

TAGORE: Yes, one eternal entity. We have to realize it through our emotions and activities. We realized the Supreme Man who has no individual limitations through our limitations. Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals; it is the impersonal human world of Truths. Religion realizes these Truths and links them up with our deeper needs; our individual consciousness of Truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to Truth, and we know this Truth as good through our own harmony with it.

EINSTEIN: Truth, then, or Beauty is not independent of Man?

TAGORE: No.

EINSTEIN: If there would be no human beings any more, the Apollo of Belvedere would no longer be beautiful.

TAGORE: No.

EINSTEIN: I agree with regard to this conception of Beauty, but not with regard to Truth.

TAGORE: Why not? Truth is realized through man.

EINSTEIN: I cannot prove that my conception is right, but that is my religion.

TAGORE: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the Universal Being; Truth the perfect comprehension of the Universal Mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experiences, through our illumined consciousness — how, otherwise, can we know Truth?

EINSTEIN: I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. Anyway, if there is a reality independent of man, there is also a Truth relative to this reality; and in the same way the negation of the first engenders a negation of the existence of the latter.

TAGORE: Truth, which is one with the Universal Being, must essentially be human, otherwise whatever we individuals realize as true can never be called truth – at least the Truth which is described as scientific and which only can be reached through the process of logic, in other words, by an organ of thoughts which is human. According to Indian Philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute Truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words but can only be realized by completely merging the individual in its infinity. But such a Truth cannot belong to Science. The nature of Truth which we are discussing is an appearance – that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind and therefore is human, and may be called maya or illusion.

EINSTEIN: So according to your conception, which may be the Indian conception, it is not the illusion of the individual, but of humanity as a whole.

TAGORE: The species also belongs to a unity, to humanity. Therefore the entire human mind realizes Truth; the Indian or the European mind meet in a common realization.

EINSTEIN: The word species is used in German for all human beings, as a matter of fact, even the apes and the frogs would belong to it.

TAGORE: In science we go through the discipline of eliminating the personal limitations of our individual minds and thus reach that comprehension of Truth which is in the mind of the Universal Man.

EINSTEIN: The problem begins whether Truth is independent of our consciousness.

TAGORE: What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the super-personal man.

EINSTEIN: Even in our everyday life we feel compelled to ascribe a reality independent of man to the objects we use. We do this to connect the experiences of our senses in a reasonable way. For instance, if nobody is in this house, yet that table remains where it is.

TAGORE: Yes, it remains outside the individual mind, but not the universal mind. The table which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind of consciousness which I possess.

EINSTEIN: If nobody would be in the house the table would exist all the same — but this is already illegitimate from your point of view — because we cannot explain what it means that the table is there, independently of us.

Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack — no primitive beings even. We attribute to Truth a super-human objectivity; it is indispensable for us, this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind — though we cannot say what it means.

TAGORE: Science has proved that the table as a solid object is an appearance and therefore that which the human mind perceives as a table would not exist if that mind were naught. At the same time it must be admitted that the fact, that the ultimate physical reality is nothing but a multitude of separate revolving centres of electric force, also belongs to the human mind.

In the apprehension of Truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal human mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual process of reconciliation is being carried on in our science, philosophy, in our ethics. In any case, if there be any Truth absolutely unrelated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-existing.

It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which the sequence of things happens not in space but only in time like the sequence of notes in music. For such a mind such conception of reality is akin to the musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is the reality of paper, infinitely different from the reality of literature. For the kind of mind possessed by the moth which eats that paper literature is absolutely non-existent, yet for Man’s mind literature has a greater value of Truth than the paper itself. In a similar manner if there be some Truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to the human mind, it will ever remain as nothing so long as we remain human beings.

EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you are!

TAGORE: My religion is in the reconciliation of the Super-personal Man, the universal human spirit, in my own individual being.



Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore is a sublime read in its entirety. Complement it with physicist Lisa Randall on the crucial differences between how art, science, and religion explain the universe, then revisit Einstein’s correspondence with Freud about violence, peace, and human nature, his little-known exchange with W.E.B. DuBois on race and racial justice, and his letter to a little girl in South Africa on whether scientists pray.

Thanks, Natascha
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2021/09/20

Quaker Theology Group : Rufus Jones (1863-1948) on the spiritual impact on him of a November 1922 car accident in Morristown, New Jersey, recalled a decade later | Facebook

(3) Quaker Theology Group : Rufus Jones (1863-1948) on the spiritual impact on him of a November 1922 car accident in Morristown, New Jersey, recalled a decade later | Facebook

Rufus Jones (1863-1948) on the spiritual impact on him of a November 1922 car accident in Morristown, New Jersey, recalled a decade later. (Jones was a Haverford College Philosophy Professor, a founder of the AFSC and author of 54 books.)
There was no single moment of invasion or of uprush. I discovered that a new life and power -had come- to me without my knowing precisely when it came.
I was hit by an automobile one night while away from home. It happened without any preparation for it. No sound, no light, no consciousness of danger, preceded the startling event.
Suddenly I felt my chest break and cave in. At the same time there was a powerful impact in my leg and my body was hurled through space with tremendous force. The odd thing was that I did no thinking. I just felt.
I was vaguely aware that an irresistible force was crushing the life out of my body, but I felt no touch of fear. There was a huge boulder of undifferentiated experience, undisturbed by reflection and without the emergence of overwhelming emotions.
I was near neighbor to death as I shall ever be while actually living, as close to the border of our world here as one can ever be and return again to the fullness of life, and yet not the least sense of fear or terror.
When a doctor arrived a few minutes after the accident my heart was beating regularly and my pulse was normal. In a few days I was brought home, carried to my spacious library and settled into a high modern hospital bed.
I was strapped tight to protect my broken ribs. My leg was fastened in a ‘fracture case’ so that I could not turn, for the slightest movement hurt me. My students brought moveable chairs, filling the room, and I went on with my college lectures and finished all my courses, lying thus flat on my back, feeling all the time an unusual élan.
Gradually I began to discover the amazing power of regeneration which living tissue reveals. Forces as gentle as the fall of snow flakes began to operate as though miracles had not ceased.
The split and broken bones were woven together again. The ligaments were stretched back and fastened in their old places. The lacerated muscles are healed by some hidden alchemy. The torn skin and contused flesh were made whole by unseen processes. Every broken fibre was regenerated as though nature’s whole business was restoration and renewal.
It was a long time before I realized that a still deeper miracle had been taking place within me. I cannot quite date the discovery. But it began to dawn upon me that a 'restoration' of another sort had gone on. I seemed in a new way to be liberated from fears and anxieties and worries. I had entered into an unexpected tranquility and peace.
More than that I had gained an immense increase of vitality and ‘vis viva.’ Life had become a more joyous and radiant affair than I had ever known. I no longer cared anything about arguments to prove the reality of God, any more than I did to prove the incomparable worth of the human love which surrounded my life as I lay quietly recovering.
Rufus Jones, “Why I Enroll with the Mystics,” in Contemporary American Theology: Theological Autobiographies, ed. V. Ferm, New York: Roundtable Press, 1932, p. 208-9.
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  • Jim Fussell
    Admin
    Richard Penaskovic: “We’re composed of matter (body) that is finite and corruptible, plus a soul that’s eternal and incorruptible or infinite.
    We have been made a little less than the angels. We’re in a reciprocal relationship with God with whom we live, move, and have our being.
    As Rufus Jones notes, “The Spiritual Universe is thus a concrete reality, not an abstract one.”
    The mystic of everyday life: Rufus Jones
    AUBURNVILLAGER.COM
    The mystic of everyday life: Rufus Jones
    The mystic of everyday life: Rufus Jones
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  • Teri Lynn Bookless
    Embracing life and leaving the peripheral to take care of itself by the grace of God. Living in the moment.
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  • Teri Lynn Bookless
    Jim, I think this would be an excellent post for sharing with my relatively new FB friends who are pushing against unsubstantiated claims that some of our former beliefs hinged upon.
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    • Teri Lynn Bookless
      I am finding my FB experience very positive because I have purposefully sought friends who identify themselves as Christians, who are still seeking, and are progressives in social justice issues.
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  • Muriel Edgerton
    Moderator
    Thank you, Jim, for sharing this. I find it very helpful.
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  • Rich Accetta-Evans
    Jim, this is a great post, but somewhat marred by several typos. I assume they were not in RJ's original document, but were introduced when pasted or retyped into your post. IMO it would be worthwhile for you to edit the post and correct these. (I find that I have to correct typos in my own posts and comments all the time. There are probably some in this one. I like to blame predictive text or autocorrect. )
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    • Carter Nash

    I wish I could share this




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    Jim Fussell
    Admin


    Carter Nash I’ve also sent the same post this afternoon to the Quakers Facebook open group, which is shareable.
    It hasn’t been approved yet, but the moderators there often lag for 12 to 24 hours.

    =
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The mystic of everyday life: Rufus Jones
Richard Penaskovic | Columnist


With Covid-19, the entire human race now lives in a fog, unaware of where we’re headed. It’s like we’re on a gigantic cruise ship, plowing through a thick fog, sirens blaring, thus warning other ships to beware. Passengers cannot see the sun and much less are the stars and sky open to their gaze. As daily cases rise exponentially, so far there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. As the July 13, 2020 edition of the Wall Street Journal, page one noted, experts warn that the Covid-19 crisis seems to be turning “uncontrollable.”


Correspondingly, low visibility on the horizon might be a parable for the physical health and spiritual climate around the world today. Global leaders today from China to Russia to the U.S. and Brazil can’t agree on a strategy to clear the fog and go full speed ahead, politically, economically, and spiritually. In this connection we need to think globally and act locally. This means we need to take the advice of infectious disease experts and use social distancing and the wearing of a mask when in public as ordered by the CDC.


In this article, I reflect on the thought of Rufus Jones, a Quaker, writer, and spiritual guru from the 20th century. I like to think of him as a mystic of everyday life, as described in the book, "Rufus Jones: Essential Writings: Selected with an Introduction by Kerry Walters," (Maryknoll, N.Y.: 2001).


In times of crisis, God appears to be absent when needed most. It’s akin to the sun on a cloudy day. Though the Lord on high seems to be distant, the Transcendent One is there like the sun, behind and above the clouds. As Muslims teach us, God is nearer to us than our jugular vein. Also, in the Hebrew Scriptures, Yahweh made a covenant with Israel, according to Jeremiah 31:33 “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This implies that the Lord is the One who’s there when needed by those suffering the ravages of disease and tribulations. As Rufus Jones puts it, “Every situation may be turned into an occasion for winning a nearer view” of the Lord.


At the end of the day, we must all bow down in silent awe to the mystery that is the divine. Jones reminds us why we’re here on the planet. He remarks that “the major business we are here for in this world is to be a rightly fashioned person as an organ of the divine purpose.” What we do in terms of our work, success, and the like doesn’t seem to matter in the sight of the Lord of the universe. The kingdom of God is what it says, “God’s” kingdom, not ours.

Within each human being there exists a Beyond in us, a “More yet,” (or as William James calls it “our Mother Sea), since we are in our constitution temporal-eternal, finite-infinite beings. We’re composed of matter (body) that is finite and corruptible, plus a soul that’s eternal and incorruptible or infinite. We have been made a little less than the angels. We’re in a reciprocal relationship with God with whom we live, move, and have our being. As Rufus Jones notes, “The Spiritual Universe is thus a concrete reality, not an abstract one.” (See Rufus Jones, “Why I Enroll with the Mystics,” in Contemporary American Theology: Theological Autobiographies, ed. V. Ferm, New York: Roundtable Press, 1932).

As human beings, we live in an Over-World that influences the entire world-drama. The Spirit that is God may be found in the middle of our everyday world, if only we took the time to look. We humans contain within ourselves a capacity for the divine as noted by the early Christians after the event of Pentecost. The 17th-century Quakers constructed their religion on the premise that the presence of God may be found in every human being.

Hence, the Quakers down through the centuries speak of getting in touch with the “Inner Light” or the “Divine Seed.” In short, we humans have a divine origin and a divine goal or destiny. This “Inner Light” must be seen, known, and felt by each of us experientially. We humans are way More than who we are because of this “Inner Light” within our consciousness.

In this connection I am reminded of Psalm 36:9 “in your light we see light.”

Richard Penaskovic is an Emeritus Professor at Auburn University. His writings have appeared in the Birmingham News, Columbus- Ledger Enquirer, Montgomery Advertiser and online by Informed Comment and Politurco.
====

Rufus Jones: Essential Writings
(Modern Spiritual Masters)
by Rufus Matthew Jones, Kerry S. Walters
 4.36  ·   Rating details ·  25 ratings  ·  0 reviews
A Quaker mystic and social activist, Rufus Jones was awarded a Nobel Prize as co-founder of the American Friends Service Committee. Widely considered one of the most significant religious voices in America at the time of his death in 1948, 
his writings impart an Emersonian vision of the ever-present reality of God in our souls and in our world. Indeed, his quintessentially American "affirmative mysticism" infuses all contemporary spirituality and offers an uplifting, positive, and powerful message today. (less)
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Paperback, 160 pages
Published January 10th 2002 by Orbis Books 



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