If I were to begin teaching a true beginner in philosophy---what would be the starting point? The middle? The end? Should I seek the origin, the matter or the goal? What if there were a discourse concerning the soul---and declare that the soul is the start and the development and the finish? If I were given the rare opportunity to completely embellish this response to the wide open question: What is truth? I would attempt to show what 'soul' means.
Let's imagine that God has given me this little blue book---the exam book you see in college and then looked carefully at the clock and said: "Peter, My son, this is an exam, a quiz...Do not fear, it is not meant to baffle or trick you, block you, twist you, or put you on a chopping block. You will gain much from this test---it profits me not one iota, it is completely for your edification. The question is as follows----ESSAY: (one hour) Write a careful and thoughtful response to this question: What do you understand by truth?"
This screen is my "Blue Book". Come along!
I would borrow a clue or two from those predecessors who have gone this way before me---yet I would not make their words and theories shackles or manacles---I would take the clue and unfold the matter as is fitting to the inquiry itself. The ideal candidates for my clue search that leap to mind are Emerson, Plato, of course, Aristotle, Thomas Merton, St. Paul, Wm Blake, Bob Dylan, David the Psalmist---the list might stretch pretty far, after all aren't all human beings en-souled?
Emerson writes at the conclusion of his New England Reformers essay: "That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. The life of man is the true romance, which, when it is valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction." Let's pause for a breath :) "All around us, what powers are wrapped up under the coarse mattings of custom, and all wonder prevented. It is so wonderful top our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that it is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise; the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.." Pause...it is important to pause and reflect here just a tad. Now the end of the paragraph:"Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past?" Amen, and amen!
These words of Emerson cheered my Lord considerably---"Hallelujah! Well done my boy! But what do YOU say---Emerson has spoken well---right on the mark---but what do you say Peter?"
"Lord, I totally agree with you---Emerson hits the nail on the head!" Allow me to begin by repeating his remark on noticing the usual as a mark of the wise one. The same thought courses through his remark concerning eyesight. This is a pregnant thought, spacious and full of depth. Our Lord also spoke often concerning the eye, and of course he spoke well of the ear as is recorded by the scribes.
If we begin with the present moment and the sun dappled lime green leaves of mid-June, in other words to begin with whatever it is that your conscious awareness is focusing upon (page, either paper or web)---begin with whatever this may be and begin to unwind, to quest-ion, interrogate, look at carefully, examine it, pay careful attention to it, caress it! Yes, like a spool of yarn pull at the thread and think through to the heighth and depth of it, to its very essence and core.
Take a term, 'embryology'---pursue it with your thought---(after all today is father's day) a fetus is born, a human life has come into the world via birth. Pursue this moment carefully! When you reach for the moment, it draws away both into befores and afters. Befores we call antecedents, not certain whether these things are causes or not, we leave to more competent thinking professionals :) Let me say that my understanding moves me toward these befores that precede, insemination, gestation, cellular division, blastocytes, antigens, and a host of other biological processes.
Each one of these "befores" opens up to another endless discourse whether in scientific peer-reviewed literature, or common parlance, or ordinary, usual, actions like feeling my wife's womb and belly, sensing the fluttering action of our baby to be---each one of these particulars opens up to an endless discourse climbing all the way toward what?
Visualize grouping overlapping circles, and then looking at the ensemble, all of it put together like a great unified organism. Now go back to the particular inquiry---this rock, this leaf, this rabbit's velvet black chin! Our goal is to show the manner in which this particular coheres in the unity of truth, while never losing our focus on the actual coming into focus of the thing in nature. This intellectual activity---a kind of wide angle seeing and then a zooming in, is the activity that par excellence establishes philosophy---But how to "get at" the soul?
It seemed like too much time had passed, certainly an hour or more and so I picked up my blue book in order to return it to God. Much to my chagrin I couldn't find him. However, just then a small woman walked into the room and sat down smiling at me: "you look perplexed, even anxious..."
"Well yes, you would be too, if you had been given the exam I have--and now I am afraid my time is up and I have barely gotten to the soul."
"Fear not," she replied, "You still have plenty of time, in fact you are just beginning and I have been sent to help you. On God's clock one day equals one thousand years, and so God's hour is 41.6 years in your reckoning----364, 416 hours of your clock time! Which means you have 364, 415 more hours to complete your essay on the soul."
"Ah, So you know about this?
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Let's imagine that God has given me this little blue book---the exam book you see in college and then looked carefully at the clock and said: "Peter, My son, this is an exam, a quiz...Do not fear, it is not meant to baffle or trick you, block you, twist you, or put you on a chopping block. You will gain much from this test---it profits me not one iota, it is completely for your edification. The question is as follows----ESSAY: (one hour) Write a careful and thoughtful response to this question: What do you understand by truth?"
This screen is my "Blue Book". Come along!
I would borrow a clue or two from those predecessors who have gone this way before me---yet I would not make their words and theories shackles or manacles---I would take the clue and unfold the matter as is fitting to the inquiry itself. The ideal candidates for my clue search that leap to mind are Emerson, Plato, of course, Aristotle, Thomas Merton, St. Paul, Wm Blake, Bob Dylan, David the Psalmist---the list might stretch pretty far, after all aren't all human beings en-souled?
Emerson writes at the conclusion of his New England Reformers essay: "That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. The life of man is the true romance, which, when it is valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction." Let's pause for a breath :) "All around us, what powers are wrapped up under the coarse mattings of custom, and all wonder prevented. It is so wonderful top our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that it is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise; the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.." Pause...it is important to pause and reflect here just a tad. Now the end of the paragraph:"Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past?" Amen, and amen!
These words of Emerson cheered my Lord considerably---"Hallelujah! Well done my boy! But what do YOU say---Emerson has spoken well---right on the mark---but what do you say Peter?"
"Lord, I totally agree with you---Emerson hits the nail on the head!" Allow me to begin by repeating his remark on noticing the usual as a mark of the wise one. The same thought courses through his remark concerning eyesight. This is a pregnant thought, spacious and full of depth. Our Lord also spoke often concerning the eye, and of course he spoke well of the ear as is recorded by the scribes.
If we begin with the present moment and the sun dappled lime green leaves of mid-June, in other words to begin with whatever it is that your conscious awareness is focusing upon (page, either paper or web)---begin with whatever this may be and begin to unwind, to quest-ion, interrogate, look at carefully, examine it, pay careful attention to it, caress it! Yes, like a spool of yarn pull at the thread and think through to the heighth and depth of it, to its very essence and core.
Take a term, 'embryology'---pursue it with your thought---(after all today is father's day) a fetus is born, a human life has come into the world via birth. Pursue this moment carefully! When you reach for the moment, it draws away both into befores and afters. Befores we call antecedents, not certain whether these things are causes or not, we leave to more competent thinking professionals :) Let me say that my understanding moves me toward these befores that precede, insemination, gestation, cellular division, blastocytes, antigens, and a host of other biological processes.
Each one of these "befores" opens up to another endless discourse whether in scientific peer-reviewed literature, or common parlance, or ordinary, usual, actions like feeling my wife's womb and belly, sensing the fluttering action of our baby to be---each one of these particulars opens up to an endless discourse climbing all the way toward what?
Visualize grouping overlapping circles, and then looking at the ensemble, all of it put together like a great unified organism. Now go back to the particular inquiry---this rock, this leaf, this rabbit's velvet black chin! Our goal is to show the manner in which this particular coheres in the unity of truth, while never losing our focus on the actual coming into focus of the thing in nature. This intellectual activity---a kind of wide angle seeing and then a zooming in, is the activity that par excellence establishes philosophy---But how to "get at" the soul?
It seemed like too much time had passed, certainly an hour or more and so I picked up my blue book in order to return it to God. Much to my chagrin I couldn't find him. However, just then a small woman walked into the room and sat down smiling at me: "you look perplexed, even anxious..."
"Well yes, you would be too, if you had been given the exam I have--and now I am afraid my time is up and I have barely gotten to the soul."
"Fear not," she replied, "You still have plenty of time, in fact you are just beginning and I have been sent to help you. On God's clock one day equals one thousand years, and so God's hour is 41.6 years in your reckoning----364, 416 hours of your clock time! Which means you have 364, 415 more hours to complete your essay on the soul."
"Ah, So you know about this?
