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Life Arts    H4'ed 1/31/13

BOOK REVIEW: What the World Needs Now!

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Viewed in another way, however, the SPIRITUAL EXERCISES of St. Ignatius Loyola could be categorized as a self-help book, at least if you undertake to do the spiritual exercises yourself, instead of just reading over the instructions for doing them. But stand forewarned: Doing this kind of imaginative meditation can trigger a psychotic episode, because doing these spiritual exercises involves using one's imagination to try to access the archetypal level of the human psyche. But certain archetypes can take over one's ego-consciousness, resulting in a psychotic episode. So if you plan to try doing these spiritual exercises, you would be well advised to do them under the guidance of a spiritual director who has done them and consult once a day with that person about how things are going.

 

In any event, mystic experience involves the experience of the sacred. The young Jew known to the world as Jesus of Nazareth almost certainly had a profound mystic life. As a result, he famously proclaimed that something wonderful is here, which is rendered in English (from the Greek texts) as the kingdom (or rule) of God. In THE WAY TO LOVE, Tony is also proclaiming that this kind of wonderful experience is still here for us to experience for ourselves, a message that Jiddu Krishnamurti from India also proclaimed to the world. Tony's thought in general and in THE WAY TO LOVE was deeply influenced by Krishnamurti's thought -- perhaps more deeply influenced by his thought than by St. Ignatius Loyola's thought.

 

 

Definition of Certain Terms

 

In his famous book THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE (English translation reissued 1987), Mircea Eliade discusses the experience of the sacred, as the title indicates. But most of the time, all of us experience the profane world of space and time.

 

Arguably the most common experience of the sacred today occurs in what is referred to as experiences of nature mysticism, which are usually brief but memorable experiences of inner harmony and peace and tranquility.

 

But across cultures today and in world history, certain people have aimed deliberately to experience the sacred, however briefly. Such people can be referred to as mystics, or at least as mystics in spirit. People can deliberately aim to experience the sacred through the cultivation of forms of meditation and contemplation. Some forms of meditation involve the use of one's imagination, as mentioned above. But certain other forms of meditation such as Buddhist meditation do not involve the use of one's imagination.

 

We can use C. G. Jung's conceptual framework to understand the experience of the sacred. The experience of the sacred involves the brief experience of the Self. But in such brief experiences of the Self, the person is not taken over by an archetype in the archetypal level of the human psyche, the kind of takeover that results in a psychotic episode.

 

In any event, the experience of the sacred discussed by Eliade can be understood as the experience of the Self discussed by Jung.

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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