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Death and Resurrection: Enlightenment and the Body of Light
Get PDFEnlightenment or God-realization is not purely a psychological event. Bodily changes also occur, most dramatically in the higher phases of enlightenment. In the final phase, according to esoteric teachings in various sacred traditions and hermetic schools, the body is alchemically changed from flesh into light, becoming immortal. This transubstantiated body is called different names, such as resurrection body, light body, solar body and diamond body. This presentation looks at the phenomenon from a cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective. It then focuses on Christianity as a sacred tradition whose purpose is to enable people to develop through the resurrection of the body to become Christed
The Self and the Structure of the Personality: An Overview of Sri Aurobindo’s Topography of Consciousness
Get PDFSri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga aimed not only at what he called the realization of the Divine, but also at an integral transformation of human nature under Divine influence. For this exceptionally wide aim, he developed an exceptionally deep and comprehensive frame for understanding human nature. His concepts, as discussed in this paper, must be understood on their own terms, which are often different from meanings attributed in the conventional language of Western psychology. This paper provides a detailed account of Sri Aurobindo’s conceptualization of the various centers of identity and of the vertical and concentric dimensions he used to describe the structure of the personality. It explains the importance Sri Aurobindo gave to the location where one places one’s consciousness, and indicates why he argued that consciousness is not only awareness, but also force. Finally, this paper describes how Sri Aurobindo visualized the still ongoing evolution of consciousness and humanity’s role in it
Shifting Realities: Tron Cyberspace and the “New” Consciousness in 21st Century Technoscapes
Get PDFThe existing direction of the (mis)use of information technologies founded on the deceptively secular rationalised heritage of scientism, arguably spells the increasing proximity to a dystopian nightmare that is far from mere fiction and imbued with the eternal religious symbolic of the battle between good and evil, as depicted in the 2010 science fiction film Tron: Legacy. The historical contextualisation of events in the film reveals the promise of the unfolding of an advanced sensibility alongside these concerns, in which fantasy and science converge to liberate humanity from an increasingly limiting worldview, and information and images serve as conduits to the sacred. The critical role information stands to play in humanity’s conscious evolution is outlined in the proposed development of a “dream systems theory”, where dreamscapes are defined as interconnected systems of imaginal data
Montessori Education: What Is Its Relationship with the Emerging Worldview?
Get PDFThe classroom structure of traditional education has been modeled on the defining characteristics of the mechanical worldview, including linearity, hierarchy, reductionism, objectivity, outcomes, and empiricism. The advent of a participatory worldview has brought a new set of priorities including non-linearity, interdependence, process, relationship, and ecology. A Montessori classroom structure embodies these emerging characteristics. The Montessori approach is based on a non-linear developmental model. It provides a form of education that is not limited to mechanistic cognitive development, but integrally involves all aspects of human development, and is thus well-aligned with the qualities of the emerging worldview
Transcendence from Below: The Embodied Feminine Mysticism of Marion Woodman
Get PDFThis article outlines the mystical path followed by Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman. It unpacks the mystical aspects of Jungian psychology and uses Woodman’s life as a lens to view how the practice of mysticism can operate within alternative psycho-religious belief systems. Woodman deeply embraces mysticism as a transformative, feminist practice by focusing her work on healing the psycho-spiritual effects of patriarchy and the associated repression of women and the body. This paper also discusses how Woodman’s mystical revelations have begun to affect the epistemological foundation of Jungian psychology in a way that echoes the embodied and enactive perspective of participatory theory
