Transpersonal Philosophy

  A brief note to clarify again the relationship between philosophy and psychology. In a society like ours it is generally assumed that philosophers and psychologists are those who are accredited by a university with a major on these fields, that is, those people who have followed specific teaching programs and passed certain exams. Neither Pythagoras, nor Heraclitus, nor Buddha, nor Socrates, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Plotinus, nor Lao-Tzu, nor Sankara, nor... (the list would be immense...), well, none of the major philosophers and psychologist in history ever had a university accreditation. It is very important not to fall into the clerk’s mentality in relation to philosophy and psychology. Psychology as academic knowledge developed under philosophy’s umbrella until the last quarter of the 19th century. We can still find remnants of this lineage connection acknowledged by the academic world. The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language recognizes th...

  Una nota breve para aclarar de nuevo la relación entre la filosofía y la psicología. Se hace necesaria en una sociedad como la nuestra en la que de forma generalizada se asume que filósofo y psicólogo son quienes están acreditados por alguna universidad al repecto, es decir aquellas personas que han seguido unos programas específicos de enseñanza y superado ciertos exámenes. Ni Pitágoras, ni Heráclito, ni Buddha, ni Sócrates, ni Platón, ni Aristóteles, ni Plotino, ni Lao-Tse, ni Sankara, ni… (la lista sería inmensa…) bien pues ninguno de esa lista tuvo nunca una acreditación universitaria. Y con la psicología pasaría lo mismo. Es muy importante no caer en la mentalidad funcionarial en relación a la filosofía y la psicología. La psicología como saber académico se desarrolló dentro del seno de la filosofía hasta el último cuarto del siglo XIX. El diccionario de la Real Academia Española de la Lengua, reconoce este parentesco, y nos dice en una de las acepciones de...

  The study of Indian religions is a whole school of the Art of Being Human . The mythopoetic stages of humanity coexist and overlap in a way that is as fertile as it is chaotic. It would take at least a three-year course to initiate us into all the subtleties and doctrinal and devotional variants of those religions, a commitment that the vast majority of you would not be able to attend to due to the practical issues of life. I have been giving you some keys learned and matured in the last 40 years of my life, many of them synthesized in the “Path of Beauty”, a book that I intended to make simpler but that I see now, after several months of your reactions in the Blog, how it requires a whole arsenal of prior knowledge for its complete understanding. I would like the most direct and simple proposal of the book to be clear: let yourself be found by Beauty and surrender to It . I would also like it to be clear what the path of non-dual knowledge (Advaita Vedanta) consist...

  El estudio de las religiones de la India es toda una escuela del Arte de Ser Humano. Los estadios mitopoéticos de la humaidad conviven y se solapan de una manera tan fértil como caótica. Se necesitaría como mínimo un curso de tres años para iniciarnos en todas las sutilezas y variantes doctrinales y devocionales, un compromiso que la inmensa mayoría de vosotros no podría atender por las cuestiones prácticas de la vida. Os he ido dando algunas claves aprendidas y maduradas en los últimos 40 años de mi vida, muchas de ellas sintetizadas en el “Sendero de la Belleza”, libro que pretendí hacer más simple pero que veo ahora, tras varios meses de vuestras reacciones en el Blog, cómo exige todo un arsenal de conocimiento previo para su completa comprensión. Me gustaría que la propuesta más directa y simple del libro quedase clara: déjate encontrar por la Belleza y ríndete a Ella . También me gustaría que quedase claro en qué consiste el camino del conocimiento no dual (Ad...

  Liminality. Liminal : Adjective for social and individual actions or processes with fuzzy principles of identity. Something is liminal when is neither this nor that. If a social action is liminal it is dangerous and unstable. It is stabilised in the process of its repetition, in its incorporation into rituals and social dramas, becoming liminoid by this repetition. A liminoid action, has traits of the liminal action but it has been deprived of the dangerous and unstable components. The purpose or final cause of a Community is to maintain its homeostasis, its equilibrium in self-development, and it does it through those social actions (economic or narrative) that transform liminal social actions into liminoid actions. Those actions incorporate the unfamiliar into the familiar, the danger of existence into the safety of social values. It is done by religion, by science, by art, but also by the safe repetition of the scenarios of everyday life. Liminal Times: ...

  I have explained duality in the second chapter of "Path of Beauty." Its understanding is easier from the understanding of the three dimensions of the Tripartite Soul. Luis has asked me to talk about Spinozist Pantheism in relation to duality. Spinoza's work has profound ramifications not only in the philosophical tradition but also in mysticism. Spinoza is one of the favorite philosophers of contemporary physicists (partly thanks to the fact that he was Einstein's favorite philosopher) because his understanding of the Universe as a Great Rational Entity gives an ontological foundation to all the work of Philosophy and Science. Natural. I do not think this is the place to discuss Spinoza's ontology, since the purpose of this Blog and this group is not academic philosophy. For this reason, I am going to give a few glimpses about the connection between Pantheism and Panpsychism, hoping that these rhapsodic notes fertilize the psychic soil ...

  Ontology It answers the question: What is there? Our starting point is the human being as a living and thinking being in the world. Humans think about what there is the world and is part of their life, whether material or immaterial. We human try to give an orderly account of experience and in doing so we establish some fundamental relationships and produce objects (abstract or physical) upon which our way of life is based. These fundamental relationships and objects are what we call a particular or specific ontology. Not all societies have considered their fundamental relationships and objects in the same way. In fact, we observe that even the same society changes its ontological orders in its historical development. Epistemology It answers the questions: how do we know what is there? How could we know it? Asking such questions we begin an investigation into the processes that guide our human knowledge.  We call this research epistemology. Our thinking begi...