Description
Book SynopsisA comprehensive exploration of spirituality and philosophy
The essays explore philosophy, meaning and spirituality; consciousness, death and transformation; and responsibility, ethics and society. Perceptive and illuminating, they examine the nature of life and death, questions of meaning and purpose, and the challenge of how we can live more harmoniously together.
A Quest for Wisdom is a wide-ranging volume which brings together 25 of David Lorimer's highly acclaimed essays. David hopes that readers will be inspired, as Dr Albert Schweitzer put it, in our common task 'to become more finely and deeply human.'
Table of ContentsCONTENTS
FOREWORD xvii
PREFACE xxi
Dr Peter Fenwick
FORMATIVE BACKGROUND xxiii
PHILOSOPHY, SPIRITUALITY AND MEANING
Victor Frankl and the Human Search for Meaning 3
The Absurd and the Mysterious 13
John Moriarty Memorial Lecture—Rhythmica Mythica:
Separation and Union, Exile and Homecoming 29
The Principles of Love and Wisdom in Swedenborg
and Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov) 45
Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov, 1864–1944)—a Prophet
for our Times 55
Tao and the Path towards Integration 63
Cultivating a Sense of Beauty 75
The Encounter of Eastern and Western Cosmologies—
Speculations on Radhakrishnan and the “Implicate Order” 85
Consciousness and Spirituality: Widening the Scientific
Perspective 101
CONSCIOUSNESS, DEATH AND TRANSFORMATION
The Challenge of Death 115
Religious and Scientific Implications of the Near-death
and Related Experiences 119
Aspects of the Near-death Experience in the Light of the Tibetan
Book of the Dead and the Experiences of Swedenborg 127
Swedenborg and Survival 135
Swedenborg, the Soul and Modern Consciousness Studies 151
The Near-death Experience and the Perennial Wisdom 159
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY—ETHICS AND SOCIETY
A Life as an Argument: The Plight of the Individual
in Modern Society 173
The Ethic of “Reverence for Life” and the Problem of Peace 183
The Ethical Mysticism of Dag Hammarskjöld 195
Religion, Society and Spiritual Renewal in Radhakrishnan 209
Ethics and the Nature of the Human 217
Beyond Fanaticism—the “Pneumatocratic” Perspective 227
Voltaire and Russell—the Crusade against Dogma
and Fanaticism 235
The Spiritual Perspective and Political Responsibility 247
Fear of Freedom 257
Some Aspects of the German Democratic Republic 263
Towards a Culture of Love—an Ethic of Interconnectedness 269
AFTERWORD 279
BIBLIOGRAPHY 285
INDEX 305
