“I think I'm quite ready for another adventure.” ~ Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings.
In this era of global communications and instant connectivity, we're saturated, even inundated, round the clock by sensationalist news and tempting “fast foods” of consumerism, as well as egotistical, even narcissistic, self-promotion and “media influence”, and drowning in shedload after shedload of information. As a consequence, we are suffering cognitive and emotional overload. I trust that a little hopefully quality “time out” will alleviate that, rather than exacerbate matters, and point you in the direction of others who can offer greater help in what is, as Henry Corbin stated, an ongoing Battle for the Soul of the World. Rather than a course following a logical progression from A to Z, this is a deliberately open-ended exploration, and exercise in mental fluidity, learning as we go along.
One main aim of the ishraqi institute, then, is to seduce you with a coherent alternative worldview, based on love, wisdom, meaning, soul, beauty, imagination, creativity, and magic, to go a little way toward countering the predominant, soulless and mechanistic, reductionist, materialist, utilitarian, and capitalist worldview, and instead offer rich, complementary, and wide-ranging content, and stimulate your need for engagement, sense of wonder and desire, for truth, unity, beauty, and goodness.
Jean Gebser wrote about the deficient mode of the mental-rational structure of consciousness that we are currently suffering, and – though he gave no guarantees that we would survive as a species – he offered hope that a new, integral mode is beginning to emerge.
Thank you for being here in these “interesting times” and for your valuable patience, consideration, and contributions.
~ ii.
Image
Ship of fools / Andrey Mironov / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.