ishraqi institute: Modus Operandi and Raison D’Etre

“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.

The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal: Book Review

★★★★ Crikey, for me it's certainly a “spiritual ordeal” to get my head round Joshua Ramey's The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal. Understanding perhaps 0.1% of Ramey's interpretation, I should perhaps have eased my way into the terminology (which often reads like a highbrow wine-tasting review with which I have difficulty relating to the reality of actually drinking) via Deleuze for Dummies, or Finnegan's Wake. I was, however, more at home with the author's scattered references to the art of “learning how to swim”, which was, quite possibly, metaphorically one of the main reasons for writing and having interested parties read this and related works.

The Golden Chain

“The philosophers who influenced Suhrawardi came from pre-Islamic Persia, ancient Greece and Egypt. Together their ideas formed a potent blend of Zoroastrianism, Plato and the wisdom traditions of Alexandria, what Suhrawardi called a ‘philosophy of light’, a tradition of esoteric metaphysics that was handed down from sage to sage, Suhrawardi believed, through the ages. In 1186 Suhrawardi tried to capture its essence in Hikmat al-Ishraq, translated, as mentioned, as Oriental Philosophy and also as The Philosophy of Illumination, the book that set [Henry] Corbin on his hermeneutical quest. Suhrawardi wrote of an initiatic chain, a school of adepts reaching back into the dim past, and which included the fabled Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus and others. All were informed by the same primal revelation, the prisca theologia or ‘primal theology’, which it was his task to resurrect.”

~ Gary Lachman, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36086531 

Meeting the Shadow: Book Review

★★★★★ Meeting the Shadow is not one of those books to read, tick off the list, and casually cast aside: it's a real eye-opener.

Meeting the Shadow is a potentially life-changing, psychoactive work; a potent initiatory experience; and the first, necessary step on the winding path not toward betterment, godliness or some unattainable perfection but toward more wholeness of being.

As Jeremiah Abrams writes in the Epilogue: “We each contain the potentials to be both destructive and creative. Admitting to the dark enemies within us is really a confessional act, the beginning of psychological change. Nothing about ourselves can change unless we first accept it and grant it reality. Shadow-work is the initiatory phase of making a whole of ourselves.”

And he concludes: “Here is the golden opportunity in realizing the shadow: the gold is in the awareness of choice, made possible by mediating the tension between our shadow and our ego. If we have choice about who we enact in the world, then it follows that we can take responsibility for the kind of world we create.”

Enjoy!

A Topical Experiment in ESP Using Wordle

Here's a topical experiment in telepathy that might be fun for someone like Rupert Sheldrake to carry out:

Have one set of candidates with no knowledge of the current day's New York Times Wordle puzzle try to guess the answer (perhaps allow them two or three guesses, to counter any internal delinquency,  or “being in two minds” and not listening to intuition), with no feedback about success or failure, unlike the real puzzle.

As the (US) day progresses, more and more non-participating people will discover the correct answer or, if they fail the puzzle, will be told the correct answer.

A second group of candidates could also attempt to guess the answer to the same day's puzzle, but the day before, so the answer would not be “floating in the air” at that time.

The Science and Art of Dreaming: Book Review

 

★★★★★ I really can’t do better than point the would-be reader to the publisher’s description at the top of the book page, because from reading and thoroughly enjoying The Science and Art of Dreaming by Mark Blagrove and Julia Lockheart, “it [really] does what it says on the tin.”

This book is a blend of rigorous documentation of scientific research and theory from dreams researcher Mark Blagrove, and more intuitive appreciation of dreams that are presented, with Mark guiding discussion with the dreamer (primarily using the eminently practical Montague Ullman dream appreciation method and free association, which we can all use at home or in groups), and the resultant and inspired artwork by Julia Lockheart (performed live on camera as each session progresses), which brings the process full-circle from the original dream imagery back to the visual; wonderful artwork that the dreamer gets to keep for further exploration by them and with friends and family.

The Imaginal Veil, by H. M. Forester

 

The first draft of The Imaginal Veil by H. M. Forester is now available for free download.

You can preview or download it at The Internet Archive

or download it at the Sher Point Publications, UK web site (just scroll down the page).

There's also an entry at Goodreads.

First draft edition, 12 February 2023, 268 pages.

Enjoy!

This Post-Enlightenment Era of Post-Trust, Post-Truth, Post-Rationality, Post-Honour, and Post-Chivalry

We are so far down the wrong rabbit hole here, people

There's something gravely amiss with, and missing from, a post-Enlightenment society that elevates rich, charismatic, unempathic and sometimes sociopathic, narcissists to positions of power in society, even though that might risk a fall into a rigid, divisive, violent and authoritarian regime. This often employs viral iconography and near-deification of a supposedly 4D-chess-playing pseudo-messianic cult figure come to save us all – or at least come to save the Real Patriots or True Believers who surround the leader and form a protective thought-bubble around the beloved leader, insulating him or her and themselves from a more objective and realistic reality. What makes matters worse is that this movement is feeding into religious narratives such as the fight between good and evil during these Christian End Times – at the very time that benevolent communion with traditional establishments such as the Church is most needed. And what makes matters far worse is that such leaders find themselves advised by people who really want to “bring it on!”: not only keyboard warriors but self-appointed and zealous Agents of Chaos, sometimes backed by adversarial foreign states. This, on top of the influence the latter or the leader's regime have on compromised public figures.

Resistance and Submission to Necessary Change

 “Once one is on this mystical path – not merely talking the talk, but actually walking the walk – self-change can become at length dire necessity, because as synchronicity becomes more and more evident in one's life, as well as presenting welcome facets it also takes on dangerous aspects, resonating with one's inner state, thoughts, and actions. Or inactions.

Finding Our Books

Etienne de L'Amour's books:

1. The Lost Treasure of Roth Nagor.*

2. Life on the Flipside (or In Two Minds).**

3. Escape from the Shadowlands.

4. In Search of Destiny.

5. The Lucian Uprising.

6. Time and Time again.

7. The Gift.

8. The Host and the Guests.

9. Whisperings of Love.

10. The Insiders: Exploring the higher realms of possibility.***

* Historical prequel.

** Prequel (You can start at book 3, if you like).

*** A response to Rafael Lefort's The Teachers of Gurdjieff.

Philip K. Dick's Lateral Worlds: A Glimpse of Track C

In “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others”, an essay delivered as a speech at the second Festival International de la Science-Fiction de Metz, France, in September 1977, science faction author Philip K. Dick talks of his experiences in alternate realities, which resulted from the sodium pentothal (colloquially known as a “truth drug”) administered to him before dental surgery; experiences which gradually began to unfold over a period of weeks.

Dick asks “what if there exists a plurality of universes arranged along a sort of lateral axis, which is to say at right angles to the flow of linear time?” That is to say, in branches of alternative history that are imminent, penetrating our own, yet not discernible, nor experienced, by all, since most are largely confined to the everyday consensus reality of the masses. That is, the predominant worldview which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view, but not the only possible reality, and quite probably a rather lowly conception of reality, due to the low levels or crudity of consciousness of we beleaguered citizens of dear Mother Earth.

Knowledge of the End Creates the Means

A Framework for New Knowledge 

“The desire for an 'awakening', often used as a technical term, may or may not be accompanied by the information and experience essential to precede this stage. The Teaching, for its part, is carried out — and is able to cross ideological boundaries — because of a knowledge of the objective: an objective which is at worst postulated as an assumption that it exists; at best glimpsed: and thenceforward is the subject of repeated attempts to devise a means to recover this glimpse.

“The working hypothesis or traditional framework provides the structure by which the would-be illuminate attempts to approach this goal. In the case of the School, knowledge alone provides the basis upon which the structure can be devised.

“‘Once you know the end, you can devise the means.’ The end does not justify the means - it provides it. The means, employed in this sense, is the structure referred to in some literature as ‘The Work’.”

~ Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way.

[Book at Goodreads]

Image: Cycle of mystical development / Esowteric /

Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Click to enlarge image.