Category: philosophical counseling
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Three Minus One Paths To God
Raimon Panikkar observes that there are three paths to God or the ultimate: By means of knowledge (jnana): through the effort of the intelligence to transcend itself: God is seen as an I. By means of love (bhakti): through the heart’s desire to seek what can fill it: God is seen as a thou. By…
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The Second Axial Age: Three Paths In Need Of Synthesis
The First Axial Age Karl Jaspers famously argued that the Axial Age, occurring between 8th and 3rd BCE, introduced the conceptual framework that has been with us since. Most notable among other discoveries was that of transcendence, and so we find The Upanishads speaking of liberation from the bondages brought about by suffering, the Presocratics…
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‘Reality Is Trinitarian’
Raimon Panikkar argues that God should be understood not in dualist or in monist terms but in terms of nonduality. Here he goes: If, in the monotheistic perspective, there is one absolutely omniscient being who embraces and understands all of reality [from which He is, in a certain sense, separate–AT], that is not the case…
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Fragments On The Experience Of God
The following is an excerpt from Raimon Panikkar’s The Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery (2006). Please contemplate and enjoy. * Everything [Panikkar writes] that we would be able to say about the experience of God in a strictly rational manner would be blasphemous. Indeed, there is something blasphemous about every theodicy and every…
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Vasanas And Thoughts = Mind
Ramana Maharshi is very clear about two things. One, vasanas/samskaras are what force the mind outward. Thus: “It [the mind] is accustomed to stray outward by the force of the latent vasanas manifesting as thoughts” (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, p. 302). And, two, the mind is nothing but thought. “Thoughts,” he states plainly, “comprise…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 