Tag: Ethics
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The Spiritual Equivalent Of War
Contesting Flabby Pacifism Imagine William James–now older and, it’ll turn out, just four years before death–delivering a public lecture at Stanford in which he’s telling fellow pacifists that their position isn’t philosophically defensible. In 1906, the feeling of war–with a long build-up to hostilities that will become WWI and the Boer War (1899-1901) not long…
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Yogic New Thought: A Reappraisal And Interpretation
John S. Haller Jr., in his book The History of New Thought: From Mind Cure to Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel (2012), regrettably misses the mark. A secular humanist tasked with studying the history of American religion and medical humanities, he lacks a good ear with regard to what was actually attractive about New…
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If A Man Takes Your Goods, Do You Help Him Lift The Rest?
In the Apophthegmata Patrum, we read about Abba Macarius (c. 300-391), a Desert Father living in Egypt: Abba Macarius while he was in Egypt discovered a man who owned a beast of burden engaged in plundering Macarius’ goods. So he came up to the thief as if he was a stranger and he helped him…
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The Moth & Us
The moth was fluttering its wings wildly, but it couldn’t take off. It kept trying and trying but still nothing. It couldn’t fly and, I feel, it foresaw its death. T.S. Eliot once wrote of the “objective correlative”: a writer describes a situation in such a way as to evoke a particular mood. I’d like,…
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Jeffrey Epstein, Alas, Had Thought Power
I don’t recall Swami Sivananda discussing perversions of thought power in his book Thought Power, at least not at great length. It’s clear that he’s aware of the possibility of a yogi abusing thought power, and it would have been obvious to him that ethical practices (such as the yamas and the niyamas from Raja…
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