By Mateus Soares de Azevedo

Comprises essays on mysticism, prayer, sacred paintings, the connection among Christianity and different non secular.

Show description

Read or Download Ye Shall Know the Truth: Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy PDF

Best mysticism books

The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility, and Mystery

David Cooper explores and defends the view truth self sufficient of human views is inevitably indescribable, a "mystery. " different perspectives are proven to be hubristic. Humanists, for whom "man is the degree" of truth, exaggerate our potential to reside with no the feel of an autonomous degree.

Alone with the Alone

"Henry Corbin's works are the simplest consultant to the visionary culture. .. . Corbin, like Scholem and Jonas, is remembered as a student of genius. He was once uniquely built not just to get better Iranian Sufism for the West, but in addition to guard the important Western traditions of esoteric spirituality. "--From the advent through Harold BloomIbn 'Arabi (1165-1240) was once one of many nice mystics of all time.

Teachings of the Hindu Mystics

This anthology collects the main lyrical, passionate, illuminating writings of the Hindu mystical culture. Andrew Harvey, the preferred non secular pupil and author, has chosen excerpts from historic and modern resources, together with extracts from the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and different classical Hindu texts; the phrases of such venerable non secular lecturers as Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi; and the devotional poetry of Mirabai, Ramprasad, and so forth.

Extra resources for Ye Shall Know the Truth: Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy

Example text

When one reads in the Gospel that 8 This is, be it said in passing, what is forgotten even by most of the impeccable gurus of contemporary India, starting with Ramakrishna. ” “Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ” (Matthew 23: 8 and 10). 13 Ye Shall Know the Truth: Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy “there is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s but he shall receive an hundredfold”, one immediately thinks of monks and nuns; now Luther thought that it was solely a question of persecutions, in the sense of this saying from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven”;10 and he is all the more sure of his interpretation in that there were neither anchorites nor monks before the fourth century.

Be that as it may, Luther does not seem to know what to do with good conscience, the one that Catholics obtain through confession and works; he confuses it with self-satisfaction and laziness, whereas it is the normal and healthy basis for the requirements of the love of God and the neighbor. Now the essential here is not the fact of this confusion, but the consequence Luther draws from it and the stimula­ tion he obtains from it. The question of knowing whether we are good or bad may be asked approximately, for we possess intelligence, but it cannot be asked in all strictness, for we do not dispose of God’s measures; now to say that we cannot answer a question means that we do not need to ask it.

For Luther and for Christianity in general, man is practically sin;25 on the part of God, there is Grace—which Luther identifies with the “Justice” of God the Redeemer—and between these two extremes, there is faith, in which the sinner and Grace meet. Luther declares in a lecture on the Epistles to the Romans that Christ “made his Justice mine, and my sin his”, and he adds: “For him who throws himself body and soul into God’s Will it is impossible to remain outside God”. Likewise, he says in speaking of Justice that “faith raises the human heart so high, that it becomes one spirit with God (dass er ein Geist mit Gott wird) and acquires the very Justice of God”.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.16 of 5 – based on 25 votes