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    The Pathway Beyond: Exploring the Spiritual Universe
    The Pathway Beyond: Exploring the Spiritual Universe
    The Pathway Beyond: Exploring the Spiritual Universe
    Ebook140 pages1 hour

    The Pathway Beyond: Exploring the Spiritual Universe

    By Jerome Stanley

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    About this ebook

    Have you ever pondered the problem of being as we know it? Our knowledge is extremely limited, and what is unknown at one moment in history may become known in the next, causing the body of knowledge to be constantly changing along the path of human development.

    While we are all on a brief journey that begins at birth and ends in death, this current state of being does not preclude the possibility of another state of being presently unknown. The Pathway Beyond addresses the issues surrounding this question, bringing together the scientific and the spiritual.

    The study of philosophy and religion has been part of human activity for thousands of years. Even so, our society seems not to have reaped the full benefit of the positive values set forth by our philosophers and spiritual leaders. Instead, the growth of science in solving immediate practical problems has consumed our interest. Now, however, scientists are developing an interest in topics that have traditionally been solely within the boundaries of philosophy and religion, such as human consciousness. The subject of ontology, or the science of being, seems to be expanding its influence within human thought.

    Aimed at laypeople as well as academics, The Pathway Beyond explores ideas from Eastern and Western spiritual leaders to illustrate the connections between science and religion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateJun 24, 2011
    ISBN9781462004799
    The Pathway Beyond: Exploring the Spiritual Universe

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      Book preview

      The Pathway Beyond - Jerome Stanley

      Contents

      PREFACE

      INTRODUCTION

      CHAPTER 1

      THE ANCIENT SEARCH FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

      CHAPTER 2

      TEACHINGS OF BUDDHA, PLATO, AND JESUS

      CHAPTER 3

      EXPERIENCES OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

      CHAPTER 4

      NEW INTERPRETATION OF CHRISTIANITY

      CHAPTER 5

      THE EGO, THE SOUL, AND THE BIBLE

      CHAPTER 6

      SPIRITUALITY,

      TRUTH, AND LOVE

      CHAPTER 7

      METAPHOR,

      ALLEGORY, AND TRUTH

      CHAPTER 8

      LIGHT, DARKNESS, AND SPIRITUALITY

      CHAPTER 9

      CAVE ALLEGORY, ILLUSION, AND SPIRITUALITY

      CHAPTER 10

      THE UNIVERSE, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION

      CHAPTER 11

      QUANTUM THEORY, EXPERIENCE, AND SUBSTANCE

      CHAPTER 12

      QUANTUM THEORY, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND INTUITION

      CHAPTER 13

      BLIND DARKNESS, IMAGES, AND PERCEPTION

      CHAPTER 14

      LEONARDO, DREAMS, AND ART

      CHAPTER 15

      INSPIRATION, CREATIVITY, AND MUSIC

      CHAPTER 16

      CONSCIOUSNESS, EXPERIENCE, AND PARADISE

      CHAPTER 17

      WHOLENESS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

      CHAPTER 18

      SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PROCESS

      CHAPTER 19

      EVOLUTION, THE HUMAN CONDITION

      CHAPTER 20

      JOURNEY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, THE NEW SELF

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      PREFACE

      This is not a book exclusively for academics. It is a book for anyone with an open mind who has pondered the problem of being as we know it. I say as we know it, because our knowledge is extremely limited, and what is unknown at one moment in history may become known in the next. The limitation of human knowledge has been evident at any given point throughout our history. All of the technological wonders of present-day human civilization were, prior to their appearance, unknown. Thus, the body of knowledge is constantly changing along the path of human development.

      One way of looking at ourselves in our current state of being is that we are all on a journey that begins at birth and ends in death. These prescribed boundaries of birth and death are precisely the same for each individual—no exceptions. One can be amazed that, with this common bond among us, we have not learned to be more tolerant and understanding of each other.

      But this current state of being does not preclude another state of being presently unknown, just as the knowledge available to people in medieval times did not preclude the incredible advancements that have occurred since then. In fact, one argument for the importance of history is that it teaches us this lesson.

      In addition to yielding technological advancements, human thought has been expanding its grasp of ontology, or the science of being, which is surely one of the areas of human investigation with the slowest rate of advancement. This is not surprising, since the journey that each of us takes between birth and death is very demanding of our time and energy. We devote much of our lives to getting an education, building a career, raising a family, and so on. In all of that, when is there time to think about reality and destiny? Certainly, religion and philosophy have been part of the human landscape for thousands of years. And yet, the average person may shun either or both of those areas of study, believing them to be of little or no practical value, since the meaning of practical has come to include anything that makes our ordinary daily routine easier and faster. Religion and philosophy are not fast-food items.

      Scheduling has become a vital part of modern life. All of us have been forced to learn how to manage our waking hours for maximum input. And whatever is important to us will find its way into our schedule. If and when we decide that religion and philosophy are important to us, we will make room for them. That is when we will become aware that we are on a pathway that is advisable and worthy of our study, just as much as it is advisable to study the road map during a car trip to ensure that we have not gone astray.

      INTRODUCTION

      The experience of awakening from sleep is common to all of us. Such experiences are so repetitive that we naturally overlook the possibility of them teaching us something. And yet, upon closer analysis, the small, routine events in life have the capacity to illustrate higher significance than is initially apparent. On the physical level, the process of awakening involves opening the eyes to absorb the surrounding environment. On the metaphysical level, the process is one of a gradual opening of the mind to a more positive mental environment.

      Ideally, one’s higher education affords an opportunity to awaken and expand the mind into a wider sphere of perception. This was the case in my own university liberal-arts training, during which time I developed a keen interest in my philosophy studies. During these early years, my attendance at a conference featuring Jacques Barzun as keynote speaker helped me to realize the importance of the liberal-arts approach to human problems.

      Our daily interior world is not something we can easily relate to others by means of spoken language. Indeed, language is woefully inadequate to describe many experiences, especially intuitive ones. We might think of this interior space as being a pathway on which we travel between birth and death. Our daily experiences establish our thought patterns, which connect the dots from one day to the next. We learn that some of our thoughts about the outside world cannot be trusted to be true. We build up images in our consciousness that may or may not be based upon reliable premises.

      Throughout the ages, critical thinkers have shared with us their own experiences. These can aid us in our journey through a myriad of phenomena that test our ability to reason clearly and to make decisions that benefit our progress, instead of hindering it. In this journey, one must remain confident that wisdom is the prize for one’s efforts. One might ask, What is wisdom? No definitive answer exists, since wisdom is a continual process within an individual consciousness.

      The human race has been experiencing a gradual awakening to a metaphysical view of existence. This type of awakening cannot happen quickly. But, as in all endeavors toward mastering any discipline, the rewards at the end are without measure. In The Pathway Beyond, we shall explore how the thoughts and admonishments of wise leaders can shape and influence our perception of ourselves and the universe. This exploration will bring us into contact with the ideas of spiritual leaders from the ancient world, the present-day studies of quantum theory, and everything in between.

      The excitement of living in the twenty-first century is that we are now witnessing what seems to be a gradual confluence of science and religion. Traditionally, science has been thought to be concerned mainly with the physical part of experience, while religion has dealt with the metaphysical. However, if the universe is a whole, science and religion may simply be two different ways of approaching that unity.

      Jerome Stanley

      December 2010

      CHAPTER 1

      THE ANCIENT SEARCH FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

      A path is a trajectory, or course, along which movement occurs. For our purpose here, it might be thought of as being analogous to a line in geometry, which consists of an infinite series of dots without beginning or end. As measured by time, an individual human path is relatively short, occurring between birth and death, whereas the collective path of the whole human race has extended for millions of years with no clear end in sight, although various speculations about the end of the race have surfaced.

      The dots along the course of an individual human path are that person’s thoughts and accomplishments, whether recorded for posterity or not. The recorded thoughts of great thinkers and teachers have created the larger dots along the collective path of human activity, thus accomplishing the development and advancement of the race. But each human being has a kind of immortality rooted in his or her part in the ongoing flow of human

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