Reality - The historic fork in the road

[Dover]

This book will strip the veil! Kingsley is a rare breed...a truly enlightened scholar.

Peter Kingsley's work is to bring back to life, and make accessible again, the extraordinary mystical tradition that lies forgotten right at the roots of the western world.

Crafted thousands of years ago as a system capable of bringing a human being to the experience of reality, this tradition is immensely powerful in its immediacy and directness. And it matters to us now more than we can imagine because it contains inside itself the secret—the original meaning and sacred purpose—of the world we live in.

Books:

1) Reality
2) Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic - Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition
3) In The Dark Places of Wisdom


Parmenides was born over two thousand five hundred years ago and lived in southern Italy. Nowadays he is famous as the founder of western rationalism—as the "father" of logic. Ever since the time of Plato and Aristotle his role in the seeding of western culture has been considered essential.

But Parmenides was not just a logician. And his teaching was far from reasonable. He described how he had been given all the knowledge he taught by a goddess after he traveled to meet her in another world. This is because he was a priest of Apollo who specialized in the mastery of other states of consciousness: for him, our familiar world was an illusion that he could leave behind and re-enter at will. And he was a healer—a healer who worked through ecstasy, through the inspired interpretation of dreams, through immersing himself and others for extended periods of time in utter stillness.

As for the "logic" that he introduced to the western world, this was not some dry intellectual exercise. It was nothing less than a gift from the gods which when understood right, and applied in our daily life, has the mysterious power of taking us back to the gods.

Empedocles was born just a few years after Parmenides. He lived on the island of Sicily. He, too, is famous for the fundamental role he played in the development of the western world. Just like Parmenides he wrote his teachings in the form of poetry; and this poetry of his exerted a crucial role in creating what were soon to become known as the separate fields of philosophy, rhetoric, medicine, chemistry, biology, astronomy, cosmology and psychology.

But Empedocles was far more than the cosmologist or scientist he is now made out to be. He was also a sorcerer whose words had a magic power that, for over two thousand years, has bewitched and confused even the brightest of minds. Like Parmenides he was a healer who specialized in ecstasy and in the ability to access other states of consciousness at will. He openly announced that he had realized his immortality; had discovered his own divinity. And through his poetry he recorded techniques, which are as powerful now as they ever have been, for leading people to the direct experience of their own divine nature.

As for his amazingly intricate teachings about the details of the world around us: these were never meant just to stimulate people's curiosity and become an object of interest in themselves. On the contrary, their real purpose was to free us from the illusions that bind us and bring us to an immediate awareness of our own immortal soul...cont'd

http://www.peterkingsley.org/pages.cfm?ID=5


Peter Kingsley is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on the origins of western spirituality, philosophy and culture. Through his writings as well as lectures he speaks straight to the heart and has helped to transform many people's understanding not only of the past, but of who they are.

He is the author of three books which, in the space of only a few years, have exerted the profoundest and most far-reaching influence outside as well as inside academia. He lectures very widely—speaking to Native American elders and physicists, professional scholars and followers of different spiritual traditions, healers and medical practitioners as well as people who very simply are aware of the need to wake up to a reality greater than the one we are used to.

After graduating with honors from the University of Lancaster, England, in 1975, Peter Kingsley went on to receive the degree of Master of Letters from King's College Cambridge before being awarded a PhD by the University of London. He has worked together with many of the most prominent figures in the fields of classics and anthropology, philosophy and religious studies, ancient civilizations and the history of both healing and science. The recipient of many academic awards, he was a Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London and has been made an honorary Professor both at Simon Fraser University in Canada and at the University of New Mexico. With his wife he emigrated from England to Canada in 1995, then from Canada to the United States in 2002.

And behind all these details, dates, places, is the consciousness that never changes

http://www.peterkingsley.org/pages.cfm?ID=2


Another great book:

The Ancient Mysteries - A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts
Edited by Marvin W. Meyer

[Dover]

1. Excerpt: In the Dark Places of Wisdom

In the Dark Places of Wisdom: The Forgotten Origins of the Western World
Published in Parabola, Winter 1999

Following are excerpts from the author's forthcoming book, In the Dark Places of Wisdom: the Forgotten Origins of the Western World. Parmenides, who lived 2,500 years ago in southern Italy, is well known as the father of philosophy and the founder of Western logic. But his real significance for us all has long been forgotten. This book is the story of remarkable new discoveries and old neglected evidence. It describes Parmenides' connections with the Pythagoreans, and explains the meaning of the poetry he wrote about his journey, guided by girls, to a goddess deep in the world of the dead.




Those girls who guide Parmenides on his journey to the underworld are daughters of the Sun.

That sounds strange, quite a paradox. For us the sun is up above in the light, doesn't have anything to do with darkness or death. But this isn't because we're any wiser or because we've managed to leave the world of myth behind: that would be about as easy as leaving our own death behind. The reason why to us it sounds strange is because we've lost any contact with the underworld.

The underworld isn't just a place of darkness and death. It only seems like that from a distance. In reality it's the supreme place of paradox where all the opposites meet. Right at the roots of western as well as eastern mythology there's the idea that the sun comes out of the underworld and goes back to the underworld every night. It belongs in the underworld. That's where it has its home; where its children come from. The source of light is at home in the darkness.

This was well understood in southern Italy. A whole Italian mythology grew up around the figure of the sun god as he's driven in his chariot by the horses that carry him out of the underworld before they take him down again. That was true in Parmenides' home town, called Velia. And for certain men and women known as Pythagoreans-people who had gathered around Pythagoras when he came out to southern Italy from the east-these same ideas were a basic tradition.

Pythagoreans tended to live close to volcanic regions. For them that was something very meaningful. They saw volcanic fire as the light in the depths of darkness: it was the fire of hell, but also the fire that all the light we know and see derives from. For them the light of the sun and of the moon and stars were just reflections, offshoots of the invisible fire inside the underworld. And they understood that there's no going up without going down, no heaven without going through hell. To them the fire in the underworld was purifying, transforming, immortalizing. Everything was part of a process and there were no short cuts. Everything had to be experienced, included; and to find clarity meant facing utter darkness.

This is much more than just a matter of mythology. In theory we think we know that each dawn brings a new day, but in practice we never see what that means. Deep down we've all agreed to look for light in the light and avoid everything else: reject the darkness, the depths. Those people realized there's something very important hidden in the depths. For them it wasn't only a question of confronting a little bit of darkness inside themselves. It was a question of going right through the darkness to what lies at the other end.

There were early Christians, too, who talked about the 'depths' of the divine. Most of them were soon silenced. And there were Jewish mystics who spoke of 'descending' to the divine; they were silenced too. It's far simpler to keep the divine somewhere up above, at a safe distance. The trouble is that when the divine is removed from the depths we lose our depth, start viewing the depths with fear and end up struggling, running from ourselves, trying to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps into the beyond....cont'd

http://www.goldensufi.org/PKarticles.html
(scroll down the page)

[Dead_Parrot]

2. And this in the science forum because...

...?