Showing 263 articles
Education: To What End?
Author: Archana SamarthSeptember 23, 2016
“Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the make [...]
Soil, Soul, Society – Rendezvous with Satish Kumar
Author: Manjula NanavatiSeptember 23, 2016
Activist, Author, Academic. Environmentalist, Humanist, Visionary. Satish Kumar believes that the spiritual aspect of our ecosystem has been lost in modern environmental debates, and has been replaced by systemic violence; towards the land, animals, mankind, and even towards ourselves. He maintains that reverence for nature is the only thread that can mend and weave together [...]
Philosophy in Ancient Egypt
Author: Julian ScottSeptember 7, 2016
It is a commonly held view that ‘the Egyptians had no philosophy’ and that philosophy began with the ancient Greeks. However, some of the major Greek philosophers, including Thales, Pythagoras and Plato, recognised their huge debt to the sages of Egypt for their knowledge and ideas. Plato, for example, spent 13 years studying with the [...]
Urban Wildlife
Author: Miha KosirSeptember 7, 2016
At the beginning of the 19th century three out of four Britons lived in the countryside, where they worked the land. By the end of the 19th century three out of four lived in the city. This was a result of the industrial revolution, which marks a turning point in history. The speed of urbanisation [...]
Archetypal Astrology: re-enchanting the cosmos
Author: Agostino DominiciSeptember 7, 2016
In the last 50 years astrology has started to gain a level of intellectual respectability which would have been unthinkable before. This has been thanks to the recent contributions of many brilliant and open-minded thinkers who have come to embrace the teachings of this ancient discipline. A long time has passed since Voltaire defined astrology [...]
Flu Pandemics
Author: Florimond KrinsAugust 22, 2016
We have all experienced the flu at least once in our life. And even if the “common” flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people every year around the world, the media still warn us about the danger of flu pandemics such as swine flu (H1N1), which in 2009 killed around 9,000 people. So what is [...]
The Myth of the Cave
Author: Miha KosirAugust 3, 2016
In one of Plato’s most well known works – The Republic – we find a short story known as the Myth of the Cave. Socrates asks his listeners to imagine a world under the ground where people live in chains, facing the end wall of a cave. Because they are chained they can’t move or [...]
Renaissance Art and the Enigmatic Genius of Giorgione
Author: Agostino DominiciJuly 25, 2016
The Royal Academy of Arts has recently put together an excellent exhibition presenting some of the greatest painters of the high Renaissance (c. 1490-1530) in a single show. The main intent of the exhibition was to revisit in particular the enigmatic figure of Giorgione, considered by many to be the founder of Venetian painting of [...]
At the service of philosophy – Manly P. Hall’s life and teachings
Author: Agostino DominiciJune 13, 2016
A few years ago, while browsing on YouTube, I happened to stumble across some old recordings of lectures covering an array of metaphysical and mystical topics. I was quickly taken by the depth and breadth with which the speaker, effortlessly, delivered his talks. Soon I learned that the person behind those words was a very [...]
The Brilliance of the Bard!
Author: Siobhan FarrarJune 10, 2016
It is quite remarkable to consider how many words and phrases in regular use today were first penned by William Shakespeare. The literary critic Bernard Levin picked out a few of them: “If you have ever been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a [...]
Accepting our Differences, Accepting Ourselves
Author: Gilad SommerJune 1, 2016
We are all different. This seems like an obvious statement, but it is often the obvious statements which require the most scrutiny and investigation, exactly because they are the ones we take least time to consider. Even though we all share the essential experience of a human being, each of us filters this experience through [...]
The Pursuit of a Work-Life Balance
Author: Rahil MehtaMay 26, 2016
Human Beings have a natural need to improve and grow. Certain moments in our lives are decisive where we feel we made a breakthrough and in hindsight we may recognize the inspiration and experiences that guided us in those moments. Often we find that in such moments we are more goal-oriented and focussed, thereby able [...]