Word
Selected Readings
Extracts from books exploring directly an understanding of life in the context of the unity of existence. Full list
Lectures & Talks
Most of the talks listed in this section were given at the Beshara School at Chisholme as part of the Six-month course, or presented within the context of the symposia on 'Self-knowledge and Global Responsibility'. Full list
Education and the Self
What kind of knowledge is necessary for an uncertain future?
A talk by Peter Young, Principal of the Beshara School at the Chisholme Institute, given at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) London, 11 January 2011.
In thinking about this talk and the fact that it was happening here, at SOAS, I thought about what it was that I would like to hear if I was studying here in London as a student. And, one of the things that I would like to know is what kind of thing is it that I'm learning? And what kind of learning is it?
Our education today is very much geared in a one-sided way. If I could fine it down to one phrase, I would say it is learning about whatever subject or discipline it is that we've chosen. So, the knowledge that we gain is knowledge about this given subject. And let's just pause there and ask whether it is, in fact, knowledge? Some of it is, but some of it may not be. Some of it may be knowledge about the current theories, or the history of beliefs about our particular subject; scientific theories, how they have evolved; what the current state of play is; what, at the top of the game, people believe is going on and present as a theory.
So, then, our knowledge of this theory is just that. It's a knowledge about a particular belief system. So we have to separate between knowledge, that is, knowledge about, on the one hand, and belief about on the other. It's not easy being a human being and we need to find a place in our interior environment for all these things... knowledge... beliefs... And we need to distinguish carefully between the two and also to ask ourselves: "Is there any other kind of knowledge, other than knowledge about?"
The greater part of my life has been devoted to an enquiry into another kind of knowledge which is not knowledge about, but is more like knowledge from. This is where we learn a knowledge from the thing itself that we are looking into. So we're not learning about it – which is going to be from the outside, nor are we learning what someone has discovered about this subject or this field – but we're going to be learning from it.
And so, I'm sure you can perceive that here there's a stepping-towards this subject, whereby it is not so much 'me' and 'it', but I enter into very close dialogue with this thing that I'm interested in. And, here, I need to be as receptive as possible to what that thing can inform me about itself. This is getting into the area of, one could say, mysticism, because things aren't supposed to be able to inform you about themselves. Read more
The Strictest Poverty
(extract from the 87th Sermon by Meister Eckhart)
'Now pay earnest attention to this! I have often said, and eminent authorities say it too, that a man should be so free of all things and all works, both inward and outward, that he may be a proper abode for God where God can work.
Now we shall say something else. If it is the case that a man is free of all creatures, of God and of self, and if it is still the case that God finds a place in him to work, then we declare that as long as this is in that man, he is not poor with the strictest poverty... So we say that a man should be so poor that he neither is nor has any place for God to work in. To preserve a place is to preserve distinction. Therefore I pray to God to make me free of God, for my essential being is above God, taking God as the origin of creatures.
For in that essence of God in which God is above being and distinction, there I was myself and knew myself so as to make this man. Therefore I am my own cause according to my essence, which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is temporal. Therefore I am unborn, and according to my unborn mode I can never die. According to my unborn mode I have eternally been, am now and shall eternally remain. That which I am by virtue of birth must die and perish, for it is mortal, and so must perish with time.
In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and all things: and if I had so willed it, I would not have been, and all things would not have been. If I were not, God would not be either. I am the cause of God's being God: if I were not, then God would not be God. But you do not need to know this.
