Human quality
From scientific experiment to whole experience through freedom
28-01-2009 Tags: espiritualidad laica, sociedad de innovación
Jaume Agustí Cullell [1], CSIC investigator. Paper presented in the University of Ca’ Foscari of Venezia in the "International symposium in honoring to Raimon Panikkar"
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
From T.S. Eliot’s Choruses from The Rock (1934)
1.The Freedom of Reality
A meditation on freedom
This paper is a meditation on the myth of freedom. It embraces freedom as a myth, i.e. as it is present in our consciousness before and beyond any notion or conceptualisation of it, and defying any attempt to its definition. Our meditation is on the creative power of this symbolic word, extending its scope beyond the confines of an exclusively human trait, to encompass all reality.
With faith and no beliefs
16-12-2006 Tags: espiritualidad laica
The proposal of the religious traditions, to a society articulated upon initiative, creativity, innovation, and continuous change in all levels of life, cannot account for “linking”. It will account for trust and acceptance of an offer supported by the acknowledgement of quality of the Masters and the great books; an offer that causes free adhesion, not to formulas, but to a quality and a spirit that generate certainty without subduing to fixed forms of thinking, feeling, acting, and living.
On a globalized society of innovation and continuous change – in science, technologies, ways of working, and organizations, in systems of collective cohesion, and purposes – the spiritual path, which has been called “religion”, can not pass for beliefs.
Under these cultural circumstances, what so far has been called “religion” - and which we will call “inner path” or “path of silence” due to the lack of a better term - cannot offer “beliefs” to new societies. Whatever it offers, if it is wrapped on beliefs, it will not be accepted.
Secular mysticism
27-09-2006 Tags: espiritualidad laica
Centre Unesco de Catalunya. On Mystics: A congress. Barcelona, June 2001
(Each participant was asked to introduce himself in connection to the subject, his personal stand point on spirituality)
My intellectual research and my inner path have blended and become one and the same.
I had a catholic education.
I studied music and piano with dedication at the Liceo School of Music. Perhaps this played a part in the education of my sensitivity.
I soon developed an interest in the spiritual path. However, and at the same time, I also began to feel uncomfortable about the way in which sacred stories, myths and rituals were experienced and also, in general, with the way that the spiritual life was approached. I suffered from this profound discomfort for years, but was incapable of theorising it or of facing up to those that knew more than I. Yet I was convinced that my experience was not a personal problem and that many others found themselves in the same position as I did.
The Problem Of Human Quality In New Societies
27-09-2006 Tags: sociedad de innovación
In new societies, where economic success is linked to scientific and technical innovation capacity, as much for goods as for services, and therefore to the ability to change organizing and axiological patterns, the fixed ways of thinking, judging, feeling, organizing or living, which are linked to either religious or secular (ideological) beliefs are no longer feasible.
The fact is that
• traditional religions find themselves in a serious cultural and social discredit;
• classical ideologies, those belonging to the first industrial revolution -socialism and liberalism-, are also coming to a deep crisis:
(1) socialist political parties, trade unions and social movements, are looking for new ideas to structure them
(2) what liberal parties and social organizations have saved from general fire are not theories or principles but some procedures that have proved their effectiveness in economic and social management : market, democracy and private enterprise.
Recommended
Xavier Melloni
Hacia un tiempo de síntesis
Fragmenta, 2011. 252 p.
"Compartir plenitudes en lugar de competir entre totalidades" es el título de uno de los apartados de este libro que plantea el reto de cómo el actual resurgimiento de la dimensión espiritual -en un tiempo de pluralidad cultura y religiosa- puede integrar las aportaciones de las generaciones precedentes, una tarea nada fácil que requiere entrar en ese ámbito de profundidad en el que cada tradición se sitúa más allá de sí misma.
Martha C. Nussbaum
Sin fines de lucro. Por qué la democracia necesita de las humanidades
Katz, 2010. 199 p.
El protagonismo de la economía y la fuerza implacable de las tecnologías amenazan de muerte la enseñanza de las humanidades en nuestra sociedad. Este libro, analítico y controvertido, es un manifiesto a favor del pensamiento activo, competente y reflexivamente crítico indispensable para la vida democrática.
Ben Zimet
CUENTOS DEL PUEBLO JUDÍO
Salamanca, Sígueme, 207. 189 p.
56 cuentos desde la Bíblia hasta nuestros días, y 81 historias de Locos, historias de Sabios, a través de las cuales nos acercamos al hombre que ríe y llora, que busca y espera. Ben Zimet, judío de origen polaco, vive en Francia. Desde siempre canta el deseo, el anhelo de felicidad que anida en el corazón humano.