Not to ruin anyones fun or pretend I can do justice to such an excellent question, I'm wondering if we can establish a few ground rules before my boy starts doing any heavy lifting? I mean, we do have high expectations for this "out of towner" but as mentioned previously its important MZ paces himself.
Please feel free to join in anyone. Rule 1 Can we agree that an answer to an excellent hypothetical question, no matter how excellent in itself, can never be more than hypothetical? ________________________________ From: at_man_and_brahman <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, June 28, 2011 5:46:43 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Aquinas, reconsidered --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], maskedzebra <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > Because in reading Catholic philosophers—like Aquinas—I find > > myself intuiting the cosmos as they experienced it—I sort of > > read this off of their writing. > > MZ, I have a question for you. > > Xeno called attention to the fact that Aquinas late in life > had some kind of experience that "silenced" him and led him > to declare, "All that I have written seems like straw to me." > > I'm wondering what you think happened to him. (If you've > already commented on this, forgive me; I did a quick search > but couldn't find anything.) > > And I have a hypothetical: Let's say you cut your spiritual > teeth on the writings of Aquinas and thorughly internalized > his views. You never encountered MMY, knew nothing about him > or TM or the Eastern idea of enlightenment. > > One day in 1976, out of the blue, with no warning, you had > the same experience you had on the mountain with MMY that > you now refer to as "slipping into Unity Consciousness," > except that you had no preparation whatsoever and no context > (and let's say it didn't last very long, a few hours or days). > > How would that have affected your take on Aquinas's writings? > How long would it have taken you to decide that the experience > wasn't "real" but Aquinas was? Excellent question, Judy. My Catholic girlfriend posed exactly the same question over the weekend when I was trying to explain the whole RC thing and his detailed reply to my question. I'm not expert on Aquinas, but his epiphany what have been similar to that of Malcolm X at Mecca, when he had his own vision of a unity of sorts. >
