Mullā Ṣadrā’s Arrivers in the Heart (al-Wāridāt al-Qalbiyya)

It is increasingly difficult after Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) to differentiate the aims of the Sufis from those of the philosophers. Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1640) offers a fine example of a thinker who synthesized the Sufi and philosophical methodologies in his voluminous writings. In Arrivers in the Heart he combines the precision of philosophical reasoning with the recognition (maʿrifa) of God and self that was central to the concerns of the Sufi teachers. In forty “effusions” (fayḍ) of mostly rhymed prose, he provides epitomes of many of the themes that he addresses in his long books. These include the concept and reality of existence, the Divine Essence and Attributes, God’s omniscience, theodicy, eschatology, the worlds of the cosmos, spiritual psychology, divine and human love, disciplining the soul, and the nature of human perfection.

VIRTUE: THE DOVE OF PEACE? SEEKING UNIVERSAL PEACE SOLUTIONS THROUGH INNER TRANSFORMATION

A virtuous life is the fruit of a mind with a rich inner landscape. It can be overtly inferred by sincerity in speech, generosity of righteous deeds and is elegantly fulfilled by inner contentment. World peace entails that despite prevailing differences and disapprovals, global citizens find it proper to continue to work together towards meliorating the quality of life for one and all. This paper analyzed secondary data to unveil the instrumental role played by virtues in the conquest of peace. The findings deducted are indicative of the seminal importance of virtue inculcation as means to restore world peace. KEY WORDS: Virtues, Peace, Values, Character Strengths, Positive Psychology, Spiritual Psychology, Human Values.

Soul — Anguish — Perfection: Oscar Wilde’s Dialogue with Kropotkin and Dostoevsky

Much has already been said about the ‘Russian theme’ in Oscar Wilde’s works. Yet the question concerning Russian sources of the motifs of anguish and the soul’s way to perfection has not yet been cleared up sufficiently. The article aims at defining the particular character of appropriating Petr Kropotkin’s philosophy of anarchism in Wilde’s works in the context of its reference to the notions of ‘Nihilism’ and ‘self-sacrifice’, and through them, to Dostoyevsky’s novels. The basic material of the research is Wilde’s essay ‘Man’s Soul under Socialism’ and his early play ‘Vera; or, The Nihilists’. The key method used in the research is comparative analysis (in the way it is used in comparative literature). The author argues that in these texts, the motifs of Christian self-sacrifice and anguish bring Nihilism (understood as Kropotkin-style anarchism) together with the spiritual psychology of Dostoyevsky and that the way to inner perfection in Wilde’s philosophy of individualism is connected with the concepts of soul, man, and society the writer formulates based on Kropotkin and Dostoevsky. Bringing the notion of ‘soul’ close to the notion of ‘socialism,’ defining Christ as a perfect personality, treating pain and anguish in contemporary society as a way to this sort of person-ality, and opposing inner feelings to outer morals, Wilde combines the philosophy of individ-ualism with the pathos of Kropotkin’s doctrine of anarchism: moral, even Christian at its core. He also adheres to the idea of resurrecting inner morals through anguish and compassion: the idea he appropriated from Dostoyevsky. As a result, in Wilde’s essay the doctrine of individ-ualism turns into a doctrine of the soul’s natural Christianity (holiness) and of resurrection in perfection through a ‘true Socialism.’ In Wilde’s play ‘Vera; or, The Nihilists’ the motifs of personal love and social pain, connected with social disorder and common unhappiness, con-stitute the very image of contemporary man’s way to personal perfection that is philosophical-ly described in his essay nearly ten years later.

THE SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL PSYCHOLOGY OF M.BEKEEV IN THE GENRE OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The article by Aksakalova Zh. А. "The Search for spiritual psychology of M.Bekeev in the genre of everyday life" is devoted to the work of the talented Kazakh artist Marat Bekeev, contributing to the development of the modern Kazakh art. The article is focused on the artistic creativity of the artist and widely analyzes the works on the theme of "childhood". Through the stylistic and comparative analysis of the works were identified peculiar features of the artist, the ability to create compositions and maintain color harmony. At the same time, it was identified philosophical, psychological, spiritual, ideological, and meaningful search for the main theme of the artist's work.

Isaac of Stella (d. c.1177)

Like other twelfth-century Cistercians, Isaac of Stella was well versed in secular learning. Centrally engaged with the contemplative life, he expresses his spiritual insights in terms of the science of his day, and combines a spiritual psychology derived from Johannes Scottus Eriugena and Hugh and Richard of St Victor with an anthropology grounded in Stoic physics, Greek and Arab medicine, and a cosmic model derived from Plato’s Timaeus. A unifying theme of his writings is the relation between the physical and spiritual dimensions of human experience.

Intimations of a Spiritual New Age: II. Wilhelm Reich as Transpersonal Psychologist. Part I: Context, Development, and Crisis in Reich’s Bio-energetic Spiritual Psychology

Wilhelm Reich is the focus of this second in a series of papers on a group of independent figures from the 1930s into the 1950s—also including Jung, the later Heidegger, Toynbee, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, and Simone Weil—who in the context of those years of crisis articulated overlapping visions of a future “New Age” spirituality that might in some more distant future serve to balance and even transform a globalizing materialism and disenchantment with traditional religion. The later Reich developed a highly original version of a “vitalistic” transpersonal psychology, as his “religion for the children of the future,” which needs to be differentiated from its more doubtful supportive research in his orgone physics and biology. The spiritual nature of his larger intuitions of a transformative life energy is also reflected in the parallels between Reich’s personal development and the classical purgation/illumination phases of unitive mysticism, and the “spiritual emergency” of his final “dark night” crisis. A later paper will concentrate on largely unrealized implications of Reich’s work for still evolving directions in consciousness studies, neoshamanism, the historical Jesus, emergent systems approaches in science, and a future planetary identity.