{"id":199374,"date":"2021-11-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=199374"},"modified":"2021-11-13T06:20:42","modified_gmt":"2021-11-13T06:20:42","slug":"a-quest-for-wisdom-inspiring-purpose-on-the-path-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/11\/a-quest-for-wisdom-inspiring-purpose-on-the-path-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"A Quest for Wisdom: Inspiring Purpose on the Path of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Review of David Lorimer\u2019s Book<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7 Nov 2021 –<\/em> This is a fascinating and beautiful book, one of those gems you serendipitously discover and shake your head at your good fortune.\u00a0 Although it is new and I received it as a gift, it reminds me of a few books I have discovered over the years while rummaging through used bookstores that have startled me into a new perspective on life.\u00a0 Ironically, these books have advised me, whether explicitly or implicitly, to be done with books, because what I was seeking cannot be found in them, for it floats on the wind.\u00a0 But this paradox is their secret.\u00a0 Such discoveries are memorable, and this is a memorable book in so many ways.<\/p>\n

Despite having read more books than I wish to remember, I had never heard of David Lorimer<\/a> until being informed by a friend.\u00a0 A Scottish writer, poet, editor, and lecturer of great accomplishments, he is the editor of The Paradigm Explorer<\/em><\/a> and was the Director of the Scientific and Medical Network from 1986-2000 where he is now Program Director.\u00a0 He has written or edited over a dozen books.<\/p>\n

He is one of a dying breed: a true intellectual with a soul, for his writing covers the waterfront, by which I mean the vast ocean of philosophy, science, theology, literature, psychology, spirituality, politics, etc.\u00a0 A Quest for Wisdom<\/a> [isbn.nu<\/a>] is precisely what its name implies.\u00a0 It is a compendium of wide-ranging essays written over the past forty years in pursuit of the meaning of life and the sagacity to realize one never arrives at wisdom since it is a process, not a product.\u00a0 Like living.<\/p>\n

His opening essay on Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and wrote so pofoundly about it in Man\u2019s Search for Meaning<\/a>, [isbn.nu<\/a>] sets the stage for all the essays that follow.\u00a0 For Frankl\u2019s life and work, and the stories he tells about it, are about experiential, not theoretical, discoveries in the world where one finds oneself \u2013 even Auschwitz \u2013 where he learned that Nietzsche\u2019s words were true: \u201cHe who has a why to live can bear almost any how.\u201d He discovered that along life\u2019s path \u2013 between life and death, happiness and suffering, peaks and valleys, yesterday and tomorrow, etc. \u2013 is where we always find ourselves by responding to the questions life asks us. He tells us, \u201cEverything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms\u2014to choose one\u2019s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one\u2019s own way.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are always in-between, and it is our attitude and conduct that allows us to freely will the meaning of our lives, no matter what.\u00a0 Frankl came to call this search for meaning logotherapy, or meaning therapy, by which an individual is always free to choose one\u2019s stance or course of action, and it is by such choosing that the greatness of life can be measured and meaning confirmed in any single moment, even retrospectively.\u00a0 He maintains that modern people are disorientated and living in \u201can existential vacuum,\u201d pursuing happiness when it cannot be pursued since it is a derivative, a side effect, and \u201cit is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.\u201d\u00a0 Happiness falls out of our pockets when we aren\u2019t looking. Additionally, as Lorimer writes about Frankl, \u201cHe rejects psychoanalytical determinism\u2026and the actualization of the self through any form of gratification.\u201d<\/p>\n

So does Lorimer, for he is an in-between man (as we all are if only we realized it), whether he is writing about Frankl, the absurd and the mysterious, the Tao, science and spirituality, the brain and the mind, near death experiences (\u201cnear\u201d being the key word), Albert Schweitzer, Dag Hammarskj\u00f6ld, freedom and determinism, ethics and politics, etc.<\/p>\n

Whatever subject he touches, he illuminates, leaving the reader to interrogate oneself. \u00a0I find such questions in every essay in this book, and the path to answer them snaking through its pages.<\/p>\n

I was especially touched by his 2008 essay, which was originally a memorial lecture, about his friend the Irish writer and philosopher John Moriarty, who died in 2007.\u00a0 Moriarty\u2019s work was rooted in the wild land of western Ireland, a place whose rugged beauty has sprouted many a passionate artist and visionary who have drunk deep of the mythical spiritual connections of Irish culture and natural beauty.\u00a0 He was a brilliant thinker and storyteller \u2013 that mysterious quality that seems so Irish \u2013 who left an academic career to seek deeper truths in nature.\u00a0 Influenced by D. H. Lawrence, Wordsworth, Yeats, Boehme, Melville, and Nietzsche, among other visionary seeking artists, he discovered a Blakean sense of reality that counteracted the deification of Reason and emphasized the need to recover our souls through sympathetic knowing that involved an embrace of intuition that went beyond cognition. \u00a0\u00a0Lorimer writes:<\/p>\n

Or, as John would put it, we have fallen out of our story and need to find a new one. Not only a new story, but also a new way of seeing and being, of relating as a part to the whole, as individuals to society, as cells to the body\u2026To be is to have the potential to become something else, a potential which we don\u2019t always fulfill, in spite of life\u2019s invitations and initiations\u2026We too easily retreat into fear, we batten down the hatches in the name of security, which is a mere shadow of peace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lorimer is clearly not anti-science, since for thirty-five years he has been deeply involved with the Scientific and Medical Network.\u00a0 But he has long realized the limitations of science and all the essays touch on this theme in one way or another.\u00a0 Wisdom is his goal, not knowledge.\u00a0 He mentions Iain McGilchrist\u2019s work in this regard \u2013 T<\/em>he Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World \u2013<\/em> wherein McGilchrist argues for a reemphasis on the master right hemisphere \u201cwith its creative and holistic mode of perception,\u201d rather than the left hemisphere with its logical, scientific mode of perception.\u00a0 \u201cTwo voyages,\u201d says Lorimer, \u201ctwo modes of perception, which should coexist in a state of mutual respect.\u00a0 The rational and the intuitive are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.\u201d\u00a0 Nevertheless, in his pursuit of wisdom, Lorimer, despite his nod to this mutuality, has discovered that the recovery of soul and meaning can only be found beyond cognition and Kantian categories.<\/p>\n

His essay on \u201cTao and the Path towards Integration,\u201d drawing on Carl Jung and Herman Hesse, et al., is a lucid exploration of what Jung calls \u201cthe vocation to personality.\u201d\u00a0 This is the call life puts to everyone but many refuse to hear or answer: \u201cBecome who you are,\u201d in Nietzsche\u2019s enigmatic words, advice that is as much a question as a declaration.\u00a0 Lorimer writes:<\/p>\n

Those who have not been confronted with this question will often consider those who have as peculiar, adding that there is no such thing as a vocation to personality, and their sense of being isolated and different is a form of spiritual arrogance; they should concern themselves with the really important things in life, viz \u2018getting on\u2019, and leading an inconspicuously normal existence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These restless-busyness people are caught on the treadmill of getting and spending, and in their alienation from their true selves must disdain those who seek wholeness by grasping life\u2019s polarities and paradoxes.\u00a0 Stillness in movement, being in becoming.\u00a0 Paradox: from Latin para = contrary to, and doxa = opinion.\u00a0 Contrary to common belief or expectation.<\/em><\/p>\n

In \u201cCultivating a Sense of Beauty,\u201d Lorimer uses his etymological understanding \u2013 which is so important for deep thinking and which he uses liberally throughout the book \u2013 to explain \u201cthe beauty of holiness, and the correspondence between beauty and truth.\u201d\u00a0 He is not some bliss-ninny who is in the interior soul decoration business devoid of political consciousness and care.\u00a0 Far from it. \u00a0He understands the connection between real beauty in its deepest sense and its connection to love for all existence and the responsibility that this confers on everyone to resist war and all forms of political oppression.\u00a0 What Camus tried to do: To serve beauty and suffering.\u00a0 \u201cThe English word \u2018beauty\u2019, like the French \u2018beaut\u00e9, is derived from the Latin \u2018beare\u2019 meaning to bless or gladden, and the \u2018beatus\u2019, blessed are the happy.\u201d Appropriately, Lorimer quotes Wordsworth from \u201cIntimations of Immortality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
\nThanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears,
\nTo me the meanest flower that grows can give
\nThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whether he is writing about Albert Schweitzer, Swedenborg, Voltaire, Dag Hammarskj\u00f6ld, Peter Deunov (a Bulgarian mystic I first learned about here), he weaves their thought and witness into his overarching theme of the search for wisdom.\u00a0 Wisdom not in the navel-gazing sense but in the larger sense as wisdom for creating a world of truth, peace, and justice.<\/p>\n

In the middle of the book\u2019s three sections, called \u201cConsciousness, Death, and Transformation,\u201d he offers various intriguing pieces that explore near death experiences and the philosophical, experiential, and scientific arguments for their reality.\u00a0 In this rejection of the materialist conception of mind, brain, and consciousness, he relies on thinkers such as William James and Henri Bergson, but especially the Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) who had many psychic and spiritual experiences that have been both accepted as inspired and rejected as hokum. Lorimer reminds us that Swedenborg was not some nutcase but was a brilliant and accomplished thinker.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not well known that Swedenborg wrote a 700-page book on the brain, in which he was the first to suggest complementary roles for the two hemispheres.\u201d Likewise, \u00a0Lorimer\u2019s work with The Scientific and Medical Network and the Galileo Commission over the decades roots his writing on this topic in the work of many prominent neuroscientists and is far from New Age gibberish.\u00a0 It is serious work that demands serious attention.\u00a0 He accurately writes:<\/em><\/p>\n

The problem of death will not disappear if we ignore it. Sooner or later we must come to terms with our own nature and destiny.What is the nature of man, of death, and what are the nature of the implications of death for the way in which we live our lives?\u00a0 The first two questions amount to asking about the nature of consciousness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the third and final section \u2013 \u201cTaking Responsibility: Ethics and Society\u201d \u2013 Lorimer, drawing often on Albert Schweitzer who has deeply influenced him, applies the natural consequences of the soulful wisdom he embraces in the first two sections.\u00a0 In the face of endless wars, poverty, ecological degradation, and the threat of nuclear war, etc., he writes, \u201cThose who have the interests of humanity at heart cannot simply stand back in helplessness and despair: they must act themselves and arouse those around them to similar action or else abdicate their humanity by not shouldering their responsibility.\u201d\u00a0 This can be accomplished through a commitment to truth, love, peaceableness, kindness, and non-violent action, first at the individual level but crucially then when a sufficient number of people can be organized for this effort.\u00a0 \u201cThis in turn demands a spiritual commitment and an initial step of faith or confidence, which the person who wishes to devote him- and herself to humanity cannot not afford to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

His essay on Dag Hammarskj\u00f6ld, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, who was a key ally of President John F. Kennedy in their work for peace and decolonialization and who, like JFK, was assassinated by CIA organized forces, is a perfect example of such faith and commitment in a true public servant.\u00a0 Hammarskj\u00f6ld was a deeply spiritual man, a mystical political man of action, and Lorimer, drawing on Hammarskj\u00f6ld\u2019s own writing, shows how he embodied all the qualities found in one who was truly wise: self-effacement, stillness in action, detachment, humility, forgiveness, and courage in the face of the unknown.\u00a0 He quotes Hammarskj\u00f6ld:<\/p>\n

Now, when I have overcome my fears \u2013 of others, of myself, of the underlying darkness \u2013 at the frontier of the unheard-of: Here ends the known. But, from a source beyond it, something fills my being with its possibilities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am reminded of JFK\u2019s love of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s prayer, which Kennedy lived by in the dark times before his assassination, which he anticipated: \u201cI know there is a God \u2013 and I see a storm coming.\u00a0 If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last essay in this illuminating and inspiring book \u2013 \u201cTowards a Culture of Love-an Ethic of Interconnectedness\u201d \u2013 was written in 2007, and all of them go back many decades, but in case a reader of this review may wonder where Lorimer stands today, he has added an afterword with a postscript in which he writes briefly about today\u2019s assault on heresy, dissidence, and those who have been falsely called \u201cconspiracy theorists\u201d in the CIA\u2019s weaponized term.\u00a0 I mention that to make clear that A Quest for Wisdom<\/em> is not an encouragement to navel gazing and some sort of pseudo-spirituality.\u00a0 It is a call to a spiritual awakening in today\u2019s fight against radical evil.\u00a0 He makes clear that the conspiracy theorist label is being unjustly used against those who question the JFK assassination, the 9\/11 Commission Report, Covid-19, etc.\u00a0 He says we are being subjected to a major information war and extensive censorship of non-mainstream views.\u201d\u00a0 He sums it up this way:<\/p>\n

Over the past few months we have witnessed a new episode of Inquisition and the implicit creation of an online Index of Prohibited Material. There has been a steep rise in censorship by social media companies of views at variance with mainstream narratives: dissident content is summarily removed. Heretical and subversive views are not tolerated, open debate is stifled in favor of officially sanctioned orthodoxy, whistle-blowers are abused and demonized. Manipulated by fear and on a flimsy pretext of security, we are in danger of abjectly surrendering the very freedom of thought and expression that our ancestors fought so courageously to secure in the eighteenth century and which constitutes the essence of our Enlightenment legacy\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are the words of a wise man and the author of a wonderful book.<\/em><\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Edward Curtin is a widely published author and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. His new book is <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies<\/a> \u2013 His website: Behind the Curtain<\/a> – email: edcurtinjr@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Nov 2021 – A Review of David Lorimer\u2019s Book – This is a fascinating and beautiful book, one of those gems you serendipitously discover and shake your head at your good fortune. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[642,870],"class_list":["post-199374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-literature","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}