Philosophy

“For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.”

― Plato, Theaetetus

Philosophy today is irrelevant as far as being a practical pursuit for the individual. True philosophy exists only outside of universities which have sterilized the quest for truth through over-dependance on thought and intellectual reasoning. The livable, and experienceable aspect of philosophy has been lost. Philosophy has given up on answering the fundamental questions of existence and instead has entertained itself with abstractions.

The beginnings of what the present world calls “philosophy” are from around the 800′s BC. This is the time period called the “Axial Age” in which all across the globe there was an explosion of religious and philosophical thought. This time period marks the beginning of the mind centered, rational world in which we are very recently evolving beyond.

The End of Philosophy

The death and rebirth of philosophy – it’s evolution and metamorphosis

The Inherent Limitation of Philosophy

It is just as well philosophy largely ignores the fundamental questions as it is wholly inadequate to approach them. Philosophy, in neglecting the testimony of internal, subjective experience has killed itself.

Their paradigm is that thought and rationality is the only thing that can be trusted, only thing that is verifiable, only thing that is real. I admit it takes quite a leap to understand that there is another faculty of knowledge and understanding
What is this faculty? Intuition, direct perception, knowing by being.
But how can you explain this to them without being laughed off? You are speaking a different language, live in a different world, a different paradigm (hopefully you don’t have a paradigm).

Their intelligence is bounded within a circle, they are relatively intelligent.
They rely on only one tool. Therefore they are dependent on that tool and limited by that tool. Blinded by that tool.
Their intelligence and skill with thought is necessary and good in its place. But it has no place probing into the mysteries. Neither can it answer any question which depend upon a proper understanding of reality and the nature of the individual.

Self-knowledge is the prerequisite and the gateway to all other knowledge. If the nature of your own self is not thoroughly and directly known, how can you know anything outside of you?

Philosophy since its inception has avoided the subjective factor, it has attempted to approach reality objectively, an impossible task since reality is by its nature purely subjective. Philosophy has avoided self-transformation. What is needed now is a philosophy which brings about a shift in consciousness, a philosophy which turns in upon itself; ceasing to project an outward objective world and understanding the only world which can directly be known: one’s own consciousness.

Thought by its very nature is limited. It is born out of time and memory and thus can never comprehend the infinite and the eternal, the unknown. Thought can never explain the fundamental mystery of the life. This can only be experienced by the individual who transcends thought, but does not fall below it. The true philosopher recognizes that thought can only explain the surface of reality, and in order to understand things at their root one must let go of all theories, paradigms, concepts, and the dualistic mind.

The previous stage of consciousness’ philosophy was one which attempted to know the fundamental nature of reality through thought and reasoning. It was ideas about Truth, rather than Truth – without ideas, concepts, beliefs, etc.

With this evolution of consciousness, this metamorphosis and complete change of being, comes a wholly new way of finding and knowing Truth.

This way of approaching Truth has died and died years ago. Always before the new can grow the old must decay and die, and the world is seeing the results of the decay of philosophy. It has become irrelevant, undertaken only by university professors who endlessly analyze and compare great thinkers of the past. They become specialists, experts at one tiny fraction of the wholeness and fulness of life.

The New Philosophy

The very word “philosophy” comes from the Greek – Philo – Sophia, love of wisdom. The word and its practice is a noble enterprise but is now 2,500 years old. A new word and a new practice are needed.

It is knowing truth rather than speculating on truth. Becoming the Truth, rather than mentating about truth.

Jean Gebser discerned 80 years ago that philosophy was on the way out and called his new formulation of what will replace philosophy as the new way humans approach God/Truth/Reality – eteology, or being-in-truthThis new way is the seeing through things to the heart, it is knowing things at their root. Statements about truth are replaced by statements as truth.
Primarily it is self-transformation