The Transfiguration of the Human Being
by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos

[M]en die but live again in the real world of Wakan-Tanka [Great Spirit], where there is nothing but the spirits of all things; and this true life we may know here on earth if we purify our bodies and minds, thus coming closer to Wakan-Tanka, who is all-purity.
Black Elk

[Y]our glory lies where you cease to exist.
Ramana Maharshi

While living / Be a dead man.
Bunan Zenji

The kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead.
Meister Eckhart

He has died to self and become living through the Lord.
Rumi

Perhaps the most beneficial way to prepare for death is to recognize that we are in fact going to die. Although we cannot deny this fact, we can selectively defer thinking about death; yet the dilemma is that the overarching reality of death is always there side-by-side with life itself. Despite this ubiquity, ‘Man was created alone and he dies alone.’

Since the most remote times there has been a practice of continuously living with the awareness of death in one’s consciousness. The words of the adage Memento mori, Latin for ‘Remember that you are mortal’, encapsulate this practice. All the saints and sages speak in unanimity of identification with the empirical ego or separate self as the source of all human suffering.

As Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886), the Paramahamsa of Dakshineshwar, a spiritual luminary, powerfully expressed the need to die to our lower nature: ‘When “I” is dead, all troubles cease.’An essential element in the world’s religions is the injunction that finds expression, for instance, in the well-known words of the Prophet of Islam: ‘Die before ye die’ (mutu qabla an tamutu).

Correspondingly within the Hindu tradition there is the concept of being ‘twice-born’ (dvija): our initial birth into terrestrial existence is one type of birth, the second birth that the religions refer to is an initiation into the spiritual path. This alchemical and transformative psycho-spiritual process of dying before dying reoccurs in a myriad diverse forms and descriptions throughout the spiritual traditions, yet we can observe the myriad points of convergence.
Just how universal this transformative process is has been underscored by the philosopher Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998): ‘every complete tradition postulates in the final analysis the “extinction” of the ego for the sake of the divine “I.” The French metaphysician René Guénon (1886–1951) also confirms the universal nature of the doctrine of mystical death and resurrection: ‘[T]he idea of a “second birth”, understood in a purely spiritual sense, is indeed common to all spiritual doctrines.’

At the heart of every integral psychology or ‘science of the soul’ is the recognition of psycho-spiritual transformation or metanoia, which is inseparable from metaphysics and integral spirituality. This perennial psychology that is an application of the perennial philosophy discerns between the horizontal dimension consisting of the empirical ego, and the vertical dimension that pertains to the transpersonal Self.

The horizontal and vertical dimensions are interdependent, and are both required for the human realm and the realm of the Spirit. However, it is essential to bear in mind that the vertical dimension precedes the horizontal and that the horizontal is reliant on the vertical dimension and not the other way around. As we recall, ‘To deny the spiritual is to deny the human.’

In what follows, we will explore psycho-spiritual integration and the symbolic meaning behind
mystical death and resurrection, as found in the universal and timeless wisdom found around the world.
Human consciousness is always ruminating on eschatological questions about our final ends, whether we are aware of it or not.
What does it mean to be born, to live, and to die? And who is it that is born, lives, and dies? These questions, although asked since time immemorial, hold as much importance today as they did in the past and remain equally perplexing because they illuminate the mystery of
existence and the limits of human knowledge. Whitall N. Perry (1920– 2005) writes:

There are two historical moments in the life of every person on earth which are inexorably real and yet totally outside the reach of empirical consciousness: the moment of birth, and the moment of death. These two decisive events occur moreover exactly once, over the entire lifespan of the individual, and scarcely enter into his reflections at all—everything else considered.

At the intersection of the horizontal and vertical dimensions, time and the temporal are juxtaposed with the timeless and Eternal. Through metaphysics we can make sense of the strange and enigmatic logic of death and dying and its transformative process.
While birth and death occur at opposite ends of a human lifetime, they are inextricably interconnected and intersect each other. They are both fundamentally linked to the sacred and originate from this common transpersonal source.

Chuang Tzu makes a thought-prvoking observation about the phenomenon of birth and death, alluding to what is beyond them both: ‘Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end.’14 it has been affirmed: ‘From the “point of view of eternity” birth and death are one.’15 The interconnected essence of birth and death has been recognized everywhere since the most
remote past: ‘Life and death, then, are considered not as two separate stages of completing mankind’s temporal and post-earthly existence, but as complementary phases in an ever-recurring cycle.’16
For this reason, the well-known teacher of Zen Buddhism, Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971), clarifies: ‘Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life.’17

Roshi Philip Kapleau (1912–2004) asserts a similar point: ‘Living is thus dying, and dying living. In fact, with every inhalation you are being reborn and with each exhalation you are dying.’18 Seen in the light of Ultimate Reality or the Absolute, as articulated through the doctrine of non-duality, both birth and death are unreal and therefore illusory, as even these dichotomies need to be transcended.

The Tibetan Buddhist tradition maintains that: ‘Ultimately, there is nothing that dies, since neither self nor mind have true existence.’This is exemplified in the Heart Sutra (Prajñaparamita-hr. daya-sutra): ‘Form is emptiness; emptiness is form. Emptiness is not other than form; form is not other than emptiness.’
The mutual interconnectedness of all phenomena applies not only to the world of appearances of samsara, but also to the mutuality of samsara and nirvana and life and death—akin to the Taoist metaphysical and cosmological concept of yin-yang where all dualism is nonexistent.
At the core of this psycho-spiritual transformation which provides integral health and well-being in divinis is not a socially adjusted ego but rather what transcends the empirical ego itself.

The secret of the Prophetic Tradition that is affirmed by Muhammad’s injunction ‘Die before ye die’ is a call for self-effacement before the Divine in order to be reabsorbed in the Divine. The spiritual path requires detachment from worldliness and sentimentality, ‘[I]n order to “live” inwardly one must “die” outwardly.’

By dying to the outer limitations, the human being is born into the unlimited and transpersonal dimension: ‘[T]he Divine requires both a ritual and moral preparation whereby the aspirant learns to “die” spiritually.’
Hence, it is essential to position oneself in this very life and to localize oneself in this ontological and existential context, to face one’s mortality and examine one’s life. Through this process, we can see and understand human existence in its most expansive and complete context:

The experience of death is rather like that of a man who has lived all his life in a dark room and suddenly finds himself transported to a mountain top; there his gaze would embrace all the wide landscape; the works of men would seem insignificant to him. It is thus that the soul torn from the earth and from the body perceives the inexhaustible diversity of things and the incommensurable abysses of the worlds which contain them; for the first time it sees itself in its universal context, in an inexorable concatenation and in a network of multitudinous and unsuspected relationships, and takes account of the fact that life has been but an ‘instant’, but a ‘play’. Projected into the absolute nature of things, man will be inescapably aware of what he is in reality; he will know himself, ontologically and without any deforming perspective, in the light of the normative proportions of the Universe.

Through this ontological and existential positioning that continually keeps death in the foreground of consciousness, the attachment to the world of appearances gradually loosens its hold and gives way so that the reliance on the Divine alone can occur.

Think often of death with attention, bringing to mind everything which must then happen. If you do this, that hour will not catch you unawares. . . . Men of this world flee from the thought and memory of death, so as not to interrupt the pleasures and enjoyments of their senses, which are incompatible with memory of death. This makes their attachment to the blessings of the world continually grow and strengthen more and more, since they meet nothing opposed to it.
But when the time comes to part with life and all the pleasures and things they love, they are cast into excessive turmoil, terror and torment.

Every moment of our earthly sojourn is to be valued and cherished and in no way taken for granted and squandered, as behind the passing hourglass of time is the Eternal:
[I]t is very remarkable, that God who giveth plenteously to all creatures . . . hath scattered the firmament with stars . . . yet in the distribution of our time God seems to be straight-handed, and gives it to us, not as nature gives us rivers, enough to drown us, but drop by drop, minute after minute, so that we never can have two minutes together, but He takes away one when He gives us another. This should teach us to value our time; since God so values it. . . .

The phenomena of death and the afterlife have had profound metaphysical and symbolic implications amongst the many ancient and diverse civilizations and societies of the world. There are numerous sacred texts on these themes such as Per-t Em Hru (‘The Book of
Going Forth by Day’), often known as The Book of the Dead, from Egypt; and the Bardo Thödol (‘Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State’), often known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead; and also the European genre of the ars moriendi (‘art of dying ). There are
also other sacred texts both written and oral known within Hinduism, the First Peoples religions and their shamanic traditions, and in Islam.
They are intended to provide guidance to human beings in their posthumous states, in order to find their way to a better or superior ontological status in the afterlife. Read the paper here

Why «Oikosophia», and what does this new and yet archaic word mean? Sophia in Greek means Wisdom, a knowing, or intelligence, which once used to be called “of the heart”: that is to say, an inherently relational, inborn way of being in unison with the totality of the living world, rather than the analytical approach of a discriminating intelligence that reifies. Oikos in Greek is the communal home, and this word has generated the prefix of both «eco-logy» and «eco-nomy».

This collection of essays argues that, in order to regain a meaningful connection to our “communal home”, just “caring for the environment” is simply not enough: rather, we need to recover the vision and inner presence that allows us to feel, and to inwardly know, how radically we belong to this home of ours. The wisdom necessary to achieve such a sense of interbeing —our only true being, in fact — is now urgently calling upon us, yet it comes from afar. From ancient Egypt to the Hermetic, Pythagorean, Presocratic, mysteric, Neoplatonic wisdom traditions, the vestiges of this knowing are traceable all along the history of the Indo-mediterranean world. During the first half of the twentieth century people such as G.R.S. Mead, C. G. Jung, R. Schwaller de Lubicz, and H. Corbin clearly saw, and proclaimed, that without a reclaiming of the Intelligence of the Heart there is no future for humanity, nor for our communal home. They therefore promoted the need for an epistemological shift in our perception of reality. Today, indigenous traditions weave this same ancestral message into the ecological discourse, with the same goal of endowing environmentalism with its necessary wisdom-based foundations; hence, their voice too has been included in these pages.

Oikosophia: For we need a home where we may once again speak the language of the soul, and a language of the soul that may take us home.

…To awaken the Functional Consciousness is to be Love, to be Unity. Qualification separates you from the water of the sea, from the stone, from the earth, from vegetation, from the amorous turtle dove, from the ferocious beast, from all human races; but all that appears outside of you is functionally within you, man of the end of a Time.

Qualification shows you a Moslem separate from a Jew, a Buddhist, a Brahman, a Taoist, a Christian; it discusses endlessly their “philosophies” and their merits. What is your criterion, you who do not know the revelation of Knowledge? Everything in its own fashion tells you the Truth, while only Truth speaks to you openly of Redemption.

Redemption is within us, provided we awaken the Consciousness of the function which unifies, and renders all discussion null and void. Is not Knowing more precious than seeking Learning?

…Sophia, then: the wisdom language that unites, rather than divides. For the time of homecoming has come. At long last. Read the complete paper Oikosophia  by Daniela Boccassini

• The story of the Juggler of Notre Dame goes back to at least the 12th century in France as one of the “miracle plays” of the medieval period in which God rewards devout commoners through acts of wonder.

The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer abandons the world to join a monastery, but is suspected of blasphemy after dancing his devotion before a statue of the Madonna in the crypt; he is saved when the statue, delighted by his skill, miraculously comes to life.

Le Jongleur de Notre Dame is a religious miracle story by the French author Anatole France, first printed in a newspaper in 1890, and published in a short story collection in 1892. It is based on an old medieval legend, similar to the later Christmas carol The Little Drummer Boy. The title character is a monk who was formerly a carnival performer. The other monks all have made beautiful works in honor of the Virgin Mary: hymns, icons, stained glass windows, and so on. But he has no such craft. So one night he goes into the chapel and performs his best juggling tricks before the statue of the Virgin. The other monks see this and would punish him for blasphemy, but the statue comes to life and blesses the juggler for his gift. Read here

• Le jongleur de Notre-Dame is also a three-act opera (labelled in the programme as Miracle in Three Acts) by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Maurice Léna.^[It was first performed at the Opéra Garnier in Monte Carlo on 18 February 1902. It is one of five operas Massenet set in the Middle Ages, the others being Le Cid (1885), Esclarmonde (1889), Grisélidis (1901), and Panurge (1913).

• In this gripping, heart-warming contemporary version from Paulist Productions, Barnaby ekes out a bare existence juggling in the street for coins. He is broken-hearted over the death of his wife and best friend. Barnaby drifts aimlessly until he stays in a small community where he is treated kindly. As Christmas approaches, all are making special gifts for the Lord. Barnaby despairs over having nothing to offer until he discovers a most profound truth about the meaning of Christmas and giving:

• The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity.

A ambitious and vivid study in six volumes explores the journey of a single, electrifying story, from its first incarnation in a medieval French poem through its prolific rebirth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer abandons the world to join a monastery, but is suspected of blasphemy after dancing his devotion before a statue of the Madonna in the crypt; he is saved when the statue, delighted by his skill, miraculously comes to life.

Jan Ziolkowski tracks the poem from its medieval roots to its rediscovery in late nineteenth-century Paris, before its translation into English in Britain and the United States. The visual influence of the tale on Gothic revivalism and vice versa in America is carefully documented with lavish and inventive illustrations, and Ziolkowski concludes with an examination of the explosion of interest in The Juggler of Notre Dame in the twentieth century and its place in mass culture today.

The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity is a rich case study for the reception of the Middle Ages in modernity. Spanning centuries and continents, the medieval period is understood through the lens of its (post)modern reception in Europe and America. Profound connections between the verbal and the visual are illustrated by a rich trove of images, including book illustrations, stained glass, postage stamps, architecture, and Christmas cards.

Presented with great clarity and simplicity, Ziolkowski’s work is accessible to the general reader, while its many new discoveries will be valuable to academics in such fields and disciplines as medieval studies, medievalism, philology, literary history, art history, folklore, performance studies, and reception studies.

“This ambitious and vivid study in six volumes explores the journey of a single, electrifying story, from its first incarnation in a medieval French poem through its prolific rebirth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer abandons the world to join a monastery, but is suspected of blasphemy after dancing his devotion before a statue of the Madonna in the crypt; he is saved when the statue, delighted by his skill, miraculously comes to life.
Jan Ziolkowski tracks the poem from its medieval roots to its rediscovery in late nineteenth-century Paris, before its translation into English in Britain and the United States. The visual influence of the tale on Gothic revivalism and vice versa in America is carefully documented with lavish and inventive illustrations, and Ziolkowski concludes with an examination of the explosion of interest in The Juggler of Notre Dame in the twentieth century and its place in mass culture today.
The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity is a rich case study for the reception of the Middle Ages in modernity. Spanning centuries and continents, the medieval period is understood through the lens of its (post)modern reception in Europe and America. Profound connections between the verbal and the visual are illustrated by a rich trove of images, including book illustrations, stained glass, postage stamps, architecture, and Christmas cards.
Presented with great clarity and simplicity, Ziolkowski’s work is accessible to the general reader, while its many new discoveries will be valuable to academics in such fields and disciplines as medieval studies, medievalism, philology, literary history, art history, folklore, performance studies, and reception studies.”

– The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity:

Volume 1: The Middle Ages – Read here

Volume 2: Medieval Meets Medievalism – Read here

Volume 3: The American Middle Ages – Read here

Volume 4: Picture That: Making a Show of the Jongleur

Volume 5: Tumbling into the Twentieth Century

Volume 6: War and Peace, Sex and Violence

Oikosophia: From the Intelligence of the Heart to Ecophilosophy

Why «Oikosophia», and what does this new and yet archaic word mean? Sophia in Greek means Wisdom, a knowing, or intelligence, which once used to be called “of the heart”: that is to say, an inherently relational, inborn way of being in unison with the totality of the living world, rather than the analytical approach of a discriminating intelligence that reifies. Oikos in Greek is the communal home, and this word has generated the prefix of both «eco-logy» and «eco-nomy». This collection of essays argues that, in order to regain a meaningful connection to our “communal home”, just “caring for the environment” is simply not enough: rather, we need to recover the vision and inner presence that allows us to feel, and to inwardly know, how radically we belong to this home of ours. The wisdom necessary to achieve such a sense of interbeing —our only true being, in fact — is now urgently calling upon us, yet it comes from afar. From ancient Egypt to the Hermetic, Pythagorean, Presocratic, mysteric, Neoplatonic wisdom traditions, the vestiges of this knowing are traceable all along the history of the Indo-mediterranean world. During the first half of the twentieth century people such as G.R.S. Mead, C. G. Jung, R. Schwaller de Lubicz, and H. Corbin clearly saw, and proclaimed, that without a reclaiming of the Intelligence of the Heart there is no future for humanity, nor for our communal home. They therefore promoted the need for an epistemological shift in our perception of reality. Today, indigenous traditions weave this same ancestral message into the ecological discourse, with the same goal of endowing environmentalism with its necessary wisdom-based foundations; hence, their voice too has been included in these pages.

• Oikosophia: For we need a home where we may once again speak the language of the soul, and a language of the soul that may take us home.

…To awaken the Functional Consciousness is to be Love, to be Unity. Qualification separates you from the water of the sea, from the stone, from the earth, from vegetation, from the amorous turtle dove, from the ferocious beast, from all human races; but all that appears outside of you is functionally within you, man of the end of a Time.

Qualification shows you a Moslem separate from a Jew, a Buddhist, a Brahman, a Taoist, a Christian; it discusses endlessly their “philosophies” and their merits. What is your criterion, you who do not know the revelation of Knowledge? Everything in its own fashion tells you the Truth, while only Truth speaks to you openly of Redemption.

Redemption is within us, provided we awaken the Consciousness of the function which unifies, and renders all discussion null and void. Is not Knowing more precious than seeking Learning?

…Sophia, then: the wisdom language that unites, rather than divides. For the time of homecoming has come. At long last. Read the complete paper Oikosophia  by Daniela Boccassini

In this wide-ranging interview, conducted on the occasion of the release of a new film addressing the implications of his thought, the physicist and metaphysician Wolfgang Smith speaks about the need to integrate science with reality in a way that affirms the lived experience of humanity, and preserves the archetypal and qualitative dimensions that give it meaning. He is critical of scientific fundamentalism and its overreaching tendencies, of the false premises of Darwinian evolutionism and of the limitations of Einsteinian physics and quantum reality. Physics, on its own terms, he claims, must affirm, on pain of absurdity, the metaphysical dimension of reality and of the corporeal existence that it informs.

Wolfgang Smith is the Founder of the Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation. In January 2020, a full-length film was released on the life and work of Professor Smith, entitled The End of Quantum Reality  (Producer: Richard DeLano; Director: KTEE Thomas). This interview,  which was conducted at Wolfgang Smith’s home in Camarillo, California on November 29, 2019, focuses on the long-awaited release of this epochal film and Professor Smith’s legacy.

Samuel Bendeck Sotillos:  If you were asked to give a brief synopsis of your film, The End of Quantum Reality  how would you articulate this for audiences unfamiliar with your work?

 Wolfgang Smith:  What we hope to accomplish is to deliver the audience from an erroneous worldview imposed upon us in the name of science, and in so doing deliver them from a chronic state of schizo-phrenia which is a consequence of this worldview.Physics has long claimed—on supposedly solid scientific grounds—that all things are simply composites of so-called fundamental particles.  What we have proved—on the basis of quantum theory itself—is that such is not in fact the case: the world in which we live, and move, and have our being does not   in fact reduce to mere particles! This means that the world we normally perceive by means of our five senses is not after all illusory, as we have been taught to believe since the Enlightenment.

SBS:  You have accomplished a remarkable feat in exposing the fundamental errors of contemporary science in an unparalleled fashion. Your findings fundamentally challenge the presiding ideology of our times and are considered “heretical” because they deconstruct the ideology as idolatry. How did this insight or process occur?

Read more here