From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Thu Jul 11 2002 - 02:04:02 MDT
Damien Broderick:
>There has to be a better way to convey our life-affirming goals, a form of
>presentation that doesn't trigger immune reactions that shut down the
>listener's mind.
You could, instead, use the Sufi threads embedded in all these
religions. (They believe that Sufism is the teaching within all
religions, so that to them, Islam is a 'shell' of Sufism as equally as
other religions are a 'shell' of Sufism.)
The Sufis believe that humanity is evolving to a certain destiny (what
that destiny is, they don't really say) and that humanity is all taking
part in that evolution. To help mankind evolve they activate man's love.
I have not encountered deathist views, yet, with the Sufis.
It is not always easy to find the Sufi threads, but they are there
(still visible in parts of France, Spain, Portugal). The reason the Sufi
threads are not easy to find in the worlds main religions is that they
believe that they are a 'nutrient' for society, and must then transmute
and disappear, leaving altered traces only. If you look, you can find
these Sufi threads in many seeming disparate places: the Moors of Spain,
the Troubadors, Fedeli d'Amore, Dante's poetry, Bacon, the court jester,
Shakespeare, Rosicrucians, Knights Templars, Jewish mysticism, Masonry,
for example.
There is a strong tradition in the Sufi teachings to transform yourself,
which could be a human psychological or a physical transformation, it
doesn't matter to the Sufis. There is also a strong tradition with them
for a quest for self-knowing.
Amara
--
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Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
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"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
--Anais Nin
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