As we discussed in earlier lessons for a time during the 18th Century it seems that the rationality of the Enlightenment triumphed over all other ways of knowing. Many rejoiced that soon the laws that operated behind the universe would all be known and humankind would create the future it wanted.
The Emancipation of Imagination
In 1817 the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge described “the willing suspension of disbelief” as an act of “poetic faith” through which a reader’s accepts fanciful aspects of a fictional work. Without this willingness the …
Romanticism and the Human Soul
Most of us know Samuel Taylor Coleridge as the English Romantic poet and author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. We may not be aware that he was also an important English theologian who …
Are we stuff that got smart? Or smarts that grew stuff?
One of the most confounding philosophical questions is the one about who we are, and how we got here. Are we intelligent matter – stuff that got smart – or are we incarnate spirit – …
The Heart of the Mystic
A mystic is one who sees the deeper reality that lies hidden beneath our ordinary experience of reality. The mystic looks deeply into the nature of things by letting go of conventional wisdom and allowing …
The Soul Evolves
The human soul is not the procession of any single individual; it is the ground of awareness that is the essence of the entire human experience. It is a field of pure knowing. At least …
A Field of Pure Knowing
What is the human soul? Is it some phantom-like part of us or is it a living dimension of the universe from which all life flows? The later is what Samuel Taylor Coleridge taught and …
Breaking the Bonds of Language
Have you ever tried to have an original thought – or worse – had a truly original thought that you tried to put into language? That is when you realize that you are trapped in …
The Bible, Poetry and Mental Sensations
By the early part of the nineteenth century the Age of Reason had made it increasingly difficult for progressive religious thinkers to accept a literal interpretation of the Bible. It was clear that many passages of …
Understanding, Rationality and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge could have used the same tag line as Apple Computers – Think Different! Coleridge is one of the early pioneers of Romanticism and Romanticism was a different way of thinking. In 1825 …
Are We Intelligent Matter or Incarnate Spirit?
One of the most confounding philosophical questions involves our understanding of who we really are. Are we intelligent matter – stuff that got smart – or are we incarnate spirit – smarts that grew stuff …
Kant, Coleridge and the Power of Intuition
My current presentation of the evolutionary ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a good place for a discussion about epistemology to fall in. How do we know what we know? is the question that epistemology …