The
Eckhart Society
Twentieth Annual Conference
Meister Eckhart and the Mystical Imagination
Took
place on 24-26 August 2007 at St Hilda's College, Oxford
The following papers were given
Hymie Wyse
The Sensuous Imagination: Embodying Meister Eckhart
One of the interesting
aspects of any Eckhart Conference is to listen to how each of the speakers reads
the text. Over the past twenty years philosophers have told us of the necessity
of knowing something about that perspective, theologians have argued for a clear
and intelligible theology. As yet no one has focussed on what Meister Eckhart
says about the body (and he does say a great deal)
Hymie, a craniosacral therapist, will conduct us in this area. For over thirty
five years he has been working both as an Analyst and Body therapist and finds
in Eckhart a wonderful guide.
Joseph Milne
The Linguistic Imagination: Meister Eckhart's Poetic and Speculative
Use of Scripture
John O'Donohue
The Epistemological Imagination of Meister Eckhart
Donald Duclow
Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa: Eucharist and Mysticsal Transformation
Among Eckhart's condemned teachings was his linking of two transformations:
bread into Christ's body,and ourselves into God. Eckhart clarifies the
issues at stake in his comments on the Eucharist, eating and hunger, and union
with God. Nicholas of Cusa (1401 - 1464) read Eckhart
closely and defended his orthodoxy. Intriguingly, he also followed Eckhart's
dangerous lead when he too used the Eucharist to discuss humanity's mystical
transformation. For both Eckhart and Nicholas, as we receive the sacrament we
become one with the divine Son - in an unending cycle of feeding eating and
hungering. Between them, Eckhart and Nicholas offer a "spiritual"
account of the Eucharist and its reception that runs counter to much later medieval
theology, but that remains provocative and vital to-day
Saturday evening: concert was performed by Ensemble
Telemania who played seventeenth and eighteenth century music
Nineteenth Annual
Conference
Defending Eckhart
Took place on 25-27 August 2006 at St Hildas College, Oxford, England
The following papers were given
Prof. Loris Sturlese
A New Interpretation of Eckhart's Defence of 1326
The talk presents a
new interpretation of the main document on which our knowledge of Eckhart's
trial by the Inquisition in Cologne in 1326-27 depends, namely the Manuscript
Soest 33. This document consists of two parchment quires conserved in the archive
of Soest in Westphalia, which are commonly considered to be an official copy
of the minutes of Eckhart's hearing in front of his Inquisitors on September
26th 1326. A reconsideration of the of the manuscript leads to the conclusion
that Meister Eckhart composed the original of this document himself before the
proceedings began and published it immediately after the first hearing, making
it available to his friends and supporters. By such a hazardous move against
the Inquisitors and the Archbishop of Cologne Eckhart aimed to reach an important
goal; to provoke an intervention of the Papal Court in Avignon.
In fact from 1327 onwards the
process is removed to the higher court of Avignon and it takes a new form. Eckhart
is no longer charged with heresy but with doctrinal errors. The condemnation
of 1329 condemns, therefore, certain of his statements but not his
person.
Michael Demkovich OP
In Defence of Meister Eckhart, using Suso and Tauler
Eckhart's
defence ought to be understood as part of a theological process wherein he sought
clarity and correction concerning the tribunal's allegations.
As such his reply to the September
26, 1326 inquisition set forth a line of defence that argued for the orthodoxy
of his ideas and sought a proper correction of errors. Such a defence was meant
to be theological in character and not intended by Eckhart to be a defence of
any heresy. This paper will examine how Eckhart's Cologne response established
his line of defence. I will then explore this line of defence in two of Eckhart's
better known disciples, Henry Suso and John Tauler. Finally I will offer some
comments on the implications this has for defending Meister Eckhart today
Rebecca Stephens
In Defence of Plain Speaking
If there is a quality in Eckhart which
causes both profound wonder and profound irritation, it is his inability to
be pinned down, his unwillingness to simplify, his playful manipulation of meaning
- in short, his poeticism.
Eckhart if read poetically, is a deeply exciting, even shocking, mystic. If
read pedantically, as by his Inquisitors and other detractors, then he is worryingly
unspecific. Or too specific - all that talk, in German, to ordinary people,
removing the gloss and the mystery fom the 'business' of the church, praising
ordinary life and the revelation to be found in a blade of grass if only you
look at it from the perspective of eternity. All that 'humour', above all; the
mockery; the jokes... There is both too much, and too little, plain speaking
in Eckhart for his readers comfort - but there is much to be said in its defence.
Prof. Bernard McGinn
The Dynamic Trinity in Bonaventure and Eckhart
Both Bonaventure
and Meister Eckhart were heirs to a long tradition in patristic and medieval
thought that made use of Neoplatonic philosophical themes to help express the
mystery of the dynamic inner life of the three persons in one God and the way
in which believers come to participate in this life. This paper will explore
the considerable convergence between the trinitarian mysticism of these two
great thinkers, while also highlighting their differences, especially with regard
to Eckhart's teaching on the 'grunt'.
Saturday evening concert was performed by the
Kelly Duo
Eighteenth Annual Conference
Eckhart and Other Religious Traditions
Took place on 26-28 August 2005 at St Hilda's College,
Oxford, England
The following papers were given
Prof. David Blamires
Eckhart and Quaker Tradition
Fr Don Goergen OP
Atman, Grunt, and Spirit:An Unfinished Reflection
My ground and God's ground are the
same ground maintains Eckhart. Atman is Brahman, according to the Upanishads.
Each at the deepest level is pure spirit. How are Hinduism's deepest conviction
and experience similar to that of Eckhart's? How does each relate to the classical
Christian tradition's understanding of God and the soul?
Fr John Orme Mills OP
After Eckhart
Fr Brian Pierce OP
Empty Fullness in the Eternal Now: Eckhart and the
Buddhists
Buddhist master, D.T. Suzuki, defines Buddhist philosophy as, “the philosophy
of Emptiness”…This emptiness, however, is not exactly empty; “it is a void of
inexhaustible contents.” Eckhart, in his own way, insists time and time again
that there is a divine Nothingness which flows quietly through all of creation.
It is there, he insists, in the Silent Desert, where the mystical birth takes
place. The advice he gave to his disciples seven centuries ago is still valid,
“Stand still and do not waver from your emptiness…All things [will] become simply
God to you…” Both masters point to a fullness which manifests itself in emptiness,
a void which gives way to presence. What can we glean today from this common
ground, this common path of dialogue where Eckhart and the Buddhists journey
together as soul-mates?
Saturday afternoo: AGM and Workshops
Saturday evening: Concert performed by Charivari Agréable,
the Oxford-based early music ensemble.
Seventeenth Annual Conference
Eckhart and Suffering
Took place on 27-29 August 2004 at Plater College, Oxford ,
England.
The following papers were given
Professor Donald Duclow
Theologies
of Suffering: Eckhart, Henry Suso
and Ursula Fleming
The fourteenth century was marked by intense devotion to Christ's passion. Few
took the devotion further than Eckhart's student, Henry Suso, who for twenty
two years imitated Jesus' suffering with extreme practices, such as fastening
a wooden cross to his back with nails. In contrast and
much more recently, Ursula Fleming wrote, 'Most of what I know and teach about
pain control comes from the study of Eckhart.' This paper asks two questions:
What is Eckhart's theology of pain and suffering? And how could Suso and Fleming
respond so differently to his teachings? The answers will focus on Eckhart's
accounts of the Incarnation, 'taking up one's cross' (Mt 16.24),and detachment.
Suso and Fleming understood - and practiced - these themes in strikingly different
ways.
Dr Rebecca Stephens
How
We Should Suffer
Though we know that as a pastoral teacher Eckhart was compassionate for our
baffled, fallible attempts at union with the divine, he was also an intellectual
delighting in theological debate and argument, word games and paradoxes. For
Eckhart, the question of suffering is best addressed in a state of detachment.
His doctrine of detachment is beautiful in its logical symmetry - if we
are perturbed by outward mishaps, he says, then it is right that God has permitted
us to suffer, for we then realise how far we are from peace, when even little
things still have the power to shake us.This is indeed logical, if somewhat
coldly indifferent. What comfort then can detachment offer us?
These are the questions I will be examining with you.
Dr Joseph Milne
Eckhart
Suffering and Freedom
Eckhart's radical approach to the problem of suffering challenges
our modern sense of identity and individualism at its roots. This talk will
explore some of the theological and philosophical implications of Eckhart's
understanding of suffering and our sense of human identity, and will illustrate
how Eckhart's thought is rooted in a theological anthropology extending back
to classical Greece but lost completely in the rationalist Enlightenment in
which human nature becomes completely divorced from God
Richard Woods O.P.
Eckhart,
Suffering and Healing
In an era of global epidemics, new diseases, and declining health care, Meister
Eckhart's revolutionary teaching on the place and value of pain and suffering
challenges the modern world intellectually, spiritually, and practically. By
revisioning suffering not as a threat to be avoided, but as a gift to be embraced
as God's very presence, does Eckhart's doctrine run the risk of fatalism or
passivity in the face of preventable evil? Or does it open a way to deeper
healing and radical health on a global scale?
Saturday Afternoon: George Wilson - Inner Silence and Awakening:
A Lection Divina Session
Saturday Evening Concert: The Solaris String Quartet
Sixteenth Annual Conference:
Eckhart and Incarnation
Took place on 22 - 24 August 2003 at Plater College, Oxford, England.
The following papers were given
Dr Ben Morgan
Eckhart and the
Incarnation: Some practical details
Eckhart uses the Incarnation to describe the relationship between man and the
divine. Not only does God let his Son be born continuously in my soul, I am
born continously as his Son. Indeed I become his Son in a way which annihilates
any difference or distance between God and myself (for instance in the sermon
Iusti vivent in aeternum). These and similar formulations were condemned
as either suspect or actually heretical in the bull of 1329. This conflict
can be approached theoretically. But it can also be read as evidence of a practical
conflict, that is to say a conflict about attitudes and ways of behaving towards
oneself and to the divine - which the heresy proceedings and the bull were an
attempt to police. Broadly speaking, the conflict was between the impulses behind
the apostolic life and attempts by ecclesiastical authorities to regulate them.
A careful reading of Eckhart's texts allows one to reconstruct something of
the behaviour and attitudes that were the cause of contention. Such a
reconstruction is not only of historical interest. It offers an alternative
model of individual identity which helps one to reasses and to transcend guiding
assumptions inherited from the Cartesian and Kantian tradition as to what is
valuable about modern Western forms of identity (consciousness, self control,
individual agency).
Dr Niklaus Largier
Interpreting Eckhart's
Incarnation Theology: the sermon collection 'Paradisus anime intelligentis'
The 14th century collection 'Paradisus anime intelligentis' - 'Paradise
of the intelligent soul'- offers a unique and fascinating possibility to see
how contemporary readers understood Meister Eckhart's preaching. The collection
contains 32 sermons written by Eckhart, and 32 from other, mainly Dominican,
authors. In a most compelling way the unknown editor of the collection
organised the selected sermons along some of the main lines of Eckhart's theology,
connecting his teaching with other theologians of his time. The concepts of
the incarnation and of the birth of God in the soul are at the centre of the
interest of the collected texts. This is not surprising. However
it is quite interesting to look at the ways in which the collection organises
and contextualises Eckhart's sermons. Thus, special emphasis is given
to the eschatological character of Eckhart's incarnation theology and his teaching
about the birth of God in the soul. At the same time the author of the
collection seems to have brought together a number of sermons that support a
mainly pseudo-dionysian reading of Eckhart's concept of the birth of God in
the soul. The unknown editor seems to suggest that Eckhart's theology of incarnation
should be read and understood both in terms of Augustin's concept of the fullness
of time and in terms of Pseudo-Denys' mystical union of the soul with God. In
my lecture I will try to depict the specific aspects of this reading of Eckhart's
sermons and point to the significance of the Dyonsian emphasis in 14th century
mystical theology
Dr Wolfgang Wackernagel
From Detachment
to Incarnation: A Study on Spiritual Advice in Eckhart's Early Teaching
An early collection of basic spiritual ground-rules known as the "Talks
of Instruction" (Rede der underscheidunge) is the inspiring prism of this paper.
Probably put together by Brother (not yet Master ) Eckhart himself, they
present various themes, such as: I. The value of detachment and the meaning
of true obedience (chapters 1-8. II. The inclination to sin and its benefit
in regard to temporal and divine repentance (chapters 9-16). III. Many other
themes, ranging from self-annihilation to the blossoming of new life (chapters
17-23/24). That is: allegiance ,complaint, confession, differentiation, forgiveness,
freedom, God, good and evil, grace, inward and outward works, humility, imitation,
joy, nature, peace, poverty, prayer,sacrament, singularity, suffering, temptation,
transcending images, union, virtue and wealth. After analysing the structure
of these talks and discussing the major themes, we shall end up by considering
the topic of this year's conference. As such "incarnation" is not explicitly
mentioned in these early teachings. Implicitly however, we may find some
interesting passages, which can be considered in relation to this topic, espacially
if we reflect on "incarnation" in an anthropological sense.
Michael Demkovich OP
Explanatory Shards
of the Incarnation in Eckhart's Parisian Questions
The Incarnation is a profound mystery, requiring theological and philosophical
thought even to scratch the surface of its meaning. Meister
Eckhart, the fourteenth century Dominican, teacher, preacher and mystic, offers
us no less a challenge in his understanding of how God enters the human condition. From
the broad scope of his writings, one confronts a philosophically gifted thinker
and an artfully eloquent preacher. In order to do justice to his thought,
this paper will examine his fundamental concepts that allow for his profound
theological insight. These explanatory 'shards', as I call them, are drawn from
his disputations that he delivered while a master theologian at the university
of Paris in the early thirteen hundreds, known as the Questiones Parisienses.
These 'shards' can give us insight into Eckhart's life and thought.
By locating the 'shards' in the context of the controversial attacks on
Aquinas, and the Dominican Order's deliberate defence of Thomas's thought, we
glimpse their richer significance. Eckhart loyally defended his Dominican
brother, but at the same time he will build on his maligned confrere's work.
By salvaging these 'shards' we better appreciate the theological project of
Eckhart as part of a new theology of his day.
Given this awareness, we are better able to grasp the underlying concerns
at work in Eckhart's theology of the Incarnation. I show this by treating
the Meister's understanding of the Incarnation found in his Commentary
on John's Gospel (Exspositio sancti Enangelii secundem Iohannem)
In particular I limit this to his reflections on Chapter 1 verse 14:
'Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis'. In his comments ,
we see Eckhart the teacher and preacher, Master at Paris and Mystic of the
Rhine, employ fundamental explanatory concepts drawn from Thomas Aquinas
and defended in his Parisian Questions. They are such telltale concepts
that their lineage to Aquinas is without doubt. The uniqueness of God's essence
and existence over against created existence and essence, is but one
explanatory 'shard,' and also the notions of actualization and the
unicity of substantial form. These are all key issues defended by
the Order and Eckhart. But Eckhart puts these to further use, developing
a twofold sense of the Incarnation in Christ and in us. His
explanatory framework, which is fundamentally in agreement with Aquinas and
the Order, creatively expands to allow for a more perfect order of reality.
The Incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ is perfect and complete
but the same Incarnation is being actualized in each one of us, here and
now, as we manifest justice and godliness. It is with these
explanatory 'shards', picked out of his Parisian Questions,
that we can imagine their relationship to his overall theological
project. In their suggestive presence we see how they allow Eckhart
to develop his theology of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh dwelling
in us.
Saturday afternoon: George Wilson - Living with
Eckhart's Thought
Saturday evening
concert: The Solaris String
Quartet
Fifteenth Annual Conference:
Eckhart and Image
Took place on 23 - 25 August 2002 at Plater College, Oxford,
England.
The following papers were given
Dr John O'Donohue,
The Absent
Threshold
The Paradox of Divine Knowing in Meister Eckhart
Dr Reza Shah-Kazemi
The Eye and the Wood:
An Image in Eckhart that explains"all that I have ever preached
about"
I will base myself on the image that Eckhart says sums up all his teaching:
the vision by the eye of a piece of wood: and explain how this image can
sum up his teachings only if we fully grasp the import of his assertion:
the creature is a pure nothing. This "no-thingness"of the creature
is the ontological premise of realization of the Absolute, brought about
through a "vision " which so unites the viewer to the object viewed (the
"eye-wood") that there is really nothing left of the viewer/creature: the
Absolute stands alone. Thus, the creatureis realized in one-pointed
concentration as a pure nothing; this is the concomitant of the positive
realization of the Absolute
Edward Robinson
Ciphers of
Transcendence:
Some reflections on the work of Kasimir Malevich, the apophatic theology
of Meister Eckhart and Karl Jaspers' concept of the Cipher.
Richard Woods OP
Eckhart's Imageless Image
Art, Spirituality and the Apophatic
Way
Emma Murphy and Lynda Sayce gave a recital of Early
Music
Fourteenth Annual Conference
Took place on 24 - 26 August 2001
The following papers were given
Richard Woods O.P.
Ecology, Spirituality and Eckhart: On Loving the
World
Accepting as fact that the environmental crisis confronting this and the
following generations is real, extremely serious, and in large measure the
result of human selfishness, greed ,and short-sightedness, I suggest
that despite Eckhart's negative approach to matter, time ,and multiplicity,
major elements of his spiritual doctrine regarding the holiness of creation,
the possibility of redemptive suffering, and the development of true detachment
can help this and coming generations to work actively in achieving global
justice.
Dr Oliver Davies
On Reading Meister Eckhart
In this paper I ask questions about why the writings of Eckhart
should be so meaningful to-day. In the first place I survey the place
of "intellect" in Aristotle, focussing on Book II, Chapter
19 of the Posterior Analytics, and in Thomas Aquinas.Here the emphasis is
upon the capacity of the human mind to penetrate with certainty into
the nature of the real and thus to found secure knowledge. It is
against this background that I read Eckhart's prioritisation of the
"intellect"as that which can take God 'as he is in his unity and his
desert'
Kant set the mark of the modern by showing the limits of reason
with respect to religion, thus undermining traditional metaphysics.
It was no longer possible to say that we have knowledge of God based upon
the use of the faculty through which we know things in the world. For
Thomas the formal object of the intellect was 'common being' (ens
communes) which bore the marks of the creator. It is
in the immediate aftermath of Kant's ground breaking work that we see
the evolution of a distinctively modern approach to reason and God.
In the work of Jacobi and Schleiermacher we see the development
of the view that some mental faculty within us can penetrate to
the divine world and that this faculty is radically distinct from the way
in which we normally perceive objects. Schleiermacher called it 'intuition'
and Jacobi called it 'reason'.
It is Eckhart's dramatic and powerful use of the theme intellect as
that which is specifically ordered to the divine which corresponds to
our modern sense of 'spiritual mind' - even if the original background
to this idea in Eckhart may have been very different from any that we know
to-day.
Joan O'Donovan O.P.
The Way of Meister
Eckhart
The purpose of this paper is to describe how the teachings
of Meister Eckhart have
influenced the vision and praxis of a centre in Dublin, Ireland, called Eckhart
House. Founded twenty years ago by Miceal O'Reagan, a Dominican priest
and psychologist, this centre was called after Meister Eckhart because it
was envisaged as an experiment in human living where the needs of body,
feelings, mind and soul were to be cared for so that the Divine might
be more visible in our world, individual, social and environmental.
The approach to Eckhart's teaching is explained, namely that of exploring
his understanding of, and vision for, the human person using the insights
of modern psychology, in particular psychosynthesis, and of trasnspersonal
theory, in order to clarify the different levels of self experience, and
to facilitate the transformation of consciousness involved in becoming who
we are in God.
It is suggested that this approach to Eckhart's Way of Detachment can become
a practice of awareness or the awakening of the Observing Self. The
methodology involved in this practice is explicated. It is presented
as a meditative attitude to life that encourages the gradual letting go of
the achievement energy of the ego and learning the more receptive attitude
taught by Meiaster Eckhart, that of 'surrender' or 'letting go' of the Deep
Inner Life
Dr Joseph Milne
Eckhart and the
Word
This talk explores the underlying theological and philosophical
understanding of the Word as presented in the works of Meister Eckhart.
Particular attention is given to the Medieval philosophy of language as inherited
from Greek philosophy, and how this differs radically from our modern theories
of language. The talk will try to illustrate the primary ontological
status of the Word as pre-existent to thought or conception, and
how this has profound implications for the theory of knowledge or
epistemology
Through a detailed interpretation of some key passages in Eckhart it
will be shown that there is a relation between mystical knowledge of God
and the knowledge of the essence of created
beings, and that this has far reaching implications for any modern theories
of the nature of reality, language and knowledge.
The main purpose of the talk is to try to overcome some of the modern
presuppositions we are likely to bring to our reading of Eckhart by
situating ourselves within the philospophical and theological tradition to
which Eckhart's thought
belongs
Stromenti
Gave a recital of unusual and beautiful
baroque music played on period instruments
Thirteenth Annnual Conference
Took place on 25-27 August 2000
The following papers were given
Father Bill Kirkpatrick - Working in London
The Spiritual Aspects
of Detachment
Dr. Amy Hollywood - Dartmouth
College U.S.A.
Eckhart's Apophatic
Ethics
The paper uses Foucault's understanding of ethics to help demonstrate
that there is an Eckhartian ethics and to clarify the relationship between
apophasis (unsaying the names of the divine), detachment (as an ascetic and
ethical practice parallel to that linguistic one), and the formation or
un-formation of the self (what Foucault calls an ethics or an ascetics).
The author aims to show that Foucault's association of ethics an ascetics
can help us understand the nature of Eckhart's ethics of detachment and its
relaionship to the ascetic ethical culture of the religious women among whom
he lived and to whom he so often preached.
Prof Denys Turner - University of Cambridge
How Should I Love
God? Eckhart, Duns Scotus & Thomas Aquinas on How to Rumble
Idolatries
Fr John Orme Mills O.P.- Prior of Blackfriars Newcastle on Tyne
The Affective
Eckhart
The initial purpose of this paper
given at the Eckhart Society Oxford
Conference of 2000 by Father John Orme Mills O.P.
(the Dominican known to the Eckhart Society's members
primarily as the founder and until 1999 the Editor of the
Eckhart Review) was to examine what grounds there are
for thinking that Eckhart was in any sense "affective", in other words
a man of feeling. This is not how he has normally been seen.
The speaker considered the nature of his dialectic and also the way he
"frequently leaves his sayings open (like a poet) for us to dialogue
with the 'otherness' of them, to take off from them". He argued that Eckhart
"was what we would call an imaginative person,
or maybe a creative person", and, drawing on later
theory of the imagination, stated: "If Eckhart was an imaginative
person, then he was a person of sensitivity, an affective person." He tested
this particularly by considering Eckhart's reflections on suffering.
He argued that Eckhart's affective side not only contributes significantly
to the vitality of his text - something particularly important for newcomers
to Eckhart - but also contributes substantially to what Schuermann called
Eckhart's "this-worldliness". In this context the speaker discussed
aspects of sermon 86 (on Martha and Mary) and recent scholarly work on it
This led him in the paper's closing section to quote the Sell's statement
"Eckhart suggests a Christian theology built upon the vulnerability of the
divine and its interrelation and interdependence with humanity" and to propose
that Eckhart's affectivity partly accounts for this understanding of God
and God's relationship with us. He thought giving more attention to the
"affective" side of Eckhart might deepen our understanding of his "mystical"
side.
Dr Brian Lancaster - University of Manchester
Eckhart,
Kabbalah and the Limits of Psychological
Inquiry
Eckhart's Mysticism is compared with that of the 13th century Jewish mystic,
Abraham Abulafia. Abulafia was a major exponent of the language of
mysticism which is central to much Jewish mysticism, and encouraged the use
of a variety of distinctive practices involving complex ways of working with
Hebrew and especially its letters. Despite this substantial contrast with
Eckhart, who eschewed any special; spiritual practices, the two thinkers
are comparable to the extent that they both tried to understand mystical
states in terms of Aristotelian categories An example concerns their
respective messianic ways of thinking about the highest level of the Intellect,
which becomes the agent for a mystical encounter with the divine.
Further to my comparison of their approaches to intellectual mysticism,
I raise the question of the extent to which systems of explanation current
in modern psychology may play a role similar to that of the
Aristotelian system of their day in furthering the challenge to understand
the human mind's relation to the transcendent sphere. Abdulafia's emphasis
on deconstruction of language suggests a model in which the normally automatic
structuring of meaning via language is attenuated whilst the more polyvalent
and dynamic flux of meaning characterising preconscious processing is fostered.
At the same time, a further characteristic of his method-whereby
deconstructed language elements are continually connected to the letters
of the divine Name-suggests a shift in the indexing of memories.
A central feasture in memory is thought to be an index enabling associative
recall, in which language plays a major role. Normally a key focus for this
index is provided by the representation of ' I '. It is argued here
that Abulafian mysticism displaces this ' I 'focus in the index with
what amounts to a 'God-focus'. The implications of such a model of mystical
states are considered and the model's
applicability to Eckhart's intellectual mysticism is discussed.
I argue that this modelling approach has more value in psychological
terms than do those approaches which emphasise the supposed experience of
'pure consciouness' in Eckhartian mysticism.
Lucie Skeaping and Members of
Burning Bush:
Gave a recital
of Sephardi and Ashkenazi songs and music
from the old Jewish
world on the Saturday
evening
Audio-cassettes of the lectures given at the Fifteenth Conference
are now available (see below)
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