Maister Echart and Mysticism

                              Maister Echart and Mysticism

          Maister Echart is representative of Christian mysticizm. Born about 1260 a.c. in Germany as Echart von Johannes Eckhart O.P. (1260–1328), also known as Eckhart von Hochheim and widely referred to as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Erfurt, in Thuringia. Meister is German for "Master", referring to the academic title he obtained in Paris. Coming into prominence during the decadent Avignon Papacy and a time of increased tensions between the Franciscans and Eckhart's Dominican Order of Preacher Friars, he was brought up on charges later in life before the local Franciscan led Inquisition. Tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII, his "Defense" is famous for his reasoned arguments to all challenged articles of his writing and his refutation of heretical intent. He purportedly died before his verdict was received, although no record of his death or burial site has ever been discovered. Well known for his work with pious lay groups such as the Friends of God and succeeded by his more circumspect disciples of John Tauler and Henry Suso, he has gained a large following in recent years. In his study of medieval humanism, Richard Southern includes him along with Bede and Saint Anselm as emblematic of the intellectual spirit of the late Middle AGE.

          Very long time it was considered that philosophy is just privileges of manhood moreover Maister Echart have had give lectures also in monasteries witch was for the members of womanhoods priest monks. He usually preaches on German language in aim to give courage to Germans woman’s that has devoted them life to God. On this occasions he use his very interesting and poetic vocabulary enriched by his Ideas inspired by mystics. He makes great influence on the school of German mystic philosophy but that was underestimated. To day no body knows, actually where is located his tomb either date of his death.

          When I first read as student ceremons of Maister Echart they impressed my profoundly, for I never expected that any Christian thinker ancient or modern could or would cherish such daring thoughts as expressed in those sermons. The Ideas expounded there closely approached Buddhist thoughts, so closely indeed, that one could stamp them almost definitely as coming of Buddhist speculations. Moreover Echart was as I am understood extraordinary “CHRISTIAN.”He stands on his own experiences, which emerged, from rich, deep religious personality. He tries to give an ‘esoteric’ or inner meaning to them, and by so doing he enters, fields were not touched by most of his historical predecessors.

          He quotes a sentence from Ecclesisasticus:”In his days he pleased God and found just”.”There are more days than one.” – “There is the soul’s day and God’s day. A day, seven or six, or more than six thousand years ago, is just present as yesterday.” Why? Because all time is contained in the present NOW MOMENT”~WHAT WE CALL CARPE DIEM?” BY HIS OPINION TIME COMES OF THE REVOLUTION OF THE HEAVENS and day begins with this first revolution the soul’s day are different. In neutral day, the soul knows all things above time and place; nothing is far or near. That is why I say, this day all things are of equal rank. God makes all things in the present now as present and as near to God as this very instant. The soul who is present now bears his one – begotten Son and that same birth the soul is born back into God.

          Echecrats God is not alike nothing at all like the God conceived by most Religious Christians. God is not in time mathematically enumerable. His creativity is not historical, not accidental, and not at all measurable. It goes on continuously without cessation with any beginning, with no end. It is not event of yesterday or today or tomorrow, it comes out of timelessness’, or nothingness’, of Absolutes Void. God’s work is always done in absolute present, in timeless ‘now which is time and place in itself’. The Idea of creating the world out of nothing, in absolute present, and therefore altogether beyond the control of serial time concept will not sound strange to Buddhist ears.

ECHART’S EXPERIENCE ARE DEEPLY, abundantly rooted in Good as being which is being and non-being: he sees in the ‘meanest’ thing among the God’s creatures all the glorious of his is-ness.

“God’s characteristic is being. The philosopher says one creature is able to give another life. For in being, mere being, and lies all that is at all. Being is the first name. Our whole life ought to be being. As far as our life is being, so far is it in God.

          Mystical philosophy is one sort of experience, in which you have to run one great voyage; on this roadman has have experienced everything what he is survived in touch with life out and inner. It is not abstract movement; it is realistic truthful road through life. By Echart, man feels something in his soul, this light is God. God is everywhere, as I have understood his philosophy. God is in very human being!

          Most human though is that when man makes God, he put in his soul his equal, his active, everlasting masterpiece. God is in man’s Soul,    -God’s self-love which contains his love for whole world as universal Enlighten in Buddhism. God is blessed by his work  on the soul’s ; he departed himself moreover he love himself in his Creature’s as his own nature, being and Godhead, and in the love he has for him self loves all creatures, not as creatures but as God. THE GOD BEARS HIMSELF CONTAINS HIS LOVE FOR THE WHOLE WORLD.

          By all means Echart spooked about man universal craving for the love- he says- “ “Could you see with my hearth you would understand my words, but it is true, for the truth itself has said it “

          This sort of tough witch is far from theology is very close to the human beings as creatures of God. God is not alienated from them he is part of humans. He gives; he is cherished and love humanity. God of Echart is not God of Church. This Universal Being is GOD of absolutes blessed by Universal who created this world. However, Echart teachings as MYSTIC AND GERMAN PHILOSPHER give to us new point of understanding. of Christianity.

By all means if we seriously take this words we are annihilated what says Nitche:”God is died.” – On the beginning of XX century. Fact that this world is drowned and swallowed by modern culture, civilizations and heir’s extra results. Wars, miserability, daises, lost of love, alienation, selfishness, and new cults of golden donkey – money. Echart philosophy is gift for hour’s souls. We need God of Love~ we are needed mutual understanding about that all Human Beings are part of God and God is in them. So that we should love and cherish as neighboring moreover people who are far away from us. Why? Because they all part of this TAO~CIRKLE~MOTHER EARTH~LOGOS.

Christ day for us; nevertheless remembers that very day somewhere in some unknown place on this Earth died man as beloved Son of God. This is not just Idea of Dostoyevsky this is Universal fact. Try to find explanations in yourself; Maister Echart was my inspiration for to day.

When I am pray, this is for very being on this world, for very human being, because everything is MOST IMPORTANT part of eternal mosaic of the LOGOS.

ANJA*philospher on duty!

Also this! Cleaning out the Knopf office is yielding archival... on Twitpic

Also this! Cleaning out the Knopf office is yielding archival... on Twitpic

Full MOON OVER BELGRADE

Lunacy and the Full Moon LA LUNA

It's an enduring bit of folk wisdom, spurred by modern-day rumors that emergency rooms fill up, oddballs act odder, and dogs howl in the streets when the moon beams. Furthermore, there are lots of perfectly rational people who will assure you they just feel a little restless around the time of the full moon. The very word "lunatic" is built on the Latin word for moon, luna. So, is there proof?

If nothing else, there's proof that scientists take the question with a surprising seriousness.  .

Biologists, psychologists, even a dentist, have taken a crack at correlating full moons with foolishness. The results have been mixed, and mysterious: ·  A 1983 study of calls to a poison center found that unintentional poisoning increases at the full moon; and that suicide attempts and drug abuse increase with the new moon. A 1980 study, though, couldn't link drug overdose to any lunar phase. ·  A 1991 study found that women in a treatment center who were developmentally delayed misbehaved more often on the full moon. But a 1994 study found no full-moon correlation with admissions to a psychiatric hospital, and a 1997 study said doctors see no increase of depressed and anxious patients. ·  A study of a suburban hospital's emergency room concluded the full moon brought no howling hoards. ·  A study of workplace absenteeism actually found more people at work on the full moon. ·  Another inquiry revealed that people ate 8 percent bigger meals and drank 26 percent less alcohol on full-moon days than on new-moon days.

Fun stuff, though not exactly a series of smoking guns.  .

One man, a dentist at the University of Pittsburgh, took this whole business seriously enough to examine the cosmological underpinnings of the whole debate: What possible excuse would a full moon have for working mental mischief? To understand what a full moon actually is, draw a small circle on a piece of paper, and put Africa in it so you'll know it's the Earth. Draw another circle (the moon's 29.5-day orbit) around the Earth, and make a bead on each compass point. Off to the right, draw a beaming sun. Blacken the left half of each moon-bead and leave the halves facing the sun white. Your right bead is the new moon, its dark back to us. Your left bead is the full moon, its entire, sunny face visible. The upper and lower beads are hatchet-lit half-moons. Frankly, the full moon's most obvious feature doesn't look very incriminating: An extra bit of reflected sunlight is making us cuckoo? Next theory, please. Both the moon and Sun have a gravitational effect on the Earth. When they're both on our right (new moon), their combined forces tug up big ocean tides; when we come between them (full moon), they pull opposite each other. So if it's a gravitational alteration that's making us nuts, we should be looking at the new moon as well as the full moon, says Dr. Daniel Myers, the dentist who has studied the effects of gravity on migraine headaches.

Or, alternatively, we shouldn't be looking at it at all.  .

"I'm not saying there's no full-moon effect," he says. "It's just not caused by gravity." What else could it be? I found no study that looked closely at moonlight, its potential for disrupting sleep, or its facilitation of night-time misbehavior. It might be interesting to compare cloud-covered full moons to clear full moons, with respect to one loony behavior. And speaking of loony, when the word first appeared in the language, it was used interchangeably with "luny." This suggests that the word evolved from the older word, "lunacy" and the moon, rather than from "loon," the name of the spotted bird with the demented voice.

Vocabulary protective, adj. A British study of hospital admissions for self-poisoning found that women make up 60 percent of patients at the new moon; but only 45 percent on the full moon. Hence, the study concludes, "the full moon is protective for women." BUT I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT I DID NOT SLEEP ALL NIGHT..NOW SOMETHING INSIDE ME IS UPSET(: MAYBE I HAVE EATEN SOMETHING OR DO IT REALLY BUT ON THE TIME OF FULL MOON I AM DIFFERENT PERSONALITY.PANIC ATTACS ARE FREQUENT AND FIRE FROM UNKNOWN..MY CAT IS ALSO UPSET ON ALL HIS HEAT ODD FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR

 MAYBE YOU WOULD LIKE THE PREVIOUS BLOG:THE GOLDEN AGE OF DEMOCRACY.....

GOLDEN AGE OF DEMOCRACY

Democracy in Athena in comparison

With philosophy and politics term

Golden age

History of democratic institutions

In the 5 B.C., when all freeborn male citizens of Athenians possessed the franchise, the citizen roll numbered about 40.000, all of whom were entailed to vote in person at the meetings of the Assembly; among other cities, only a handful could muster more than 10.000. Plato fixed the number at 5040 for his ideals for his ideal state: Aristotle thought all citizens know eny another personally.

History of building ancient democratic institutions in Athena.

The people of Attica belonged to four phyla (tribes) or clans, whose identity survived the union under Athens, while their territory comprised three districts known as the Plain (Pediake), the Coast (Paralia) and the Hill (Diakria).            The population was early divided also in the three classes, Epudatrai, or nobles; Gergoi and Agroikoi, or farmers of hill and plain); and the Demiourgoi, or artisans, all of whom were ipso facto equal member of Eakklesia or Assembly. The arable land held by free man was immemorially inalienable of the clan. A Fourth class of freeman without civic rights, known as Hektomoroi, included agricultural laborers. Power gradually passed to the Aeriopagus or Council of Nobles, who supervised the three executive archons elected by the Assembly; the Basileus, the Polemarch and the Eponaymos, whose functions where broadly speaking, respectively religious, military and civil. The Archon Epynomos WAS chief magistrate and nominal head of polis, or city state and after these offices were restricted in 683.b.c. to yearly tenure gave his name to the year. On pagus Lather their number was increased to nine by the adition of six recording judges. The aristocracy monopolized political office though after Kylon unsuccessfully effort to usurp power and the consequent war with Megara, poluar discontent extorted Draco legal code in 621 BC. The harsh law of property that allowed a debtor’s person to be taken in pledge still reduced many peasants to slavery, but a Court of Appeal of 51. Judges was instituted to deal with cases of bloodshed.

Towards the end f the century new classes (the Timocracy were emerging founded on the wealth gained in commerce or agriculture, and new division of the people, based on landed property was made. The highest class was now the Pnetakosmidiomedmnoi (those whose income was equivalent to 5000 medimmni of corn); next came the Hippies or Knights (300-500) medimmni from whose  ranks came wartime cavalery; and below them the Zeguiitarai or Youmen (those with par of ozen) who in war became Hoplities or infantrymen. The forth estate of peasants and arstisans Tehetes were excluded from the Asembly but paid no taxes.

Solon who became Archon Epynomus in 594 B.C. promogulated Seischathia, canceling by all debts involving elections to archonship to the highest class, but enfranchised the Thetes. He increased the judicial dignity of the Aeropagus while transforming its deliberative functions to the Assembly, and created and created a new system of Council of four Hundred (Boule) upon which devolved in effect the transaction   of the business of the Assembly. The Thetes were exluded from the Bule . Popular tribunals Heliastis were enrolled by lot so that justice be impartial to rich and poor alike. Despite Solon’s reforms party strife between the clans caused thirty years of anarchy, which ended in the constitutional  turanny of the polemarch Peisistratos. Under his benevolent dictatorship the reforms of democracy were preserved, and he administrated the state according to the established usage and his arrangements were wise and salutary.

After the overthrow of his more despotic son Hippies, The Alkmeonid recognized the tribes. Finding Atitica comosed of c.170 demes or sectors(parishes0, he altered their traditional division into three districts the: City, the Coast and the Inland, and the stamp out they old rivalries, he regrouped the inhabitansts. In such reform he make following: The old Council of 400 became a Council 500 composed of 50 deputies from each tribe, elected, annually by lot. The departies of each tribe held office in rotacion for about five weeks in the year as Prytaneis or Presidents. Theu chose one of their number by lot of Epustates (Chief President), who with nine Proderoi as assistant and Gramateus-secretary not of their body, formed the Prytaneia or Presidental Commite. The Puritanism presided also over the meetings of the Ecclesia, which was ultimate , without whose sanctions no bill could passed  into law. By the institution of Ostracism a ten year a banishment  without loss loss of rights used between 487 and 417 the duty of guarding the state against the plots of potential tyrants was trasfered from the Aeropagus to the sovereign people. Pahilochororos tells how in such cases  the Agora was fanced with boards, ten entrances being left, through which the citizens entered by tribes to cast they votes; the nine archons and the Boule presided. The classes of the Timocracy were retained; below the rank of citizen were the Metics, or resident aliens, and slaves.

In 487 BC the power of nine archons was reduced by the institution of their election by lot. Before this date  the Polemarch had acted as commander in chief assisted by the ten tribal generals ; hencoward the Ten Generals (STARTEGOI0, elected every year one of ich tribe, became not only the supreme commanders of the army and navy, but where also the dominant magistates in the political lead each expedition, but where also the dominating magistrates in the politicalfield. Pericles was elected general every year from 43 till his death in 429 from pleagh and from this fact he owed his unique postion. The Pericles and his older contemporary Ephaties is due the completion of Athenian democracy. Nearly all the  power of the Aeropgus were transferred to the Assembly. The arhonship, no longer confined to the two-higer classes, became a paid office, having little political power and pay was also introduced for the Council and the Jurymen. By the time the Peloponnesian war all cased to be entailed.

Philosophical questions

Demos cratos – rule of the people. But we have here a problem in ancient Greece we are have several modus of ruling over the people: Oligarchy –gerusion (the oldest members of powerfully families Sparta, Theocracy (rich people)– Corinth, Basileus – aristocracy and Athena –democracy.

In the first place, what are the people? In ancient Greece demos meant rule of the for people over the rich. In this sense the people means the ‘ruled’.

But this kind of ruling is possible only in small societies like polis –Athena. Everybody have chance to speak in the name of his class or his dema end to represent the will of his community. But how many people have been free in Athena and how many the slaves they have? By definition slave is not a man but only creature which spoke or some kind of tool by Aristotle.

But democracy as way of politic life has big role in Athena mostly in the golden age after Persian –Greece wars. Self- government for small group consist in general participation in the deliberative process, in which person voice carries a weight appropriate  not to his status but to the merits in the judgment of the others, of what he has to say. If despite continuing disagreement a decision  is essential it must be arrived at by majority of group vote. But this chance for everybody who have been a free man the have opportunity  to have influence in political life is exclusive for small community. Because the free citizens of Athena have become on the Stoa, some kind of place for political dispute and run dialogues about that and that and give their political opinion. General notion somebody who is not included in political life that he is IDIOT: WHICH MEANS THAT COULD BE ONLY GOD BY HIMSELF or animal or man who live alienated from the others. By Aristotle the man is zoon poolitcon..It means in his essences is to participate in political life of his polis. But main problems that Athens noun or term or system of democracy is not a viable for  the bigger community. When the association of the Greeks, members of delian league polis likes Corinth, Megara, Theban, Athena, Focida, Aegina, Sparta after wars against Persia the Periclo idea about pan-Hellenic state was annihilated  by Spartans refusal to cooperate . Result was of this disagreement Peloponnesian wars, crash of the democracy and become of the Alexander the Great who whose like his father basileus not democrat..After 30. Years of this stupid Peloponnesian wars Athena never agene recovered including the most good democratic system. Maybe that is prove for that kind of democracy is for such ideal state of circumstances and small community. By whole means and the others polis in Greece become over the Macedonian rule they have lost independency. Main problem was? Disagreement between tribes. Ever body have their inters. Democracy was a last gap between them but for Sparta was first and crucial.

To day we are faced with possibilities of democracy. What kind of face she have? And is this system ”rule of people” appreciable for most of the countries over the world. Is the China or some other bigger countries good field for the democracy and what kind of democracy?

The main question in golden age in Greece, Athena was the question about god?

God was linked with knowledge; by the Plato the man who have knowledge could not male evil he will know the differences. But main philosopher who has a biggest influence of Pericles was Anaxagoras.He have study cosmos but the best known and most influent of all the ancient Greek philosophers.

WAHAT IS HIS NOTION ABOUT modern police 

In the Republic Plato sets out his “ideal state”. It is very decidedly authoritarian. He begins from the premises that only those who know what the good is are fit to rule, and he prescribes a long and rigorous period of intellectual training, which he thinks will yield this knowledge. In a famous analogy, it will loose the bonds that keep most men confined in a cave underground and allow us to ascend to the real world outside, which is world of Forms, available to the intellect but not to the senses. This is to be accomplished by full study of mathematics, which will turn one’s attention towards the Forms, since it is an apriori study and does not concern itself with what is perceptible; and after that a study in dialectic in philosophical debate. Those who complete this training successfully, and so know what the good is will form the ruling elite. From time to time they will be required to give up their intellectual delights and go back into to cave to governed it. They will govern with a view to maximizing the happiness of the state of the whole, but Plato thinks that the way to achieve this is to impose a strict censorship to prevent wrong ideas being expressed, to ensure that each person sticks to his own allotted job, so that he does not meddle with affairs that are not his concern and so on. Plato was firmly against democracy, and seems to have seen no connection between happiness and individual liberty. 

Strictly to be open with this philosophical opinions Plato have notion that rule over state is only for training people for class of philosophers. That democracy is not god modus to run a one polis or country. Democracies have her gaps end big mistake: why the opinion of majority could have influence about some issue. How could common man have knowledge about? Majority is some times not a people but just a group of people  - mass without knowledge that has opportunity to vote by influence of some another group witch have some inters to some propose in assembly. That is now the problem of modern democracy.

And so on!