Here’s an interesting phrasing of “that which lies beyond” rationality and science, and the linguistic grasp of the left hemisphere, with still a rational vocabulary:
Without necessarily invoking “god” as a supernatural being, it seems fine to recognise an ineffable sacred beyond science but still “natural”.
Beyond science but still natural.
Quote by Ian Glendinning from the live Member Q&A with Iain McGilchrist this week.
Thank you to James Willis for a poetic and beautiful review of our book!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58913447-the-renaissance
Thank you to Ian Glendinning for a wonderful and generous review of our “Renaissance” book!
Excellent summary of some of the basics of the theology that underlies so much of St. Thomas Aquinas’ work – and in many ways the over-arching idea and representation of Divinity in Dante’s Divine Comedy. A crucial introduction for understanding the vocabulary of much of the writings from the 12- and 13-hundreds:
Happy to see Mark Vernon launching a new course based on his previous book – which outlines a broader canvas of history and theology in the old Tradition. The argument for reviving the mystics might also be largely congruent with McGilchrist’s latest masterpiece “The Matter with Things”, as a means of searching for ways to re-balance the hemispheres and elevate the right hemisphere’s approach to apprehending the world, and what lies beyond.
In Purgatory 4 Dante comments on the nature of our sense of Time, which is partly related to the context of the Late Repentants – those who were distracted or started late on the Path to seeking deeper, and spiritual, Knowledge.
When any of our senses is aroused
to intensity of pleasure or of pain,
the soul gives itself up to that one sense,
oblivious to all its other powers.
This fact serves to refute the false belief
that in our bodies more than one soul burns.
And so it is that when we see or hear
something which wholly captivates the soul,
we easily can lose all sense of time.
The sense aware of time is different
from that which dominates all of the soul:
the first is free to roam, the other, bound.
This passage comes after the second encounter with a shade where the Pilgrim gets lost in the moment, and delayed on his metaphorical Journey and climb up the mountain of Purgatory.
From the beach in Purgatory:
Thus, where we were, Aurora’s lovely face
with a vermilion flush on her white cheeks
was aging in a glow of golden light.
At the end of Chapter one in Dante’s Purgatory, Virgil picks up a reed at the shores – a symbol of Humility – and girds the waist of the pilgrim as Cato had instructed them. Then comes one of the most beautiful and deepest metaphors of the whole canticle:
Oh, miracle! When he pulled out the reed,
immediately a second humble plant
sprang up from where the first one had been picked.
Here is a quick review and rating of McGilchrist’s new book “The Matter with Things”, on GoodReads:
The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This Masterwork is potentially a depth charge for decades to come. Towards the end McGilchrist walks us to the very boundaries of science and rationality through rational language, and then gives us a bridge into the intuitive and Sacred world only apprehended by the right hemisphere. And then walks us back again.
A life-changing book.
