Why Love Another? What for? Mysticism Doesn’t Just Tell Us—It Shows Us!

What is Love? How do we know it? How are we One in it? The mystical experience shows us directly not only what Love is, but that we are Love.

The Kosmic One Endows Us the Energy to Be and to Act

Have you ever wondered where the energy that makes up your body-mind comes from, both bound in material form and free-flowing in "spiritual" form, and that this may be a deeper aspect of You?

Qualia, Consciousness, Christ, and Cosmos

What is qualia? What is the source of individual instances of subjective conscious experience, like seeing the redness of an apple? Where does the redness come from? I don't know, but here are some ideas. Energy in our environment impinges upon our sense organs causing a cascade of electrochemical reactions and nerve impulses that are [...]

“Canticle of the Sun,” by St. Francis of Assisi, and Joseph Smith’s “Olive Leaf”

One of the last things we did at the seminar with Bernard McGinn this past weekend was read through and discuss Saint Francis of Assisi's poem and religious song Canticle of the Sun. McGinn considers this to be a very mystical text from Francis, as Francis seems to see God powerfully in and throughout the whole of creation, including in the sun, moon, stars, Earth, etc. McGinn noted that it is a kind of nature mysticism. Francis wrote most of it in the year 1224, and the last few lines in 1226 just before his death.