Online research in philosophy

This paper explores the way in which God as the infinite ground of existence is discerned by the imagination and understanding. The representation of the apophatic divine is facilitated by the working of the human mind, which means that the manifold nature of thinking establishes the presence of God. In the metaphysical speculations of kabbalah and tantra the singular light of Ein Sof and Paramashiva intersects with the human imagination, and is refracted into a multiple display of understanding. So the (...) mind acts as a prism through which God is conceptualized and delineated. It constitutes a mediated envisaging of the Absolute, and the corollary of this perception is the engendering of the divine presence, notably as the feminine Shekhinah and Shakti. In short, in these two apparently different traditions—of kabbalistic and tantric thought—there is a detectably common theme of the notions of activity and force in creation as betokening a feminine representation of God’s being. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the way in which divinity is realized through an imaginary locus in the mystical thought of Jewish kabbalah and Hindu tantra. It demonstrates a reflective consciousness by the adept or master in understanding the place of God’s being, as a supernal and mundane reality. For the comparative assessment of these two distinctive approaches I shall use as a point of departure the interpretative strategies employed by Elliot Wolfson in his detailed work on Jewish mysticism. He (...) argues that there is an androcentric bias embedded in the speculative outlook of medieval kabbalah, as he reads the texts through a psychoanalytic lens. In a similar way, I will argue that there is an androcentric bias to the speculations presented in medieval Shaiva tantra, in particular that division known as the Trika. Overall, my aim is to suggest some functional and perhaps structural similarities to the characterization of divinity in these two traditions, through brief analyses of the erotic understanding of the nature of the Godhead. (shrink)

What does it mean to talk of the power of God in relation to the human self? The discourses generated by the Jewish and Christian tradition about the capacity for divinity have been mainly promulgated by men, and have more often than not served to exclude women cognitively, practically, and spiritually. As a result they have been made powerless in the face of God’s presence. It is possible to look to ideas developed in Hindu Tantra for comparative notions of power (...) (shakti) which can redeem the place of God for women. The path of divine consciousness is effectively illustrated by an imaginary and somatic awareness, by a devout attention to the play of light in the soul. In this paper I propose to read the assignment of energy and force within conceptions of divinity through the lens of a poststructuralist realization, using the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and Luce Irigaray. This working paper is basically an exercise in metaphorical writing, and one reader has called it 'creative theology'. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the apparently distinctive outlooks indicated by the mystical thought of Jewish kabbalah and Hindu tantra as they aim at realizing the scope of divine awareness. It is a profound horizon of light that beckons to them, which shows them to be on the verge of touching God. For both traditions there is a demonstrative reflective consciousness by the practitioner in realizing and recognizing the place of God’s being, as a supernal and mundane reality. It is (...) an attempt to grasp that which is otherwise unreachable and unknowable, by pointing to a sublimely felt reality. I argue that there are some phenomenological similarities to the way in which approaching the divine is understood in these two systems, especially in regard to the role of specularity in apprehending and discriminating the place of God. (shrink)