Spirituality and Human Development

I have always greatly valued those precious moments of pure spiritual insight where the nature of life - though still utterly mysterious - is clearly revealed. And in that intimate moment of realisation, all questioning ceases. The latest example of this occurred last week while in deep reflection after receiving the sad news of the untimely death of a close relative. We are accustomed in scientific terms to tracing out the evolution of our Universe in a somewhat linear manner entailing phenomenal space and time. And the present conventional wisdom in this regard is that the Universe started its existence some 13.5 billion years or so as a "Big Bang". However from the spiritual standpoint this is all very misleading! Properly understood from this perspective, the Universe always exists in the absolute present moment. Thus phenomenal notions of space and time have a merely secondary relative validity, that ultimately can always be shown to be circular and paradoxical

I recently finished reading "The Passion of the Western Mind" by Richard Tarnas. Strangely, I remember receiving this book as a present some twenty years ago and quickly concluding - without much study of its contents - that it was too bland for my taste. Well, clearly something significant had changed in the meantime as on this occasion, I read it straight through, remaining enthralled with the unfolding narrative from start to finish. It put me in mind of an earlier book that I had read in the 60's "The Western Intellectual Tradition" by Bronowski and Mazlish. However whereas this was confined to a relatively short period from about 1500 to 1850, Tarnas provides a marvellous perspective for consideration of all major developments spanning ancient Classical Greece right up to the end of the 2nd millennium. Then at the end he summarises his conclusions "For the deepest passion of the Western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its being.&quo