Author: It Is What It Is
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The Unfolding of Truth – 9: Emanuele Severino – The Inevitable Resolution of the Contradiction
The Final Contradiction The journey of philosophy, from Parmenides to postmodernity, is marked by one recurring drama: the tension between Being and becoming. Parmenides declared: Being is; non-being is not. And yet, all of history, Platonic dualism, Christian creation, Buddhist emptiness, modern subjectivity, has wrestled with the appearance of change: These questions have driven metaphysics,…
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The Unfolding of Truth – 8: Modernity – From Substance to Subject and the Collapse of Metaphysics
The Turning Point: From the World to the Self With the collapse of the medieval synthesis, the philosophical gaze shifted dramatically. No longer anchored in substance metaphysics or a transcendent order, modernity turned inward, to the thinking subject as the new foundation. This was not merely a shift in emphasis. It marked the beginning of…
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The Unfolding of Truth – 7: Scholasticism and the Domestication of Metaphysics – The Final Attempt Before the Fall
The Afterglow of Revelation and the Return of Aristotle As the Middle Ages matured, a remarkable convergence took place: the truths of revelation were increasingly systematized through the lens of Greek metaphysics, particularly that of Aristotle. The fusion promised much: clarity, coherence, and the ability to defend faith through reason. Yet behind this synthesis lay…
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The Unfolding of Truth – 6: Buddhism – Emptiness, Interdependence, and the Question of Appearance
Of all the great spiritual traditions, Buddhism stands as perhaps the most radical in its deconstruction of substance, self, and separateness. Where Western and Islamic metaphysics sought to secure a necessary foundation, Buddhism uncovered the groundlessness of all things. But is this negation a form of nihilism, or does it open toward a different kind…
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The Unfolding of Truth – 5: Islamic and Jewish Thought – Divine Simplicity, Emanation, and the Hidden Unity
As the Christian world grappled with the tension between eternity and time, Islamic and Jewish thinkers inherited many of the same questions, often through their deep engagement with Greek philosophy. What emerged was a powerful synthesis: the divine transcendence of monotheism joined to the metaphysical clarity of reason. Yet beneath this apparent resolution, new contradictions…
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The Unfolding of Truth – 4: Christian Revelation – Creation, Logos, and the Problem of Time
With the advent of Christianity, a new voice enters the unfolding of thought, one that speaks not only of the eternal, but of a personal God who creates out of love, enters into history, and redeems. The metaphysical speculation of the Greeks meets the narrative structure of Scripture. Logos becomes flesh. Eternity touches time. At…
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The Unfolding of Truth – 3: Plotinus – Emanation and the Return to Unity
If Plato glimpsed the realm of the eternal through the Forms, fixed, timeless, and shining with intelligible clarity, Plotinus deepens the vision. In the Enneads, he presents a metaphysical unfolding of reality from a single, ineffable source: the One. This One is beyond Being, beyond intellect, beyond any distinction. It is not a being among…
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The Unfolding of Truth – 2: Two Worlds: Plato and the Birth of Metaphysical Structure
Parmenides had shown that Being cannot not be. Change, then, must be illusion. But human experience contradicts this at every turn: we see birth, death, decay, motion, transformation. If thought must reject the evidence of the senses, how is truth to be known? It is Plato who takes up this task, and with him, philosophy…
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The Unfolding of Truth – 1: The First Light: Parmenides and the Emergence of Being
Before there were systems, there was wonder. In the earliest days of philosophy, Greek thinkers turned from mythos to logos; not to dismiss the sacred, but to seek its structure. Beneath the shifting appearances of the world, they began to ask: what abides? What is the principle that does not pass away? What is real?…
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The Unfolding of Truth Through the History of Thought – Introduction
Throughout the history of human thought, there has been a persistent intuition, often obscured, often contradicted, yet never entirely extinguished, that reality is not what it seems. From the first metaphysical inquiries in ancient Greece to the contemplative insights of Eastern sages, from the mystical speculation of late antiquity to the rational rigor of modern…
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Christianity and the Structure of Being–A Metaphysical Map
From Plato to the Eternal Structure of Being 🔹 1. Plato (4th c. BCE) Core Move: Eternal Forms vs. Temporal World 🡺 Impact: Introduces the first metaphysical dualism→ Sets up the world of change as ontologically inferior→ Seeds the logic of annihilation (what becomes can also vanish) 🔹 2. Early Christianity (1st–4th c. CE) Core…
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Christianity and the Structure of Being– Conclusion: Christianity Was Never Meant to End in Dualism
The Return to What Has Always Been True Throughout this series, we’ve traced a path—one not of rejection, but of return. Not a return to doctrine as it has been taught, nor to metaphysics as it has been inherited, but to the truth Christianity has always carried within itself: that what-is cannot not be. That…
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Christianity and the Structure of Being– 5: Toward Fulfillment — Christianity and the End of Dualism
The Return to What Has Always Been True Christianity stands today at a threshold — not of decline, but of fulfillment. After centuries of tension between its deepest intuitions and its inherited metaphysics, the time has come to see what has been gesturing from the beginning: that the truths it proclaims are not mere hopes…
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Christianity and the Structure of Being– 4: The Intimations of Destiny Within the Christian Tradition
How the Eternal Structure Continues to Emerge Despite centuries of metaphysical dualism, Christianity has never fully surrendered to nihilism. Even while shaped by a Platonic framework that casts the world as impermanent and the body as perishable, the Christian tradition has continued to bear witness to something more: the silent but insistent truth that what…
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Christianity and the Structure of Being– 3: The Persistence of the Platonic Framework
From Augustine to Modernity: How Christianity Carried the Logic of Annihilation By the time Christianity emerged as the dominant religious force of the Roman Empire, the seeds of a deeper metaphysical tension had already been sown. The Christian proclamation of the eternal had fused with the Platonic suspicion of time, matter, and change. The result…
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Christianity and the Structure of Being – 2: The Infiltration of Platonism
How Greek Metaphysics Entered Christian Thought In its earliest centuries, Christianity encountered a world saturated with Greek philosophy. Among the many schools of thought that shaped late antiquity, none was more influential—or more seductive—than Platonism. Plato offered a majestic metaphysical vision: a realm of eternal, unchanging Forms—the true Being of which all sensible things were…
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Christianity and the Structure of Being – 1: The Eternal Intuition of Christianity
The Seeds of Truth in the Christian Vision From its very beginning, Christianity has spoken of eternity. Not merely as a distant realm beyond this life, but as something that enters into history—something that breaks into time through incarnation, resurrection, and the promise of a kingdom that shall have no end. In this, Christianity reveals…
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Christianity and the Structure of Being– Introduction to the Series
From Dualism to Destiny For centuries, Christianity has offered the Western world its deepest intuitions about the eternal: that life does not end in death, that the person is sacred, that love is stronger than the grave, and that a kingdom without end is not only possible—but promised. And yet, these luminous insights have long…
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The Final Non-Duality 6 – The Fulfillment of the Religious Quest: Eternal Structure and the Destiny of Thought
Beyond Paths, Beyond Goals — The Joy That Always Already Is Across the millennia, religion has been the most enduring expression of humanity’s longing for the infinite. Beneath its doctrines, rituals, and images, there pulses a single, unyielding question: What is the origin of all things, and what is our place within it? This question,…
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The Final Non-Duality 5 – Why Every Path Is Necessary and Yet Must Be Surpassed
The Longing for Being and the Inevitability of Its Recognition To one who has deeply entered the history of spiritual traditions, it may seem impossible that so many sincere seekers, mystics, and teachers — across millennia, cultures, and languages — could be mistaken. And in fact, they are not. Each tradition, from the earliest shamanic…
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The Final Non-Duality 4 – Modern Non-Duality: Awareness, Realization, and the Trap of Sudden Awakening
The Self Does Not Awaken — It Eternally Is Modern non-duality, especially in the traditions emerging from Advaita Vedānta and later crystallized in the teachings of figures like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and more recently Rupert Spira and Francis Lucille, offers what seems to be one of the most radical breaks from ordinary consciousness. The…
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The Final Non-Duality 3 – Christian Mysticism: Union, Darkness, and the Eternal God
From Ascent to Appearing: Rereading the Path of the Soul The mystical tradition in Christianity stands as one of the most powerful witnesses to the limits of conceptual thought and the longing of the soul for something that cannot be captured by language. From Dionysius the Areopagite to John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart,…
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The Final Non-Duality 2 – Buddhism: Emptiness and the Movement Beyond Suffering
The Eternal Structure Misread as Impermanence Among the spiritual paths of the world, Buddhism stands out for its analytical clarity and radical focus on the problem of suffering. Its foundation — the Four Noble Truths — begins not with metaphysical speculation but with existential urgency: dukkha, the suffering that characterizes life, and the promise of…
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The Final Non-Duality 1 – Advaita Vedānta: The Identity of Self and Brahman
The Eternal Truth Beyond the Path of Realization Among the world’s spiritual philosophies, few have exerted as profound an influence as Advaita Vedānta. With clarity and subtlety, it proclaims a truth that stands at the heart of the human search: that the Self (ātman) is not separate from the ultimate reality (Brahman), and that the…
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The Final Non-Duality: Rereading Spiritual Traditions in Light of Being — Introduction
The Spiritual Quest and the Hidden Contradiction Across the world’s spiritual traditions, from ancient Vedānta to contemporary non-dual teachers, we encounter the same longing: a desire to overcome division, to dissolve the sense of separation, to awaken into unity. Whether spoken of as enlightenment, liberation, realization, or union with God, this quest appears as humanity’s…
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The Last Dualism 5 – Direct Cognition and the Necessity of Recognition
The End of the Search and the Fulfillment of Seeing There is a growing interest today in what many call direct experience, pure awareness, or non-conceptual knowing. People seek a state beyond language, beyond belief, beyond thought—something immediate and unmediated, where truth is no longer a theory but lived, seen, known. This yearning often carries…
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The Last Dualism 4 – The Eternal Structure of Thought
Beyond Self, Ego, and Silence Modern non-duality often speaks of “going beyond thought.” Thought is treated as noise, as interference, as the domain of the ego. Silence is upheld as the pure state—the absence of self, of mind, of conceptual filters. Enlightenment, in this view, is the cessation of thought, or at least a radical…
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The Last Dualism 3 – Awakening Without Becoming
The Contradiction of Enlightenment in the Light of Eternal Being The modern non-dual discourse is saturated with the language of awakening. One is said to awaken from illusion, from ego, from time, from the false self. This awakening is often described as a shift, a transformation, a sudden recognition, or the end of seeking. For…
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The Last Dualism 2 – The Myth of the Body’s Illusion
Plato’s Legacy and the Persistence of the Great Dualism In the midst of today’s non-dual revival, a strange contradiction persists. While the language of unity, presence, and wholeness is widespread, the body—this visible, touchable, vulnerable being—is often spoken of as an illusion, a veil, a mistake. In countless spiritual teachings, the body is subtly or…
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The Last Dualism 1 – What Is Truly Non-Dual?
Beyond the Confusion of Experience, Metaphor, and Ontology In recent decades, few terms have gained as much traction in spiritual and philosophical circles as “non-duality.” From Eastern teachings like Advaita Vedanta and Dzogchen, to Western spiritual movements, therapy sessions, and even casual Instagram posts, the term has become a kind of shorthand for ultimate truth,…
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