• By Henri, January 6, 2012 @ 12:16 pm

  http://henrycorbinproject.blogspot.com/2008/07/selected-quotations.html

  Henry Corbin (1903-1978) was a scholar, philosopher and theologian whose work is profoundly significant for the contemporary world. He was a champion of the transformative power of the Imagination and of the transcendent reality of the individual in a world threatened by totalitarianisms of all kinds. One of the 20th century’s most prolific scholars of Islamic mysticism, Corbin was Professor of Islam & Islamic Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Teheran. He was a major figure at the Eranos Conferences in Switzerland. In addition to his prodigious output as a scholar of Islam, he was the first French translator of both Martin Heidegger and Karl Barth. He introduced the concept of the mundus imaginalis into contemporary thought and his work has provided much of the intellectual foundation for archetypal psychology as developed by James Hillman. But Corbin’s central project was to provide a framework for understanding the unity of the religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. His great work Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi is a classic initiatory text of visionary spirituality that transcends the tragic divisions among the three great monotheisms. Corbin’s life was devoted to the struggle to free the religious imagination from fundamentalisms of every kind. His work marks a watershed in our understanding of the religions of the West and makes a profound contribution to the study of the place of the imagination in human life.

  The Active Imagination guides, anticipates, molds sensory perception; that is why it transmutes sensory data into symbols. The Burning Bush is only a brushwood fire if it is merely perceived by the sensory organs. In order that Moses may perceive the Burning Bush and hear the Voice calling him ‘from the right side of the valley’ – in short, in order that there may be a theophany – an organ of trans-sensory perception is needed. – Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi, 80

  …The seriousness of the role of the Imagination is stressed by our [Iranian] philosophers when they state that it can be ‘the Tree of Blessedness’ or on the contrary ‘the Accursed Tree’ of which the Qur’an speaks… The imaginary can be innocuous, the imaginal never can. – Spiritual Body & Celestial Earth, vii-x.

  On the Angel

  Whether it be Metatron as the protos Anthropos and Active Intelligence, or the Active Intelligence as Holy Spirit and Archangel Gabriel, or as Holy Spirit and Angel of Humanity in the philosophy of Ishraq, the same figure never ceases to manifest itself to mental vision under this angelophany. – Avicenna & the Visionary Recital, 67

  In the perspective of the Paraclete, the three Abrahamic faiths can come together in the same city-temple. – Temple & Contemplation, 338

  Every physical or moral entity, every complete being or group of beings belonging to the world of Light…has its Fravarti. What they announce to earthly beings is…an essentially dual structure that gives to each one a heavenly archetype or Angel, whose earthly counterpart he is. – Spiritual Body & Celestial Earth, 9

  The history of the modern West is the history of “l’homme sans Fravarti.” – Le paradoxe du monotheisme, 253

  It is this Fravarti which gives its true dimension to the person. The human person is only a person by virtue of this celestial dimension, archetypal, angelic, which is the celestial pole without which the terrestrial pole of his human dimension is completely depolarized in vagabondage and perdition. – Le paradoxe du monotheisme, 243
• By Vagablondage, January 9, 2012 @ 10:10 am

  Here’s your perdition right here.

  http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/the-man-with-the-golden-brain/

  What happened to Daniel Wolpert? Was diggin’ that space.
• By Henri, January 9, 2012 @ 10:47 am

  It may befall a soul to ‘die’ as a soul can die, by falling below itself, below its condition of a human soul: by actualizing in itself its bestial and demonic virtuality. This is its hell, the hell that it carries in itself – just as its bliss is its elevation above itself, flowering of its angelic virtuality. Personal survival cannot then be thought of as purely and simply prolonging the status of the human condition, the ‘acquired dispositions.’ The latter doubtless concern what we call the ‘personality.’ But…the essential person in its posthumous becoming and in its immortality perhaps immeasurably transcends the ‘personality’ of so-and-so son of so-and-so. – Avicenna & the Visionary Recital, 116

  It is not in the power of a human being to destroy his celestial Ideal; but it is in his power to betray it, to separate himself from it, to have, at the entrance to the Chinvat Bridge, nothing face to face with him but the abominable and demonic caricature of his ‘I’ delivered over to himself without a heavenly sponsor. – Spiritual Body & Celestial Earth, 42

  The Gospel Parable of the Feast (Matt. 22:2-10, Lk. 14:16-24) means precisely what it says… It would be ridiculous to engage in polemics against men or women who refuse to come to the Feast; their refusal inspires only sadness and compassion. – The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 145
• By Henri, January 9, 2012 @ 10:52 am

  On Spiritual Reality & Imagination

  For all our esotericists, the interior world designates the spiritual reality of the supersensible universe which, while a spiritual reality, is that which encircles and envelopes the reality of the external world… ‘To leave’ that which we commonly call the exterior world is an experience not at all ‘subjective’ but as ‘objective’ as possible, but it is difficult to transmit this to a spirit wanting to be modern. – En Islam Iranien v. 1, 82

  The Active Imagination guides, anticipates, molds sensory perception; that is why it transmutes sensory data into symbols. The Burning Bush is only a brushwood fire if it is merely perceived by the sensory organs. In order that Moses may perceive the Burning Bush and hear the Voice calling him ‘from the right side of the valley’ – in short, in order that there may be a theophany – an organ of trans-sensory perception is needed. – Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi, 80

  The brain is the mere servant of the Imaginal, Eternal and Platonic Soul.
• By Henri, January 9, 2012 @ 11:00 am

  The imaginary can be innocuous, the imaginal never can. – Spiritual Body & Celestial Earth, vii-x. – H. Corbin
• By Henri, January 9, 2012 @ 8:18 pm

  “If the world around us is a world of informational events, the symbolic manifestations that surround
  UFO reports should be viewed as an important factor. If we regard the physical world as an
  associative universe of informational events, consciousness is no longer simply a local function in
  the human brain. Instead, I propose to define consciousness as the process by which informational
  associations are retrieved and traversed. The illusion of time and space would be merely a side
  effect of consciousness as it traverses associations. In such a theory, apparently paranormal
  phenomena like remote viewing and precognition would be expected, even common, and UFOs
  would lose much of their bizarre quality. These phenomena would be natural aspects of the reality
  of human consciousness. I submit that reports of alien “contact” must be studied at this level, even
  if we are a long, long way from being able to channel our speculations into the formal equations of
  a new physics.” – Jacques Vallee
• By Vagablonde, January 9, 2012 @ 10:57 pm

  Jacques Vallee Jacques Vallaa Jacques Valee Jacques Valalalalalalalala
• By Henri, January 10, 2012 @ 5:49 am

  Your comment is neither constructive or even meaningfully destructive, troll elsewhere please.

  Read some David Bohm. David Bohm was a close colleague of Einstein, and he made major contributions to quantum theory. Vallee is mining Bohm for that paragraph.
• By Woody, January 10, 2012 @ 8:28 am

  I agree w/ Vagablonde! Jacque Vallee is da bidnizz!

  Henri, it is also true that David Bohm is (was) da bidnizz, w/out a doubt!

  They can both be da bidnizz w/out diminishing the bidnizzitizm of the other… don’t you think?

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