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Robert Waxman is an author, educator and guest speaker on the subject of "comparative
universal truths" that are found in world religion and philosophy. He uses a unique and stimulating teaching approach
to reveal the timeless wisdom that is embedded in ancient and modern religions. He is the author of (3)
books on this subject.
Robert specializes in teaching his students about universal ethics, morals and
virtues that have been taught throughout the ages. He underlines these intuitive truths by explaining the wisdom
teachings of critically acclaimed philosphers and scholars whose books have become classics over the past 3,000 years.
Robert frequently refers to the writings of Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Philo
Judeaus, Aldous Huxley, Sir James Frazier, Descartes, Kant, Schopenhouer, Maimonides, Bhagavan Das, Thomas
Aquinas, Carl Jung, Plotinus and Plato.
Robert uses myths and religious philosophies to create a positive and uplifting environment
where people are able to reinforce their own intuitive truths. He stresses that we unfold from "within to without",
and that we're constantly in a state of "becoming". Bob also gives his students exercises and practical methods for using
these wisdom teachings in their everyday lives.
Robert is a popular guest speaker at presentations, lectures, classes and
seminars, and specializes in explaining the comparative teachings of the world's esoteric traditions.
He is also the author of, The Seven Fundamentals of Esoteric
Philosophy, and the executive producer of the nationally
released CD, Song Universal, which is filled with mantras, chants and songs used for
group meditation, birthing rooms and yoga sessions.
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The Rehabilitation of Philosophy by James McKinnon
In the days when Pythagoras coined its name, Philosophy was much more
than the narrow field of study that it is today. In its inception Philosophy was a holistic system of education designed to
help the Philosopher achieve true, eternal happiness (1).
Philosophy has, through
the passage of time, come to be defined as a type of fancy arguing, or, more formally stated, dialectic applied to topics.
We often hear people say, “My philosophy is…” and they will then go on to give an argument or opinion about
some topic or other. For instance, you might hear someone talk about their philosophy about cars. They will then go on to
explain how they feel cars should be built, or fixed, or purchased, or some other topic relevant to cars. In these cases the
word philosophy is being used as a synonym for argument, or opinion. Webster's Dictionary does give the definition, “pursuit
of wisdom,” as a secondary meaning for philosophy, but it then goes on to limit the scope of this pursuit of wisdom
to “speculative rather than observational means.”
In today’s academic environment, a sound argument is what the Philosopher strives for, and virtually
nothing more. In Philosophy departments in universities, students are graded almost exclusively on the soundness of their
arguments, or for their ability to critically analyze the soundness of someone else's argument. Judging the soundness
of an argument is obviously useful, but it was never intended to be the whole of Philosophy. Since Philosophy is now seen
as dialectic alone, many people believe that Philosophy has little or no practical value, and I have even heard Philosophy
professors suggest that it is little more than a form of amusement.
The
philosophical sects of the Hellenic world had far more mystical intent when they used the word philosophy. The goal of the
mystic is union and direct communion with Ultimate Reality. It is assimilation with, and perfect knowledge of Absolute, Omnipotent
consciousness, what we call God. This assimilation extends to the concept of Theosis, or becoming god.
Pythagoras was calling himself a mystic when he named himself Philosopher,
and this can be shown with a look at the Hellenic philosophy that succeeded him.
The literal meaning of Philosophy in Greek is Love of Wisdom. Plato, who was the most famous of the Pythagoreans (2), wrote
in the Symposium, "Love is the longing for the Good."(3) To the Pythagorean, love was not something that you had.
It was an activity associated with not having. It was a longing, a force that drew us toward its object. Once the object was
achieved, love was replaced by happiness or satisfaction. Love for any particular object was seen as a miss-directed love
for the Good. The Good is God, the One, or Absolute Reality, it is the Universe and all things in it in perfect harmony with
itself. Achieving the Good brought with it happiness, or unqualified satisfaction. Plato taught that a person is happy in
so far as he has the Good, (4) and if the person has the Good he can lack nothing, for the Good is All.
Wisdom is the link between man and the divine and it also is the Divine. Iamblichus the Pythagorean
calls Wisdom, “a virtue through which we are assimilated to the gods in the highest degree.”(5) He also says,
"Wisdom is a certain executive leader of men and of the whole order of nature; and referring cities and homes and the
life of everyone to a divine exemplar, it forms them according to the best similitude- exterminating some things, and purifying
others. Thus, Wisdom renders its possessors similar to Divinity."(6) Heraclitus renders Wisdom as the Good by saying,
"The Wise is One, Alone, unwilling and willing to be spoken of by the name Zeus."(7) In the first part of this phrase
Heraclitus is telling us that, "the Wise," or Wisdom, is a self-subsisting Unity. In the second part he is saying
that its nature is otherwise indefinable, but that it is Omnipotent God. To the Pythagorean Zeus, or Jove was synonymous with
The One, Omnipotent God or the Good as we see from this Orphic Hymn:
One is the power divine in all things known,
And One the ruler absolute alone.
For in Jove's
royal body all things lie,
Fire, night and day, earth, water and the sky;
The first begetter’s pleasing
love and mind;
These in his mighty body, Jove confined;
See, how his beauteous head and aspect bright
Illumine
heaven, and scatter boundless light! (8)
The typical path or method of the Pythagorean
philosopher is three-fold; purgative, illuminative, and unitive. In the Pythagorean School the students were divided into
groups, beginners who practiced the purgative training listened to lectures on ethics, and who practiced morality and austerities
designed to help them gain control over, "stomach, sleep, lust and anger."(9) They were made to take mindful walks
in the morning and they were taught the value of silence. For illuminative training, the more advanced studied the reasoning
sciences which we now call the Seven Liberal Arts, specifically, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music, Dialectic, Grammar
and Rhetoric. This was so that, through cognition and logic, they would come to the conviction that Union with God was the
only way to escape the wheel of dissatisfaction and unhappiness they found themselves on.
Finally, for unitive
training the most advanced students were taught meditation. This was called, "contemplation of the One, or contemplating
the Good."(10) There might be someone who would object to my calling contemplation of the One, meditation, because contemplation
is commonly defined as discursive rumination or analysis, and meditation is the shutting down of rumination or analysis. Yet
the act of contemplating the One is the de facto shutting down of rumination and analysis due to the One’s perfectly
simple nature. Neither discourse, nor logical analysis enters there. Using logic to know the One is like using a compass to
get to the North Pole. It only takes you about as far as Prince of Wales Island and then it fails. Try to discursively ruminate
on the One; you will only be able to say what the One is not, like Euclid describing the source and end of all Geometry, the
point, "A point is that which has no part."(11) The One can only be contemplated in the pure silence of the mind.
These training methods were designed to create resonance between the individual and the One, and in so doing cause the individual
to become divine.
The teachings
of the Pythagorean philosophers are virtually identical with those schools of mysticism in the East. Pythagoras taught re-incarnation.
(12) He also taught a concept which became known as Universal Friendship (13), which is identical with the Buddhist concept
of Compassion for All Sentient Beings. He taught his followers to be vegetarians on the grounds of non-violence to animals
and because meat eating inhibits mental silence. (14) The Pythagoreans also practiced a meditation technique call the method
of negation, or the apophatic technique,(15) which is identical to the Neti-neti, technique taught in the Upanishads.(16)
Pythagorean teaching is so similar to the mysticism of India that the Yogi Harish Johari claims Pythagoras learned his wisdom
in India. (17)
Through its earliest definition, the explanations of its
early adherents, through its practice and training, and through comparison to eastern schools of mysticism we see that Philosophy
was meant to be mysticism. We can only speculate as to why it degenerated into logical reasoning alone. Perhaps when Christian
priests replaced Philosophers as the theologians of the West, uninitiated yet educated people, reading the works of men like
Plato and Aristotle assumed that logical reasoning was the whole of Philosophy. This is a position that would doubtless be
encouraged by a Church that could abide no rivals. Whatever the cause, logical reasoning is certainly a pretty toy for the
intellectually active, but it always falls short of the Real. Logical reasoning, however, like the harmonies of music and
the principles of geometry, could not be dissonant with the Universal Symphony, so the Philosopher uses it as a tool to assist
the student to love and strive toward the Good, but it was never intended to be the whole of Philosophy. The true Philosopher
is a lover with a singular focus, who sells all that he has to buy a field in which is a pearl that is the Good. He strives
with all his heart, soul, mind and strength for union with Absolute Reality.
1. Commentary of Hierocles on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, Translated by N. Rowe and Andre Dacier,
Kessinger Publishing, May 2005.
2. Plato. Symposium., 360 B.C.E, Translated by Benjamin Jowe, 205d. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html3. Plato. . Symposium., 360 B.C.E, Translated by Benjamin Jowe, 205a. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html4. Plato. . Symposium., 360 B.C.E, Translated by Benjamin Jowe, 205a. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html5. Iamblichus. The Exhortation to Philosophy, Translated by Thomas M. Johnson, 1920. pp121.
6. Iamblichus. The Exhortation to Philosophy, Translated by Thomas M. Johnson, 1920. pp121.
7. Heraclitus. Fragments
of Heraclitus, Translated by Brooks Haxton and James Hillman, February 2001.
8. The Hymns of Orpheus, Translated by Thomas
Taylor, PRS, June 1987.
9. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and library, Translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. Phanes Press,
July 1987. pp 76-82 and 163.
10. Plotinus. Enneads, Translated by. Stephen MacKenna, Penguin, Nov 1991. pp534.
11.
Euclid. The Thirteen Books of the Elements, Translated by Thomas Heath, Dover, June 1956. pp 1.
12. Iamblichus, The Life
of Pythagoras, Translated by Thomas Taylor, Inner Traditions, December, 1986.
13. Iamblichus, The Life of Pythagoras,
Translated by Thomas Taylor, Inner Traditions, December, 1986.
14. Plutarch: Moralia, “On Abstinence from Animals
Flesh,” Translated by Frank Cole Babbit, Kissinger, 2005.
15. Gnosticism and Neoplatonism Ed. R. T. Wallis and
J. Bregman. Studies in Neoplatonism 6. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. pp 425-459.
16. The Principal Upanishads, “Brihad-aranyaka
Upanishad” Ed. Swami Nikhilananda, Dover, June 2003.
17. Johari, Harish, Leela, Destiny Books, September 1993.
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