What to save when an older relative passes away? And what do the items left behind tell about that person? These were questions put to me by a friend packing the memorabilia of a rather enigmatic departed one. When my father died in Riverside, California, where I grew up, I asked my daughter, who lives […]
“Lord, is there an aim, like perfecting the world or uniting us all into the Godhead?” No, not exactly. There is a purpose but not an end-point. The notion of an end-point derives from the model of the human will and its desires, getting what it wants. The purpose of singing a song is not […]
Another notable book by William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, helped answer this question. The founder of pragmatism, the only distinctively American school of philosophy, James taught not only philosophy but, as Harvard professors did in those days, psychology and physiology as well. He was a man of science but, for him, empiricism did […]
