Spirituality Studies 11-1 Spring 2025 15 Patrick Laude Notes [1] “And I think that certain Jews too are here hinted at, for that while they were bitter accusing their neighbors for small faults, and such as came to nothing, they were themselves insensibly committing deadly sins. Herewith towards the end also He was upbraiding them, when He said, You bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, but you will not move them with your finger, and, ye pay tithe of mint and anise, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” (John Chrysostom 2012, 244). [2] As a specific application of this type of understanding, Benson sees the parable of the mote and the beam as crystallizing the way self-knowledge found in piety is perfected through a conjunction of justice and charity (Benson 1846, 78). [3] This has been confirmed, in a way, in psychology, through the notion of projection: “In depth psychology we often find projection to reveal in the other disturbing, unwanted, painful, shadow elements; the ‘speck’ I see in my brother’s eye would likely take the shape of that which I ‘fail to see’ (deny, repress, or suppress) in mine own eye in the form of his sin or shortcoming, something ‘in need’ of being ‘looked at’ or evaluated and consequently condemned or forgiven (‘taken out’).” (Sandoval 2017, 115). [4] “The soul’s naked being finds the naked, formless being of the divine unity” (Sermon 83: Renovamini spiritu; Eckhart 1981, 206). [5] On Iblis see the 10th century scholar and mystic Abū Tālib al-Makki (Renard 2004, 252–253; Murata 1992, 42). [6] The term “henotheism” was first coined by Max Müller: “Müller noted that the various deities invoked in the hymns were each in turn felt to be supreme and absolute… This feature is one which Müller called henotheism – ‘a worship of single gods’, as opposed to monotheism (‘the worship of one god involving a denial of all other gods’) and polytheism (‘the worship of many deities which together form one divine polity’).” (Smart, Clayton, Sherry and Katz 1985, 203). [7] “That person [Sa. purusha] is the great Lord; he is the mover of existence, he possesses that purest power of reaching everything, he is light, he is undecaying. The person [Sa. purusha], not larger than a thumb, dwelling within, always dwelling in the heart of man, is perceived by the heart, the thought, the mind; they who know it become immortal.” (Müller 1965, 246). [8] “‘Purusha’ is a Sanskrit word with various meanings: man, human, presiding deity, transcendent being, and so on. Unlike other terms associated with the divine, purusha is not abstract and is certainly corporeal, a term applied commonly to the body or embodied subjects.” (Vemsani 2016, 217). “According to the Samkhya thinkers, the universe consists of two separate realities: ‘Purusha’ and ‘Prakriti’. ‘Purusha’ is designated as pure consciousness whereas ‘Prakriti’ is regarded as the unconscious material reality. As pure consciousness, ‘Purusha’ is called a witness, a seer, an experiencer and an enjoyer of the artifacts of the material ‘Prakriti’” (Malhotra 2001, 6). [9] “Socrates: ‘Well, and is it an easy thing to know oneself, and was it a mere scamp who inscribed these words on the temple at Delphi; or is it a hard thing, and not a task for anybody? Alcibiades. I have often thought, Socrates, that it was for anybody; but often, too, that it was very hard.’” (Plato 2005, 195).
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