Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
What Does Imagination Stand for?
What Does Imagination Stand for?
Xavier Pavie
The Power of Imagination: Shaping Our Future, 3-60, 2025
Imagination has always held a central place in human history, whether it be in religions, myths, legendary tales, or universal stories. This is explained by the answers that imagination can provide to the complex questions that humankind asks ourselves. For Aristotle, what drove humans to philosophize is related to their capacity for wonder in the face of what they could encounter without understanding its meaning or origin: Why thunderstorms and seasons? Why tides and the lunar and solar calendar? Is the earth round, flat, or something else? Where do we come from, and where are we going? These questions arise from wonder in the face of natural elements, in the face of the existence we lead, which prompts us to imagine answers, to reflect on our existence, to question time, and to reason on the basis of our experience. Malebranche writes, “Men are always curious, always inclined to seek the cause of what they see.” Science will offer the best answers as advances and discoveries progress. Nevertheless, between questioning and wonder on the one hand and scientific answers on the other, several centuries can elapse, and imagination then fills the gap left by the absence of a solid answer. This is the role that myths, in particular, could play. Humans, as Malebranche also says, fascinated by everything extraordinary, will provide initial answers with surprising and prodigious stories that aim to terrify others as well as themselves.
Myths are nothing but imaginative constructions that explain what is not yet explainable by science, whether it be natural, cosmic, or social phenomena, from the creation of the world to the status of human beings, including existential questions about our nature and reason. Moreover, our imagination feeds itself, and thought on any subject is fully capable of being stoked to develop further. As Malebranche points out once again, “the imagination warms up on its object, enlarges it further, and is even inclined to add what would be lacking to make it completely marvelous.” For the theologian, being cautious that imagination doesn’t control people is important because it can act independently and, in some way, govern the mind according to its own rules:
On the Purity of European Consciousness and the Limits of Being-Time in the Existential Anthropology of the Late M. Heidegger
On the Purity of European Consciousness and the Limits of Being-Time in the Existential Anthropology of the Late M. Heidegger
Viktor Okorokov
Philosophy and Cosmology 29 (29), 88-115, 2022
The issue of the European thinkers’ purity of consciousness is studied from the standpoint of the later M. Heidegger (in polemic with F.J. Gonzales and T. Sheehan). The article shows that Heidegger, having embarked upon the searching for new thinking, chooses the European thinking origins and, starting from the “Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event)”, he already refuses to distinguish between being and time, that is, he is looking for a third principle (thinking) for their joint grip. We believe it is no longer the being that follows from the understanding of time, but being and time from the understanding of thinking (and even thinking of being). In this new dimension of consciousness, thinking falls into the time-like phenomenology dimension, commuting with being and time. Based on the analysis of the subsequent working of Heidegger, we can conclude that thinking must go through the metaphysics path to return to its wholeness (at the origins), but already to the existential temporal unity. Thinking, commuting with being and time, starts to bend like the light in the black hole (according to the general theory of relativity of Einstein) and split (Heidegger uses the term “the Clearing of Being”).
Existential thinking is a special case of this gap. It was that new dimension of thinking that the mystics and the Eastern sages aspired to. The topos, where being is joined to time, is the ultimate (pure) thinking that has overcome ignorance or attachment to the material world. It is through this dimension we begin to understand not only what being is, but also what time is, as thinking begins to distinguish its time, it temporalizes and starts to listen to its own “breathing” or temporalization of time (Heidegger wrote about). In such dimension, thinking turns into that original topos, when all connected with being flows inherently, be it Gods, humans, or the things grasping (everyone goes the way of being). The ideas of later Heidegger suggest that thinking can appear only where the being clearly exists (and Tao in its non-manifestation). Thinking arises only in conjunction with being and a new topos (thinking of being). Thinking is the gift of the being through the clearing (interspace), the one that allows you to grasp both the being and Tao.
Nevertheless, based on the later M. Heidegger, it can therefore be concluded that almost fifty years after the writing of “Being and Time”, European thinkers still have not learned to think, since what awakens true thought, what should encourage us to think, and what is associated with pure thinking, has not yet awakened. It does look as if the later Heidegger was close to the idea that time reveals not only the being but also consciousness. In the classical dimension of thinking of being beyond the boundaries, both time and the being disappear, thereby closing the path to pure thinking (to avoid the “true”).
To the Origins of the True Existence of Western Thinking: Martin Heidegger and the Ghosts of the European Mind
To the Origins of the True Existence of Western Thinking: Martin Heidegger and the Ghosts of the European Mind
Viktor Okorokov
Philosophy and Cosmology 33 (33), 183-205, 2024
Objective. To show that despite the enormous efforts of M. Heidegger, he failed to find a new way of thinking. Scientific novelty. It is shown that the meeting of two different streams of historical thinking – the destructive thinking of Heidegger, who never stood on the ground of the Pre-Socratics (although he strived for this all his life), and the Pre-Socratic, which gradually lost its vitality in subsequent European culture, never took place. The different streams of thinking – the ancient Greeks and Heidegger – never crossed. The early Greeks sought to understand the nature of essence, that is, they were looking, according to Heidegger, for the first beginning of thinking (and for this they tried to use the tools of openness of thinking, but did not understand its reasons), while Heidegger, who consistently went through a long path of liberation from all the European ones known to him methods of understanding nature, on the contrary, sought to find ways to understand the true nature of human existence, that is, he looked for the second principle of thinking (but also failed to reveal its origins).
It was found that European culture throughout its history has stopped between these two extreme streams of thinking – aimed, on the one hand, at the world of things (essence) and, on the other, at the inner world of man (existence), but in both of these streams there are genuine the beginnings of thinking remained unheard. The analysis shows that throughout his life, Heidegger was looking, in fact, not even for being, but for the being of thinking; more precisely, he was looking for thinking that could exist synchronously with the thought of the ancient Greeks, which allowed him, on the one hand, – to reveal the fall of European culture, and on the other hand, to try to find the motives for future thinking. In our opinion, Heidegger heard the main problem of European culture: logos does not illuminate thinking, does not carry either natural or divine light, it is only similar to a given (often artificial) logical scheme. All ancient religions spoke about this. The ancient Greeks knew this; Plato and Aristotle replaced the true divine light with a system of ideas, concepts, categories and logic.
It seems that the concealment of the true light (nature and gods) is the path of the fall of European culture, about which Nietzsche, Wagner and Heidegger wrote. Thinking exists only where consciousness disintegrates in the spatio-temporal topos of its existence. And logos, as this study shows, can only exist in a split consciousness. Based on this, it is increasingly clear that we have not learned to think like the Greeks and, moreover, in our selfishness we may finally lose this opportunity. On my own behalf, I would like to add: what Heidegger failed to achieve can be clarified along the paths of contact between Western and Eastern thought.
[B] From Shakespeare to Tagore: Reinterpreting English Literature Through Indian Sensibility
From Shakespeare to Tagore: Reinterpreting English Literature Through Indian Sensibility
Sona Parvin, Vatika Sharma, Raj Kumar Deshmukh, Aparajita Shukla
Wissira Research Lab, 2025
English literature has traveled far beyond the borders of its origin, finding new meanings and emotional textures in diverse cultures across the world. Nowhere has this journey been as transformative and creatively fertile as in India-a land where storytelling traditions are ancient, aesthetics is deeply philosophical, and cultural exchange is woven into everyday life. This book, From Shakespeare to Tagore: Reinterpreting English Literature Through Indian Sensibility, emerges from a desire to explore that remarkable encounter. The chapters that follow examine how Indian readers, writers, translators, performers, and thinkers have engaged with English literary texts-not as passive recipients but as active interpreters. From Shakespeare being staged through Kathakali gestures to Tagore reshaping Western Romanticism with Upanishadic depth, from the colonial classroom to modern global literature, India has consistently infused English texts with its own individuality and worldview.
This book does not seek to trace a linear history. Instead, it offers a tapestry of cultural interactions-adaptations, translations, reinterpretations, and hybrid forms of creativity. It highlights how rasa theory enriches the reading of Shakespeare, how Indian English novelists blend global narrative techniques with local realities, and how new digital platforms are globalizing Indian voices in unprecedented ways. Above all, the book celebrates a simple truth: literature thrives when it is shared, exchanged, and reimagined. English literature in India is not a derivative tradition; it is a dialogue-sometimes harmonious, sometimes critical, always evolving. Through this exploration, I hope readers will discover how Indian sensibilities have not only reshaped English texts but also expanded the very horizons of world literature. This work is intended for students, teachers, researchers, and all lovers of literature who believe that cultural intersections create new forms of beauty. May it inspire fresh interpretations and new pathways of understanding in the ever-growing landscape of global literary exchange.
[B] From Plato to Panini to Levinas: The Problem of Language for Philosophy and Theology
From Plato to Panini to Levinas: The Problem of Language for Philosophy and Theology
Ori Z Soltes
Taylor & Francis, 2025
This volume offers an innovative exploration of Western social and religious thought and bridges the expression of a regional imagination with several planetary conversations. It reconnects Plato and philosophy to the issue of theology and religion and the limits of language as an instrument in engaging both disciplines. While beginning with the language problem as Socrates lays it out in Plato’s Cratylus, it wends its way through the Panini-inspired discussion of language across Western thought and turns to an examination of the idea of theodicy—the justice of God in its relationship to humans: how do the innocent suffer—for example, during the Holocaust—in a world made by God? The book ultimately turns arouand to consider how particular contemporary Indian thinkers have taken up both Western thought and the issue of language and its applicability to philosophy and theology. It thus offers new horizons in the Western World and India by connecting Plato’s Cratylus to the works of Saussure, Wittgenstein, Barthes, Derrida, Levinas, as well as to Panini, Aurobindo, Ranjan Dass, Giri, and the Gita. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of philosophy, linguistics, and religion.
Western Esotericism: A Cosmopolitan History and Historiography
Western Esotericism: A Cosmopolitan History and Historiography
Bernardo Schiavetta
Migrating Minds, 47, 2023
From the 1950s onwards, the opening of the research field of the History of Religions to esoteric beliefs and practices worldwide was made possible by cosmopolitan, agnostic, and interdisciplinary positions that eventually responded to the constitutive cosmopolitan nature of esotericism itself. This article aims to show that, if esotericism exists traditionally as an internal phenomenon in many non-Western religions, cosmopolitanism, ie the integration of alien spiritual beliefs and practices, can be seen as a characteristic of Western esotericism from its historical inception, when Pythagoras created his School. This relationship is studied here by distinguishing several moments and three levels of extension: a restricted cosmopolitanism, between two religions (eg Jewish Kabbalah and Christian Kabbalah); an extended cosmopolitanism (as in the case of the late Neoplatonists who practiced a pagan universalism which only excluded Christianity and Judaism); and, finally, a global cosmopolitanism, without exclusions, proposed by Numenius of Apamea in the 2nd century CE.
After the exclusion of Kabbalah and pagan Neoplatonic theurgy in Late antiquity, Renaissance erudite humanists will reintroduce them in Christianized forms. Later, against 19th century scientism, the Theosophical Society extended the cosmopolitanism of Western esotericism to oriental religions. The phenomenon has become global in popular forms of New Age, including Jung’s deep psychology,“shamanisms” and their use of rituals and various psychedelic substances. This overview suggests that minority epistemes suspected of deference to an alien “other” are often suppressed or pushed back into oblivion, and, on the other hand, that cultural globalization phases can transform them into syncretic universals.
[B] Sri Aurobindo und die Transformation der Welt
Rencontre d'Homère et de Sri Aurobindo
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[PDF] Desire, Destiny and Identity: A Comparative Study
Bharata Muni’s concept of Shringara Rasa, Abhinavagupta’s interpretation of
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[TXT] Policy Studies 30 Legalizing Religion: The Indian Supreme Court and Secularism Ronojoy Sen
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