I’m sharing with you a stimulating conversation I had today with a good friend and collegue of mine Dr Thomas Daffern about the state of the world and what we can all do to take us all further together into a planet living at peace.
Thomas, is a philosopher, historian, peace academic, poet, author and religious studies specialist. He was awarded his PhD from the University of London for a thesis which explores the History Of The Search For Peace 1945-2001, and which proposes a new field of historiography, Transpersonal History.
Together, we launching a special Course on Enlightenments East And West:
Examples From The Past And Present, For The Future.
Here’s a little bit about it:
Rationale: This course is premised on a number of underlying hypotheses: firstly, that the situation in the world is now so grave, so multifaceted and so complex, that only some kind of planetary enlightenment can help us get out of it and build a better tomorrow.
It is also premised on the idea that there is not one sole model or way to enlightenment, but a plurality of approaches, which have arisen in different cultures, different times and different places, and that we need to draw on the greatest, wisest, best and most helpful of all these models, in order to work out a planetary synthesis that can take us all further together into a planet living at peace.
For this reason, we speak of enlightenments, plural, as a grammatic innovation in enlightenment theory; in previous eras thinkers spoke of “enlightenment” singular, and offered their own method or “route map”.
But now we realise the world is pluralistic, diverse, multicultural and many-layered and so we prefer to speak about “enlightenments” (plural). See the course manual Enlightenments (2008) by Thomas Daffern.
In this course two leading practitioners of enlightenment theory and practice will be sharing the fruits of two lifetimes of research and experimental life-practice into these complex issues.
You can learn more and register for the course here:
