Towards a New Renaissance

David Lorimer•redcircle.com

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Religion & Spirituality

In Towards a New Renaissance, David Lorimer reviews significant and inspiring books across a range of disciplines including science, health, philosophy, spirituality, consciousness studies, ecology and politics for open-minded and curious listeners.

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Episodes

Mutual Reciprocity - A Lesson for our Time

In this episode I review two significant - even seminal - books: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Both books convey a message of our need to recover a relationship with Nature by drawing inspiration from how organisms work (in Merlin's case fungi) and to go beyond a reductionist approach outwardly manifest in ecocidal destruction in the name of growth. Here is what Robin says that we all need to remember in terms of ‘original instructions’: land ...

Sep 18, 2022•24 min

Technology and the Human Spirit

In this episode I review three books concerned with the human-machine interface in relation to consciousness and spirituality. Kingsley Dennis and James Tunney are well-versed in the implications of the advent of technocracy as a form of social control and engineering. This view is underpinned by exclusively materialistic and mechanistic philosophy that sees humans as hackable animals to be manipulated and controlled for commercial gain and political hegemony. As Jung indicated over 60 years ago...

May 22, 2022•9 min

Global Emergence

In this episode I review three books discussing our evolutionary potential and the collective choices we need to make in order to co-create a flourishing, regenerative and genuinely sustainable future. First, Choosing Earth by Duane Elgin (see www.choosingearth.org), then The Call to Uniite , edited by Tim Shriver and Tom Rosshirt. Finally, Our Moment of Choice , edited by Robert Aktinson, Kurt Johnson and Deborah Moldow. They make for challenging reading but do give reasons for hope if we can m...

Mar 20, 2022•19 min

Consciousness Unbound

In this episode I review two highly significant new volumes on a post-materialist science of consciousness - Is Conscious Primary? sponsored by the Academy for the Advancement of Post-Materialist Sciences (www.aapsglobal.net) and Consciousness Unbound , emanating from the Esalen Institute and the Department of Perceptual Sciences at the University of Virginia. Both books provide persuasive evidence and cogent arguments (and the first some accounts of personal experiences) to challenge the domina...

Oct 02, 2021•29 min

A Gnostic Revival

In this episode I review two books about the marginalisation and return of gnosis. The first is a masterpiece by classical scholar Peter Kingsley – Catafalque – subtitled ‘Carl Jung and the End of Humanity’ about the inner decay of Western culture that has lost touch with its primordial roots. The second – The Gnosric New Age – by Rice University scholar Prof April DeConick describes how a countercultural spirituality and way of knowing has acted as a transgressive but creative impulse for spiri...

Jul 06, 2021•24 min

Healing Paths

In this episode I review three books on health and healing – the first an extraordinary autobiographical account by Dr Erica Elliot about her time with the Navajo – Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert. Then a book by Maria and Istvan Sagi entitled Healing with Information building on the work of Erich Korbler and advancing the field of vibrational medicine. Finally, another autobiographical account of Janet Edwards healing journey through the cancer minefield – Choosing to Heal. Each of the...

Apr 09, 2021•20 min

Technology and the Future

This episode reviews two significant books giving wider historical and philosophical understandings of technology and technological patterns of thinking. The first is The Metaphysics of Technology by David Skribina and the second In the Shadow of the Machine by Jeremy Naydler, who has recently published a sequel entitled The Struggle for a Human Future . The key question is: what does it mean to be human? And in our time I regard it essential to reaffirm our spiritual nature and the validity of ...

Feb 16, 2021•20 min

The Regeneration Revolution

In this episode I review an important book published in 2012 - Global Awakening, by Michael Schacker. This follows on from a webinar last week with Dr Jim Garrison of Humanity Rising where he spoke of the need for regenerative, not simply sustainable development. He echoes the call by Sir David Attenborough in his recent 'witness statement' A Life on our Planet' for the restoration of the biodiversity that we as the human species have destroyed. The book sets out a roadmap for the necessary Rege...

Nov 30, 2020•15 min

Hermann Hesse - the Wanderer

In this episode I review a magisterial biography of Hesse by Gunnar Decker, discussing Hesse's influence on my life and my communication of his message to my pupils at Winchester College in the 1980s. Themes include beginnings and endings, nationalism and internationalism, and the spiritual quest as an inner journey home. Then I read a wonderful short essay on the wisdom of trees in terms of stillness and endurance: "home is within you or home is nowhere at all."

Oct 21, 2020•14 min

Secular and Mystical Spirituality

In this episode I review two books on spirituality, the first , Secular Spirituality, by Harald Walach, and the second, Belonging to God, by Will Keepin. Both books are important contributions to the field of science and spirituality with an emphasis on inner experience as a means of accessing other levels of reality, as one sees for instance in near-death experiences. Harald's book provides a lot of historical background, with fascinating insights into Roger Bacon, while Will draws of 35 years ...

Aug 15, 2020•20 min

Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology

This episode reviews two landmark handbooks in psychology: The Oxford Book of Psychology and Spirituality and The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology , both of which call for an expansion of the field beyond scientific materialism. Then the third book - I - Reality and Subjectivity by David Hawkins MD, PhD is one of the most brilliant and profound explanations of the relationship between the nonlinear and linear realms - the very fabric of our experience - that every seeker shou...

Jul 14, 2020•28 min

The Will to Power

In this episode I review two books by American philosopher of religion turned foreign policy analyst Prof David Ray Griffin, whose work took an unexpected turn when he was asked to write an article to debunk ‘conspiracy theories’ surrounding 9/11. The further he looked into this, the less plausible and adequate the official accounts appeared. He has written over ten books on the subject, the last two of which I review here. His latest book is A Christian Gospel for Americans.

Jun 13, 2020•25 min

Religion, Metaphor and Justice

In this episode I review a book by Australian scholar David Tacey on religion as metaphor, where he steers a middle path between religious and scientific fundamentalism, promoting a symbolic approach instead; also a biography and DVD of the American theologian and social activist Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps best known as the author of the Serenity Prayer.

Apr 15, 2020•15 min

Dr Albert Schweitzer

This first episode reviews a recent biography of Schweitzer by Nils Ole Oermann - my interest in him goes back to the 1960s when I first heard his Bach organ recordings then I subsequently became interested in his Ethic of Reverence for Life developed at his hospital in Gabon.

Apr 06, 2020•13 min

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