Eric Scheske

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Existence Strikes Back

Existence Strikes Back

Wisdom pursues reality. A region of reality (“the Tao”) isn’t knowable. Wisdom respects reality’s unknowability while pursuing reality nonetheless. This unending pursuit reached its apex in the 13th century, then the pursuit started to decline. Modernity was the rejection of the Tao ("The Great Rejection"). Postmodernity is the rejection of The Great Rejection. These essays tell the story.

Why Gnosticism is Left Hemispheric

Why Gnosticism is Left Hemispheric

Gnosticism is logical. In fact, it can be argued that logic and rational conclusions are the gnostic's gods. The gnostic uses rationality to construct abstract ideas of how the world works . . . of what full reality is. The gnostic then embodies these abstract ideas into structures (the belief in

Seven Early Symptoms of the Mental Disease “Modernitis”

Seven Early Symptoms of the Mental Disease “Modernitis”

“Modernitis”: A mental disease, rarely diagnosed, marked by intuitive confidence in one’s ideas and the findings of science

These Six Traits Make a Person a Gnostic

These Six Traits Make a Person a Gnostic

A Diagnostic of the Gnostic Eric Voegelin was to modern gnosticism what Knute Rockne was to Notre Dame football. Rockne didn’t start the ND football program and Voegelin didn’t discover modern gnosticism, but they took their subjects to much higher levels. The Swiss theologian, Hans urs Von Balthasar

Those Hippy Puritans

Those Hippy Puritans

Exploring America's Millenarian Movements 💡The Puritans were Gnostics. If you understand Puritans, you start to understand modern Gnosticism. If you understand modern Gnosticism, you begin to see the glaring problem that is modernity. We are a nation held together, paradoxically, by the agonism of conflicting millenarian projections: communists,

The Elf Lays Down His Harp to Kill an Orc

The Elf Lays Down His Harp to Kill an Orc

A few notes on the Inklings, Iain McGilchrist, and Poetic Language

Thomas Aquinas: Pinnacle to Obsolescence in 200 Years and Why It Matters

Thomas Aquinas: Pinnacle to Obsolescence in 200 Years and Why It Matters

Aquinas knew there was something prior to essence and being. Western culture lost sight of it.

Are You Engaged in the Act of Existence? Then You’re a Man of the Tao

Are You Engaged in the Act of Existence? Then You’re a Man of the Tao

Introducing "The Reality Spectrum"

Tao: The Transcendental Modem

Tao: The Transcendental Modem

For the fortunate few, that router is hard-wired with fiber optic. Most of us only get a wireless connection, and a wobbly one at that.

How to Break on Through to the Other Side

How to Break on Through to the Other Side

The Doors released their first single in 1967: “Break on Through (to the Other Side),” a tribute of sorts to Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. Huxley had been trying to break on through to the other side for years. He put together a splendid book in the 1940s

How to Start Detaching the Door of Reality from Its Hinges

How to Start Detaching the Door of Reality from Its Hinges

You Need to Deal with the Survival Paradox The man who invented the calculator, you might imagine, was pretty freakin’ smart. But he apparently didn’t understand some really freakin’ fundamental things. He one time wrote: “I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which