Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Necessary Wisdom
    Necessary Wisdom
    Necessary Wisdom
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    Necessary Wisdom

    By D. Patrick Miller

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Throughout an illustrious career of teaching and writing that spans five decades, philosopher Jacob Needleman has always tackled the “big questions” of life: Why are we here? What is our purpose? Why do we search for love, and for God? Instead of giving fixed answers, Dr. Needleman has always helped his students and readers learn to ask deeper questions that help them become their own philosophers.

    Only one reporter has followed the career of Jacob Needleman closely for decades: D. Patrick Miller, a leading writer in the journalism of consciousness. In this collection of six feature interviews that began in the 1980s, Miller and Needleman discuss Making Sense of Mysticism, The Secrets of Time and Love, The Meanings of Money, Searching for the Soul of America, Meeting God Without Religion, and finally, The Need for Philosophy.

    With the problems that face humanity today, no solutions will work without the wisdom to implement them. Wisdom comes not from knowing all the right answers, but from knowing how to question deeply and communicate openly. In this remarkable book of searching yet down-to-earth dialogues, readers will discover the keys to their own practice of philosophy, “the love of wisdom.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherD. Patrick Miller
    Release dateJan 30, 2013
    ISBN9781301197989
    Necessary Wisdom
    Author

    D. Patrick Miller

    Patrick D. Miller is Charles T. Haley Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author of numerous books, including The Religion of Ancient Israel. He is coeditor of the Interpretation commentary series and the Westminster Bible Companion series. In 1998, he served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature. He was also editor of Theology Today for twenty years.

    Read more from D. Patrick Miller

    Related to Necessary Wisdom

    Related ebooks

    New Age & Spirituality For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Psychedelic INSIGHT

      Nov 22, 2022

      Psychedelic INSIGHT
      12 min read

    • Article

      BOOKMARK THIS read…listen…stream

      Dec 13, 2022

      Patricia Rockman, MD; Allison McLay, DCS; and M. Lee Freedman, MD • New Harbinger Nothing can kill the spirit of genuine mindfulness more quickly than a one-size-fits-all attitude, and nowhere is that illustrated more potently than with teenagers. If

      4 min read

    • Article

      Bookmark This

      Dec 17, 2019

      Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive Marc Brackett • Celadon Books Brackett—founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence—came to this work with a mission born from his own experience o

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Heart Of A Story

      Mar 22, 2022

      The Heart Of A Story
      4 min read

    • Article

      Shinzen Young

      Nov 17, 2020

      I SOMETIMES SAY: “I’m a Jewish-American Buddhist teacher who got turned on to comparative mysticism by an Irish-Catholic priest and who has developed a Burmese-Japanese fusion practice inspired by the spirit of quantified science.” I was born in 1944

      2 min read

    • Article

      This Essentially Meaningless Conflict

      Sep 22, 2017

      MARILYNNE ROBINSON’S accomplishments are impressive by any standard: she has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal, among other honors. But perhaps a better measure o

      8 min read

    • Article

      BOOKMARK THIS read…listen…stream

      Jan 26, 2021

      The Path Back to Connection in a Fractured World Sarah Wilson • Dey St. Anyone who read Sarah Wilson’s First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, her remarkable 2018 memoir about shifting our approach to anxiety and mental illness, will have high expectatio

      8 min read

    • Article

      Book Reviews

      Mar 1, 2020

      Award-winning journalist Johann Hari has suffered from depression since he was a child, and started taking antidepressants when he was a teenager. He was told that his problems were caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, and traine

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Dark Side of Awe

      Jan 29, 2024

      The Dark Side of Awe
      10 min read

    • Article

      Dharma Faqs

      Nov 20, 2018

      Dharma Faqs
      2 min read

    • Article

      Bookmark This read…listen…stream

      Apr 1, 2020

      How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage Kelly McGonigal, PhD • Avery McGonigal’s thesis is simple—as humans, we are hardwired for movement. She builds her case through a wide-ranging survey of scientific studies, interview

      7 min read

    • Article

      Booked In For Therapy

      Jun 12, 2019

      Booked In For Therapy
      7 min read

    • Article

      BOOKMARK THIS read…listen…stream

      Dec 28, 2021

      Jose Silveira, MD, and Patricia Rockman, MD • Oxford University Press This is an extraordinarily honest book about one of the hardest challenges we face: assessing and treating mental health problems and addictions. We’d like them reduced to a checkl

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Choice Is Ours

      Mar 4, 2024

      In December 1866, mathematician Mary Boole wrote to Charles Darwin: Do you consider the holding of your Theory of Natural Selection, in its fullest & most unreserved sense, to be inconsistent,—I do not say with any particular scheme of Theological do

      3 min read

    • Article

      Faith For Troubled Times

      May 18, 2021

      Faith For Troubled Times
      4 min read

    • Article

      More From Lion’s Roar

      Jul 20, 2021

      More From Lion’s Roar
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Rosary In My Pocket

      May 23, 2023

      A Rosary In My Pocket
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Necessary Wisdom

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Necessary Wisdom - D. Patrick Miller

      NECESSARY WISDOM

      Jacob Needleman Talks About God, Time, Money,

      Love, and the Need for Philosophy

      in conversations with D. Patrick Miller

      Published by D. Patrick Miller at Smashwords

      © 2011 by D. Patrick Miller

      Smashwords Edition

      All Rights Reserved

      Smashwords Edition, License Notice

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank for respecting the hard work of this author.

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Making Sense of Mysticism

      The Secrets of Time and Love

      The Meanings of Money

      Searching for the Soul of America

      Meeting God Without Religion

      The Need for Philosophy

      . . .

      The Works of Jacob Needleman

      About the Interviewer

      Acknowledgments

      INTRODUCTION

      "Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question"

      e.e. cummings

      When I was twenty, a smart girlfriend who had her hands full saving my sanity gave me a paperback and said, Here, read this. The book was philosopher Jacob Needleman’s The New Religions, and therein I found a passage that has come to mind periodically ever since. As I’ve struggled and slept along a faintly marked trail between the devil and the deep blue sea — or what I like to call my spiritual path— this paragraph has served me well as a sort of recurring signpost. In discussing the central crisis of Western religion, Needleman wrote:

      It is as though millions of people suffering from a painful disease were to gather together to hear someone read a textbook of medical treatment in which the means necessary to cure their disease were carefully spelled out. It is as though they were all to take great comfort in that book and what they heard, going through their lives knowing that their disease could be cured, quoting passages to their friends, preaching the wonders of this great book, and returning to their congregation from time to time to hear more of the inspiring diagnosis and treatment read to them. Meanwhile, of course, the disease worsens and they eventually die of it, smiling in grateful hope as on their deathbed someone reads to them yet another passage from the text. Perhaps for some a troubling thought crosses their minds as their eyes close for the last time: Haven’t I forgotten something? Something important? Haven’t I forgotten to undergo treatment?

      With the additional retrospect of thirty-odd years, my appreciation of this insight has only increased. The author’s observation applies not only to the use and misuse of the Bible, but also describes how the followers of any spiritual tradition can fail to implement the teachings of their path. Since The New Religions was published in 1970, we have seen the dramatic spread and popularization of such alternative spiritual philosophies as Zen Buddhism, Sufism, Kabbalism, and A Course in Miracles (ACIM), but it remains to be seen whether Western culture is any closer to curing its disease as a result.

      In fact, it could be said that the West suffers primarily from a malady that it doesn’t even recognize. From day to day, we may think that our worst disease is terrorism, gun violence, racism and prejudice, environmental degradation, warfare between nations or cultures, or even physical illnesses such as cancer. But most of these ills could be ameliorated, and some perhaps even eradicated, by the reclamation and exploration of our inner life.

      The materialistic attitudes of the West – which by now are globally pervasive – tend to discourage even the recognition of an inner life. We increasingly believe that our consciousness stems entirely from biochemical reactions in the brain, and that the answers to all our problems will eventually be found in scientific research and technological development. Yet even as science and technology progress, producing remarkable and sometimes dangerous changes in our lifestyles at an ever-increasing pace, the deeper problems of human culture remain: alienation, despair, enmity and misunderstanding, and a fundamental loneliness that separates people from each other in both intimate and social realms.

      Human beings have traditionally turned to religion to deal with these deeper problems. But most mainstream religions have become so weighted with superstition, dogma, and recruitment strategies that they often end up exacerbating the human predicament rather than easing it. What’s been largely lost in our conventional religious traditions is the understanding that, as Jacob Needleman suggested decades ago, the great spiritual teachings are meant to be textbooks for the application of wisdom to our experience in this world. Instead, we tend to treat our books of wisdom as anthologies of beliefs that we merely venerate, or parrot, or rebel against, instead of practical guidebooks that we actually use to explore the territory of our inner lives.

      Fortunately, you don’t need a mainstream religion to discover or explore your inner life. A great gift of newer spiritual paths like Zen and ACIM is that they have reintroduced to Westerners the concept of a spiritual discipline that trains the mind to awaken to spiritual reality. By that, I mean the deep engagement of our personal consciousness with the nature of consciousness itself. This is not a scientific or rational process, and its goal is not a refined knowledge, a particular set of beliefs, or a special way of behaving. For lack of better terms by which to describe the indescribable, the spiritual goal is a higher and more authentic state of being than most of us would normally develop without a discipline.

      When the classic Zen koan asks, What did your face look like before your parents were born? it is invoking a questioning stillness that leads not to a logical answer, but to the direct experience of a deeper reality than our thinking mind can usually grasp. When the Course asserts "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God" it is pointing toward the same mystical awareness.

      A spiritual discipline that many people are not aware of is the practice of philosophy. For most, philosophy may well mean a dry-bones collection of hoary old ideas once written about by a bunch of dead guys. We may have brushed up against Philosophy 101 in college as a throwaway elective; we may even pay lip service to the contributions of such iconic figures as Socrates, Plato, Kierkegaard, or Kant. But not many of us could even briefly summarize what such teachers had to say, or what relevance they might have to our everyday lives.

      Among living philosophers, Jacob Needleman stands out for his lifelong dedication to bringing his discipline out of the academic lecture hall and into the everyday lives of his students and the readers of his best-selling books. While he can knowledgeably discuss the contributions of all the great philosophers and the various traditions they represent, he has always been more interested in helping ordinary people become their own philosophers. In his view, an effective philosopher is not someone who formulates final answers to the great questions of human existence, but someone who constantly asks questions in order to raise ideas that, in turn, provoke deeper and greater questions. It is exactly this ever-progressive questioning and testing of ideas that lies at the heart of genuine spiritual development – and that may lead us, in ways we cannot rationally plan or predict, to the healing of the greatest human problems.

      Born in Philadelphia and raised in a Jewish intellectual environment in which becoming a doctor was the only human thing to do, Jacob Needleman entered Harvard University with the intention of going on to medical school. But then something went awry, as the young student’s obsessions with the big questions of life steered him into the pursuit of philosophy.

      My father never understood what I was doing, Needleman recalls, and his mother didn’t take his decision well either. When the newly-minted Ph.D. (from Yale) was first introduced socially as Dr. Needleman in her presence, she joked He’s not the kind of doctor that does anybody any good, you know.

      Dr. Needleman has never been what an academic philosopher is supposed to be, either. Early on, he departed from the soulless pursuit of argumentative logic and analysis to teach and write at the heart of philosophy, dealing with those Why am I here? questions that inexorably cross over into the academically suspect realm of spirituality. At Harvard he was the only student to sign up for an esoteric course on Vedanta, and in ensuing years he studied Zen and the other westward-drifting Eastern traditions. He also encountered the teachings of the Russian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, which remain a touchstone of his perspective.

      Needleman has spent five decades as a professor at San Francisco State University, with some sabbaticals to write or edit books on consciousness and spirituality, including such landmark works as The Heart of Philosophy, Lost Christianity, Money and the Meaning of Life, The American Soul and, in 2010, What is God? When I met him for our first interview in the late 1980s, I had been following the work of Dr. Needleman for about fifteen years and already considered him my chief mentor in my studies of spirituality. By that time I had abandoned my early interest in investigative reporting and, having taken over the task of saving my own sanity, was just beginning a career that I eventually labeled the journalism of consciousness. I was fortunate to find an editor, Sy Safransky, who shared this interest, and his magazine THE SUN, published in Chapel Hill, N.C., would eventually publish three of the six pieces collected here. Another was featured on my own website over a decade ago, and

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1