This week we have four new additions to our library: a chapter from The Book of Certainty, by Martin Lings, plumbing the depths of Qur’anic and Sufi doctrine with an elucidation of “The Truth of Certainty” (haqq al-yaqin).

“…this nothingness and poverty is the key by which alone one may have access to the Infinite Riches of the Truth; and yet since the being is utterly extinguished in the Truth he cannot be said to have gained possession of Its Riches, for in Reality He has never ceased to possess Them.”

By Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a new audio lecture, “For the Peace from Above”, explaining how peace, that “state of inner peace, of wholeness, of single pointed concentration is the essential context in which all our prayer is expressed.” You can listen online or download the MP3 file for free.

We welcome a new author with an article by Kerrie Hide: “Silence Enflamed: John of the Cross and Prayer”, giving us a genuine insight into the essence of St John of the Cross’s mystical poetry:

“Night is the womb of solitude where Beloved and lover are transformed into each other. ‘Night’ infuses us in eternal wisdom and sustains us as we take the way of the darker nights of contemplation.”

Finally, with thanks to our friends at the Prometheus Trust, we bring a rare selection of Platonist selections “Concerning Prayer”, including original texts from Proclus, Iamblichus and Hierocles. This is a first hand account of the religious life of the Greek philosophers, allowing us to appreciate the pious depths of ancient theurgy:

“To a perfect and true prayer there is required in the first place, a knowledge of all the divine orders to which he who prays approaches…But in the second place, there is required a conformation of our life with that which is divine; and this accompanied with all purity, chastity, discipline, and order.”