Seyyed Hossein Nasr

In this talk, delivered as the 2003-04 Dudleian Lecture at Harvard Divinity School, Dr Nasr argues eloquently for the need to return to a sacred cosmological paradigm.

When you negate that in the beginning was consciousness, and you end up with this idea of consciousness being an island within certain creatures known as human beings, who occupy a certain planet called the earth, then how can we know anything? The Cartesian bifurcation has never been solved. None of the prevalent answers really provide the complete solution. How do I know that something is out there?

When you cut human beings off from that cosmic world of consciousness (…) myth is converted to science fiction and the vision of angels to the experience of extraterrestrial beings and UFOs. A myth then becomes something unreal rather than real. Myth used to be a sacred reality, but now it is seen as unreality. In its place have now come all kinds of pseudo-myths, such as science fiction itself, which is an attempt to try to fill the void with, you might say, pseudo-sacred writings.

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With thanks to the Seyyed Hossein Nasr Foundation.