A Letter From the President

The University of Philosophical Research: The Purpose of a Postmodern Wisdom Academy
Obadiah S. Harris, Ph.D., President

What is modernity? What is postmodernism? What do either have to do with the many wisdom traditions and philosophies? And what impact do they have on each of us - now and for the future?

Modernity refers to that era beginning roughly in 1850. In that period Darwin’s Origin of Species and Marx’s das Capital were both published. Gaining strength from the explosive fruits of the Industrial Revolution, materialism grew in popularity as a “new philosophy.” So-called “value free scientific materialism” presented a view of the world unlike anything previously known. For centuries Western folk took refuge in the notion of a universe created and reigned over by a Father God, in the notion that every person had a soul and free will, and in conviction that Jesus Christ had lived and died for the benefit of Fallen humankind, material science all but totally undermined traditional religiosity. Now humans were devoid of measurable soul, composed of matter alone; furthermore, life itself stemmed from accidental combination of chemicals in ancient seas. Religion was discredited and dethroned, humans seen as no more than upright walking intelligent apes. In such a scheme of things, life itself was without meaning, purpose or ultimate end.

Modernity reformulated how we live and think about nearly everything. The numerous specializations known in today’s universities and technologically oriented corporations are byproducts of one hundred and fifty years of modernity. Yet leading edge thinkers and doers now claim we are leaving modernity for a post modem environment. What do they mean?

Modernity failed. Like that period of religious domination of reality we know as the Dark Ages, modernity imposed an equally limited and limiting view. Where the Dark Ages reduced all experience to religious categories, modernity reduced all facts to categories of material science. In both cases, data and experience falling outside official models was simply denied, or cited as heretical or insane. In the Dark Ages they were explained as evil forces, while modem science’s omission of consciousness from its model necessitates their denial. In either case, one is tempted to claim intellectual dishonesty as the cause of such denial. In fact, the problem lies elsewhere - and dictates the nature of intellectual fashions. Neither model of reality had a comfortable place for such experience as something natural, as something in the natural order of things and events.

We know the ancient world was abuzz with the ideas and methods we teach. We know a period of religious repression followed. Toward the ending of the High Gothic Period, ancient wisdom began to re-emerge in the Latin West. Reintroduction of the notion of gnosis had much to do with catalyzing the Latin Reformation, making both empirical science and the Reformation possible. Some of us know that an age of great speculation, eclecticism and snycreticism of underground Gnostic oriented spirituality reemerged at that time as well. We know, too, the Northern Renaissance received tremendous inspiration from those wonderful myths firing the imagination of that time we know as the Rosicrucian Manifestos. Then something happened. The Enlightenment offset resurgence of mystically oriented inquiry, resulting in the final triumph of modernity by 1850.

Mystical or Gnostic spirituality did not die. It took root in the Romantic Movement. It spurred an occult revival most have been touched by in one way or another. The occult revival of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries grew more extreme, more marginal and more crank as time passed it by. Caught between rapidly growing and increasingly credible science and decreasingly credible religious conservatism, occultism, vainly attempted to find a solid place of its own in the scheme of things. Too often it succeeded only in painting itself into a corner.

Wisdom is known by various names. Gnosis, for example, literally means a kind of knowing. Occult refers to something hidden, while esoteric means something you come to know the inner or hidden truth of. Orthodoxy tells us mysticism can be broken down to reveal something that begins in a mist, is I-centered, and ends in schism as orthodoxy takes mystic and heresy as synonyms. Various terms traditionally employed for wisdom would indicate that such knowledge is special, rare and hidden from common view: that is to say, it is arcane from the perspective of conventional knowledge.

In the 1920’s Mr. Hall, our founder, began developing a school the like of which never existed before. Pythagoras’ Krotona was one model, no doubt the Buddhist universities of ancient India and the Egyptian academies of antiquity added to his vision. But most important to his vision was establishment of a school for modern times, a beacon of light in the darkened world of scientific materialism.

Our task is the next step. Our world quickens even as it waits for a guiding vision yet to be born. We all seek the order and certainty of a vision and knowledge of the world that will make us feel settled and comforted. In that vision the hopes and aspiration of wisdom traditions must gain birth as normative truth, as the stuff of respectable philosophy. They must gain practical application for delivering us to a future worthy of our potential; they must address our dormant, partially realized potential.

Postmodernism is a way of saying we’ve crossed beyond the conventions of the modem period and are desperately seeking a new vision. For the first time in history we are connected to any time, any place. We have electronically available to us the collective wisdom of the human race - or can be at its feet in a matter of hours or days. Augmenting the position of wisdom is its rediscovery at the cutting edge of various sciences; as the mechanical model failed, leading scientists sought answers and solutions anywhere they could be found. Increasing numbers found guiding principles in what we know as esoteric wisdom traditions.

I ask you, where are the Bacons, the Descartes, the Liebnitz’s of today? Are they in our ranks?

I am here to challenge each of you personally to accept the mission of embracing humanity’s wisdom heritage and bringing it forward as an active, co-creating participant in postmodern culture.

Each of you should know that your participation will result in a synergy and a unique community of leading edge emergence. Take comfort knowing that no one knows what the future will become, but that those engaged actively in its creation may actively contribute to its determination. Look upon yourselves as a community of persons holding individual keys, each of which will unlock and reveal a piece of the mystery before us.

I extend an invitation to each of you to move forward with the post modem mission of UPR, to participate in the birth of a new culture, a renaissance, to be a part of a practical leading force in the rebirth of our culture.