A QUEST FOR WISDOM: Inspiring Purpose on the Path in Life

David Lorimer's decades of exploration into the fundamental questions of existence are distilled in this important collection of essays, written between the 1980s and the present day. Each essay is introduced in the context of when it was written and what inspired it, which infuses the book with a sense of David's personal journey, also explained in more detail at the beginning of the book in his Formative Background.

There are three sections to the book. The first is entitled Philosophy, Spirituality and Meaning. Here, David presents essays on Victor Frankl, Emanuel Swedenborg, Peter Deunov and Taoism, as well as discourses on beauty and the mysterious. Of the many ideas presented across the essays in this section, two stood out as emblematic of David's message. Firstly, there is the message of integrating the intellect with the will, values, and intuitive modes of knowing. By ensuring a balance and congruence of these human faculties, a life of purpose and coherence is possible. In contrast, disconnected intellect will find itself threatened by all that which it cannot comprehend through logical thought, and this will detract from the felt sources of meaning and purpose that are so essential to life.

Secondly, there is a message of transcending dualities such as such separation and union, implicate and explicate, unknown and unknown, transcendence and immanence. Opposites are friends to wisdom and love, but they can appear threatening to the fear-laced thought that defines so much of normal waking consciousness for many. When fear is the core of experience rather than love, a pervasive intellectual tendency is to bunker done on one side of these pairs of opposites and deny the validity of the other end, even though the two exist in relationship. In this way, the self becomes anchored to a partial truth, and is set against the "others" who purport the contrasting perspective. This is the recipe for conflict and partisanship. Wisdom is the lifelong journey away from this either-or view of knowledge towards one where opposites are complementary.

The second section of the book is entitled Consciousness, Death and Transformation. It contains six essays that consider the nature of death, near-death experiences, the soul and the survival of consciousness. David's erudite weaving of Eastern and Western wisdom provides for a subtle and many-sided consideration of the topic, taking in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Swedenborg and recent NDE science. As with Section 1, David looks past the oppositional dualities that frequently plague discourse on these complex topics, for example the first person vs. third person perspective, and the authority of tradition vs experience. He encourages a both-and approach to these dialectics. Science tends towards third person evidence, but much in terms of evidence about death comes via first person experiences that can at best by conveyed second-hand through words. Religion tends towards the authority of tradition while spirituality frequently places experience as the bellwether of what is true. There is room, David argues, for all these to harmoniously co-exist.

The third section of the book is entitled Taking Responsibility – Ethics and Society. Here David brings his holistic lens to a range of issues relating to social and political concerns. The ethical perspective that underpins this section flows directly from the multi-faceted conception of human nature that is fleshed out through Parts 1 and 2 of the book, in which the mysterious/transcendental/spiritual is a constant context for the physical. Ethical behaviour, David writes, is the natural outcome of being a fully rounded human being, whose mind, will and heart are integrated. An interconnected being gravitates to caring for other living forms as an expression of their relational nature. In contrast, fear leads to a disconnected and dehumanised state of being, which is inimical to ethical behaviour.

An essay in this section entitled Fear of Freedom speaks to our current situation. The message from most authorities around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic has been that freedom must be taken away to ensure safety. Only draconian compulsory mandates that create as much social disconnection as possible, enforced by criminal law, can get human beings through a pandemic, we are told. To ensure compliance with these mandates, government messaging has been designed to maximise fear and minimise the expression of dissenting views. And yet the evidence is clear now – countries and states that respected the ethics of freedom and personal responsibility, such as Finland, Sweden and Japan, and states such as Florida and Nebraska have done just as well in managing Covid-19 as countries that have applied lockdowns, without inflicting anywhere near as much damage on the collective psyche of their population. David's message is congruent with this. His view, with which I wholly concur, is that freedom of inner and outer life remains our best ally, even in difficult times.

When I travelled to Iran many years ago, I visited a Zoroastrian fire temple in a city called Yazd. The priests there had kept the same fire burning day and night for 1500 years. This beautiful symbol of continuity is, I think, an apt metaphor for the task of keeping the light of wisdom burning and bright through the generations. David has devoted his life to tending the fire of wisdom for our times. He has done much to kindle it in word and deed. I am grateful for his dedication to this task and for this book.