Seekers of Unity

Trailblazer in the extra-ordinary, cartographer of the unknown, Jeffery (Yehuda) Mishlove is a clinical psychologist, host and producer of Thinking Allowed and New Thinking Allowed. Jeffery studied the psychology of religious mysticism, and completed a PhD in Parapsychology, the only ever awarded by an accredited University (Berkley 1980), published later as Psi Development Systems. He is the author of The Roots of Consciousness and The PK Man.   Over the past few decades Jeffery has been a pioneer of innerfaith dialogue and has had the great distinction of interviewing many of characters who have shaped our current world of Mysticism, Religion, Philosophy and Psychology, with the likes of Colin Wilson, David Chalmers, Huston Smith, Irvin Yalom, John Searle, Oliver Sacks, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Jean Houston, Ram Dass, Robert Anton Wilson, Rollo May, Rupert Sheldrake, Stanislav Grof, Steven Pinker, Terence McKenna, U. G. Krishnamurti and Whitley Strieber, just to name a few.  In this lit conversation Jeffrey shares his story with us, tells of his falling in and out of religion, we discuss his most memorable interviews, mystic vs psychic, particularism vs universalism, initiating yourself, being true to ourselves in religion and how to create meaning. We farbreng about the broken tablets and the trees of Eden, we cry, laugh, smile and sing in an adventure of human connection. Join us.  Timestamps: 00:00 Excerpt  01:38 Intro to Jeffrey  04:35 Jeffrey’s Story, in his own words  37:08 Finding/Creating Meaning in a Deconstructed World 39:50 Making Oneness real in our lives | Innerfairth Dialogue 43:59 Do we need to practice one tradition? Particularism vs Universalism   48:43 Did Judaism take a wrong turn with Moses? 50:49 Living between Exile/Samsara and Redemption/Enlightenment: Broken tablets and whole tables, tree of knowledge and tree of life 54:08 Mysticism vs Psychic phenomenon? and What is a Mysticism?  56:18 Jeffrey's favorite interview? 57:56 Conclusion and Upcoming Projects  “We live in an era where the spiritual tradition of the world are everybody inheritance” - Jeffery Mishlove

A Muslim and a Jew walk into a Zoom… (Timestamps below)  I had the distinct privilege of interviewing my Muslim brother Ihsan Alexander, creator of Soul of Islam Radio and a luminous Sufism Youtuber. And what a pleasure it was. Ihsan shares his story, teaches us about the inner dimension of Islam, pushes us towards unity and harmony, guides us in staying true to our tradition while respecting and loving the traditions of others, tells of his corona Ramadan experience and the importance of innerness in religious practice, dispels myths about conflict between the inner and outer, shares his personal spiritual practice with us, shows us how we can escape from the self, become Nothing and ‘get out of our own way,’ and concludes with charging us to ‘be the way,’ to revitalize religion today as a path to light, love and unity.  “To see beauty in the other, that is the path to God” – Ihsan   00:00 Interview with Ihsan  00:35 Introduction   02:11 Live with Ihsan   05:33 Ihsan’s Story and how he received his beautiful name  18:05 What is the inner dimension of Islam?   20:07 Are we all striving after the same unity?  21:23 Proselytism vs harmony? Do we need to convert each other?  23:25 Balancing religious individuality and integrity with religious pluralism and universalism?  30:04 How was Ramadan during Corona?  33:21 Internalized religion vs Religion on display    36:35 Is there tension between the body and soul, the spirit and the law, of Islam?   39:42 Do you find any tension between the internal and external in your own practice?  42:44 Is God conceptualized differently in Sufism vs ‘Orthodox’ Islam?  46:45 Ihsan’s personal spiritual practice  53:43 The inner, psychological experience of Zikr | Forgetting the self  56:42 Escaping from the self  59:20 The Paradox of a Youtube channel about Egolessness  1:05:37 Transforming Religion | Be the way  1:12:09 When to find more of Ihsan  1:14:23 Final words

Yehuda Katz, a brilliant young master of Kabbalah, shares his story, gives us a peek into his beautiful mind and a glimpse though the cosmic star-speckled spheres into the mind of God.   00:00 Introducing Yehuda Katz  04:40 Yehuda’s story, in his own words  11:10 Living an Authentic, Colorful Judaism | Beyond the Black n White      18:02 Ascending through Silence, beyond Words and Images | Via the Bahir  21:11 Seeing Visions vs Beyond Vision | To a Place of Listening  22:53 Imagination in Judaism | פנטזיהדות  27:43 Quieting the Mind in Kabbalah and Eastern Mysticism  30:25 How did we Implement these Ideas into our Lives?  35:58 Understanding Kabbalah contextually | Who's on First?  41:46 Kabbalah vs Hasidut? | The Eternal vs the Timely   47:08 Who are your top Kabbalists and Why?  54:28 Paradigm Shift | Who/What is God to you?  59:56 The Question We Need to Ask Ourselves  1:06:42 Understanding Kabbalah Accurately and Developmentally    1:20:21 Yehuda's Plan going forward  1:25:25 Final Words   To ask Yehuda your own questions, get access to his online classes or hire him as a teacher, please email: LKatz07@Yahoo.com   Join Seekers on: facebook: https://facebook.com/seekersofunityinstagram: https://instagram.com/seekersofunitytwitter: https://www.twitter.com/SeekersofUpodcast: https://anchor.fm/seekersofunitywebsite: https://www.seekersofunity.com Please, Like, Subscribe and Share. Love you.

"In the latter part of the thirteenth century, at the time when theosophic kabbalah was flourishing, there emerged an alternative kabbalistic tradition with a different focus. The main exponent of this tradition was Abraham Abulafia." Explore one of the most important, prolific, complex and controversial figures in the history of Jewish mysticism. A self-proclaimed, Prophet and Messiah, an itinerant Mystic who risked his life attempting to meet the Pope. Banned and ostracized, during his own life time, he has now returned to his rightful place in epic story of Kabbalah.   00:00 Abulafia  01:45 Abulafia’s Biography  16:40 Abulafia’s Opposition   20:13 Abulafia’s Influence  23:30 Abulafia’s Bibliography  26:01 Abulafia’s Kabbalah  33:38 Abulafia’s Messianism   36:41 Abulafia’s Linguistic Mysticism    53:52 Abulafia’s Practice   58:47 Exercise    Part 1: Ezekiel's Vision, Merkaba, Hekhalot, Four Entered the Orchard: https://youtu.be/Ek-bbbhmPLk    Part 2: Midrash, Neoplatonism, 12th-13th Century: https://youtu.be/Wg_DEtvewBM    Part 3: Introduction to the Zohar, the book that changed Judaism forever: https://youtu.be/nObu-d2Xv0I  Subscribe to more quality Kabbalah and Mysticism content, for free: https://www.youtube.com/seekersofunity Sources and Further Reading: Meditation and Kabbalah by Aryeh Kaplan   The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia by Moshe Idel   Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah by Moshe Idel Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism by Moshe Idel Language, Torah and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia by Moshe Idel Abraham Abulafia, Kabbalist and Prophet by Elliot Wolfson The Heart and the Fountain by Joseph Dan Chaye Ha-Olam Ha-Ba - Life in the World to Come, Translated by Yaron Ever Hadani  Abraham Abulafia: Meditations on the Divine Name by Abraham Solomon

Enter the Cosmic Drama of a World of Words, a Mystical Journey, the third holiest textual corpus of Judaism. The undullable Masterpiece, the Magnum Opus of Kabbalah. A Renaissance of Human Spirit, wound to Birth forth again, to have us Reborn, rediscovering our Why.            The Zohar is no book, it’s a World, an intricate, subtle and complex one, it’s the mythological Soul of the Soul of Judaism. Wrestle with its Historical context, controversial Authorship, its internal quixotic Structure, and the daringly provocative Ideas it brought to Life. A Paradigm Shift of Epic Proportions, radically and fundamentally reconceptualizing God, Man, Torah (the Bible) and the World.            Settlers of the frontiers of Consciousness, Perspicacious Pioneers of the undulating precipitous pyrenees of perspecation, Sages, nay Saints, nay sacred Sorcerers, God’s of Men, embarked to Unite the Transcendence and Immanence in the Infinite Divine Romance and bring final messianic closure to the millennia-long arc of the meta-story of the inner life of God. Answering for millions the realest existentially infernal questions, why do we suffer? why are we in a state of internal alienation and external estrangement?            More that the Zohar appeared in our universe at some God given moment, more so do we inhabit the world painstakingly conconted, constructed and conjured by the punctuation, paragraphs and pages, sapphires, spheres and sefirot, sefer, sofer and sipur of this holy text. Augmenting our perception of Being and awareness of the Divine, the unity of our lives, reaching that tipping-point of illumination, the immediacy of the ever-present messianic moment becoming a manifested reality, a tree of Life to all who grasp it, Here and Now.           With this Book we will go out of Exile. - Zohar, 124b, Ra'aya Meheimna   00:00 Zohar, the Masterpiece  06:15 What we’re going to cover  06:59 Historical Context  08:51 Who wrote the Zohar?   13:00 Literary Structure of the Zohar  14:30 Core Ideas of the Zohar: 15:02 God: En Sof, Sefirot and a Divine Romance  26:50 The Human, the Fulcrum of the Cosmos 33:31 Torah, a Secret Code 41:12 The World, Illusions of Duality 43:50 The Meta-Story, From Exile to Redemption 48:58 Post Class Conversation, Knowing thru Love, Writing our own Zohar  “This comes about as close as anybody ever came to actually pushing the entire contents of the universe down into about fourteen cubic inches.” - Terence Mckenna  Introduction to Kabbalah Part 1:   Ezekiel's Vision, Merkaba, Hekhalot, Four Entered the Orchard: https://youtu.be/Ek-bbbhmPLk   Introduction to Kabbalah Part 2:  Midrash, Neoplatonism, 12th-13th Century: https://youtu.be/Wg_DEtvewBM   Subscribe to more quality Kabbalah and Mysticism content, for free: https://www.youtube.com/seekersofunity?sub_confirmation=1  Join Seekers on: facebook: https://facebook.com/seekersofunity instagram: https://instagram.com/seekersofunity podcast: https://anchor.fm/seekersofunity website: https://www.seekersofunity.com  “This is a very Talmudic idea, that somehow a book is the primary reality. The idea in some schools of Hasidism is that all of the future is already contained in the Torah. Then when you ask them, ‘Well, if it’s contained there, then isn’t it predestined’ the answer is no, because the letters are scrambled and only the movement of the present moment through the text correctly unscrambles and arranges the letters.” - Terence McKenna   tags: introduction to Kabbalah intro to Kabbalah History of Kabbalah Holy Zohar Moshe de Leon Sefirot Primary texts of Kabbalah #Zohar #Kabbalah #ProjectUnity

Attempting to explain the mystery of the emergence of 12th-13th Century Kabbalah of Isaac the Blind and Nachmanides in France and Spain, by examining the merger of the mythological genre of early Jewish mysticism with the Neoplatonic philosophy of Ibn Gabirol and Plotinus. And exploring the role that their metaphysics of the 'One and the Many', Unity and Multiplicity, Great Chain of Being and Emanationism, play in Kabbalah.   00:00 The Historical Mystery to solve  06:34 The Genre of Kabbalah  08:43 Midrash-Mythos meets Chakira-Logos  10:18 Neoplatonism: Plato, Philo and Plotinus   14:52 Neoplatonism in Muslim and Jewish thought  19:00 Ibn Gabirol: Mekor Chaim, Fons Vitae  21:31 Kabbalah meets Neoplatonism    23:04 Metaphysics of Neoplatonism: The One and the Many  28:32 Kabbalah of 12th Century Provence   31:09 Reaction against Maimonidean-Aristotelianism  35:44 Kabbalah of 13th Century Catalonia and Girona   41:49 Teaser and Recap  43:48 Question Time

i gave an intro to Kabbalah class, here's how it went..  00:57 Class begins with Definitions   02:01 Exoteric/Revealed vs Esoteric/Secret Torah  04:44 Prerequisites for Studying Kabbalah  06:52 Necessity of Kabbalah | Body and Soul  09:39 Genius of Kabbalah | Integrated Mysticism   12:09 Historical Sketch of Jewish Mysticism   13:48 Biblical Mysticism | Ezekiel's Vision  14:25 Mystical vs Prophetic Experience   16:24 Merkava Mysticism | Second Temple  (20:42 Questions | What is the Purpose of Mitzvot?  26:20 Idols in the Temple? | Beyond Good and Evil)  29:53 The Beautiful Logic of Kabbalah  30:51 Heichalot Mystical Literature  35:12 Four Entered the Garden.. Only one made it out     37:40 (Sefirot)   Subscribe to more quality Kabbalah and Mysticism content, for free: https://www.youtube.com/seekersofunity?sub_confirmation=1   Join Seekers on: facebook: https://facebook.com/seekersofunity  instagram: https://instagram.com/seekersofunity  website: https://www.seekersofunity.com

Gavi Kutliroff is a writer, poet and musician and a firm believer in the necessity of an artistic Jewish renaissance. After studying East Asian Studies and Psychology at Brandeis University, he served as a madrich at Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem. Gavi is pioneering the comparative study of Chinese and Jewish Mysticism, particularly between the Daoist (Zhuangzi) and Hasidic traditions (Rabbi Nachman). He also has a strong affinity for aquariums.  Forget what you know about knowing as we explore, the Limits of Rationality, Rationalism and Mysticism, Identity, Self-Alienation and Dancing around the Infinite Nothingness.  “Knowledge in limitless. The human capacity for knowledge is limited. To use what is limited to pursue what is limitless is dangerous.”    Timestamps:  02:45 Conversation begins   04:29 Scepticism of Rationalism  08:50 Gavi’s Story - Who is Gavi? - Identity Crisis   16:51 Mysticism and Rationalism   19:03 Scepticism and Subjectivity, Information vs Wisdom   21:31 Gavi’s Religious Identity   29:33 Finding Jewish Mysticism   31:45 Self-Alienation in the Universality of Mysticism   41:03 Difference in Similarity, Diversity in Unity   44:14 Difference in Similarity in Self-identity and God’s identity   56:25 Gavi’s thesis: A Comparison of Judaism and Daoism, Rabbi Nachman and Zhuangzi   1:09:18 Playing with Reality   1:13:00 Capital N Nothingness   1:21:05 A Chinese Nothing and a Jewish Nothing   1:26:09 Messianic Paradigms   1:28:25 What Gavi’s up to   1:31:52 Closing words Join the Seekers community:  facebook: https://facebook.com/seekersofunity instagram: https://instagram.com/seekersofunity twitter: https://www.twitter.com/SeekersofU

In this episode we’re going to be exploring some Conceptual Crossovers between Islamic and Jewish Mysticism, Mutual Metaphysics, Similar Soteriology’s and Twinned Theologies.   We’ll discuss the   2:54 Theological idea of the Unity of God,  5:03 The metaphysical concept of the Unity of Being,  10:27 The cosmological ideas of the Gradations of Being,   13:08 The process of becoming one with God,  22:34 and Theories to explain how these ideas are found in both traditions. Sources quoted: “And They Shall Be One Flesh”: On the Language of Mystical Union in Judaism, Adam Afterman. Pdf:  https://www.academia.edu/27761710/Ada...“The Temptation of Abu Yazid”: Hindu and Muslim Mysticism, R. C. Zaehner, p. 129-133. Pdf: https://archive.org/details/hinduandm...Hayom Yom, 18 Kislev, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson   If you’d like to stalk us facebook: https://facebook.com/seekersofunityinstagram: https://instagram.com/seekersofunitytwitter: https://www.twitter.com/seekersofupodcast: https://anchor.fm/seekersofunitywebsite: https://www.seekersofunity.com As always, Like, Share and Subscribe. Love you.

In this interview with Sara Sviri, Professor Emerita of Arabic and Comparative Religions of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, we shall discuss:  03:44 Wisdom of the Heart  04:49 Definition of the Mystic 05:56 Knowing - Ma'rifa  06:32 Poetry by Gilani    10:45 Unity of Being - Waḥdat al-Wujūd   13:09 Unity and Duality   19:45 Sara’s favorite Sufis  23:29 Love and Eros  25:26 Sara’s Story 31:23 The Spiritual Path in Sufism   35:42 Ego - Nafs   36:45 The Spiritual Stations - Makamat and Achwal  39:27 Annihilation and Subsistence - Fana and Baqa   43:14 Establishment and Fluctuation - Tamkin and Talween    Sara’s fields of study include Islamic mysticism, mystical philosophy, comparative aspects of early Islam, the formative period of Islamic mysticism, medieval Jewish mysticism and the mystical wisdom of Ibn al-ʿArabī.    Her first book, The Taste of Hidden Things: Images on the Sufi Path, was published in 1997. Followed In 2008 by her comprehensive Sufi Anthology. In 2013, Sara published her latest work, Perspectives on Early Islamic Mysticism, The World of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and his Contemporaries.   Check out Sara’s YouTube channel where she is sharing her teacher’s, Irina Tweedie’s book, The Chasm of Fire: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1is...  Poem:  From the heavens descend rain of blessing to the earth.   And the earth produces a variety of plants.   From heaven this thing descends to the ground of the hearts.   The hearts quiver.     And from all knowledge that descends to them – sprout different plants   Secrets, wisdoms, union, trust, silent prayer, closeness to the exalted God.   And they grow in the heart, trees and species of flowers.   And it moves, deserts, wastelands, oceans, rivers and mountains.   The heart becomes a place, a place of meeting for humans and demons, angels and spirits   This matter is beyond the intellect.   Strength, and real power,  the will and the knowledge of God Her/Himself.  She/He gives it to a chosen few.   To a rare few of the children of man.  - Gilani   #ProjectUnity