Author: petermatthewbauer

The ‘Alam al-Mithal: Henry Corbin & the Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi

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“Here we shall not be dealing with imagination in the usual sense of the world: neither with fantasy, profane or otherwise, nor with the organ which produces imaginings identified with the unreal,” writes Corbin. Rather, we speak of “a universe endowed with a perfectly ‘objective’ existence and perceived precisely through the Imagination.” As in certain aspects of Tibetan Buddhism such as Dzogchen, this organ of Imagination is the direct doorway into, and state of, the archetypal experience. Read more…

Holy Mountain

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There is no more obvious first choice for a film that epitomizes the spirit of Fifth Sun/Fifth World than Alejandro Jodorowsky’s metamorphic masterpiece The Holy Mountain. This film is the perfect distillation and further advancement of the idea of synesthesia, or the simultaneous perception of harmonic opposites… (click the photo to watch the trailer and read more)

Tarot’s Dynamic Symbolism

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The ability of humankind to navigate life through mythology, ritual, archetypes and the symbolic has been damaged by cultural misapprehension as an attempt by corporate media, etc, to imprison our innate consciousness.  Throughout history, many ancient cultures understood the importance of contacting the sacred through symbol and ritual, of personifying and evoking divine energies, which serve as a universal map of human evolution.  Relating to these universal/spiritual   principles brought forth more oneness between people and with nature itself.  There was a unique, elevated wisdom that crossed cultures and like a finely, woven net of psyche, held the planet and it’s people in a sustainable cohabitation.  Sadly we now live disconnected from one another and have driven our planet into a state of chaos and crisis. We are in serious need of tapping into the sacred as a human race.  And while ancient forms of accessing inner knowledge become popular again, there is a responsibility to respect the traditional methodology and seriousness of such.  The art of tarot has the extraordinary ability to project and …

Longchenpa and Heidegger

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Longchenpa & Heidegger  The Kayas & Multidimensionality from An Archetypal Astrological Perspective / Lecture notes from Peter Matthew Bauer, Seminar on existential psychotherapy at the Washington Center For Consciousness Studies. November 2014. / When we talk about astrology from an archetypal perspective, we are speaking outside the limited and concrete realm of prediction and fortune telling, which, in many ways, is our own mechanistic and modern derivative of the form and more so, its entire undoing. Instead we are trying to resurrect a lost art, a lost language of consciousness. From this archetypal perspective, we are talking about the dramas of our own lives as phenomena and sensory experience infused with awareness, the nirmanakaya in the Buddhist languaging. We are speaking about the planets  as archetypal symbol and myth, as cosmological forces that are an entrance into the archetypal realm, the sambogakaya in that same languaging, and even further into the pure and unmediated space of awareness, the dharmakaya. In this light, astrology can show us the world within us and our self within the …

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Fifth Sun, Fifth World is the journal of the Laurel Canyon Center for Consciousness Studies, based on the west coast of the United States with a headquarters in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles. The basis for the center is an investigation into consciousness as it arises out of art, mystic vision, myth archetype and symbol. (click on the picture for more)

A Recent Discovery

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Henry Corbin’s “Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi” found last week in Washington DC. A longer piece forthcoming. “Suhrawardi died a martyr at the age of thirty-eight in Aleppo, whither he ahd rashly journeyed (1191), a victim of the rabid intolerance of the doctors of the Law and of Salahaddin, the fanatic known to the Crusaders as Saladin. Thoguh his life was cut off too soon, he succeeded in carrying out a great design: in reviving in Iran the wisdom of the ancient Persians, their doctrine of Light and Darkness. The result was the philosophy, or rather, to take the Arabic term in its etymological sense, the “theosophy of Light” (hikmat al-Ishraq) to which we find parallels in many of the pages of Ibn ‘Arabi… The effects of Suhrawardi’s theosophy of Light have been felt in Iran down to our own time. One of its essential features is that it makes philosophy and mystical experience inseperable: a philosophy that does not culminate in a metaphysic of ecstacy is vain speculation.”

Prometheus the Awakener

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Early essay by California professor Richard Tarnas on the hidden archetypal meaning of the planet Uranus. “Suddenly,” Tarnas writes, “from this most improbable and scorned source, we had a method of illuminating both the archetypal character and the timing of individual experiences, including non-ordinary states of consciousness such as those mediated by powerful psychoactive plants and compounds”… (Click on the photo to read more)

Events

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Future announcements of Public Programs, Concerts and Seminars sponsored by The Laurel Canyon Center For Consciousness Studies will be found here. Begun in September 2015, the center envisions a variety of public performances and presentations as it continues to grow from its earliest stages. For more information on upcoming events please contact fifthsunfifthworld@gmail.com Fifth Sun, Fifth World is the journal of the Laurel Canyon Center For Consciousness Studies, based on the west coast of the United States with a headquarters in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles. Founded by Peter Matthew Bauer, singer, composer,  and a founder of seminal New York art rock band the Walkmen, the center searches for a new and contemporary vision of consciousness and worldview, with a foundation based on the esoteric societies of old.  Publication in the journal is by invitation though outside submissions will be considered.