John Bardi

Philosophizing without words....

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle

"We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate." Thomas Jefferson

"Here’s what I mean by building your own little subculture….I don’t mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don’t go around naked, for example. I don’t run through red lights. The little things I can obey. But the big things—how we think, what we value—those you must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone—or any society—determine those for you." ("Tuesdays with Morrie," 155)

"It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated." Alec Bourne

"True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess." Louis Nizer

"Unless we are able to overcome the conditioned patterns and mental habits that characterize where we are now, then we will remain stuck where we are now." John Bardi

"In the sense that everyone has an internal operating system, everyone has a philosophy. The philosopher is unique, then, not in having a philosophy—for everyone has an internal operating system—but in endeavoring to discover what that philosophy is. In other words, the philosopher chooses to exercise inquiry on the deepest level—on the level of the internal operating system."

"Soul is not a religious dogma. Soul is simply a term for the inner dimension. Not to be aware of this inner dimension is to be unconscious. To be unconscious is not to be a zombie. It is to be without this special type of inner awareness—the “witness.” It is to be automatic, pre-patterned, and operating on the basis of a program."

"There is a great saying about enlightenment—'Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.' In other words, enlightenment is not about attaining some state we do not currently experience. It is about increasing our awareness, which we already have, of the experiences we are currently having."

"Once many years ago I was touring with Harry Lebherz, a magnificent bass player. After the gig each night we would go to our motel room and jam through the night, producing the most elegant and expressive improvisations. One night, after a particularly satisfying jam, I said, 'Harry, we have to start taping these jams.' He thought for a few moments and then sagely replied, 'No, we just have to keep living our lives in such a way that we can sit down anytime and jam like this.'”

"I would say that the appeal of jamming is the opportunity to enter a mindspace of attuned awareness. As one musician friend put it, in order to jam you have to listen to the cosmic song. There is also a feeling of being joined with the other musicians on some deep, even extrasensory level. One then becomes a channel of a level of creativity beyond what one is ordinarily able to produce."

"I was recently asked what philosophical significance a perfectly rendered virtual reality might have. I replied that it would have no philosophical significance. Asked to explain, I said that a technologically rendered perfect “virtual” world will have no philosophical significance because it will be nothing new. It will only be a technological simulacrum of what already is a perfect virtual reality generator, which is the human body. In short, what we call “reality” IS virtual reality. It is just that it is a biologically constructed experience rather than a technologically rendered one.'

John Schumaker, "In Search of Happiness: understanding an endangered state of mind." Everyone wants to be happy, valuing it above all else, yet we live in a deeply unhappy world. How is this? Schumaker argues that our culture teaches us to seek a fraud--happiness as personal satisfaction--that not only fails to nourish us the core of our being but actually makes us unhappy and even a little bit crazy.

Susan Neimann, "Moral Clarity." Just when philosophy had made itself invisible and irrelevant regarding the problems of the world, Susan Neimann shows up to offer sage advice. To give one tiny example, if you personally have ever done an altruistic deed, then you know for yourself that the claim that there is no such things as altruism, only selfishness, is false.

Ken Wilber, "Integral Spirituality." Ken Wilber is arguably the Aristotle of our time--a polymath who touches on all fields and an expert in the "three cultures" (the sciences, humanities, and meditation). In this book he looks at spirituality from the integral perspective.