What Damanhurians believe in E-Book

Stambecco Pesco

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 55

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Damanhur is a path of spiritual research, inspired by the teachings of Falco Tarassaco and further developed by the Damanhurians themselves, over many years of living together, into a philosophy of life. These are the principles, the ideas and the rituals of a school of thought that discovers the Divine in every aspect of existence.

Leseprobe

DAMANHUR CON TE Series

WHAT DAMANHURIANS BELIEVE IN

Stambecco Pesco (Silvio Palombo)

Translation: Beira (Tiziana Redoni) and David Sutcliffe

First English Edition DEVODAMA srl, Vidracco (TO), Italy.

ISBN 978-88-99652-75-3

COPYRIGHT 2017© MIL Associazione di Promozione Sociale

The current volume was created by the Associazione di Promozione Sociale MIL as part of the activities and functions of the statute.

All rights reserved. No part of this work can be reproduced in any form without the express written authorization of the editor, except for brief texts to be used in reviews.

Printed June 2017.

The writer Stambecco Pesco (Silvio Palombo) scripted and edited the comic books Il Baule delle Memorie (The Chest of Memories) and Scacco al Tempo (Checkmate to Time) and worked on the volume Credere è Reato? (Is believing a crime?) (EMP). For Devodama he authored Una visita a Damanhur (A visit to Damanhur) and Viaggio nei Templi dell’Umanità (Journey into the Temples of Humankind).

Cover: A group of Damanhurians.

What Damanhurians believe in

Humankind, Gods and the Quesiti1

Circuits in the Sacred Woods Temple

1 The Quesiti are a set of principles representing the basis by which Damanhurians live their lives. This word (Quesito is the singular) has no direct equivalent in English as its meaning stands in between a ‘question’ and a ‘quest’.

Warp and weft

What do Damanhurians believe in? What are the principles of their philosophy of life? Why is the latter not seen as a religion, while yet representing a very well-defined spiritual reality?

Damanhurian philosophy, based on Falco Tarassaco’s teachings and subsequently developed by Falco’s spiritual offspring, is the foundation upon which the Federation of Communities was created and has grown: Damanhurians are involved in many things, from art to education, from politics to the growing of fruit and vegetables organically and so many other areas, but Damanhur is above all a spiritual reality.

The Damanhurian spiritual path, well defined in its fundamental concepts, allows various approaches depending on the different individual inclinations. Spiritual relativism? No, if anything it is mystical provocation, with which Falco used to underline the fact that a spiritual path has value if taken not just according to the principles we believe in but also with full participation of our emotions and our intelligence, day after day, bit by bit.

Falco himself was extremely fond of the dialectics involved in Damanhurians’ interpretations and possible elaborations of the things he said during public meetings. The possibility of exploring, explaining and enriching Damanhurian philosophy, by testing it against different or alternative logics, enables us to see how our own ideas – even on very deep philosophical questions – engage with those of others, over and above any monolithically held dogma. And this surely was and is one of the strong points of Damanhurian spirituality.

Over the forty years of his teachings, Falco constantly sought to convey his spiritual message using a range of modalities based on engaging with others, purposely not producing the book of teachings, a foundation text which would be the key to Damanhurian philosophy. Furthermore, when elaborating upon his ideas, Falco would use different “languages” – esotericism, myth, spirituality, the Quesiti, Spiritual Physics, to mention those that have had the most impact on Damanhur’s adventure. And, within these “languages”, he always maintained the importance of individual doubt, of debate with others, affirming the value of cross-fertilization between different experiences, and the modification that one experience works on another, and the role of picture and frame that the many forms of his teachings take on in respect of each other.

This flexibility, which is based on the principle that every difference is mutual, and mutually enriching, is the warp that binds and maintains the weft of Damanhurian philosophy. At the center of the itinerary proposed by Falco Tarassaco, is the uniting of the human being with his or her divine nature, through contact with the self, with the divine nature that dwells within us all, with the great spiritual ecosystem of which we are a part, often unconsciously. This objective is the core around which the Damanhur experience develops through the activities of the School of Meditation.

The School offers practical courses involving elements of personal development teamed with elements drawn from the esoteric tradition, teaching us how to interact with Forces and laws that go beyond our material plane. The union of these aspects, told in different ways and declined according to the everyday experience of every individual, constitutes the body of Damanhurian belief.

To give meaning

Spirituality does not have to mean believing in a God or following a religion; it is more an attitude to life. This vision of spirituality can be found in other philosophies and confirms an important principle: spirituality is not an achievement, it is rather the natural direction that humankind takes when it is led by its “sense of the divine”. This is an “inner sense”2 which instinctively orientates every individual towards the search for the source of existence. Thus, every individual should instinctively take a spiritual direction that can manifest in a religious, philosophical or gnostic feeling offering a general reading of the panorama of life. Naturally, for this approach to qualify as “spiritual” and not simply cultural, it should represent an aspiring element in daily life.

But let us be clear: “to give meaning” is just the first step. In itself, it is the act that can form the basis for a religion: a well-defined process of approaching God in which all the meanings are already there and the spiritual seekers just need to assign them to the everyday experiences of their lives.

In the Damanhurian spiritual way, which as we have said is not a religion, the emphasis is placed instead on “creating meaning”, given that life is to be experienced moment by moment, creating one’s values as one performs actions, acting such that every deed is an ethical, positive and creative whole affording the opportunities for one’s own and others’ growth.

2 The senses of smell, taste, touch, hearing, sight, are the “outer” senses, to which, according to Damanhurian thought, are added skin, mind and heart. In addition to those, there are five “inner” senses, which project the individual out of his or her self: the sense of dreaming, the sense of the divine, the sense of memory, the sense of exchange, and the sense of desire.

The spiritual experience