In 2007 I commenced my studies in philosophy at the VU university Amsterdam and I graduated with an MA in 2012. My focus in these years was to deepen my understanding of the lineage that runs from Spinoza and Nietzsche, through Heidegger, and on to Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben. This is a line of philosophy that emphasises a practice of radical freedom, the search for life-affirming thought, immanence and the transmutation of the very idea of being human. Under the inspiring mentorship of professor Wouter Goris I wrote my thesis on Michel Foucault, exploring the problem of transcendental analysis in his archaeology of knowledge. After my graduation I worked for some years on a PhD project that, however, remains unfinished. With the new comrades I found in this period of intense learning I built enduring friendships that sustain the ongoing quest for the good life.

My driving motivation in studying Western philosophy was to understand the cultural predicament that had led me to the East in my search for meaning. What is the West (for me, at any rate) if its cultural resources lack the basic elements of spiritual fulfilment? What I wanted to understand was the history of the ‘meaning crisis,’ as John Vervaeke now aptly puts it. Nietzsche dealt with this under the rubric of ‘the death of God.’ I myself now approach it as the experience of the loss of the absolute. This loss, I believe, marks the fundamental character of our collective unconscious. The challenge that we face in this context is the question of whether we will prove capable of relating consciously to this loss, and, secondly, whether we can invent novel cultural forms of communion that may once again bring the absolute into presence.

In confronting this challenge I have drawn great inspiration from what are known as the ‘Sophianic traditions.’ The term is one used by Henry Corbin to describe the so called ‘wisdom traditions’ that in their respective ways hold to wisdom as a concrete ideal for human development. For me these sources include Mahayana and Tantric Buddhism, as well as Kashmir Shaivism, Sufism, Gnosticism and the Hermetica. It is my belief that these Sophianic traditions provide us with an authentic understanding of the meaning of ‘wisdom.’ Wisdom, here, is not conceived of just as a human property, but primarily as a divine attribute in which the human can participate. In other words, wisdom is conceived of as an intrinsic quality of Being itself, also understood as primordial awareness or pure consciousness. It is through adopting the proper comportment toward Being that we as individuals can learn to participate in the creative intelligence of the Source. What is required for this is to undergo a conversion to our selves, in such a way that reveals to us the immanence of the Absolute at the heart of our humanity. In short, it is to ‘know thyself’; the philosophical move par excellence.

It is said somewhere that the pathways of knowledge are crooked. The philosophical path, for me, has certainly been long and winding. More than a ‘consolation,’ philosophy is for me rather an exploration of the labyrinth, a search for the core of the maze called mind. This ongoing search can at times be terrific, and at other times terrifying. I know from first-hand the experience of disintegration that can result from critical self-inquiry. I also learned how to put the pieces back together into a new state of integration. When things got tough I often contemplated giving up all together. In recent years, though, I am filled with more and more gratitude for the wondrous journey. It is from this gratitude that I hope to be of help to others who, like me, remain in search of themselves.