Parabola’s Spring 2014Â issue features content curated around the theme of wisdom. The first article, “An Inner Wisdom” by Lee van Laer, explores the idea of wisdom as an “outward manifestation of an inward quality,” referencing and connecting the writings of Sufi mystic and philosopher Ibn-Al-Arabi, Russian spiritual writer G.I. Gurdjieff, and Emanuel Swedenborg. Van Laer quotes a long passage from Swedenborg’s Divine Love and Wisdom:
“…since what is wholly itself and unique is substance and form, it follows that it is the unique substance and form, and wholly itself; and since that true substance and form is divine love and wisdom, it follows that it is the unique love, wholly itself, and the unique wisdom, wholly itself. It is therefore the unique essence, wholly itself, and the unique life, wholly itself, since love and wisdom is life.
All this shows how sensually people are thinking when they say that nature exists in its own right, how reliant they are on their physical senses and their darkness in matters of the spirit. They are thinking from the eye and are unable to think from the understanding. Thinking from the eye closes understanding, but thinking from understanding opens the eye. They are unable to entertain any thought about inherent reality and manifestation, any thought that it is eternal, uncreated, and infinite.”
