{"id":1161,"date":"2019-03-13T14:29:41","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T14:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2019-03-13T14:29:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T14:29:49","slug":"morgans-response-to-medhi-aminrazavis-lecture-on-divine-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/uncategorized\/morgans-response-to-medhi-aminrazavis-lecture-on-divine-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan’s Response to Medhi Aminrazavi’s Lecture on Divine Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Apparently\n25% of the human population in the world <\/em>is\nMuslim. One in four human beings. I didn\u2019t know that. Fundamentalists are the\nextremists who base your value as a human being on how religious and devout you\nare. They consider Sufism as heretical and Sufism actually arose as a reaction\nto the extreme Fundamentalism. There seems to be debate on where the term\n\u201cSufi\u201d came from, such as the Greek word \u201csofia\u201d for\nwisdom, a word for burlap (like the irritating fabric worn by monks), or a\nPersian word for \u201csoft.\u201d They believe that if religion is something\nto truly be believed in, then it must transcend earthly laws (even if those\nlaws are from the religion itself) and focus on something deeper, such as Truth\nand Love. Sufism itself is not a sect, as it has hundreds upon hundreds of\nsects and denominations within itself though most of them believe that being\nstuck on following religious laws for the sake of following them borders on\nidolatry and worshipping the laws themselves rather than God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medhi\nAminrazavi showed segments of a film I think was called Beyond Words, that was\nconsidered very rare footage of an extreme sect of Sufism where initiates engage\nin acts of self-mutilation as expressions of love and devotion to God. Aminrazavi\ncalled this \u201csacred intoxication\u201d and \u201csacred madness,\u201d and\nit followed the idea of being so intoxicated by love that the more you suffer,\nthe more genuine your love for God and your faith in Him. Some people were\nusing knives, as an expression of \u201ccutting off their ego.\u201d Aminrazavi,\nseveral times, referred to it as \u201cutter madness.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s\neven science behind the \u201chigh\u201d of these experiences. There\u2019s a branch\nof brain science called neurotheology, which is the \u201cneuroscience of\nreligion\u201d and it claims that the left temporal lobe is the seat of religious\/spiritual\nexperiences. The left temporal lobe lights up during these experiences, but some\npeople are more prone to these religious highs than others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nlecture was really interesting in that it kept discussing the idea behind\n\u201cthe more you love someone\/something, the more you\u2019re willing to suffer\nfor it\u201d and that, apparently, being in love, especially Divine Love, is madness,\nand that when you\u2019re in love, even if you\u2019re in love with a fellow human being,\nyou\u2019re not acting \u201crationally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\nutterly mad being in love must be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently 25% of the human population in the world is Muslim. One in four human beings. I didn\u2019t know that. Fundamentalists are the extremists who base your value as a human being on how religious and devout you are. They consider Sufism as heretical and Sufism actually arose as a reaction to the extreme Fundamentalism. … Continue reading “Morgan’s Response to Medhi Aminrazavi’s Lecture on Divine Madness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[48,33],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cpr-series-mad-lectures","tag-section-02"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/papJgd-iJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1162,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions\/1162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}