Drops of Wisdom will crush mountains of foolishness

The advancing moral evolution of mankind in modern circumstances is subsiding since all the efforts of homo sapiens to build a highly moral society trying to rest only on their mind and ethics have failed. It is necessary to find more efficient ways of reaching social advancement. So according to Kozma Prutkov we should learn to get to the root of things. The clue to solving this problem is to my mind in returning to intrinsic understanding of philosophy, which was etymologically defined by the genius of Greek philosophy Pythagoras as love for wisdom. It was he who gave philosophy the definition as study on searching for wisdom and the right way of life. Old-time Russians called this original philosophy love for wisdom. But to our regret the concept of wisdom has gone away from modern philosophy. Today mankind is developing in the framework of consumer – oriented thinking of market technocratic society which  is based only on limited abilities of mind or even just elementary reason. And moral way of life doesn’t depend much on it. Thus spiritual wisdom-oriented understanding of problems is so far not accessible for most people on the Earth. And we are facing rapid loss of wisdom in spiritual culture of nations. Mankind is immersing in the quagmire of horrors connected with global crises and continuous wars. Ignorance of people displays especially distinctively in their understanding of the life essence questions “Who am I?” “What am I here for?” and many other key matters.

All said above made us come to the conclusion: it’s high time to realize that with the help of mind and common sense only by absolutizing rational problems and mental life positions it is impossible to mould a high-morality person and to build a society based on high spirituality. It was proved by the history of the last centuries. With all its progressive value human mind proved to be unable to make a spiritual breakthrough in developing nations and building the reign of ratio on the Earth .Philosophers, politicians and the ruling elite of all nations should make the conclusion, that solving such problems is beyond the mind’s power alone. That is not its function. Besides in our mind evil intellectual germs constantly live which give birth to greediness, haterid, ego-centrism, arrogance, envy and many other human vices. That’s why it’s impossible to solve the problem of starvation, to find ways of spiritual rebirth only with the help of lower stages of human intellect.

Global problems of the third millennium can be solved only with the help of spiritual stages of the mind – wisdom, inner sense etc. Only wisdom, this powerful force will allow people to remold themselves morally, to find harmony of their thoughts, words and actions, to live by the laws of love, whose influence can be compared with the power of nuclear energy. For people wisdom is also the higher truth, allowing to cognize the intrinsic meaning of their lives and the universe.

For me the profound study of all those problems began 25 years ago in the framework of Public Academy of Wisdom, which I founded in February 1986 in the town of Tselinograd (now Astana, Kazakhstan). Today this Academy has been fruitfully working in the town of Kineshma Ivanovo region for already 9 years (see the site www.sofiogonia.ru).

Its activities have got 5 main directions:

1)    Monthly sittings to discuss the most complicated matters of conceiving wisdom.

2)    All-Russian and international conferences.

All in all twelve conferences have been organized including publishing their materials. In 2010 articles for the 5 conferences were gathered in one concluding book “Wisdom is the only possible and the most efficient way to Humanity”. There were about 200 authors of the book, including Moscow State University rector Sadovnichy V.A. with the article “Path of a Wise Man”.

3)    Studying and generalizing the experience of teaching “Wisdom Lessons”, as well as special course “How to become not only clever, but wise as well”.

4)    Publishing 27 books on Sophian-related and spiritual development of man and society. Among those books Explanatory Philosophical Dictionary “Eurasian wisdom from A to Z” and a number of manuals on cognizing wisdom can be singled out.

5)    Realizing that the process of achieving wisdom by a person is difficult and quite individual. That’s of why it is necessary to work out concept for individual mastering of wisdom. The author following repeated students and listeners’ questions “What is wisdom?” managed to discover a philosophical formula. Wisdom is (Love+Profound knowledge/Skills)*Consciousness. The formula is interesting for listeners which is proved by their works on the site of the Academy in the column “Intellect is good but wisdom is better”.

The essence of philosophical understanding of wisdom was deeply and exactly expressed by Vladimir Dal’ in his dictionary: “Wisdom a quality of a wise man, combination of the truth and the good, the highest truth, a merger of love and truth, the highest state of mental and moral perfection”. And one more definition: “A wise man, who rests on the good and the truth and combines love and truth in himself, highly sensible and having good intentions”.

So wisdom as the main and priceless, continuously growing in culture spiritual wealth of the society is a noble alloy of values-related, intellectual spiritual, intuitive, transcendental and practical knowledge.

With the time study on wisdom has gradually turned into a special concept of a personality’s mastering of wisdom. That’s why it needed a special name. Again Pyphagorus and his concepts cosmogonia and theogonia helped. Similarly a new concept was called sophiogonia (greek. “sophia” – wisdom and “gonos” – birth, origin, producing posterity). In a free-lance translation it is philosophy, giving a birth to wisdom in a person. While creating and developing sophiogonia the following sections were singled out:

1.     Man, cognize the three-united essence of your nature, make the way to your self-actualization, that is spiritual self-transformation.

2.     What is wisdom as a subject, method, methodology of cognizing and paradigm of man’s spiritual transformation?

3.     Discovery of wisdom’s formula and ways of its realization as a personal life program of a certain personality.

4.     Realizing the main forms of social being and conceiving wisdom in culture and society’s consciousness.

5.     What is spirituality and what ways exist for spiritual transformation of man and society?

6.     Working out methodology of transition of mankind’s consciousness as to relations with nature from noospheric to sophiaspheric stage and as to governing the state from noocracy to sophiaocracy.

7.     Scientific, spiritual, social and economic, technological and cultural matrix of trends for mankind’s advancing  evolution towards the civilization of wisdom.

In the concept of sophiogonia we put special value on understanding ways for reaching harmony and synergy in evolution of the main branches of unified cognition tree of all real: philosophy, science, religion and art, as well as developing a new model of education on the basis of study on wisdom of conciliarism (All-wisdom), its laws forming sophian-like way of life. Gradually all nations irrespective of age and mental peculiarties will master sophian-like laws of life.

For many contemporary thinkers such a concept of philosophy may seem absurd. But it is in my opinion, extremely efficient and soon it will get recognition, if governments and modern philosophers come to realize the disastrous nature of absolutizing rationalism and consumer mentality. Leaders of nations who don’t want to attend the mankind’s funerals should get all the world’s nations accept wisdom  as a paradigm, directing the process of establishing the civization of future. Then perhaps bureaucracy of different countries will find strength, to follow the great historical example of China where all state officials for more than 200 years up to the 20-th century just before their appointment used to take on exam on knowing wisdom of Confucius teaching.  

For Russia such a task may be fulfilled by the philosophy as it was understood by V.I.Dal’: it is love for wisdom, science on man’s reaching wisdom, cognizing the truth and the good, on basics of thinking and cognition. Other nations may use the philosophy which probably will be created in the course of work of World’s Philosophical Forum in Athens. But for successful solution of this task it is necessary to found an institute of wisdom under the aegis of UNESCO which is going to deal with summing up proposals and creating philosophy of man’s personal reaching wisdom, and will turn it into a lever for spiritual transformation of people.

This philosophy will make a strong foundation for developing a new system of education teaching and upbringing which is capable to form a wise way of life with all the world’s nations. But in the author’s view it will take mankind a few hundred years to accomplish it. As “Building materials”, laws of a wise life style the following uppermost objectives of human’s life meaning might serve:

1.     to enthrone Love in everyone’s heart as the main principle and law of being;

2.     to overcome selfishness, to root wise motivation into behaviour in order to think only good things and say only good things and do only the goodness;

3.     to gain excellent health at three major levels: spiritual, mental and social, bodily;

4.     to continuously develop one’s mind through calming, concentration and perfectioning, mastering spiritual level of cognition;

5.     to learn harmoniously combine material wealth with the one of spiritual transformation as a personality;

6.     to achieve spiritual and moral ascending on the basis of implementing the principle: “Don’t do to others what you don’t want to be done to you” (Confucius);

7.     to deeply understand the formula of wisdom: Wisdom=(Love+Deep Knowledge, Skills)*Consciousness and implement it in a life programme;

8.     for everyone to discover spiritual essence inside himself, in his earth brothers and in all real;

9.     to root generosity, mercy, justice, truth, humility in serving people and see as a result great joy and bliss of being.

Only wisdom can still rescue mankind and nature. And no matter that it will take a lot of time and efforts the great goal of mankind’s spiritual and moral rebirth and survival will readily justify all that.

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