The Metaphysical Society - Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza

Publisher: Blackstone Audio Inc
Author: Thomas Cook
Narrator: Charlton Heston
Length: 2 hours (Unabridged)
Download Price: $8.99
Format: Encoded Windows Media
© 2006 Blackstone Audio Inc

A Portuguese Jew living in Holland, Spinoza was excommunicated because of the unorthodox view he took of God.

Spinoza wrote in the rationalist style of a geometric proof to develop his idea of God as the infinite, indwelling cause of all things, a unified causal system that is virtually synonymous with nature. In this system, there is no free will, for all things are necessary and inevitable, and all objects, including humans, are part of God's active self-expression.

Our minds can participate in the eternity of God by focusing on natural laws and the way all things follow from God or nature. Human fulfillment is possible, he believed, only by rejecting our finite, flawed selves and identifying with the eternal within us. Spinoza believed that by doing so we can love God with an immediate devotion without asking anything in return.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
-- Albert Einstein

"Seek and 'ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened, ask and it shall be given unto thee."
--A Biblical Passage

"The true understanding of both the Creator and the creation is considered to be the transcendental or metaphysical knowledge."
-- Bhagavad Gita

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."
-- Isaac Newton