Agape and Bhakti with Bataille and Mark at Loyola and St. Francis. David L. Goicoechea

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      We all came to see that phenomenology is a theory of intentional

      consciousness, an attitude of respect for the concrete and a

      method of description begun by Husserl and continued by many.

      At Loyola I was introduced to phenomenology by studying

      Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and we read Heidegger’s

      Being and Time as soon as it was translated into English.

      I continued to work on it with Barbara Henning at St. Francis.

      I memorized the eighty-four headings in the table of contents and gave

      a talk on it at the second workshop in 1965 and John Mayer

      asked me if I would like to come to Brock University to teach.

      That was fortunate for me because at St. Francis a beautiful

      young nun, Sister Carolyn, became ill with tuberculosis

      and when I visited her in the infirmary I told her that I would

      pray for her twice each day and I believed that she would recover.

      I told her that I loved her as if she were my sister, or my

      mother or my wife and that I would always love her forever.

      She told this to Sister Anita Marie, the president of the college.

      Sister called me to her office and told me I should not

      speak like that and that I should get a job teaching elsewhere.

      So when Dr. Mayer asked me to come to Brock it was a relief.

      Studying phenomenology prepared me well for what I would

      encounter at Brock and especially the idea of intentional

      consciousness helped me to think about agape and bhakti.

      The monistic mysticism which sees Atman as Brahman

      sees Brahman as pure being, pure bliss and pure consciousness.

      A personal God always has an intentional consciousness

      as distinct from the pure consciousness of monistic mysticism.

      From the Catholic World to a Secular University

      Mervyn Sprung grew up a Protestant and received his PhD

      in Philosophy from the University of Berlin and deep in his mind

      and heart he was a Buddhist for he loved a philosophy of peace.

      As a Corporal in the army he thought about the war-like ways

      of the people of the Book and the Indian world was not like that.

      Mervyn was always most friendly to me and I thank him from

      the bottom of my heart for because of him I was able to learn

      the philosophies of the East and even came to teach the Gita.

      John Mayer was born of a Jewish father and a Calvinist

      mother and had no inclination in either direction but became

      a Unitarian loving process philosophy and the thought of Buber.

      John also studied the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies and,

      like Mervyn, felt more at home with them than Judeo-Christianity.

      At Brock we never had an Islamic philosopher but we did

      have several Islamic students and some became majors.

      As a Catholic I could be open to other religions and their

      philosophies just as could John and Mervyn and they saw

      and appreciated that as we debated and worked together.

      Just as Augustine learned from Platonists and Thomas from

      Aristotelians and the Franciscans from the Stoics so now

      with John and Mervyn I was eager to learn from India.

      In my introductory course I often taught the Bhagavad Gita

      together with Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.

      From the beginning I taught the philosophy of love and

      many students came to love understanding how agape,

      eros, bhakti, amor fati and the Works of Love could all

      work together and compliment each other in a person’s life.

      Many students came to love the love of wisdom and the wisdom

      of love and became members of the Brock Philosophy Society.

      Still today, Jews, Catholics, Moslems, Protestants, Secular

      Humanists, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and others work together.

      Mark’s Good News

      The Agapetos Reveals Trinitarian Love

      Mark begins his Gospel with the Baptism of Jesus.

      No sooner had he come up out of the water

      then he saw the heavens torn apart

      and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him

      and a voice came from heaven.

      “You are my Son, the Beloved;

      my favor rests on you.”

      The original Greek word for “Beloved” is “Agapetos” and so Jesus’

      new love is announced right away in this little statement.

      We are told about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is like a dove.

      Then right in the middle of Mark’s Gospel at the transfiguration

      again we read,

      And a cloud came, covering them in shadow;

      and there came a voice from the cloud,

      “This is my Son, the Beloved, Listen to him.”

      Again the Father refers to his Son with the word agape which is

      what Jesus came to act out by exorcising the possessed,

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