at Brock, was one of the three Canadians.
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,
