Dante’s Divine Comedy and Spiritual Awakening

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is many things: a personal crisis, a diatribe against corruption, an unsurpassed poem, a celebration of love. But at heart, as Dante described it, it is the realisation that “I am more than I am”, discovered by journeying through three domains of reality. So, what is the nature of this perceptual expanse and how does it come about?
This talk will examine the transformation Dante underwent, which human beings can still undergo. It will focus on what might be called the emergence of Dante’s spiritual intelligence and examine this alongside psychotherapeutic insights. Spiritual intelligence knows many things: that descent and ascent are intimately linked; that time can be experienced in dramatically different ways; that virtues are crucial not so much for moral reasons but because they connect with reality; that the whole of life is one life, unified not through uniformity but, as Dante describes it, like a book of many leaves bound by love, each with its part. The talk will assume no knowledge of the Divine Comedy and serve as an introduction, as well as exploration and application.