Online Zoom Forum: Meister Eckhart: The Spiritual Vision and Influence in His Life and Work.
Date: Wednesday 3 June 2026.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Dr Thomas Clough Daffern:
Bio: Dr Thomas Clough Daffern is a philosopher, historian, peace studies expert, poet and religious studies specialist. He was awarded his PhD from the University of London for a thesis which explores the history of the search for peace, and which proposes a new field of historiography, Transpersonal History. He has taken initiations in many spiritual paths and runs the Commonwealth Interfaith Network. He is Director of the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy (IIPSGP) www.educationaid.net which works across many academic fields to bring together all those with an interest in and a commitment towards the study of peace, nonviolence and philosophy. Thomas taught at the Muslim College 1990-1993 & for the University of London, & University of Oxford 1993-2003. As House of Lords, Research Seminar Convenor (1992-2001) he worked with Lords and MP’s to establish an All Party Group for Peace and Conflict Resolution and co-chaired 35 meetings in parliament on peace policy. He has written over 60 books and is a published historian, philosopher, poet, and specialist in interfaith peace-making. He founded the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the Middle East (https://trcme.wordpress.com/) after many visits to Israel and Palestine and has friends on all sides of these agonising policy choices. He has consistently supported a two state solution and in 1991 he already called on Palestine to adopt a non-violent policy of resistance to stop giving Israel excuses to demonise and attack them. He is particularly interested in the religious and spiritual opportunities for peacemaking in the region and believes that between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Bahaism and Zoroastrianism etc. there should be treaties and declarations of non-violence. For this purpose he has drafted the first Interfaith Peace Treaty (www.Interfaithpeacetreaty.wordpress.com). He sees education as a key resource for peacebuilding and served as a front line philosophy and religious studies teacher for 20 years in the UK, and is also now running the International Delphic Academy to redefine what we mean by education as at root the process of transformational self-knowledge development. He also serves as Chair of the World Intellectuals’ Wisdom Forum (https://worldintellectualforumeurope.weebly.com).
Speakers:
Prof Robert J. Dobie:
Title: Meister Eckhart as Perennial Philosopher.
Description: One of the biggest problems concerning the study of the work of M.E. Is how to classify him: is he a mystic? A mystical theologian? A philosopher? Sui generis? Without ruling out these labels as appropriate for Eckhart's thought, I will argue that we can best look at his thought as a species of "perennial philosophy" - a sort of "summa" of classical metaphysics that, while rooted in and growing out of its scholastic matrix, transcends its time and place to provide universal metaphysical principles. Among these principles are the concepts of ground, birth, detachment, suffering, and intellectual intuition, among others. In particular, I shall explore these themes s with an eye towards contemporary philosophical problems.
Bio: I have been a professor of philosophy and sometime chair of the philosophy department at La Salle University in Philadelphia (USA) for the past 24 years. I have published books on medieval Christian and Islamic mysticism, Medieval philosophy, and J.R.R. Tolkien (full bibliography in the signature below). I have a special interest in metaphysics, particularly from the Middle Ages, the esoteric tradition, and the fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Rev Dr Michael Demkovich:
Title: Eckhart’s Disruptive Spirituality: A Look at Sermon Three.
Description: We live in contentious times of autonomous certitude and ideological isolation, Meister Eckhart’s Spirituality calls us to ‘break through’ (durchbruch) our conceptual knowledge to where ‘God is God.’ German sermon three Nunc scio vere (Walshe 25) gives us an understanding of Eckhart’s unitive mysticism, knowing the unknowable God. I contend that Eckhart’s mystical knowing broke beyond the liminality of his times, and serves as a lesson for our own.
Bio: Fr Michael Demkovich entered the Dominican Order in 1976 and was ordained in 1981. He holds both the pontifical doctorate (SThD) as well as his PhD in Religious Studies from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. His dissertation ‘Life Gives the Most Noble Lessons’ was on Meister Eckhart and his mysticism. He has taught in various graduate schools such as the Blackfriars Oxford, Aquinas Institute St Louis, and Oblate School of Theology San Antonio. He is vice chair of the English Eckhart Society and has published numerous articles and books, as well as being a popular speaker and retreat master. He recently published his ‘Trilogy on Trust’ and is currently working on ‘Thomas Aquinas: Teacher, Preacher, Mystic.’ His works include Introducing Meister Eckhart (2006), A Soul-Centered Life (2010), and We Walk by Faith (2019).
Prof Dietmar Mieth:
Title: Meister Eckharts Concept of "Relation" and its Consequences for the Unity between God and a Human Person.
Description: Meister Eckhart insists as Theologian on the priority of "relation" to "substance". This include the Trinitarian Relations in God and also the Relation between soul and God. The individual name like "Henry" get lost in this unity and will be replaced by the transformation in Christ, the "two in one".
Bio: Dietmar Mieth (+1940), German, Prof.em. (Theological Ethics, Univ. of Tuebingen).
Scientific interests: : Meister Eckhart, Narative Ethics (Thomas Mann), Ethics in the sciences.
Associated since 2009 at the Max Weber Center, Meister Eckhart Research, University of Erfurt.
(Meister Eckhart - An Introduction, Leuven, Peeters 2025.)
M. Ali Lakhani, KC:
Title: Detachment as the Basis for Love: Correspondences between Meister Eckhart, Zen Buddhism and Sufism.
Description: Eckhart’s planimetric metaphysics connects the soul to its transcendent Ground through detachment (Abgescheidenheit), enabling it to operate as the vessel for love, the creative birth of the Word in the soul. The Kyoto School in Zen (through their commentaries on sunyata) and Sufi metaphysicians (in their teachings about fana’ and baqa’) promote similar views.
Bio: M. Ali Lakhani, KC
Mr Lakhani is a Cambridge-educated lawyer (a King’s Counsel) who practiced advocacy in Vancouver for over 40 years, including at the Supreme Court of Canada. He was also a senior member of the Ismaili leadership in Canada and internationally, who headed policy work for the Ismaili community globally, and served as an appointee of the Aga Khan on an international judicial and policy-advisory tribunal.
In 2001 Mr. Lakhani was awarded the First Prize at the Imam Ali International Conference (in Tehran) for his paper on the roots of Muslim jurisprudence in the writings of Imam Ali.
In 1998, Mr. Lakhani founded Sacred Web: A Journal of Tradition and Modernity (www.sacredweb.com), which is the leading journal in its field. It addresses issues of modernity from the perspective of traditional first principles. The journal has been endorsed by, among others, Prince Charles (as he then was), Karen Armstrong, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Huston Smith. Prince Charles introduced both the Sacred Web Conferences: 2006 at the University of Alberta, and 2014, at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Here’s the link to Prince Charles’s 2006 SW Conference Address (University of Alberta):
https://www.sacredweb.com/video/king-charles-sacred-web-conference/
Mr Lakhani has written many articles on diverse matters to do with religion in society, for journals internationally, including for the Doha Institute, and has testified as an expert witness before the Parliamentary Senate of Canada in the area of Islamophobia.
- He has spoken at the Eckhart Society, the Royal Asiatic Society in London, for the Temenos Academy, and he has lectured at Carleton, SFU, University of Victoria, the Institute of Ismaili Studies (London), among others.
Mr Lakhani is the author of four books, including The Sacred Foundations of Justice in Islam (World Wisdom, 2006), The Timeless Relevance of Traditional Wisdom (World Wisdom, 2010) and Faith and Ethics: The Vision of the Ismaili Imamat (IB Tauris and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2018), an examination of the ideas of His Highness the Aga Khan, published on the occasion of his Diamond Jubilee.
Dr Anastasia Wendlinder:
Title: Exploding Metaphors and the Spiritual Vision of Meister Eckhart.
Description: Meister Eckhart is the undeniable master of religious language. His peculiar use of metaphors such as "ground" and "nothing" to refer to both God and the human creates a radical cognitive dissonance, detaching the believer from conventional notions of the divine and creating a space for radical spiritual transformation. I will explore how this linguistic exercise might be useful in today's polarized world.
Bio: Dr Anastasia Wendlinder is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University and formerly served as the director of the Graduate Program in Religious Studies. She received her PhD in Systematic Theology from the University of Notre Dame and her MA from the Graduate Theological Union. Her areas of expertise include the theologies of Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart, the Second Vatican Council, Doctrine and Sacramental Theology, Ecumenism, and Theologies of Liberation. She teaches in and has published a book and a number of articles dealing with the above topics. She is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Eckhart Society, and formerly served as the President of the Assoc. Jesuit Colleges and Universities Consortium on Pastoral, Theological and Ministerial Education, and the Association of Graduate Programs in Ministry.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Cost: By Paypal:
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