We are going to start our journey through time about 13.7 billion years ago. 13.7 billion years is indeed, according to the latest scientific discoveries, the time that has elapsed since the origin of the universe.
Our little personal story, which will last an average of a few decades, is very paltry on this scale. And from this origin we come from, we don’t really know much.
First subject of meditation: we are part of a story that has lasted for 13.7 billion years.
This should fill us with the humility required to calmly approach the pages that follow.
Assuming the status of “digital university of peace” is not easy.
But this name sums up our philosophical position and our ambition: to know not to be master and possessor of nature, but to know to make peace. This does not mean veiling one’s face if “truths” seem disturbing, if they divide us instead of bringing us together. This means that our knowledge of the world and its history will always have the status of a hypothesis, and that the humility that we have already mentioned, we will always use it here in the form of intellectual restraint.
The increase in human and material resources devoted to research on a planetary level leads to the production of new knowledge every day. And this pace will accelerate in a way that is perhaps unimaginable because these discoveries will now also be made by artificial intelligence systems. Description, understanding and vision of the world are therefore bound to change very quickly, and we are aware that our courses will have to be regularly updated.
We therefore ask a little indulgence of specialists who might come across claims that we have not yet had time to correct, and we will be happy to take into account all their comments!
By revisiting the history of our spiritualities, we will be brought to evoke the actions of characters who have shaped our civilizations, cultures and beliefs. For a large part of them, we do not even know if they really existed, and what part of “truth” contains the stories that put them in scene, or the words that are lent to them, transmitted first orally from generation to generation, then through the written word.
Whichever model one adopts for analyzing communication or understanding individual or collective memory, one can be sure that the original message has undergone many transformations. It is enough to see how immediate communication is done today to know that a step back is necessary.
This will not exempt us from the question of sources, their authenticity and their reliability, but the human sciences, as we have seen for the natural sciences, are subject to permanent revision, at the rate of linguistic, archaeological, historical discoveries…: we will therefore pay particular attention to the essence of beliefs, to their universal and specific features.
During your visits to our sites, you will probably look for short summaries, images, 3-minute video clips or other shortcuts to try to grasp in 2 seconds or in 4 lines the meaning of what we are trying to transmit to you because you do not have the time, the patience, the availability of mind to deepen.
If we are to make sense of and unravel millennia of misunderstandings and mistakes, this cannot be done “hastily”. If you want to embark on this “initiation” journey with several stages, we advise you to take your time, to clear your head and, if possible, to forget everything you feel you know, focus on the content that we are going to offer you and meditate on this at length before reacting eventually if you feel the need through the blog that we are going to create. This blog will be exclusively intended to enrich by your knowledge the contents which we will propose and in no case, to speak to us about your personal problems – subjects omnipresent on current media.
We invite you to a long meditation on the state of the world in order to try to draw the right resolutions for the future. Your efforts will undoubtedly be rewarded.
For our part, our entire editorial team will also take their time to substantiate the remarks. We are not subject to any deadlines. So we ask you to give us this time and to be patient.
We have all inherited a heavy past which leads to a very heavy present, not very reassuring, and even frightening… but, neither I, nor any of us who live on this earth in 2020 is responsible for the mistakes made by our near and far ancestors.
We are not responsible for errors made by our near or distant ancestors, but we are responsible for reproducing or endorsing them.
If we do not seek to understand the origin of our dysfunctions, we will repeat the same errors and will be the actors of collective suicide whose process is already underway.
One day, which I wish to be near, we must hope to celebrate a collective and universal “Kippur” (the day of great forgiveness practiced among the Jews) where we will forgive past mistakes to go towards the “new world” that we are in. giving birth slowly but surely.
Welcome, and we wish you a safe journey!
If however you do not agree with the points mentioned above, respecting each other’s progress being one of our fundamental values, please do not join us.
Emmanuel Chouraqui
Steering committee (non-exhaustive list)
Committee of honor
Mr. Federico MAYOR ZARAGOZA –Former Director General of UNESCO, President of
the Cultura de Paz Foundation – Spain
Mr. Doudou DIENE – UN Special Rapporteur
Chief Rabbi René Samuel SIRAT – Former Chief Rabbi of France
Mr. Yehuda LANCRY –Former Israeli Ambassador to the UN and France
Mr. Edmond LISLE – President of the Brotherhood of Abraham
http://www.fraternite-dabraham.com
Pr. Basarab NICOLESCU – President of CIRET (Coordinator with science)
http://ciret-transdisciplinarity.org/index.php
Dr. Magda STAVINSCHI (Coordinator with Orthodox spiritualties)
President of the Association for the dialog between science and thology in Roumania –
ADSTR and the Institute of Transdiciplinary science and society IT4S
Dr. Danielle RAPOPORT – Psychologist
Honorary President of “Bien-traitance, education and research” www.bientraitance.com
Spiritualties of Africa
His Majesty Dada HOUNON HOUNA II – Supreme Leader Vodun Hwoendo – Benin
http://www.unesco.org/new/fr/port-au-prince/about-this-office/singleview/
news/sa_majeste_dada_daagbo_hounon_houna_ii_chef_spirituel_supr/
African Judaism
Pr. Ephraim ISAAC – Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, Director of the Institute of
Semitic Studies and Chairman of the Board of the Ethiopian Center for Peace and
Development.
Judge Joseph RAULINGA – Judge at the Courthouse in Pretoria and located in the South
African capital, bearer of the Jewish identity LEMBA in South Africa.
Peniel ben Yehuda AGHA –Ancient of the IGBO tribe in Nigeria
Christianity
Father Ferdinand POSWICK – Director of the Computer Center and Bible of the Abbey
of Maredsous http://www.maredsous.com/index.php?id=bible , http://www.cibmaredsous.be
Islam
Sheikh Khaled BENTOUNES – Spiritual Guide of the Sufi Brotherhood Alawyyia –
Sheikh Bruno Abd-Al-Haqq GUIDERDONI – Director of l’IHEI
Sheikh Saliou M’BAKE – Spiritual Guide of the MOURIDE (Dakar, Sénégal)
Hinduism
Brahmacharini Dipamrita Chaitanya
The Vedic federation of France
https://federationvediquedefrance.fr
Buddhism
Jean Claude GAUBERT –Representative France SOKA Consistory – Buddhism
http://www.soka-bouddhisme.fr/
Educational committee
Pr. Ibrahima THIOUB –Historian, rector of the University Cheikh Anta DIOP in DAKAR
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahima_Thioub
Pr. Cyril ASLANOV. Linguist. Specialist of the work of André Chouraqui.
http://www.academia.edu/6436644/CURRICULUM_VITAE
Dr. Francine KAUFMANN – Translation and Translation Studies Specialist
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francine_Kaufmann
Prof. Jacques SCHEUER – Emeritus Professor of History of Religions and Philosophies of
Asia, Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Specialist
Hinduism and Buddhism of India.
Dr. Bertrand ROSSIGNOL -Doctor in the history of religions, specialist in Japanese
Buddhism, coordinator with historians of other spiritualties of Asia.
Pr. Meir BAR-ASHER – Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem and currently director of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature.
Dr. Antoine ARJAKOVSKY – Doctor in History of EHESS, Founder of the Institute
Ecumenical Studies of Lviv at the Catholic University of Ukraine.
Co-director of the “Politics and Religions” department at the College des Bernardins in
Paris. Author of several books on Orthodox Christianity including “What is Orthodoxy?”
(Paris, Gallimard, 2013)
Executive team
Founder designer
Emmanuel CHOURAQUI – Producer Author-director of documentaries. Specialist of the
work and the message of his father André Chouraqui.
Technical director of digital
Mr. Jean – Claude LEVY – expert digital librairies
An IT engineer specializing in the creation of digital libraries, has been developing the essential tools for creating our site for more than 20 years.
Educational engineering
Dr. Florent PASQUIER –
Master lecturer in Education science at the Sorbonne, president of CIRET
https://pasquierflorent.wixsite.com/pasquier
http://lettres.sorbonne-universite.fr/IMG/pdf/curriculum_pasquier.pdf
Coordinator between African Spirituality Animism / Judaism / Christianity / Islam
Mr. Guershon NDUWA –President of the Federation of Black Jews of Africa
http://feujn.fr / ; http://feujn.org
Coordinator with Asian spiritualties
Mr. Vincent PILLEY –Coordinator of Intercultural Events of the Soka Cultural
Association of France