What is The Anamnesis Project? 

The Anamnesis Project is an initiative dedicated to hosting spaces that support the return of learning and knowledge to their sacred orientation. The project utilises public talks, workshops, contemplative gatherings, and courses to host such spaces. 

What is the meaning of anamnesis and why is it the project’s name?

The Greek word anamnesis means remembrance and recollection. Its use in different initiatory traditions has taken on slightly varying meanings and emphases. Even before Plato developed his theory of anamnesis, the term referred to a deep remembering of what is already present within the human being.* The word is used here in its root sense, not tied to a particular tradition, while remaining accessible to those of any tradition or none. The project draws upon this understanding of anamnesis to elicit and evoke learning and knowledge as forms of inner remembrance and embodied recollection of what is already essential within us: the sacred.

*“Anamnesis—recollection, remembrance; in the Orphico-Pythagorean context, it is understood as a remembrance of one’s true divine nature, revealed through sacred initiation; the idea of memory and the restoration of the soul’s true identity is crucial for the Egyptian tradition as reflected in the Book of the Dead and later employed by Pythagoreans and by Plato, who explains anamnesis as recollection of things known before birth and forgotten (Meno 85d); thus Platonic learning is equated with remembering (Phaedo 72e).” ~ Algis Uždavinys

What is meant by “the sacred?”

The term “sacred” is widely understood to mean something “considered to be holy and deserving respect,” according to the Cambridge Dictionary. Within the context of this project, this general understanding applies, but the term is used in a more specific sense: the sacred is “the direct manifestation of Being in becoming, of the Eternal in the temporal.” (The Need for a Sacred Science)  

Reflecting on the difficulty of defining the sacred, Dr Seyyed Hossein Nasr observed in his 1999 Davidson Lecture, Knowledge and the Sacred:

“Every language possesses these irreducible words like beauty, truth, sacred, which are very difficult to define because in a sense these are primal words. But indirectly we can do it. It relates actually to Source, Beginning, Origin, the Transcendent, the Beyond, That before which one has a sense of awe, of majesty … Religions may differ concerning the rituals, even the theological formations, but they never differ on the sense of the sacred.”

Whether one is affiliated with a particular faith tradition or not, this sense of the sacred  belongs to the shared heritage of humanity.

Who is this project for? 

This project is for those who are attuned to a sense of the sacred, yet find a gap in integrating that orientation with how they learn, how they engage with knowledge, and how they can support that orientation, especially while participating in contemporary cultural contexts that may not naturally nourish it. This project is here to help bridge some of that gap. 

Founder and Facilitator

Mishal Baig is the founder and facilitator of The Anamnesis Project. Previously, she worked for six years at London’s St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace as a programme designer and event facilitator, bridging the themes of spiritual ecology, peacemaking, and reconciliation. She then spent a year as a spiritual ecology facilitator with Emergence Magazine. Mishal holds a Diploma in Journalism from the University of Westminster. You can reach her at [email protected].