Rolling_Stone
Well-Known Member
Driving through the hills of southern California in the summer is like driving through the folds in a blanket of golden velvet. Up close, though, you see only thorns and brambles. View a mosaic from a distance and the image is clear and beautiful; up close, the image is lost in a jumble isolated bits and pieces.
In the same way, an extremely large, complex and highly automatic-appearing mechanism naturally conceals the intelligence behind it from any and all inhabits very far below the level of the Originator. Therefore, is it inevitable that universe mechanisms would appear mindless to the lower orders intelligences such as man. Making it a conclusion, however, is a matter of philosophy rather than one of evidence or experience.
Assuming the presence of an Originator, it would be a kind of intellectual rape if It compelled in any way, from within or from without, recognition of it by creatures that incapable or unwilling to explore life beyond the most coarse elements of life— physical sensation, emotion and intellect— and cruel to give the same creature a strong desire for knowledge placed beyond his reach. Hence, there is religion. And while wholly natural, it is also optional.
Rationalism’s concept of perfection does not admit to a yearning and need for completion— the disclosure of Totality in the self and the self in Totality. It prefers the perfection of a stone, a perfection in which the relationship between the part and the Whole which is not a drama of two that finds resolution in a third. Religion, on the other hand, is Spirit acting in cooperation with the human mind and gives birth to a living, immortal soul. To rationalism this is superstition. It simply cannot relate to the symbolic character of the language employed by religion any more than an ape can relate to the meaning contained in a book. Even amongst religionists, conditioned to revere objectivity above personal experience, the concept of the union of two natures—God in man and man in God—is confusing.
Religion is by no means a disclosure or experience of anything in the world of things. God is not an object or thing, but spirit. One cannot experience or enter into communion with spirit through any sort of objectification. God is life, and his Being comes to light after the division of subject and object. A doctrine that professes to meet the needs of abstract reason kills God, so to speak, by depriving him of a dynamic presence in the interior life.
In the same way, an extremely large, complex and highly automatic-appearing mechanism naturally conceals the intelligence behind it from any and all inhabits very far below the level of the Originator. Therefore, is it inevitable that universe mechanisms would appear mindless to the lower orders intelligences such as man. Making it a conclusion, however, is a matter of philosophy rather than one of evidence or experience.
Assuming the presence of an Originator, it would be a kind of intellectual rape if It compelled in any way, from within or from without, recognition of it by creatures that incapable or unwilling to explore life beyond the most coarse elements of life— physical sensation, emotion and intellect— and cruel to give the same creature a strong desire for knowledge placed beyond his reach. Hence, there is religion. And while wholly natural, it is also optional.
Rationalism’s concept of perfection does not admit to a yearning and need for completion— the disclosure of Totality in the self and the self in Totality. It prefers the perfection of a stone, a perfection in which the relationship between the part and the Whole which is not a drama of two that finds resolution in a third. Religion, on the other hand, is Spirit acting in cooperation with the human mind and gives birth to a living, immortal soul. To rationalism this is superstition. It simply cannot relate to the symbolic character of the language employed by religion any more than an ape can relate to the meaning contained in a book. Even amongst religionists, conditioned to revere objectivity above personal experience, the concept of the union of two natures—God in man and man in God—is confusing.
Religion is by no means a disclosure or experience of anything in the world of things. God is not an object or thing, but spirit. One cannot experience or enter into communion with spirit through any sort of objectification. God is life, and his Being comes to light after the division of subject and object. A doctrine that professes to meet the needs of abstract reason kills God, so to speak, by depriving him of a dynamic presence in the interior life.
