Saturday 18 March 2017

Contemporary Ignorance


We live in an age when the average person educated to university level is supposedly more intelligent and more morally aware than ever before. The world is run by such people and they are our artists, scientists and political and business leaders. They represent the cream of humanity at a time when humanity has progressed to its most enlightened stage so far. Why then are human beings today more spiritually ignorant than they have ever been? You may not believe this but it was stated by the Masters who spoke to me (and that was in the 1980s, things are worse now), and seems obvious to anyone who looks at the world through spiritual eyes or a mind receptive to higher truths. Oh yes, we are probably 'nicer' to each other nowadays but we are less aware of the true good than we have ever been, with goodness diminished to meaning little more than treating everyone equally and in a friendly fashion, with its aim seen as increasing worldly happiness while correspondingly reducing suffering with no thought of any greater meaning or purpose to life.

So we are now both more intelligent (again, supposedly) and more ignorant. How is that possible? I suggest it has come about because of a rejection of faith or intuition as means of evaluating basic truths. We rely entirely on unsupported reason as a guide to the understanding of life. As our focus on the intellect has increased so we have become more entrenched in our own minds. We are locked inside them, unable to see beyond them to a source of greater truth. We reject tradition because it belongs to the ignorant past and we now know better because we have science. We may indeed know better concerning some areas of life, but only those to do with the immediate physical world. When it comes to truths beyond our everyday experience we assuredly do not know better, and there tradition has a lot to teach us.

We have become arrogant, unable to accept that there is something greater than ourselves. We disguise this with grand sounding phrases about our small position in the universe but the fact is that our ancestors, who saw their world as the very centre of the universe, had a more accurate idea of their place in it because they perceived it in relation to a Creator. Their understanding of inessentials was far less than ours but they grasped the basics. The funny thing is that the most ignorant peasant in the Middle Ages who believed in God had a better understanding of life than the most learned scientist today who does not.

Patterns repeat themselves. Could it be that we have, figuratively speaking, once again gone against the divine command? That is, tasted the forbidden fruit. The thought that science could be regarded as such will be thought absurd but I am not, as such, saying that. What I do say is that it provides a very strong temptation to independent power and knowledge, and we have succumbed to that temptation. We have consequently separated ourselves further out of life and are attempting through technology to make ourselves gods with no thought of the real God. This will, of course, end in failure, probably passing through alienation, despair and madness though we may disguise those from ourselves in various ways and through various means. But that is what it will do, indeed is doing.The only way out is to turn in humility to a higher power and allow ourselves to be guided by that.

Some people conjecture that this is a necessary stage to go through, part of the process that eventually leads us into a deeper spiritual understanding than if we had remained purely passive with regard to the spiritual world and our relation to it. I doubt that. It may have that effect but, like the original Fall, I don't think it was necessary, and that union with God could have been achieved without such a deep and radical separation. But even if I am wrong and it was necessary there is no doubt that the point of return has been reached and we should, without delay, turn our faces back to the spiritual world, realising that that was our origin and should be our goal. For when it comes down to it there is nothing else. Restriction to this world, and to ourselves without the sense of God, is death.

To those who ask why we cannot perceive God if he exists I would reply as follows. Firstly, if we could perceive him we could probably not perceive anything else enough to form our own individual character which is part of what God wants of us since he wants sons and daughters not slaves without minds of their own. Secondly, we cannot perceive him because we have not yet developed those higher faculties which would enable us to do so. To develop these is part of the spiritual path. And thirdly, we cannot perceive him for our own good. We can't even look straight at the sun. How could we see God in our present state without being obliterated? We can see him through his works but to see him directly would be more than overwhelming. Strive, through purifying your heart and pondering his Word, to feel his presence. That is more than enough for anyone in this world. For the rest we have eternity.

1 comment:

David Balfour said...

I find myself praying for Gods forgiveness; both for myself and my loved ones but for the lost prideful modern world. We must repent. This current path is too painful to behold.