The Problem of Grasping Spiritual Reality
The Problem of Grasping Spiritual Reality
by Dmitry Moiseev
Dmitry Moiseev examines the clash between modern science’s materialistic approach and the spiritual aspects of human existence, drawing on Swiss thinker Frithjof Schuon’s insights.
Despite the fact that German philosophy of life, as early as the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, convincingly refuted the idea that the methods of natural sciences could be in any way suitable for interpreting the phenomena of the ‘world of man’, human spiritual reality, the modern world in its institutional and ideological manifestations persistently imposes a strictly materialistic view of human nature, paying little to no significant attention to the spiritual understanding of life. The claims of natural sciences to provide a comprehensive explanation of human nature, which everyone now encounters during their education in school, in practice lead to the total alienation of man from the very possibility of spiritual life, offering nothing in return.
This thought was wonderfully expressed by the Swiss traditionalist Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) in his work Light on the Ancient Worlds (1965): ‘Modern science, which is rationalistic with respect to its subject and materialistic with respect to its object, can describe our position physically and approximately, but it is incapable of telling us anything about our supra-spatial position in the integrated real Universe... Profane science, trying to penetrate the mystery of things that serve as containers — into space, time, matter, energy — forgets about the mystery of things that are the content: it tries to explain the basic properties of our bodies and the intimate actions of the soul, but it does not know what intellect and being are, and therefore, relying on its “principles”, it is unable to understand what a person is.’
It is hard to argue with these theses of Schuon — indeed, everything truly significant in a person lies far beyond the grasp of natural-scientific understanding. In more noble times, when education was not mass-produced, standardised, and essentially materialistic, a person was given the opportunity to come into contact with the world of the spirit and to find meanings that supported him throughout his entire life. In the current situation, the only path that seems possible to overcome the absurd conceptions of man, imposed by materialistic science, is the path ‘against the modern world’.
(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)
18th thru late 19th Century “Natural Philosophy” was the rational study of God’s Creation. The earlier precursors were monks who illuminated sacred text and studied pea inheritance (Mendel).
Inheritance was most of society i.e. the Three Estates into which people were born and never escaped, along with whatever property of their fathers, until the French Revolution and Napoleon began a change thru Liberal Europe approaching America, which never had hereditary, feudal class structure. Writing constitutions, like scientific “how to” manuals, became a political fad in Liberal Europe.
A certain class of arrogant atheists aligned with Marx and the anti-clerics of the French Revolution took science as proof against God, that everything could be explained via scientific principles. What they really aimed at was eliminating the clergy which held property rights sacrosanct which they, in turn, held as the basis of the despised feudal class system which, in fact, it was.
Aristocrats inherited estates and titles. Bourgeoisie inherited business or government positions. Craftsmen inherited a trade. Peasants inherited a lot of work and restrictions.
Science, in fact, did call this hereditary system into question since everyone did seem to put their pants on the same way. Differences were largely imposed by circumstance. What counted was intelligence and character which transcended class which has progressed to “woke” absurdities.
Today, in Charles Murray’s “Human Diversity”, 2020, we discover that not only IQ but cognitive differences expressed in character, like empathy and conscientiousness, are also hereditary, not within a class, but they are heritable traits with a race. They are what create and maintain stereotypes.
Now, we have Artificial Intelligence which challenges the basis of the Liberal Order, IQ and Character, as opposed to feudal heredity. Our Great Leaders actually can be replaced by learning machines although to what extent, we don’t know.
I suspect entirely. The brain and nervous system are after all part of the muscular system which machines have been replacing for centuries. A good boss is nothing more than someone who has learned the principles and has the character and brains to apply them, all of which can be replicated by a learning computer as it once by hereditary classes which apprenticed their young.
This leaves the question of spirituality entirely open to that which was neither life nor the machines created by life, but that which created the elements of both, in the Beginning, and it will certainly leave material arrogance behind.
It will require a disciplined, hierarchical class structure of the like never seen, based upon heritable characteristics and leaving material wealth behind, whether inherited or looted. It will "equality" behind as it must. The Bill Gates, Devos Crowd are too stupid to manage anything like this. They could hire the engineers required but they couldn’t manage the economy, technology, politics i.e. make any of the correct decisions required even with artificial intelligence, which they would corrupt like frivolous wealth corrupts everything else.
I see a Dark Age ahead, a protracted period of turmoil, wrestling with all this, in which capitalism and communism will be seen as merely two faces of the same thing and the Great Traditional Religions aspire to something beyond Saffron Gurus, Bile Thumpers, Zionists or Muslim Fundamentalists although a return to fundamentalism is likely required for a new view in an entirely new era.
The nature of our existance will change to what we, I think will discover, has been there, all along.
In the current situation, the only path that seems possible to overcome the absurd conceptions of man, imposed by materialistic science, is the path ‘against the modern world’.
Succinctly said...sublime even.
John 15:19 - If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.