This, or something like it, is a well known saying. It roughly means that common sense natural perception, uncorrupted by ideology, sees the basic truth about life. People are different, men and women are different, there is a supernatural meaning to the world, an afterlife exists, that sort of thing. But when people are subjected to a certain kind of ideological conditioning and reeducation, they lose their native wit and start imitating what they imagine to be more intellectually correct attitudes. But those few who reject theories and abstractions and are able to look at the world as it is and human beings as they are, develop the direct insight which brings real knowledge. Which is, in fact, the only means to real knowledge. That doesn't mean they are right in all things all the time for they remain subject to human error. But they are largely correct in the broad sweep of things.
It seems clear that as human beings evolve, their intellectual centre, the way they engage with the world, moves. It starts off as an instinctive perception which is God guiding us unconsciously. We don't understand much but we know enough to lead an existence that is more or less in harmony with our immediate environment and the world. This is primitive but it is not out of kilter with reality. As human beings progress and develop intellectually, becoming, in the process, more detached from their environment which makes them better able to understand it on some levels and less able on others, the mental/rational faculties come into play. We lose our connection to Nature and the unconscious oneness with life, and start to guide ourselves from our own understanding.
This is a great step forward but unless it is supported by divine revelation and a proper religion it can lead to blind ignorance as it obviously has now. Reason only operates in the material world which is that of the senses. It cannot rise to higher perception. Consequently we have grown out of the unconscious instinctive mind and into the self-centred mentally focused one and that has now made us prideful enough to reject what cannot be grasped with this new mode of thinking. We desperately need to move on to the next phase for if we don't there is real disaster ahead. We will separate ourselves more and more from reality, ironically enough in the name of reality but a pseudo-reality, of course.
The next phase is the development of intuitive insight, a direct insight into the mind of God. This is the stage when God once again guides us from within but this time the process is conscious. There is an understanding about what we perceive. It is not just instinctive and beyond our control nor is it thinking from a part outside the whole. It is unseparated from being and complete in itself. Thinking is knowing is being, all one movement.
It seems clear that as human beings evolve, their intellectual centre, the way they engage with the world, moves. It starts off as an instinctive perception which is God guiding us unconsciously. We don't understand much but we know enough to lead an existence that is more or less in harmony with our immediate environment and the world. This is primitive but it is not out of kilter with reality. As human beings progress and develop intellectually, becoming, in the process, more detached from their environment which makes them better able to understand it on some levels and less able on others, the mental/rational faculties come into play. We lose our connection to Nature and the unconscious oneness with life, and start to guide ourselves from our own understanding.
This is a great step forward but unless it is supported by divine revelation and a proper religion it can lead to blind ignorance as it obviously has now. Reason only operates in the material world which is that of the senses. It cannot rise to higher perception. Consequently we have grown out of the unconscious instinctive mind and into the self-centred mentally focused one and that has now made us prideful enough to reject what cannot be grasped with this new mode of thinking. We desperately need to move on to the next phase for if we don't there is real disaster ahead. We will separate ourselves more and more from reality, ironically enough in the name of reality but a pseudo-reality, of course.
The next phase is the development of intuitive insight, a direct insight into the mind of God. This is the stage when God once again guides us from within but this time the process is conscious. There is an understanding about what we perceive. It is not just instinctive and beyond our control nor is it thinking from a part outside the whole. It is unseparated from being and complete in itself. Thinking is knowing is being, all one movement.
Clever people are often stupid. By that I mean they don't actually know anything real. This wouldn't matter too much but they think they do and actively reject deeper reality because it goes beyond their understanding. The world is run by such people and our education system turns them out in their thousands. Unless enough people wake up to the higher reality of their own nature and move on from this intellectual dead end into which we have carelessly walked I foresee a collective insanity. Signs of it are already to be seen.
@William - That's very well put.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing is that the current 'Clever' stage is only able to perpetuate itself (and prevent itself from moving-on) by 'dumbness'; since modern 'skeptical' materialism is self-refuting nonsense.
However, it is self-defended by an unwillingness to stick to the point, make connections and think things through - and this is done with such determination and aggression as to be wilful; hence it is actively-sinful.
I think most people sense this, and this feeling is what leads to the kind of defensive 'lashing-out' and wildly-inappropriate hyper-aggression which has become 'normal' in mainstream public discourse in this era.
Yes, I believe you're right about this lashing out in defence of the palpable nonsensical. It's part of the rush into insanity. As the consequences of people's embrace of materialist ideology become more and more extreme, the attempts to uphold it become ever more belligerent. It's as though forcing your mind to believe a lie actually turns you mad.
ReplyDeleteVery similar to my own line of thinking. My experience is that people who are more intuitive minded (primarily) often have deeper personalities with more integrity and are generally more charismatic/mature than rigid "atheist" types. Being rational is not always reasonable, as I believe Kant pointed out, hence strictly rational types often lack moral personality. This makes them mental servants who are good at figuring "things" out but lack the ability to phenomenologically relate to other people hence lack insight of the psyche and soul. I believe this is partly because ideological rationalism goes hand in hand with a type of control-based way of life that is confined to daily consciousness only, while at the same time suppressing the unconscious. This is understandable because our current world is based on that type of "modus operandi", hence we have become over-socialized and neurotic. It's like modern man can't tolerate that he is an actor in a plot that is much bigger than what he is able to control through self and must consult God and release himself to grow inwardly and find himself again.
ReplyDeleteI believe our thiswordly mental bias has lead to a very unhealthy cognitive dissonance. Humans as intuitive beings often know things to be true before we're able to articulate and confirm them. Yet nowadays we are always supposed to "wait" for empirical data and missing pieces to provide evidence for what we already know, and then people start thinking about everything that way. Hence we don't even trust our nature in a wholesome sense. We're bound to endless legal formalism and red tape, because somehow we have externalized our own rational procedures to rule things for us, while leaving the human being behind. We're even blind to the data itself since obviously materialism is a giant emprical failure. But still most people are apologists for the clever-monkey-strategy.
Eric, I don't know what to say! You have just described to perfection someone I had in mind when writing this post, a person who for me exemplifies the Y mentality.
DeleteDickens has a minor character in "Oliver Twist" called Mr. Grimwig. He punctuates his opinions by saying that if they are not true, "I'll eat my head." (a variation on the "I'll eat my hat" expression.) As Dr. Charlton points out, the materialism of the clever people is "self-refuting": it eats its own head. For if consciousness is but an epiphenomenon of the brain, then all thoughts are no different than any other physiological process. To speak about truth or falsehood becomes meaningless. "That's true" has about as much meaning as "I'm hungry." Both become statements of the same sort. But the clever people don't really believe what they say they believe, for they behave and opine as though what they and others say and do matters and they want to hold people accountable, e.g. laws against "hate speech" or "climate denial." But how can one criminalize and epiphenomenon of the brain? The Grimwig Perplex cannot be sidestepped except by willful blindness. If thinking is recognized as something that is above nature, that is, as an activity that can arrive at transcendent truth, then we are on the doorstep of the supernatural.
ReplyDeleteMaterialism eats its own head. I like that. You could also say it removes the ground from under its own feet. At any rate it makes absolutely no sense. It is wilful ignorance.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, the movement into intuition, as in direct insight, does not seem to be connected to IQ. That is, low IQs do not make that progression though they may well have faith. I think it does require a reasonably high IQ to move forward as one would expect but while that may be necessary, it is by no means sufficient. In fact, high IQ people are often the worst offenders among the 'clever' people and the most trapped in politically correct ideology. Perhaps because of the link to abstraction and theory and the prideful resistance to simple faith. This might be a recent phenomenon though, dating from the last 3-4 hundred years. You would normally expect the more intelligent to be, well, intelligent.