It is often said that there is nothing esoteric in Christianity. Everything is public and out in the open, and there are no hidden secrets divulged only to higher level initiates. It is true that Christ did exteriorise the mysteries, enacting literally what had taken place symbolically in those ancient rites and so potentially making rebirth into spirit available to everyone who believed in him, though what belief in Christ really means in this context is something to ponder. But time moves on and what was applicable at one moment in history may be less so later on.
Spirituality means escaping the iron grip of matter. Not because matter is evil but because it is matter, i.e. not spirit or, at least, not spirit in its pristine, undisguised form. As one escapes matter one moves up through the levels of manifested reality which, in human terms, means through the levels of the physical nature, the emotions, thought and personal identity. Each one of these levels must be conquered but all are incorporated into the whole. We descend from the pure consciousness of the spiritual world into matter to learn the lessons of matter and acquire its virtues which are the qualities associated with action and doing, relating and feeling, and knowing and understanding, qualities one can only acquire through experience in a dualistic world of subject and object. In the process of our immersion in matter we can forget who we are and identify with the 'bodies' or modes of being through which we temporarily operate in order to gain the ability to become gods, free agents with creative power motivated by love. It is this false identification that is the problem so the fault does not lie with matter, which is merely the medium through which spirit expresses and comes to know itself, but our identification with it.
What does this have to do with the esoteric? Simply this. At an earlier phase of development the majority of human beings were focused in the physical and emotional worlds. Few people had developed mentally to a high level, but that is no longer the case. Many people have now reached a relatively high degree of intellectual development and these people need to understand. They cannot just proceed on faith. Their ability to believe must be coupled with understanding for them to flourish and grow spiritually, and for their belief actually to be rooted in the whole of their being. The esoteric is really just about knowledge. It is not spiritual in the spiritual sense but intellectual. And yet for modern man to be spiritual in the spiritual sense he needs intellectual support.
A follower of Christ in our day must combine a degree of esoteric understanding with faith. If he neglects this his faith will be shallow even if it is intense. His spiritual development will be limited and his entry into the mind of Christ will be partial. This is in line with the growth of human consciousness. The old ways may suffice for some but for those who would not just follow Christ but actually start to become like him then knowledge must supplement faith even if it remains the case that true knowledge actually arises from real faith. "Credo ut intelligam".
The esoteric is not there to replace faith in Christ. It is not a higher level of spirituality but a means of deepening faith and taking it from something that is exterior to the inner man, in the sense that it is located in thought and feeling, to something that is more like knowing through being. It elevates faith to a higher plane where the boundaries between faith and knowledge start to dissolve. If faith is of the heart, as it should be, then the esoteric is of the head and we need both to be spiritually whole. Indeed, only when we have both do we really have either one of them in the proper sense.
4 comments:
A few questions William about the "growth of consciousness" -
When I read ancient texts, I get the impression of a mind immensely more sophisticated and subtle and intelligent than the modern mind. I do not get the sense at all that we are the smarter or more advanced ones. I also don't get the sense that I am dealing with a mind that is fundamentally different - in fact, I am always shocked by how intimate and familiar these ancient voices are.
Modernity by its own articulators in the early modern period and into the modern is characterized precisely by a "narrowing" of consciousness, not an expansion. It was the "exclusion" from view of all that didn't fit the materialist paradigm, the narrowing of focus to include ONLY those elements needed to "control" a situation. Modernity then seems to be a stripped down consciousness for the purpose of "control". It's hard to understand how this can be a state in the expansion of consciousness.
When I read ancient texts like in Taoism or Zen or early Christianity, I find they were highly self conscious in a manner no different than people today, and were grappling precisely with what spiritual people today are grappling with - they had the same spiritual concerns, which doesn't indicate evolution of consciousness but rather the existence of a perennial human nature and timeless human concerns.
Which doesn't mean that the passage of time may not lead to better solving these spiritual issues, or that we have much to learn here in terms of filling in the gaps in our spiritual life, but it suggests not do much and evolution of consciousness as a simple working out of timeless human problems towards a final resolution by both humanity and God. In my view, modernity was more likely just a wrong turn, and it's didactic value lies in a potential turn found once and for all to be a dead end, and this closed off forever.
It's been said the spiritual path is "the return to innocence after experience" - or the " later long wandering, in my beginning is my end".
Perhaps humanity had to taste the bitterness of the false path to recommit with greater firmness of purpose to the right one.
The ancient texts you read were not written by the average man of the day but by the most spiritually advanced people of the time. I am certainly not implying that we are at a higher stage of consciousness than a Plato or a St Augustine. I am not saying we are at a 'higher' state at all. But ordinary consciousness of those days was not centred so much in the mind as now. It was not vastly different but it was different.
You actually write that the modern mentality is "characterized precisely by a "narrowing" of consciousness" so you are admitting a change! This change does involve a greater restriction to the material/physical so consciousness has expanded in some senses but contracted in others. We are much more focussed in the material world which has some advantages and many disadvantages. We have a greater sense of self with all the pros and cons that involves.
I agree with you that modernity has taken a wrong turn. That is surely undeniable. In fact, it has taken many and it's hard to say when it started as it has been an ongoing process, probably since the Fall. But there was a major wrong turn in the 19th century, another in the 20th and yet another more recently.
We are humans just as our ancestors were and our basic consciousness is the same so our problems are the same and the solutions are broadly similar. But consciousness has changed in that the material environment has solidified to. greater degree and our response to it has altered as well meaning we are more firmly locked in the self than our forebears were.
Thanks for your explanations William, I have to think about this some more for the time being.
As for me admitting modernity does reflect a change in consciousness, certainly, but I don't see it as a fundamental alteration or evolution of capacity or innate orientation - in other words, modernity is the choice to use a small portion of our mental abilities, in pursuit of a very narrow goal, not a fundamental change in those capacities or our innate orientation.
But your clarifications are interesting and I must give it some more thought.
I find it apt to imagine the heart as a vast and deep ocean, and to imagine the mind as the effects of it in clouds and rains. The metaphor is that the heart is the "unconscious" but perhaps closer to "what is, has been, and will be." The mind is the "conscious" or that which is produced by causes before it. Symbolically it is helpful to see the heart as waters and the mind as airs. Later on fire will be introduced to the heart and earth will be introduced to the mind.
The exercise is to place one's faith in the heart. Do not entrust the mind to bear faith. The thoughts of the mind must relinquish themselves continually and they have no where to go but to be filtered through the heart whence they have a chance of returning to the mind in rarer form. Only one cause does anything return to mind to provide more clarity of vision and union of spirit with life. An active life takes to the fullest meaning of one granted foresight for knowing themselves and for all else that remains mystery they bare to the front and meet all that comes with nothing but.
In vague terms we may have to reintroduce fire to earth to get over ourselves in these uncertain times. The unmanifest married to the manifest.
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