|
Chapter 3: Scientific Proof of the Existence of God
Will Not Be Announced by the White House
The Illusion of the Separation of
Church and State
Modern societies generally acknowledge the principle of
the separation of Church and State. The origin of this
common principle was in the early conflicts that arose
between traditional religious institutions and the emerging
powers of secular scientism and technology. In the
historical transition of mankind from the cultic religious
basis of ancient societies to the scientific and
technological basis of modern secular societies, the old
religions balked at some of the implications of the “new
knowledge.” Therefore, if scientific technology were to
provide the basis for the new era of Man, the dominance of
the social order by the authority of official cultic
religion had to be brought to an end.
The principle of the separation of Church and State is
simply the “civilized” device created to permit the
transition from a religious to a secular order of
society.
Ever since this principle became the working norm, cultic
religion itself has been gradually diminished in power and
secularized in its content. And the “new knowledge” of
science, which provides the dogmatic basis for what is in
effect a new “Church” (or official way of knowing and
living), has become more and more a critic of cultic
religion. Indeed, the scientific establishment and its spawn
of university intellectualism and large-scale technical and
industrial enterprise have displaced the ancient culture of
religion. In fact, the principle of the separation of Church
and State is itself only a strategy for excluding
conventional or cultic religion from the creative position
of authority over the proceedings of society in general.
Truly, that principle does not apply to the official
“Church” of secular society.
The State is always in league with the official “Church”
of scientific materialism in all modern industrial
societies. And the authority and authenticity of every
religion other than science is fundamentally excluded by the
dominant “Church.” The Rule of science moves over the world
with the heavy hand of State power, creating scandal and
doubt and fear in every area of independent cultural
creativity. And all religions are forced to suffer the
plundering by this new “Church”-or else convert and be
transformed into a species of the “new faith.”
As a result, we find that certain religious cults have
submitted to a high degree of containment by the secular
forces, and so they have been granted a kind of official
status as “allowable cults.” Such is true of mainstream
Christianity and Judaism in much of the Western world.
However, even these, along with the other cults of the
“great religions,” are the subjects of oppression in those
secular societies in which the “Church” of scientific
materialism is most clearly in power, based on its intimate
association with the State, or the practical idealism of
political materialism. (Such oppression is true in the
absolutist secular States of European and Asian
communism.)
The trend of the new “religion” of scientific materialism
is to exclude the mystical, evolutionary, and independent
cultural motivations of all peoples, and to establish a
political ideal of materialistic work-effort in every area
of society. Therefore, wherever this trend succeeds, human
beings are devoted to individualistic motives and
collectivist hopes for material progress that will
ultimately permit every future individual to enjoy a
prolonged life span of pleasurable self-fulfillment.
Wherever conventional cultic or “old-style” religions are
permitted to survive in secular societies, they are able to
survive only by adapting to the new social and political
idealism and the new knowledge. Thus, cultic religion has
become more and more a merely poetic restatement of
“humanistic” psychological interpretations of Man. And the
“mysteries” of religion have become merely prescientific
allegories for natural events that have now become banal
truisms, or “closed cases” in the continuing “detective
story” of science. Certain “fundamentalist” religious
beliefs remain at the less sophisticated levels of popular
society, but such religious beliefs are generally regarded
as a kind of harmless and ridiculous intoxication that has
no real significance in the daily world of sober social
effort.
I am not protesting that archaic religious institutions
have ceased to be able to freely dominate mankind via
intimate association with powers of State. I am protesting
that a new, aggressively anti-religious, secular, and
materialistic philosophical trend is everywhere in league
with the State. And the true religious or evolutionary
spiritual Wisdom-Teaching of the great Adepts of the world
is being prevented from achieving its rightful role as the
dominant cultural motive of mankind. Indeed, the new
“Church” of scientific materialism is not, in this regard,
any different from the old exoteric religions that were
previously in league with State The religious institutions
that anciently achieved legitimacy and dominance through
political association were exoteric “Church” institutions
that supported ideals compatible with the secular motives of
the State. Those religious institutions are still present
today as the “allowable” cults of Christianity, Judaism,
Islam, and so forth. But the more basically secular
“religion” of scientific materialism has superseded the
authority of exoteric religion and, therefore, in most
societies, the State is now designed in separation from the
old cults, and, in many cases, the State and its new
“religion” are in direct opposition to the old cults.
Truly, the exoteric religions of the old world are
archaic, and they are fast becoming obsolete. The
obsolescence of the ancient exoteric religious conceptions
is inevitable and not inherently wrong or regrettable.
However, what is wrong and regrettable is the continued
disposition in the institutions of popular secular society
to exclude the esoteric Wisdom of the evolutionary spiritual
Teaching of true Adepts, ancient and modern.
The exclusion of true or esoteric religion has been the
business of the State since ancient times. At first this was
done via the establishment of the popular idealism of
exoteric religious institutions in league with the State.
But in modern times the same process is done by the
strategic exclusion of conventional religious cultism,
mystical idealism, and higher evolutionary Wisdom from the
mechanisms of popular culture.
Consider all of this carefully. Observe the dominant
powers that influence, propagandize, and rule in our daily
lives. Examine the strategies of your own opinions.
Criticize the motives of your own desiring. Then you will
see how urgent is the need that mankind awaken to a new
cultural destiny.
In the realm of popular culture, scientific and political
materialism is in power. And the essence of official popular
propaganda is fundamentally anti-religious and devoted to an
exclusively materialistic interpretation of Man and Nature.
The “allowable” or semi-official cults of the yet remaining
religious establishment continue to serve as exoteric
religious extensions of the secular State. But all
non-establishment cults of free religious, mystical, and
spiritual experimentation and practice are constantly the
subjects of negative propaganda in the popular
communications media. And “intellectual leaders” are
constantly agitating against esoteric and non-establishment
religious cultism-and especially against the possibility
that any religious or spiritual leader achieve a position of
widespread influence and power in the midst of the secular
order. (Therefore, university intellectualism and popular
criticism generally oppose, or at least work to maintain the
disposition of doubt relative to, religion, religious
institutions, mysticism, and the naturally dominant role of
the Living God and true Spiritual Masters in the esoteric
culture of true religion.)
I am deeply dismayed by the trends of popular culture in
our day, and I have grave concerns about the immediate
future of the human world. The modern machines of political
power and “official” propaganda are immense, and the common
mind of even the most considerable intellects of our day is
monstrously deficient in higher understanding and purpose.
The people are full of righteous needs, but they are
otherwise possessed by aggressively self-indulgent motives
and all of the self-deluding conventions of the
mob-mind.
I am awakened and committed to another understanding than
the one that now and traditionally has motivated and
controlled the human world. But I can do no more than Teach,
by word and intimate demonstration. I have no worldly power
to change mankind. My only power is the Truth that I Teach,
and the love or sympathy that any man or woman may be moved
to grant me as they consider, and practice, and change in
community with me. Therefore, I can only plead and beg for
your attention and for your understanding of the esoteric
spiritual Way that I Teach. And if I am heard by many, then
perhaps we can together demand real changes in the cultural
basis of the social order, so that Wisdom will at long last
become the Master of Church and State.
Scientific Proof – Table
of Contents
|