Chapter 1 The New Reformation The time has come for a new and worldwide reformation of
human culture. The impact of this cultural conversion of
mankind will be comparable to that made by Copernicus in the
natural sciences and Luther in the domain of religion. But
this new reformation will be universal. It will include all
of mankind and every aspect of human culture. It will
include all aspects and all traditions of religion, all the
sciences, the communications media, economics, and politics.
And it will transform the intimate and relational conditions
of all people. This new reformation will continue the cultural gesture
begun in the time of Copernicus and Luther. That is, it will
extend the cultural and scientific tendency of Man to
acknowledge and also surrender to what is beyond and more
primary than Man, and beyond and more primary than the
Earth. This new cultural gesture will base itself on full
recognition of the more radical and modern discoveries in
science and cosmology, such as those proposed by Einstein
and his theories of “relativity.” And it will also base
itself on full recognition of the more radical and modern
realizations in the area of human religion and spirituality,
such as I have considered and communicated in The
Enlightenment of the Whole Body and other books, and
which represent the highest Wisdom of actual Adepts who have
lived the Truth of the Spirit (or the Living Reality in
which the World and Man are evolving). Therefore, this new cultural reformation will step beyond
the old and childish mentality, wherein Man is surrounded by
the Parent Deity and the Parental Universe. And this
reformation will also pass beyond the adolescent conceptual
rigidity of scientific materialism, so that mankind may not
only acknowledge the Paradoxical Condition of Nature, but
also participate and surrender within that Paradox. Only in
that case may we continue to grow and evolve as Man, and
ultimately transcend Man and the Earth. All of this means that we must now begin to escape beyond
the conventional Man-versus-Object mentality in religion and
science. We must realize and presume God to be greater than
an Object to us – greater than the Sun or the Creative
Other. And we must see Earth and Sun and our own local
Universe within an Infinite Paradox of space-time, which
arises, and floats, and changes, and passes away within the
Paradox and Living Radiance that is the true Divine, the
Mystery or Condition in which all present conditions are
arising. Conventional and traditional science objectifies Nature
as the “It” of observable processes. Just so, conventional
and traditional religion objectifies God as the Eternal
“Other” that creates the World and Man. Thus, both
traditions, in their conventional mode, create objective and
independent Idols, which Truth belies. In Truth, God and Man
and Nature are Coincident, and thus Identical as the Paradox
and Process of the totality of Existence. And only when God
and Man and Nature are thus conceived to be perfectly
reconciled, as a Unity, can we observe and experience and
surrender to the Divine Paradox of the Process in which we
exist. Science must abandon the conventional conception of the
“It” of Nature, and religion must abandon the archaic
conception of the “Other” that is believed to be God. We
must all acknowledge and point to and surrender to the
Single Paradoxical Reality and Process. Both science and
religion must abandon the strategy of separation from Nature
and God. We must all acknowledge our inherent Unity with the
Paradoxical Reality and Process, and, therefore, we must all
surrender into the Living Reality, which never begins or
ends, and which sustains all that exists, and which is
ultimately beyond all knowledge (and thus is
Transcendental). And we must establish the unanimous and
universal validity of the cultural disposition of human
self-transcendence, or heartfelt and intuitive surrender
into the universal, All-Pervading Current of Radiant
Life-Energy, within which all worlds and beings are arising,
floating, changing, and then apparently passing out of sight
or knowing (but never passing out of the eternal realm of
Existence itself). Only on such a basis can we live in
personal and social pleasure, creativity, peace, harmony,
and immortality. And only from such a point of view can we
also rightly establish religion, practice science, and
create communities that are human, intelligent, and
sustained by continuous submission to the Truth, Process,
and Paradox of the Living Reality. The Reality in which we “live and move and have our
being” is not actually or merely Other than all beings and
things. The “Otherness” of God and Nature is an archaic
conception shared by both conventional religion and
conventional science. In the case of both conventional
religion and conventional science, Man, and thus every
individual, is, by virtue of a false conceptual
understanding of the process of “knowing,” established in
the mode of the independent observer, the experiencer, the
believer, so that his very being is separated from ecstatic
participation in the Reality that is both Nature and
God. The God who is irreducibly separate from Man is an Idol,
a false God. Such a God is not the God who grants Life and
who is Life. The realm of Nature that Man may only observe and know is
a Mirage, a terrifying Illusion, a Lie. Such a World is not
the World that is Alive and that is not other than our own
Life. God is not the Supreme Object, related to the body of Man
like the Sun is to the Earth. Nature, or the World-Process, is not the Supreme Object,
related to the modern analytical mind like the ancient God
was to the ancient religious mind. God and Nature are a single Paradox, incapable of
existing as an Object or Other to Man. Man is inherently
involved in the Paradox of the World-Process. Man is
inherently one with the Living Presence of Radiant
Existence. All our conventional knowledge and all our archaic
beliefs are motives toward Illusion and Idolatry, unless we
constantly transcend both knowledge and belief, by intuitive
self-surrender into the Ecstasy of Unity with the Living,
Radiant, Transcendental Reality, the Paradox in which
childish religion and adolescent science constantly dissolve
and are transformed. The radical and more mature (and thus more “esoteric” or
less popularly understood) scientific knowledge that is now
beginning to emerge (since the original work of Einstein,
and others) is pointing beyond the archaic mentality of the
mechanical sciences that produced the modern movements of
scientific materialism and conventional technology. The
radical new scientific movements are founded in the higher
and paradoxical physics of Nature, and these movements are
less associated with the rigid, mechanical conceptualization
of the universe (and the development of absurd technological
inventions) than they are with the creation of a new
cosmological understanding of the paradoxes of “matter” and
of “bodies” and of “things” and of “mind.” The radical new
scientific movements are approaching a Divine Conception, in
which the primary Destiny of Man is Ecstasy, rather than one
or another kind of self-binding success. Likewise, a radical new understanding of religion and the
spiritual process is also now beginning to emerge, and I am
a servant or prophetic “midwife” of that understanding. That
understanding points beyond the archaic mentality of the
ancient religions and the naive mysticism of traditional
spirituality. A radical new movement in religion and
spiritual science may now be founded on the higher and total
psycho-physiology of Man, rather than on naive cosmologies
that are nothing more than symbolic extensions of the
neuro-anatomy (or nervous system) of Man himself. Therefore, the new or emerging culture of Man will be
religious or spiritual in the highest evolutionary sense,
but it will be associated with a rational cosmological
understanding. Likewise, the scientific basis of that new
culture of Man will be associated with an essentially
Ecstatic or participatory view of Man within the
World-Process. There will be no conflict between religion and science in
that new and future culture of Man. Religion will not be
irredeemably distorted by the illusions of “subjectivity,”
and science will not be irredeemably distorted by the
illusions of “objectivity.” Rather, all human beings will
engage in common disciplines of knowledge and of
self-transcendence (or Ecstasy). It will be a higher human
culture, established in the ultimately unknowable Paradox of
the Divine Unity, the ultimate Identity of God and Man and
the World. And the higher or religious and scientific
dimensions of that culture will not be subservient to the
vulgar subhuman drama of present-day economics and politics.
Rather, the religious and scientific dimensions of the new
culture of Man will be the very foundation of the
culture-and all matters of economics and politics will be
guided and determined by the higher Wisdom of that
foundation itself.
Scientific Proof – Table of
Contents