The ability of a material being to survive (i.e., to maintain its permanence at a given level or plane of existence) is dependent upon its adherence to the laws governing its spiritual or essential reality (spirit understood as a non-tangible motivating force or energy behind any existence). The more complex the laws which regulate its existence, the more complex the material being must be.
On the mineral level, there is very little that can go wrong. The only known requisite for mineral survival is movement (e.g., a photon would cease to have mass if it stopped moving at the speed of light). When it fulfills this requirement, it will be susceptible to adhesion – the effect of the mineral spirit.
On the vegetable level, several complex biochemical processes and environmental influences come into play in sustaining the plant’s relatedness to its spirit – the life force. These include photosynthesis, chemosynthesis, thermosynthesis, etc.
The animal is subject to the mineral, vegetable, and higher laws of existence, and there are various aspects of its nature (consciousness through the senses, psychomotor ability, etc.) that must be sustained for survival at that level of existence.
Human beings are the most complex beings we know of on this plane, and so must the laws which regulate the effective expression of their capacity to know and to love – of the human spirit or soul – necessarily be. They have, through these unique capacities, been able to take the maintenance of that relationship with the mineral, vegetable, animal and human spirits into their own hands through sciences such as medicine.
It has been repeatedly demonstrated, however, that adherence to the laws governing the material nature of humankind is not sufficient to solve every malady afflicting us (e.g., psychosomatic illness, perversity of character, etc.). We must therefore deduce that humans are more complex beings than was initially assumed, and that our existence is sustained by laws not governing bodily integrity, i.e., that the human spirit itself is bound by laws, the adherence to which is essential to our survival as independent entities.
An understanding of the human spirit, its potential, and the laws that regulate the actualization and expression of that potential, is therefore of utmost and critical importance. This is a task that the branch of philosophy called psychology (etymologically the “study of the soul”) was initially created to undertake. However, the intangible nature of its subject of study, plus certain historical circumstances related to the evolution of knowledge, temporarily led psychology to fall victim to the oppressive influences of logical positivism, determinism and the like, which arose from the study of material beings and denied the existence of “spirit” in a very unscientific manner as a reaction against the superstitions and falsehoods promulgated by a mislead and arrogant clergy, whose adherence to a believe in the so–called “supernatural” has for centuries befuddled the minds of the masses.
It is the task of education to base itself firmly on the findings of medicine and true “psyche”–ology in order to understand the psycho–spiritual potentialities of man and actualize them at an optimal rate. A firm grasp of the laws governing humankind’s dual nature, then, is essential to cultivating that nature to the fullest expression of its existence.
(September 1985)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment