SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, part III

 

 

 

SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, part III - by Guenther Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.

 

 

 

 

For too long we are living imitating formal things, repeating old routines as meritorious. What should be our guideline it is not any authority nor tradition, but only the Truth itself... "When our thinking seeks unswervingly the truth at any price, and when we are absolutely sincere in this search, ready for any sacrifice - then our spirituality is really religious" (Romain Rolland).

 

 

 

Holding hands with this belief goes further understanding: that the essence of Truth cannot be derived from any didactic manual, from any ecclesiastical dogma, from any dominant tradition; so that no empirical, no objective phenomenon, can make up the core of religiosity. Religion is metaphysics revealed in ethics. And that is why religion is superior to any shape or form, in which can maybe lend, to some extent, its outer garment, but never determine in its intimate nature, nor can be interpreted decisively. "Only the metaphysical content, not the historical encasement is what saves us", writes Fichte, in his book "Anweisung zum seligen Leben" (Guidelines for a blessed Life). And Albert Schweitzer, the great thinker and friend of humanity, says, in his work on the "Historical Jesus", that our Christianity has failed because we put secondly, the ethical will of Christ, and primarily, our historical and scientific speculation of his earthly life.

 

 

 

All values and all the dignity of man rests in his ability to focus on himself. The entire empirical-sensory experience has only one reason to exist when based on the foundation of the spiritual Reality of man. And that is why this Reality is the only constant and permanent factor among the inconstant and impermanent facts of the world. God is spirit, and the nature of the spirit is never revealed to man as clearly as in the experience of the Spirit in his inner self. No indirect and external revelation can give man a consciousness of strength and inner peace so great and permanent as the probing of his own inner depth, as the immediate experience of his own spiritual Reality. Man truly lives only because of the spiritual Reality within; every hour, every minute, whether in faith or in doubt - it is this spiritual Reality to him the most intimate of all intimate things.

 

 

 

And it is not difficult to him to discover this fact - supposed that he really wants to.

 

 

 

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