This yearning for redemptive liberation is caused by a profound awareness of non-redemption, however paradoxical it may be, as having to move away from the ego's comfort zone is a tremendous discomfort. It seems that the peculiar function of intelligence is to make a man feel that no material comfort, for more luxurious it may be, can free him from this painful sense of restlessness and dissatisfaction. The farther man moves, by the power of intelligence, from his human centre, invading external spaces, the more he feels, consciously or unconsciously, the need to return to himself, by conquering the inner space, by discovering his true Self. The progressive escape from his central Self, produced by the intellectual ego requires a corresponding force in the opposite direction and with the same intensity, which only the spiritual Self can produce. The more liberated man is judged by material comfort, the more enslaved he feels by the lack of awareness of his true destiny. And this awareness of non-redemption awakens in the soul an increasing yearning for redemption.
To lessen this awareness of vacuum and dissatisfaction, profane man seeks all kinds of satisfactions - but ... satisfactions do not bring satisfaction! Material goods, sensual pleasures, political power, science, art, social entertainments, or everything that society and culture offers can act as a temporary artificial anaesthetic, but the root of the evil continues, however much the symptoms of the disease are camouflaged.
For this reason, the most sensible of human beings seek to go beyond this cheap quackery for curing morbid symptoms, which is so much advertised in social media, and try to cure the root of the problem. Human societies of recent times are full of secret societies, mystical, esoteric, spiritualist groups, which promise their followers a definite metaphysical stillness and full integration of the individual in the mysteries of the Cosmos. Less favoured classes and radical believers, on the other hand, are content with the practice of ritual and sacramental ceremonies, under the direction of their respective guides.
The man who has gone through two wars of extermination, the constant armed conflicts around the world and the chaos in which he lives in this 21st century, can no longer believe in the redeeming force of our culture and civilization, as many optimists of the past, believed. Today's man has lost faith in science and technology as factors of liberation. Some even fear that science will go even further, and cause total annihilation of the human race. 1
Science, technology, politics, progress, civilization, humanism, ritualism, nationalism, and other alleged remedies to cure moral and ethical maladies have suffered tremendous collapse; it is proven that none of this can liberate man, because all this has failed and plunges humanity into greater chaos.
Man has never been more frustrated and sceptical of himself than he is today. The man’s Luciferlike ego cannot redeem him from the effects of his selfishness. And the prospect of greater and more terrifying chaos extinguishes the last spark of optimism and self-confidence in the soul of modern man.
However, humanity longs for redemption. These historical dramas and dilemmas need an end, and man recognizes that a solution has to be given.
But where will the redeemer come from?
Externally? Through dogmas, rites, theologies? But these always triggers wars!
From the inside? Through human intelligence, tyrannical ego? But that is precisely what has disgraced man.
We have nothing left but to surpass rituals and scientific approaches and discover in ourselves the “Archimedes point” on which the redemptive lever can be supported. That point of support cannot be our ego, but it has to be something deeper and more solid.
The rational and spiritual man is less and less content with mental magic and ritual techniques. Nor does he believe in the redemption from external factors as in mental ego-redemption, but he knows that there is a spiritual self-redemption, as it appears in the Sermon on the Mount’s Magna Carta.
Until the end of the Middle Ages, the man was satisfied with his naive belief in ecclesiastical rituals, which, according to his spiritual leaders, conferred automatic and easy redemption. To disagree or to doubt the redemptive efficiency of dogmas and sacraments was a mortal sin against the faith and led to ex-communication in the present life and eternal condemnation in the afterlife.
With the advent of Protestantism in the 16th century, ecclesiastical rites, which were a monopoly of the clergy, were replaced by faith in the redeeming blood of Jesus, and the Pope's infallibility gave way to the infallibility of the Bible - the concept of redemption by external factors took over a new aspect. For this kind of redemption to have an impact on life, man must close his eyes and blindly believe in its effectiveness.
It turns out that the rational and spiritual men of today, do not want to believe with their eyes closed, but to know with their eyes open and not to go back in the hope of liberation by external rites, nor to trust in the mental magic of certain techniques.
Even the prospect of a future reincarnation, in better conditions, does not reassure the man of deeper spiritual experience. He wants to know how he can be liberated here and now. He does not believe that death can give him what life has not given.
An intimate voice tells him that neither being born nor dying nor living or surviving can redeem him, but that a more comprehensive experience is necessary, that is, beyond to what these factors can guarantee. But is his redemption present in an intense experiential experience? And how to achieve this experience? ... Where is the key to the mystery, externally or inside him? ... Is there a redeeming element in a man? ... Is he not evil and a sinner?
Man has progressively become conscious - even unconsciously - that this liberating ideology surpasses all external modalities, both from the legal automatism of the outdated religious ideology of Israel's synagogue, as well as the ritual magic of the Christian churches, which inherited this ideological rancidity and even from the initiatic schools and their techniques in modern spiritualist societies.
Redemption comes from within man himself, but not from this man-ego, who is precisely the author of his own slavery, but from the man-self, the “spirit of God who dwells in man”. The man-Christ redeems the man-Satan. If the “grain of wheat” of the man-ego dies, the life of the man-Self latent in that seed “will bear much fruit”. Otherwise, “it will be sterile”.
Self-redemption is not ego-redemption. Man is redeemed not by his ego, although that redemption resides within himself, which is his true centre, his divine Logos who incarnated and inhabited him, although in a still latent state. Therefore, to awaken that dormant divine life within himself - that is, redemption, salvation, self-realization.
The ego is an object that man has - the Self is the very subject that man is. What I am redeems me from what I have. My being is light – “you are the light of the world” - my havings are darkness – “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not arrest it”; the darkness of my human ego cannot extinguish the light of my divine Self - and it is this divine Self in me that redeems me from my human ego and finally setting me free!
And the most effective instrument for this liberation is the apprehension and comprehension of the Sermon on the Mount’s Magna Carta, the ultimate document of existential realization, and the most complete instrument and program of self-redemption. The man who carries out this program in his life is fully liberated.
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