The text below is part of a project of ideas generated for a long time and materialized in the 60s.
Some may understand it as a fictional one resulting from the fertile creative imagination of its author, the philosopher, educator, theologian, polymath and polyglot, Huberto Rohden. However, imagination can be fleeting, a fantasy, a representation, a supposition, a schism; it can also result from an erroneous judgment, an unreflective appreciation, which dissolves into the ether.
In the case of reflections on the text, imagination gave way to another tool: intuition, which transported the author to the presentiment of truth.
The Latin word intueri means: to see from within. Albert Einstein said that man is able to analyze facts and intuit at the same time. And he went further, claiming that the great laws of the Universe cannot be discovered by analysis and logic alone but need intuition. Analyzing, imagining is seeing from the outside while intuiting is seeing from within, an external view and an internal one.
As proof of the assertive result of Einstein's intuitive reason, it was the fact that occurred in May 1919 when a solar eclipse had the most remarkable scientific repercussion of this phenomenon, where Einstein deduced by intuition that the path of starlight would be deviated when passing by a region emitting a strong gravitational field, like the Sun. And that's what happened because six months later, photos and calculations released by British scientists about the phenomenon confirmed Einstein's theory.
And he also said that “... intuitive certainty is prior to any proof, but proofs are necessary to justify certainty for those who are not sure, through intuition”.
To conclude this preface, Rohden shows below the imaginary - or intuitive? - dialogue between a Reverend and a Layman. The first, a church's member and follower of Rome's gospel, defiled and convenient; the second, the Gospel of Jesus' follower, in IS THE MIRACLE AGAINST THE LAWS OF NATURE?
R- Do you believe in miracles?
L- Why not?
R- But the miracle is an exception to the laws of nature, and science has proven this to be impossible; natural laws are constant and immutable.
L – Perfectly, natural laws are constant and immutable, I agree, but I deny that the miracle is an exception to these laws; I claim that the miracle is the most brilliant confirmation of the laws of nature.
R- I don't understand your philosophy.
L- You don't understand? But how can you ignore these things? Every Sunday, from the top of the pulpit, the Reverend speaks to his flock about the life of Jesus, and you think that the miracle is incompatible with the laws of nature? Either the miracle is not from God – or nature is not God! It is not acceptable for there to be a contradiction in the works of God.
R - What I tell my flock are the great ethical truths contained in the Gospel of Jesus, but as for miracles, I avoid talking about it.
L - From what I see, the Reverend would want to see the Gospels “expunged” of this obstacle that are the miracles of Jesus.
R- You are right. I preferred a Gospel without miracles because it would be a more scientific one. If we could purge the Gospel of these numerous miracles, we would have the most remarkable document of ethics that has ever appeared.
L- But then, we wouldn't have Christianity.
R- How not? Isn't Christianity based on the Gospels?
L- Not at all! The Gospel is not the foundation of Christianity! The Gospel is a doctrinal system of ideas, without the miracles of Christ, as the Reverend would have it.
R- If it is not the Gospel, what then is the basis of Christianity?
L – The Christ Jesus, and nothing else. Christianity is nothing other than the historical Christ himself, present throughout the centuries; the eternal Logos, made flesh, dwells among us and is with us every day until the end of the world. “Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.” But this real Christ is inconceivable without the miracle because the miracle reveals him as sovereign over all the forces of nature. Christianity is not a system of ethical doctrines; Christianity is an objective fact, a tremendous historical reality, permanent. It is the most spectacular invasion of the divine world into the human world. Ideas and doctrines do not give strength – all strength comes from reality. Christianity is not an ethical or poetic idea; Christianity is the greatest of realities. No one has ever lived or died for an idea – but for a reality, and many have lived and died in all times and countries.
If Socrates, Plato, Buddha, or other spiritual geniuses of humankind had written in the Gospel, as we have it today, we would not have Christianity with all its ethical doctrines. But if we did not have the Gospel with the presence of Christ, we would still have Christianity in all its purity, strength and plenitude, because Christianity is the Christ permanently present in the world, therefore, the real Christ is not conceivable without the miracle.
R- Why not?
L - Because by performing miracles he proved that he is superior to all the laws of nature and that they can be used as he wish, spontaneously, without the slightest violence against those laws. The merely sensitive man is a slave to the laws of nature; the intellectual enslaves it, treats it as a tyrant treats his slave, divorced from it. But the spiritual, rational, cosmic man, the integral man, the Christ or the Christlike man, for he is neither slave nor enslave – but friend and ally, and for this he cooperates, and that is to be a thaumaturge. Whoever works miracles by virtue of its essence, proves that stopped being a slave and enslaving nature. The Christ Jesus proved in his full human maturity and spiritual adulthood by cooperating peacefully and spontaneously with all the laws of nature.
The man who thinks he dominates nature mentally has a partial, precarious, fragmented, uncertain, violent domain. That is why he often fails in his magical attempts at biological experiments - but the spiritual man does not fail for his domain is absolute and spontaneous.
All the confusion reigning in this sector comes from man's habit of identifying the greatness of nature with the smallness of his own nature. When forces from an unknown part of nature invade the known part, man has the impression that something alien or is even against the laws of nature has happened.
To illustrate as examples or making comparisons, a primary school child reads his first book with some difficulty and calls it “the literature of humanity”. For this child, Shakespeare’s dramas, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Goethe’s Faust, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Camões’ Lusiads, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, etc., are not part of world literature, for they are not contained in the universe the child calls the literature of humanity.
A six or seven-year-old student learned the multiplication table, which represents for him “math as it is”. But one day, he comes across a work of advanced mathematics, say Einstein's Relativity or Unified Field Theory, or some work by Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Ramanujan and Isaac Newton, who represent high levels of mathematics – but, for the young student, all this is outside the realm of mathematics.
And it is from these examples that man identifies nature with the fraction he knows of it, and builds philosophy on this fragment.
The miracles of Jesus and his disciples, of all times and countries, went beyond borders of mathematics' rudiments, which was conventionally called "nature", but they do not go beyond the boundaries of Absolute Nature, that is, of Universal Reality, because it is God itself, the Infinite, the Absolute Thesis, the Whole, the Soul and Essence of the Universe, beyond which nothing exists, for the Whole encompasses all that is real. It is the essence of nature, every atom and every star, every firefly and every lightning in the atmosphere; of a stone, plant, insect, bird, fish, animal, man and angel, just as Life is within each living being.
The transcendence of God does not exclude its immanence, and immanence does not contradict transcendence. Dualists, or almost all Western theologians, admit the transcendence of God but deny or at least ignore its immanence. Eastern pantheists acknowledge the immanence of God in all things, but they often deny or ignore its transcendence, identifying God with all things. True monotheism, however – which is genuine and integral Christianity – knows that God is both transcendent to the Universe and immanent in every phenomenon in the world.
R - What happens when someone performs a miracle?
L- The following: the thaumaturge applies a natural law that is beyond the boundaries of the material world, say physics and laboratory chemistry, but it is not external to Nature as a whole because outside of it, nothing exists.
R- What exists beyond the material forces of nature?
L- There are mental and spiritual forces, which is Reason or the eternal Logos. But both, the material, mental and spiritual ones, are part of nature.
For a man who knows water only in its liquid state and has never seen it frozen, what concept would he form of this element? For him, this water is not part of the laws of nature, for he sees it in liquid form, its normal state! Imagine if he saw it in a state of vapour; would he accept it as water, this substance suspended in the air? Wouldn't that also be against the natural laws of gravity?
And if this water undergoes the action of electrolysis, it will transform into H (hydrogen) and O (oxygen). What if someone tells him that these elements are highly flammable, would he accept it as water? No, he would say: water extinguishes fire, consequently, not admitting such a thing as scientific and natural!
What if he were told that hydrogen and oxygen can be disintegrated to the point where energy is thousands of times more subtle and powerful than all previous states of water?
Water, ice, steam, gas, nuclear energy – the same substance in five different states, and all the more powerful as fewer materials, more subtle, endowed with distinct properties and ways of acting. Is this natural science?
Perhaps it is not science for the rudiments of primary knowledge, but it is science at the upper levels of the university of the spirit.
Likewise, the miracle is unscientific to those who know little of the Book of Nature. Still, to the students of reason and spirit, the miracle is the most brilliant confirmation of the laws of nature because it reveals its infinite amplitude.
Almost nothing can be done with a litre of water if poured into a small mill toy, which would spin for only a few minutes. But with the same amount of water evaporated and applied to the pistons of a small machine, some force can be produced.
Even with the same litre of water disintegrated by the atomic bombing, it is possible to obtain enough energy to move an aircraft.
Now, just as the man in the past only knew how to use the peripheral forces of water, and these days he makes use of the nuclear energy that can be obtained from it, without surpassing or contradicting the laws of nature, so is the thaumaturge, mental or spiritual, of natural forces unknown and untouched by the common person, knowing only material forces.
What Christ Jesus did, every Christlike man can do, as he said: “The same works that I do shall you do, and greater shall you do.” “Nothing is impossible for him who is in faith.”
It is simply about releasing deep and powerful energies within each being. Unfortunately, the common person is reluctant to release them because he lives centred on the illusions of materialism and does not believe in the existence of these energies due to an absolute lack of faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment