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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives Last week, I promised to begin my attempt to answer the questions, "Whence came man and to what purpose?" I have touched on this before. Now it seems to be coming clearer for me. After years of struggle, this is my first real attempt to express and resolve the conflict within me. My understanding of the myth of creation is growing in my mind and in my heart. It is my best reconciliation of everything I have learned on my journey. For me, it begins to close the apparent dichotomy between my logical scientific self and my spiritual self. I have read a great deal about this from various sources and none of these thoughts are original with me. They come from the great religious thinkers, philosophers, and psychological philosophers throughout our history. I borrow heavily from all of them and specifically from Carl Jung. Of course, this does not mean that I blame Jung for my bungling. I see my task as organizing the ideas I have noticed and putting them into my modern language. This is for my own understanding and to share with whomever finds it useful. The myth of creation is, after all, only man's attempt to understand his relationship to the forces within and external to him. What weakened the original story of creation was the fundamentalist's insistence on a literal interpretation of what is essentially an heroic epic. In that, they gave enormous leverage to their scientific protagonists. They could have accepted the story as a symbolic explanation of a divine process. There would have been no dichotomy then and nowhere to attack. Instead, they sacrificed the foundation of their doctrine. For my story, I will begin with what I know. Logic and my personal experience tell me that something within and connected to me exists which I did not create. The one thing I do know is this thing is an energy or power which is not me. That I am sure of because I experience it often enough. Things happen to and within me which did not originate within me. My task is to achieve some understanding of that. I wish to increase my awareness. I wish to know how this power came about. It existed before me and to some extend it exists independent of me. Hence, it is not me. It is something else. At this time, I choose to call it the life force. It really does not matter what I call it. The name does not affect the reality. This is key! The important thing is the life force is an a priori reality. I cannot prove this to anyone who chooses to dispute it. I have no need to. I will only suggest that you look within yourself as I have. For me, it is real. It flows naturally out of my study and personal experience. To me, nothing else can explain my knowledge and experience. To be sure, my knowledge and experience are anecdotal. So what? In my view, science as it should be, reveals the underlying forces that support the reality we see. Through science, our understanding and awareness of our universe evolves. This is how it should be. There is nothing amiss. There is nothing wrong. Science does not invalidate the story of creation. Albeit, the myth is couched in the terms of a more primitive man with all of his limitations of perception and understanding. This wording makes it prone to misunderstanding. On examination, however, there is no direct contradiction of what we have since learned within the conceptual framework of the story. We must consider the sophistication of the origin and the intended audience before judging it. Myths are not to be literally interpreted, but to be understood. It was the insistence on literal interpretation which ran the Church fathers aground. They had plenty of room for understanding and adjustment if they had been the least bit flexible. Now, we are in dire need a new understanding of the myth. Here is one. This is my understanding of how man evolved from the a priori God. It is consistent with Darwin's theories. It is also consistent with the biblical version of creation. It is not necessary for anyone to believe or disbelieve this. What it does for me, is account for everything that I know of. Hence, it is believable, but, of course, not provable. It is not necessary to set it down here in the somewhat heroic phasing of the classic myth. I do so simply because it pleases me to do so. It will not change this point one bit if you choose to substitute the phrase "the super-conscious" for the word "God". In the beginning was God, the divine mystery. You will see, if you wish, that this is simply a rewording
of the original story. It is obvious from this what God expects
of us. The question naturally occurs, "What went wrong?"
I will try to address that question next week in a piece I will
title, The Origin of Crisis.
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