Mystery and Mythos

 

We live in a fragmented world, a world dedicated to the atomization of understanding, a world governed by scientism rather than science. This is a world dominated by the left brain. It is a view of the world which is lacking in gestalt. Today I would like to discuss with you why scientism has become an ideological parasite. Scientism is the result of looking at things detached from the whole to which they belong. Therefore, today we are seeing many examples of the unintended consequences of our collective actions. The unintended consequences which have resulted from applying simplistic solutions to multivariate complex problems without using our right brain. For it is only in the right brain where gestalt can happen. The right brain allows us to bring together disparate things to form a living entirety.

 

Partly this is the result of modern man's rejection of the mystical. Spirituality and enlightened ascendance can only exist in the realm of the mystical. And our atomised understanding of the world historically is a recent phenomenon. We evolved over countless eons being informed by the mystical. If this did not serve an evolutionary purpose our love of mythos would not exist. Yet modern men reject such narratives. We have come to believe that by parsing the world into inanimate bits and pieces so that we can examine each piece as though it was not part of a larger hole that we can understand how things operate. This is what I refer to as scientism. But evolutionary biology, in specific human evolutionary biology, rejects such a view of the world. The human brain evolved complex mechanisms of intuition that exist only in the right-hemisphere. It is in the right hemisphere the detached and disembodied can become embodied to present a living whole. One of the great problems in developing artificial intelligence is that we do not understand how our intuition operates, why it so often informs us correctly without us understanding the processes of how we arrived at our conclusions. Moreover, if we were to stop and try to explain how we make such judgments we would be unable to breakdown the processes to define them. It would be like asking a brilliant jazz improviser to break down their improvisation into each note. The instant one asks such a question is the very instant when the artist would become soulless and mechanistic.

 

It is in the right brain that our sense of wonder occurs. Piloerection is the phenomenon of wonder that happens when we are struck with awe over something we find deeply moving. Whether we are looking at a beautiful piece of art, or listening to a moving piece of music, we encounter patterns of discovery, and through their beauty we experience a heightened sense of enlightenment. By the same token we instantly know if there is discord and lack of harmony when we encounter the ugly or mechanistic without being able to define why we perceive it to be so. The same may be said for spiritual experiences which evoke a feeling of being in the presence of the Divine, experiences which this materialistic world rejects.

 

This atomised understanding of human existence has devolved life’s mystery into meaningless collisions of matter in an endless cascade of creation and destruction. The result has been our present prevalent nihilism, the belief that there is no absolute truth, just subjective experiences. Which is why Postmodernists believe that we can be anything we choose to be at any given moment, since there is no reality, no way of looking at the world to bring things together into a meaningful entirety. Their faith in scientism fails to grasp that as much as we know that we really know nothing. Real science is never settled. But how do we find meaning in a world rife with scientism?

 

First let me ask a question, if the materialists actually believed there was no truth, then why wouldn't they allow others to find peace, joy, and satisfaction wherever it may be found, particularly in a belief in the Divine? After all, if there is no truth why would it matter what anyone believes? The very fact that the materialists are turning our lives into an atomised dystopia is ipso facto proof that they do have a hierarchy of beliefs. It demonstrates that they do in fact believe in something. Otherwise, they wouldn't insist that we believe as they do. Yes, their own belief system deconstructs itself because they have rejected the mystery and so they live in a contradiction resulting in cognitive dissonance.

 

To the ancient Greeks logos, which describes a left-brain way of looking at the world, was not where ultimate truth was to be found. No, to the ancient Greeks ultimate truth was to be found in mythos. The stories which for countless eons humans have told which help to define in metaphorical terms this infinitely complex world. The stories which are found in mythos are truer then if they were scientifically true. Science tells us nothing about why we see a dynamic, ever changing, and potentially dangerous world the way we do and why we react to it as we do. This is why Jesus spoke to us in parables, so that we could understand mysteries metaphorically. In a certain regard Evangelical Christians share the same delusion that atheists who believe in scientism have, namely that the Scriptures must be literally scientifically true in a historical sense in order for them to be true. But the Bible wasn’t written by scientists and historians. Even the four Gospels do not tell the same story in the identical way but nevertheless the metaphors that they contain are the same and truer than anything else we may hold as Truth. Why?  Because they refer to the same Divine phenomenon. So, this mechanical and atomistic view of the world is now shared by atheists and Christians alike. But in doing so both reject the gestalt of the mysteries revealed in the Scriptures. In the coming together of disparate parts to form a living whole.

 

And so, mankind comes full circle. Out of the Renaissance, onto the Reformation, and on again to the Age of Enlightenment mankind came to view the world scientifically while coming to reject the grand narrative which once defined it. Nietzsche was not rejoicing when he wrote about the death of God and the fact that we had killed him. Furthermore, it was his belief that we had to create our own value structure which has proven to be a murderous impossibility. It is time to revivify the soul of society which has been lost by rejecting the Divine Mystery. God cannot be apprehended ". It takes a revelation of discovery to uncover what has always been there, namely our Divine calling. A mystical journey through revelation of Christ Jesus and Him crucified and resurrected. Moreover, that we also are crucified and resurrected with Him to be seated at the right hand of God the Father above all the troubles of this current age. An age which has given itself to a satanic view of reality. I invite you on this journey but do not expect your left brain to understand the path. Give yourself over to the mystery while taking up your cross to follow Him.