Star Symbol in Menu


Read and Search The Third Testament
   Chap.:  
(1-47) 
 
Advanced search
Table of Contents for The Fate of Mankind   

 

 
Chapter 6
Two forms of religiousness
As has been shown in the previous chapter, mankind can be divided into two forms of religiousness. Of these, one constitutes the generally known form that includes beings who can believe blindly in the religious accounts that have been handed down from the past without understanding them in the absolute sense. This means beings who live by dogmas and express themselves as "believers", "saved", "holy" or "blessed", and who feel happy in their "belief".
      The other form of religiousness includes all those individuals who cannot believe. Belief is not an act of will. One can have a sympathetic or an unsympathetic attitude towards an assertion, since such an attitude is subject to the control of the will; but to believe in an assertion is totally beyond the scope of the will. Either one has the faculty to believe or one has not. But as the faculty to believe is thus due to an innate faculty then it is no crime to be irreligious, since one cannot carry out actions that are based on abilities one does not have. To the occult sight all forms of intolerance therefore appear to be expressions of the highest degrees of naivety. One is equally naive if one mistakenly brands non-believers as "infidels", as "lost", as "the children of the devil" and so on. And it becomes even worse when one characterises this vast host of beings as "irreligious", because one then goes against the absolute facts. The experience of life is exclusively based on an attraction towards the unknown, which in turn constitutes the essence of every form of religiousness. Every normal human being has therefore a more or less strong desire for an explanation of the mystery of life. He is thus, on the basis of even the very minutest degree of curiosity or desire for knowledge, religious by nature. But all individuals are not equally critically-minded as regards the interpretation of the mystery of life. And we here come to differentiate between beings who are satisfied with an emotional interpretation and beings who are not satisfied with this but must also have an intellectual interpretation.
      By an emotional interpretation should be understood a religious account or an expression of the highest mystery of life that can appeal more to the feelings of the individual than to his sense of logic. Such an interpretation is then manifested in the form of a ceremony or church service with accompanying organ music, hymn-singing, altar candles, images of saints, baptismal ceremonies, sacraments, priests and altar boys in ceremonial vestments, beautiful accounts of loving deeds and so on. And it can of course not be denied that such an interpretation can be exceptionally inspiring, uplifting and ecstatic for the sensitive mind and give the individual a certain feeling of the presence of God. But this feeling is not perfect. It is a feeling without analysis. It is the blind man's impression of something that he cannot see. And so we have here the essence of the ordinary form of religiousness.


Comments can be sent to The Martinus Institute.
Information about errors and shortcomings as well as technical problems can be sent to webmaster.