"I of my own knowledge…"

It is precisely my objection to politics and ideology, that they encourage people to look outside themselves for the source of life’s problems. But, as Jung in his wisdom told this reporter, each of us has within us Mr. Hyde. Our job is to learn what we are

From an interview with the English journalist Frederick Sands in 1955.

“It seems to me we have reached the limit of our evolution — the point from which we can advance no further. Man started from an unconscious state and has ever striven for greater consciousness. The development of consciousness is the burden, the suffering, and the blessing of mankind. Each new discovery leads to greater consciousness, and the path along which we are going is merely an extension of it. This inevitably calls for greater responsibility and enforces a great change in ourselves. We must draw conclusions from what we know and discover, and not take everything for granted.

“Man has come to be man’s worst enemy. It is a clash between man and God, in which man’s Luciferan genius has produced in the H-bomb the power to destroy more effectively than any ancient God could. We must begin to learn about man until every Jekyll can see his Hyde.”

We never know when we may be serving the purposes of something well beyond ourself. I have a thoughtful friend, a professor of philosophy. I thought he’d be interested in a blog post I found about attempting to comprehend man, so I forwarded the URL, which is http://pavellas.wordpress.com/

In due course I received my friend’s reply:

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Henry Reed is an author, lecturer, psychologist, and teacher. This book review appeared in the January 2010 issue of Venture Inward, the magazine of Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. (www.EdgarCayce.org) It’s a good reminder that it’s always easier to see the mote in the other person’s eye than the beam in one’s own.

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Those who know me, know that I am not a worshipper at the altar of science. It has its place as an interpreter of reality, as an extender of our mental boundaries, but for at least the past 200 years it has functioned as if it could tell us the most important things: who we are, what we are here for, what the purpose of life and the universe is.

It can’t do those things, but the atrophy of religions in our day and the failure (finally!)  of beliefs in social, economic, and/or political utopias (ideologies, in a word) left a vacuum, which  scientists were as eager to fill as they were unqualified to fill it.

Nonetheless, when I find a report from scientists that confirms what I already believe, I’m happy to pass it along, with the caveat that the results of a study are no more than the results of a study. If another study tomorrow disproves this one, are we supposed to jump hoops to re-form our beliefs to meet the newer study? Apparently many scientists think so. I wish them well, but I’d rather anchor my beliefs in something a little more permanent, a little more solid, than this new variant of “the latest thing.”

This is from Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208155309.htm

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