The New Priesthood

[Guest guest]

OVER THE LAST CENTURY " sciENTisM " has become the popular world view

of the modern cosmos and the favored way of relating to the natural

world, to others and ourselves. It has managed in many parts of the

world to depose religion as the official and popular form of relating

to the universe. Yet the mood which scientism has created is one of

separation, doubt, questioning, analysis and emotional disassociation.

Scientific materialism is a special form of relationship, to specific

events, specific moments, specific places and for specific purposes.

At worst it is knowledge without love. If this becomes the dominant

mode of viewing the universe and ourselves and the standard form of

relationships, then any appreciation of the holistic and wondrous

nature of the flow and play of existence becomes submerged. We then

lose the ability to respond to the phenomenal world as a mysterious

and magical whole. We find ourselves living in a substitute world of

ideas.

The old mechanistic, intellectual approach requires the separation of

the observer and the observed. Francis Bacon, one of the major

founders of modern science, even went so far as to exhort the

scientist to " torture nature's secrets from her. " We are witness to

such tragic attitudes and the victims of this mechanical approach to

what was once known as " Mother Nature. " The material successes of

scientific methodology have most effectively deposed intuition and

spirituality and we are the inheritors of this spiritual vacuum. It

is reflected in the whole form of our world view and culture. There

is little sense of love, no point to our lives. Science can give

facts but is unable to impart meaning and significance. The new

priest still cannot answer these fundamental questions: " Who are

we? " " From whence do we arise? " or " Where are we going? "

He cannot even define what life is, while at the same time many of

his kind are so enthusiastically trying to reshape it. Thus we

blindly follow the blind.

 

Unknown Man..........Yatri

 

posted .........bob