To Netnews Homepage Previous Next Index Table of Contents
From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter Six - Stages in Meditation
It is at this point that all the great world religions offer to man a way of knowledge and a process of unfoldment which can and does hasten the work of development. Dr. Otto in The Idea of the Holy says that man "must be guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reach the point at which [128] the 'numinous' in him perforce begins to stir, to start into life and into consciousness." - Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy, page 7. The word "numinous," we are told, comes from the Latin numen, meaning supernatural divine power. It stands for "the specific non-rational religious apprehension and its object, at all its levels, from the first dim stirrings where religion can hardly yet be said to exist to the most exalted forms of spiritual experience." - Otto, Rudolf, Ibid., page XVII of Translator's Preface. His translator, Dr. Harvey, Professor of Philosophy at Armstrong College, adds that there develops in man a "growing awareness of an object, deity... a response, so to speak, to the impact upon the human mind of 'the divine', as it reveals itself whether obscurely or clearly. The primary fact is the confrontation of the human mind with a Something, whose character is only gradually learned, but which is from the first felt as a transcendent presence, 'the beyond', even where it is also felt as 'the within' man." - Otto, Rudolf, Ibid., page XV of Translator's Preface. Through attention to life purpose, through concentration on life work, through keen interest in the sciences which engage the attention of our best minds, and through meditation, as practiced by a few in the religious field, many have arrived at a point where two things happen: the idea of the holy, of Being and of relationship to that Being enter in as dominating factors in the life. Secondly, the mind [129] begins to demonstrate a new activity. Instead of registering and storing up in memory the contacts which the senses have communicated, and absorbing that information which is the common heritage of the day through books and the spoken word, it reorients itself to new knowledge and begins to tap new sources of information. Instinct and intellect have done their work; now the intuition begins to play its part. It is to this point that the meditation work we have been considering has brought us and for which the education of the memory and the cataloguing of world knowledge has prepared us. They have had their day. For many thousands, therefore, a new endeavor is in order. Is it perhaps possible that for those souls now being born into world experience, the old education with its memory training, its books and lectures and its appropriation of so-called facts has become insufficient? For them we must either formulate a new method, or modify the present technique and so find time for the process of mind reorientation which will enable a man to be aware of more fields of knowledge than he now contacts. Thus we shall demonstrate the truth of the words of Mr. Chaplin in his valuable little book The Soul, that "...it is through Soul that bodily processes attain their significance." - Chaplin, F. K., The Soul, page 63. The conquest of the kingdom of the soul looms before man. The day when the word Psychology will return to its original meaning is at hand. Education [130] will then have two functions. It will fit man to handle his worldly contacts with the greatest efficiency and use intelligently that apparatus which the Behaviorists have done so much to explain, and it will also initiate him into the realm to which the mystics have always testified and to which the mind - rightly used - holds the key.
To Netnews Homepage Previous Next Index Table of Contents
Last updated Monday, July 6, 1998 © 1998 Netnews Association. All rights reserved.