POST-CHURCH SPIRITUALITY
Erle Frayne D. Argonza
Here comes the Aquarian Age! Welcome the
post-Piscean Age! Hail the Post-Church Era!
Planet Earth is now at the ascending arc of
her evolution. Ascension holds true for humanity, whose evolution in the dense
spheres is now ending and the entry to the higher dimensions accelerating. It
takes 555 million years for the entire human race to devolve & evolve—to
devolve into the dense spheres, and go back to the divine spheres as evolved
beings. The midpoint of the 555-million year period was reached on the 21st
of September of 1934 yet (see revelations of Guru Roerick, Guru R.K.K)
The ascendant route in our evolution is now
way up since 1934. So cheer up, Noble Seekers! This route will see the
emergence of greater individuation in the human psyche, a development that was
anticipated many decades ago by the H.P. Blvavatsky, Carl Jung and Tailhard De
Chardin. As mankind individuates all the more, so will the bond with the
collective mind get fractured. All those institutions that sought to control
humans and reduced them to automatons that lack autonomy are now crumbling.
That includes Religion with the capital R.
Institutional behavior is largely effective
for those with the strongest ‘herd instinct’, even as it harnesses the folk
spirit or folkgeist to secure individual loyalty to society and
institutions. For the highly individuated souls, institutional behavior or mass
behavior is sickening and misplaced, and will seek every way to express their
autonomy as ‘free spirits’ rather than dance to the sway of the folkgeist.
Those high risk takers will not take second thoughts in leaving their churches,
peers, kinship circles, old neighborhoods if to prove the toxic nuisance of the
old ways and the highest value of their freedoms.
Sadly for the devotees, religions will end
in violent upheavals over the next few decades. In many European countries, the
church-going impulse had died, many have left their churches and are seeking
new modalities of adaptation that will see the greater expression of
individuality and autonomy. Many of the Europeans have fallen into the
atheistic path, but many are Seekers who aspire for alternative spiritual
programs that are of the individualized platforms rather than institutional
(churchly) types.
One must understand that Europe
had enormous traumas with religious life, passed through many Dark Ages that
were reinforced by religious precepts, and went through bloody genocides and
wars due to religion. And so, when the most open society—the postmodern society
with a post-industrial economy—began galvanizing in their countries, Europeans
at last found the environment they needed to throw away the garbage
institutions that have enchained their souls for centuries and millennia.
Institutions are crumbling. The postmodern thinkers
have already pronounced the ‘implosion of the social’, the ‘end of
meta-narratives’ and ‘rise of micro-narratives’, the ‘end of ideology’, and
every kind of terminal phases of old worlds that have for so long enchained the
human psyche in the fiery hells of Dostoevskian existence. Go through the works
of Jean Francois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida,
Daniel Bell, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jurgen Habermas, Alvin Toffler and
Kenichi Ohmae, and you’ll find their thoughts converge on the observation about
the rise of the new context marked by collapse of institutions.
In the emerging context, old modalities and platforms
of adaptation won’t work as they are ineffective. It would be futile to revive
them, reconstruct them into hip-hop type things for they are largely meant for
the ‘herd mind’ or ‘collective mind’. In the emerging contexts, the herd mind
of the Laggard is out and the individuated mind of the Free Spirit-Seeker is
in. The mighty waves of the new context are now here with us, dealing
catastrophic blows on old societies & cultures, economies, polities,
religions, kinships, world outlooks, educational systems, health institutions
and other behavioral morphs that tend to retard or obstruct soul ascent to the
divine spheres.
The new world is rising with so much birth pangs, as it
violently pushes its way up and disgorges itself from the wombs of the old
world. We are in the transition phase, as we witness the representatives of the
old world working so hard to assert their remaining powers so as not to let go
of their largesse and privileges derived from controlling and manipulating
people. We witness the clash of religious tolerance versus religious
fundamentalism, and the clash of religious fundamentalist groups that have so
far resulted to countless deaths.
The next twenty-five (25) years will see the further
intensification of religious conflicts. We now see another world war shaping up
from out of the revived age-old conflict between Sunni and Shiite Islam. While
the war shapes up, the old war between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland Africa haven’t extinguished too. The ancient hatreds
between Arabs and Jews are still around, though in the coming world war the
Sunni-Jewish alliance will galvanize in a tenuous coalition versus Shiite
aggression.
It is now certain that tens of millions will die in the
ensuing wars. It seems like we’re back to the 30-Years War (1618-1648) which
began along the Catholic-Protestant cleavage, but which later ended up
differently as alliances changed. In this new 30-Years War shaping up, the
Shiite-Sunni cleavage will just be the trigger towards a bigger war scene as
the world powers enter the war fronts and declare their alliances accordingly.
The conflicts could spread to all continents, unless that the madness be
stopped before the globe will catch up fire in the process.
One thing is certain should the religious cleavages result
to enormous deaths in warm bodies: a global shock for humanity, a shock that
will rapidly see the esteem of Great Religions diminish radically. Past the
year 2030, it is most likely that the survivors of the wars will lose respect
for their religious elders, and would rather choose the path of the
freethinker. Religious participation will decline to insignificant levels
thereafter, as the shockwaves of the carnage will refuse to die out many
decades after the last embers of the battles have extinguished.
And this will be the explicit message of the
forthcoming global experience of religious madness: it does not pay to sustain
and reinforce religion as a modality of expressing and meeting the spiritual
needs of an individuating populace. If it will take this bitter path to take us
all out of the old world life and celebrate later a post-religious
spirituality, then let it happen. And the sooner that the catastrophic events
will happen, the better will it be for us all.
What I’ve been prophesying all along will come forth:
the birthing of the post-religious society. There’s no way that herd-mind
institutions can survive a new world that will be dominated by the life
modalities for the individuated minds or free spirits. Humanity is rapidly
moving towards the noosphere and there will be no turning back to the herd mind
of the Stone Age. Teilhard De Chardin, whom the church badly demonized for his
unorthodox futuristic vision about the coming of the noosphere, will be
vindicated.
But most of all, you Noble Seekers will be vindicated.
You who have to hide in the shadows for fear of persecution, you who have
silently deconstructed in thought and action the destructive ways of your
churches and priesthoods, will be vindicated. You whose figures were vilified by
pals, kins, and every fanatical devotee you may have encountered, will be
vindicated. And you will exhibit the last laugh, as you will witness before
your own eyes the violent collapse of churches. Islam will go, then Judaism,
then Christianity, then Hinduism, and all those that have resorted to mass
slaughters of perceived ‘infidels’.
No more will inquisitions work. Even if global tyranny
will be established today in the name of God, by religious zealots of the most
fundamentalist groups coalescing to save their crumbling powers and privileges,
this tyranny won’t hold. Every church group that has been resorting to
inquisitions such as the jihadists and Christian terrorists will be humiliated.
No draconian measure whatsoever that will shackle the free mind will ever
succeed again, more so in the sphere of the sacred.
The Age of Dogma had already faded away in social life
and is more markedly a part of historical analects as narratives of the damned.
The Age of Interpretation had long superseded dogma, with the new context
leaving it up to the individual reader or learner to interpret texts, lessons,
archetypes. But the defenders of dogma refuse to accept their fated defeat, and
they seem to have a window of opportunity to unleash their powers via religious
fundamentalism and televangelism. But their days are numbered, and as soon as
humanity will witness the full horrors of the religious holocausts now shaping
up and intensifying, the compass of the day will point to more lay people
leaving their churches more so among the younger generations.
Dear Seeker, what then should be your attitude towards
your church? You really need not leave your church as you ascend the Path, you
can still make use of it as a vehicle for your bhakti (devotion) practices. But
if you’re tired and sick of your church and you’ve left it for good, very well
then, welcome to the world of freethinkers. You can still do your bhakti at
home, include it in your prayers, or set special occasions for around 10-15
minutes or more in a week to focus on chanting the name of God, as well as the
Avatar (e.g. Christ, Krishna, Maitreya, Buddha, Ahura Mazda) and Divine Mothers
(e.g. Quan Yin, Mary, Portia, Vesta, Liberty) that attract you most.
So, Noble Seeker, if you’re so disturbed by the surge
of fundamentalism and other fascistic religious movements, this will only be
for a temporary phase. Past 2030 they will be residual, clumsy, ridiculously
spent out forces. Seekers and freethinkers will be the victors of the day. So
please show more patience and love to the fanatical devotees, for many of them
will leave their churches yet and go the Path of the Seeker. Hail the Age of
Post-Church Spirituality!
[Writ 27 September 2007, Quezon City
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