The Evolution of Revelation
IN ANCIENT TIMES, humanity was under the sway of the gods, or that of a Supreme Being, and the prevailing revelatory cultural cosmology was, quite literally, carved in stone in the Western world. Whether it was the writings of the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks or the Romans, incising the insights of the prophets, seers and sages into temple walls or on clay or stone tablets was the norm. The uptake in each of these cultures was essentially very similar: “Here is Truth,” they basically wrote. “This is how the universe came into being and how it works. Here is humanity’s place in the greater scheme of things and this is what we humans must do in order to curry the favor of the gods (or the Supreme Creator). If we do these things, we will be granted a wondrous eternal existence in the Great Beyond.”
In other words, “Take this as gospel. The prophets, the seers and the sages have spoken.”
With the invention of the printing press and the inception of the “Gutenberg revolution” in the 1450s, what had once been carved in stone was now placed on the all-powerful page. Soon, volumes of words began filling the desks of scholars and the shelves of the clergy. The updated narrative, whether compiled by Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams or Christian bishops and priests, not only took over, but went totally stratospheric among these figures, as well as among those learned individuals of the upper classes who could afford such a curious new thing as a book.
Once these manuscripts were available to more and more people, the cosmic narrative took a very decisive turn here in the West. What theologians and philosophers did is precisely what we all tend to do if given a chance: they began adding their own commentaries to these works. They also began inserting their viewpoints into newer versions of the older work or editing them to suit their own sense of what the ancient prophets, seers and sages meant.
What followed on from that was debate. Indeed, fierce debate began raging all across Europe and the Middle East in the Middle Ages and opinions were fired off with what, at times, amounted to billowing barrages of inflammatory rhetoric.
Then a new breed of scholars, men known as scientists, dared to begin questioning that narrative. Men like Copernicus, Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei had the audacity to challenge the prevailing theological narrative in its entirety and that really set the continent alight. It set the debates so aflame that the Empire struck back: The Roman Catholic Church inaugurated the most heinous, notorious, evil and ill-named institution in the history of the world: The Holy Inquisition. Indeed, the revelations of science were such an affront to the narrative of the RCC that the pope, the bishops and the priests went all out to squelch those revelations. They did so by condemning those who espoused them, not just with vicious and damning denouncements, but by hauling people in front of tribunals and threatening them with torture and death if they did not recant their “heretical” views. (As a matter of interest, Giordano Bruno refused and was subsequently burned at the stake.)
This sent many a scientist underground and many a group of scientifically-minded individuals hiding out and sharing ideas in what became known as “secret societies.”
Eventually, of course, science won the day and that is for a very simple reason: revelations regarding the nature of the material world are provable in some form, whereas theology with its emphasis on the invisible, supernatural domain can prove none of its contentions.
As a result, the Big Bang now reigns surpreme and science is king.
Yet, even science cannot prove all of its contentions. For example, where did the original matter come from prior to the Big Bang? Something cannot come from nothing, so how did that something pop into existence in the first place? As another example, we might note that neuroscientists say that the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain. Yet, this is unproven. Darwinian evolution, as a final example here, works great in theory, but it, too, is unproven. Where are the bones of those half-human, half-ape beings who are supposedly our forebears?
Without a doubt, there is great mystery on many fronts.
How do we explain the building of the various Neolithic temples and pyramids all around the globe which involved the cutting, transporting and the putting into place stones weighing multiple tons (in some cases in excess of 50 or 100 tons)? This at a time when there were supposedly no machines or tools of sufficient quality to even do the initial cutting.
And what the hell are those strange objects known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, which buzz around us and can materialize and dematerialize before our very eyes? How can they fly at speeds that defy all our current technology, not to mention perform aerial maneuvers that defy the known laws of physics? Despite not knowing the answers to these questions military leaders now admit the existence of these UAP.
And how do we explain the tens of thousands of reports given to us by people who have had near-death experiences? The brain is flat-lined, the heart has stopped beating, yet incredible adventures and encounters somehow occur and these simply cannot be explained away by neuroscientists in terms of the material workings of the most subtle of chemical processes in the brain.
Indeed, it is mystery that reigns in this world and that is precisely why it is revelation that keeps evolving and at a more dizzying pace than anything else.
One day, the great hope, of course, is that science and spirituality, the physicist and mystic, will finally unite and be able to reveal reality in its fullness. Such a notion, known as a “theory of everything”, may or may not come to pass, however.
How we feel about this assertion speaks volumes about who we are at a core level.
The scientific materialist tells us that there is nothing but oblivion which awaits us once we slip the mortal coil, even though energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
The metaphysician, in sharp contrast, says the human “spirit” lives on. It travels into some “Otherworld”, some alternative dimension, and continues on with its adventures and encounters. The “soul”, metaphysicians say, is immortal, eternal and celestial in every sense of the word.
We can pick one view or the other, or — fortunately — just keep an open mind and pursue knowledge in both arenas, hopefully with a passion that creates volumes about who we are at a core level.
