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Master of Spirituality

Master of Spirituality ............................................$60

This is a course about the history of spiritualism and the basics of different belief systems. It's written with the idea of counseling in mind. When you counsel to others, it's imperative that you understand where they are coming from. By understanding this fascinating history of philosophy and how different philosophies came about, you can best counsel the people who come to you for help.

From the author:

"This is a class on the re-emergence of spiritualism in the modern world. In this course you will learn much regarding the history of western intellectual thought and the associated development of religion. This course is different from many of the other courses in that it is not designed to teach spiritual enlightenment as much as it is designed to aid in your ministerial abilities.

One of the most difficult challenges facing any minister today is the challenge of speaking to a person who is scientifically minded. Such people do not believe in anything they cannot see and touch, nor will they believe in anything that cannot be “proven” using modern scientific methods.

These people tend to ridicule those of us who believe in mysticism and they find our beliefs to be ridiculous in the extreme. However, these people are being drawn toward some form of religious belief due to the fact that their scientific view of the world leaves them wanting. Science is great, as far as it goes, but it cannot provide man with meaning in life. It is this lack of meaning that drives such people toward a spiritual enlightenment.

My intent in these lessons is to provide you with the information you will need to be able to effectively minister to these people when they at long last seek you out. It should be understood that when scientifically minded people begin to search for meaning, they are easily put off by discussions that those of us who are spiritual would find inspiring.

For this reason, a careful and knowledgeable approach is necessary. If you move too fast too soon into metaphysical discussions, you will scare these people off. I will provide you with information and ideas that will be of great assistance when ministering to these people.

Why is this important? The answer to that can be found in the realities of our modern world. Science has penetrated nearly every aspect of our existence and for many people—even spiritually minded people—science exerts a strong influence. Even spiritually minded people find it difficult to defend their spirituality when confronted with those who are scientifically minded.

But science has progressed to the point that it has itself proven that mysticism is at the heart of all things. I know that many people who already believe in mysticism find such a thing to be unnecessary, but we must remember that we are not ministering to ourselves, we are ministering to people who are searching for meaning. It is important therefore that we learn to minister to all people. "

Some of the course lesson include:

  • History of Western Thought
  • Heisenberg
  • Faith and Learning
  • Socrates et. all
  • Plato & Aristotle
  • Different Spiritual Philosophies
  • The Birth of Atheism
  • Empiricism
  • How We Know Things
  • Schopenhauer
  • Fitche
  • Nietzsche
  • Hegel
  • Marxisim
  • Darwinism
  • And Much More!
Sample of Course

Master of Spirituality

Written by Rev. Chuck Bynum


    

Welcome to lesson two of the Masters of Spirituality program. Each week you will receive a discourse that talks about the various types of spiritual thoughts. You will be receiving an email for this course approximately once a week. If for any reason you don’t receive one, please write to amy@ulcseminary.org so she can re-send your material.

 

The Science of Religion

www.ulcseminary.org

  Universal Life Church Seminary

**********

Spiritualism - Lesson #2

History of Western Thought pt. 1

 

Helloand welcome. This is a sample of lesson 2 from the Master of Spirituality Course offered by the ULC Seminary.

This week I would like to provide you a brief—very brief—history of Western thought.  This is important because of certain realities that have been discovered by science itself that validates mysticism in ways that even scientifically minded people are often not aware of. 

 

There is an important reason for learning at least the highlights of this history and, though I will tell you this goal here at the beginning of this lesson, it is important that you not blurt this out when ministering to scientifically minded people.  Our purpose as ministers is to assist people as they discover truth for themselves.  We cannot preach truth or force it on them; we must instead assist them through their own process of discovery.

 

The history I am about to outline will demonstrate one central truth of modern day science, and that is that science is itself a religion in every sense of the word.  Take a moment to think about the things religion does for people. 

 

·         Religion provides guidance and morality for its members. 

·         Religion attempts to explain the mysteries of the universe and provide answers to our questions about life. 

·         And religion performs the miracles of healing and well being that are so important to us all.

 

Now think about science. 

 

·         Science provides guidance and a specific morality for its practitioners (this morality consists of rules that scientists must adhere to or else they will be discredited and cast out of the fold). 

·         Science attempts to explain the mysteries of the universe. 

·         And thirdly, science performs miracles.  If you doubt this just think of all the “miracles” of modern science such as putting a one hundred ton flying machines in the air, or curing a previously ‘incurable’ illness.  Jesus himself would be proud of modern science’s ability to cure illness.

 

It is this religious aspect of science that those who are scientifically minded do not recognize.  I can speak to this because I was just such a person.  If someone spoke to me of metaphysical matters, I thought them to be foolish or crazy.  What I did not recognize was the fact that science is built upon ground no firmer than any religious belief system.  Science is itself based on the faith that logic, reason, and the mind of man can come to know the truth of all things. 

There is no basis for this belief, nor is there any way to test or prove that this is so.  We must simply have faith that it must be and that is no different than having faith that God exists and that He is the ultimate cause of all things.

 

How is it that science has so deluded itself that it cannot see that it is a faith based system of beliefs?  How does science convince itself that it and it alone is the final determiner of truth?  That, as it turns out, is quite an interesting story.

 

I could spend the next year writing every day and still not cover everything related to this topic.  But rather than do such a thing, let’s go back to ancient Greece , as that is generally understood to be the place where western thought originated.  I will hit the highlights of the development of western thinking and I would encourage you all to research these topics in greater detail.  I will also tell you that when this journey is through, you will have a greater understanding of the truth of mysticism than you are likely to have ever had before. 

 

Science has peered into the mind of God and has found only consciousness interacting with energy as the cause of all things in the universe.  Those of you who are tuned in to such things will not be surprised at this as you have intuitively known all along that mind and energy are the motivating forces of all.  But those who are scientifically minded will be quite surprised to learn that the very science they worship has ultimately come down in favor of the mystics.  Let us go back to Greece about 3000 years ago where it all began.

 

Long ago there were a group of Greeks known as the Pythagoreans.  These people were the first to recognize the creative force inherent in mathematical formulations.  They discovered that two strings will play in harmony if their lengths are in a simple ratio. This demonstrated for them the wondrous ability of mathematics to describe the world around them.  They further developed their theories and ultimately came to worship numbers and mathematics as being Gods themselves.

 

This might seem odd to us to think of numbers as God, but let us think about that a moment.  If we could build a time machine and go back 3000 years and get Pythagoras himself and bring him back to the modern age, what might he think?  He would see airplanes flying through the sky, rockets launched into space, computers connecting the world so that everyone can immediately communicate with everyone else. 

 

He would see music transmitted silently through the air, only to be heard when a box called a radio captures the silent music and makes it audible again.  He would see invisible signals transmitted through the air that when captured by a television set becomes little people interacting with one another.  He would see all kinds of remarkable, miraculous things, but would he be surprised to learn that it was all made possible by mathematics?  No, I think not.  He would go back to his time telling everyone that he has seen first hand proof that numbers are in fact God because he has seen the miraculous things numbers allow man to do.

 

I am not making the case that numbers are God, but I would suggest that numbers are a representation of the God energy in the universe.  We often think that miracles were something done long ago, but we forget that we live with many miracles every day that we have come to see as normal and not so miraculous. 

 

Science has harnessed the God energy of the universe and used it to create all manner of miracles.  But the mind of man has become somewhat drunk with this God-power and we think it is us alone making these things happen.  We forget that we merely shape the energy that already is and that this energy has always been God.  But I am getting ahead of myself here; let’s go back to the Greeks.

 

The next Greek we should discuss was a man named Democritus.  Democritus was the first person to come up with the idea of the Atom.  He deduced, through logic alone, that there must be some small building blocks of matter that have no particular properties of their own but, depending on how they are arranged, they take on specific properties as they are grouped together.  He thought that everything must be built from these particles.  When we think that he lived about 2500 years ago, it is quite amazing that he could have come up with such an idea.

 

The next person that we should mention is Plato.  Plato was the founder of the Academy and the ideas he laid out for the organization of the Academy are to this day followed by colleges and universities everywhere.  Plate came up with the idea that everything we see has a perfect idea of itself or form that exists beyond our ability to see.  For example, a horse is an approximation of the perfect idea of a horse.  To Plato this idea of a horse had to actually exist somewhere because—for reasons too complex to discuss here—he believed that it was impossible for something to come into being.  Things had to exist or not exist, nothing could one day be.  Plato believed in a dual universe in which the perfect forms of everything existed. 

 

Aristotle was a student of Plato and he took this philosophy one step further.  Aristotle said that the perfect form did not have to actually exist.  There only had to be the potential for it to exist and every real thing would aspire toward that perfect potential.  This is known as the concept of potential, and as it turns out, modern physics will ultimately prove old Aristotle right. 

 

One further point that I would like to make is that the Greeks believed that empirical observation—or in other words, verifying what we believe to be true through experiment—to be unnecessary.  They believed that logic and reason alone were enough to prove all things.  If your logic and reasoning were infallible, the thinking went, then it must be true.  Experiments to verify would be absolutely unnecessary.

 

By the 1700’s, people were quite afraid to speak of scientific things for fear 

that the church would either arrest them or put them to death as heretics.

This concept fell out of favor ultimately as we learned that experiments were able to expose flaws in our logic.  But another shift in thinking occurred as a result of Christianity.  By the 1700’s, people were quite afraid to speak of scientific things for fear that the church would either arrest them or put them to death as heretics.  A separation of God, World, and man followed which allowed scientists to speak of their findings without reference to God or man thus avoiding heretical accusations.  A man named Rene Descartes (pronounced Dekart) came onto the scene and he produced a philosophy that turned the universe, and everything in it, into a giant machine.  Everything that existed was mechanical and could be described in mechanical terms.  This concept was introduced in the first half of the 17th century and we still think in these terms today.  We believe that everything has a cause and effect just as a machine does, and that if we could but understand every cause, we could then predict every effect.  The universe is like a giant clock just waiting for us to understand it.  When we do, we will know everything.

 

But then along comes Immanual Kant.  He produced a work known as The Critique of Pure Reason.  To simplify to an extreme level, let us say that he questioned whether or not reason was an adequate tool for understanding all that is.  Kant’s work is difficult to understand, but let me provide an example that, though it may not be Kantian specifically, it should get the point across.

 

We are human beings and as such we understand our world through reason.  Reason is the only tool available to us, therefore we apply reason to everything, and we believe that whatever reason tells us is true.  But Kant discovered that reason can be fooled.  Reason and logic can lead to contradictions that neither reason nor logic can explain. 

 

Reason is our way of experiencing things.

Reason tells us that an object that travels a distance—let’s say one mile—must first travel half that distance and then travel the second half.  But before the object can travel the first half of the distance, it must first travel half of that.  Before it can travel that half it must again travel half of that.  This goes on into infinity, therefore nothing can move ever because every distance no matter how small can be cut in half and every movement must move half of every distance first.  Reason and logic tells us that motion is impossible and yet we see motion everyday.

 

The point is that reason is our way of experiencing things.  There could be other ways to experience things that we are not aware of.  Reason is fallible and can lead to contradictions.  And yet we built our entire knowledge base upon reason and logic without recognizing that these methods of thinking are inherently flawed.   

Thank you all and God be with you.

Copyright 2005 by Rev. Chuck Bynum. All rights reserved. No part of this lesson may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

 ULC Seminary , Inc. © Copyright 2005, All Rights Reserved.     

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