Forest Poetry

During my encounter with Nikkon, I asked him about the other things he thought about Europe:

-”You lived in Europe”, I asked “What do you think of that? What is your opinion about Western civilization?”-

-”Civilization!”, he exclaimed “Western civilization is an ersatz!”-

He emphasized the word “ersatz”. This word is of germanic origin. It means substitute, deceiver, false. After a pause, Nikkon continued.

-”Everything that is in it: the arts, sciences, philosophies, religions, is ersatz!”-

-”You truly believe there is nothing authentic, good, in the countries of Western Europe?”-

-”Nothing”, he answered, “Everything is false, empty. The only exception is Orthodoxy. But even it is hardly found in its genuine, original form.”-

After hearing that I was an Orthodox Christian, the old man made an observation:

-”You should consider yourself lucky. For there is nothing more precious in this world than Orthodox Christianity. Even with the hardship of finding it in its purest form, order everything in your life according to it”- [1]

In the modern West, the common dispute is between barbarism and civilization, good and evil, progress and backwardness and so on. Gurdjieff, extremely intelligent twentieth century esotericist, was precise in identifying that anguish of a bunch of people that have already lost any inkling of that which is understood as traditional civilization, anguish born out of the lack of a traditional worldview [Weltanschauung], which formed what Evola called “world of the agitated”, and the saga in search of “progress”, “conservation” or even “regress” [2], without realizing that, in this world of the agitated, all are running towards the same abyss, although by distinct paths.

The criticism of traditionalists, not only those from the perennialist school, as also those of religious people of a contemplative life or sages that had some contact or belonged to a traditional civilization, always leads to the same point: all the western currents and ideologies that concur amongst themselves are nothing but faces of the same degeneration. The staretz Nikkon, quoted above, was a monk from Mount Athos practitioner of Hesychasm, the silent contemplation and prayer, that while young traveled trough all Western Europe, and had the opportunity of knowing the European thought and way of life. His deception was great, and not for less: to one accustomed to life in ancient Greece [3], for example, the life of the European, be it of the academic or the simple worker, is very agitated, inconstant and full of uncertainties.

Russel Means, Sioux leader and activist for the rights of North American natives, also noted this tragedy of the European man, and went even further in his analysis of capitalism, communism, Hegelianism, Scientism and others. In this discourse, links between the Tradition of North American natives and other Traditions, such as Christianity, can be noted. For example, the critique of the excessive value given to the written word, that for St John Chrysostom showed us how degraded we are [4], the critique of the transformation of nature in private property [5], and in this point both Marxism and capitalism are similar, for both defy the natural order of things.

Obviously, such reasoning is capable of bringing up various questions and criticisms, such as: how to explain the rising of the quality of life, the technological and pharmaceutical advancement that allows the prolonging of life expectancy, or yet the unending wars fought between natives throughout the world. But all of that, if analyzed and compared coldly, shows us that problems existent among the natives were not solved by the good civilized, and also, they increased.

First of all, we not only can but should question the western man’s concept of quality of life, especially from the first world. A lot of those things that makes him proud, like the comfort of our civilization against life in nature and all its perils, are nothing but an even bigger problem. The traditionalists accuse modern man of losing the capacity of contemplation, and that might as well cease to be an accusation to become a realization: what western man is capable of contemplative practices like Hesychasm, meditation or the silent worship of North-American natives? All this comfort, built in the deviation of the natural order of things, has cost first the capacity of contemplation, and today it costs sanity. Man feels increasingly the necessity of working more to obtain more comfort, and the technological advancements that increase his comforts also make him work each time more. Disorders like ADD and diseases like depression rise annually, and the critic of the natives “drug” use does not realize that modern man is increasingly more dependent on medicines against depression, attention disorders and personality disorders. He cannot see any relation between these problems and the fact that modern man does not live in a real civilization anymore, but in a bunch of clueless, agitated people that have lost any real notion about humanity, transcendence and reality.

On the other side the native Indians from Brazil, to quote J.P. McEvoy, “it may not be progress… but who cares?” In Christian countries that were free from Charlemagne’s Imperialism, and also from the legalism of the scholastics and afterward one of humanity’s greatest tragedies, the Protestant Reform, a different vision about religion can be noted, as well as the impact of religious life of that population. The fervour of the Russians prior to the deforms of Peter the Great caused amazement even in the emissaries of orthodox Patriarchates such as from Antioch, already influenced negatively by the West from its educational exchange with Rome due to Turkish domain [6]. On the other hand on the Greek villages under Turkish occupation, where the parents did not have financial conditions for sending their children to study in the West, life was peaceful and religious, similar to Russia before Peter, for the Turkish domain was not capable of affecting the life course of people who had a real focus in life. What caused more amazement was the concentration of the children in the long divine works, that standing up prayed by the side of adults, for hours, without any complaint or agitation. Something similar to the children of natives, that listen for hours to the oral teachings of their people, as noted by professor Luiz Pontual, that crowns his explanation with a beautiful picture:

“It’s very illustrative in this respect the fact that the native Indian children from Brazil are extremely calm and even concentrated. They are capable, as we could witness in more than one occasion, of remaining for two or more hours in perfect tranquility, while adults talked or performed tasks. Such unusual trait to moderns can be understood a little if we note that an Indian, as well as a medieval peasant, follows the various moments that constitute, for example, the cycle of feeding. They help or see their parents from the preparing of the land, trough the sowing, the sprouting and development of plants, to their harvest and final preparation for eating. It’s something quite different, for example, from an unbearable hyperactive kid destroying a pack of cornflakes… or a hot-dog!”

Thus, the most reasonable orthodox like the Count Lucas Notaris preferred the turban of the sultan than the tiara of the pope, for while the Turkish domain cost only some lives one time or another and a little bit of money, the approximation of the degraded West cost the soul and the oriental way of life itself. The Turkish were not capable of altering the peaceful and religious life of the inhabitants of Anatolia and Thrace, but the western influence managed to launch Russia in the biggest darkness of their history, and soon afterwards threw Greece under the subjection of Venizelos to war and spiritual decadence, in search of so called progress. Such anguish and despair are understandable from the Westerner: he thinks he is always late, but does not know where he should arrive.

That’s why the staretz warns about where to find true Orthodoxy: orthodox life does not involve merely faith, or faith in a body of moral codes to be followed, but also a whole world view [7], that cannot exist among the degradation of modernity. Nowadays, we lament a lot when we see devotees demand the liturgy in the vernacular, priests neglecting the essentials of the tradition like cassock or beard and long hair, for we are dealing with people very near to an ideal, for it would be enough to look to some decades in the past and realize how much this is important and was alive, it was part of our everyday; while westerners are not so lucky, because they are going through a long and slow process of decadence, and have ideas that are very vague and imprecise about tradition, because life under traditional principles is something that is very far, like an abstraction or stories from a very distant past.

For those reasons, I can’t align myself or even see as a “lesser evil” currents of thought like Conservationism, that while apparently less evil than communism, is part of the same process of degradation, and is not less pretentious, for it too puts itself as the dike that stops the invasion of barbarism, when it is also a mixed child of the myth of the good civilized, that Universal Man full of self judgment, doubts, problems and solutions, always putting his dirty and full of blood hands on that which was already ordered.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————–

*Originally published in the Sociedade Nihilista Subterrânea Brasileira. http://brasil.anus.com/?p=125

[1] Messages From The Holy Mountain, Dr. Constantine Cavarnos, Cap. 6, pgs. 31,32.

[2] http://lasciateognisperanza.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/revolucao-e-contra-revolucao/

[3] In The Elder Ieronymos of Aegina, by Pedro Botsis (The Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Massachusetts, 2007), the author tell us the amazement of St Jerome upon arriving in Athens, after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey due to the insanities of Venizelos. The saint, upon disembarking in Athens, cried when seeing the lack of religious piety and the negligence with the spiritual life of the population that lived under Turkish domain for a long time, and remembers how life in his old village in the city of Iconium (today Konya), at Anatolia, was a lot more pious. To give a glimpse, in the small village where the staretz was raised, not only monks but also a great part of the population had the habit of practicing prayer with tears in their eyes, sometimes soaking the floor of the small and crowded churches of devotees that clamored for forgiveness and cried during the divine works.

[4] cf. I Homily about the Gospel of Saint Matthew, St John Chrysostom

[5] cf. Homilies about the Psalms, St Basil the Great; Seventh Homily about the Hexameron, St Basil the Great; About the Ecclesiastes, St. Gregory of Nyssa. One of the most startling is this homily of St John Chrysostom about the I Epistle to Timothy: *
“Are the silk clothes beautiful? Really, they are fabric produced by vermin. Their beauty is convention and human prejudice, not a natural thing. If you look a bronze coin covered by a layer of gold, rapidly admires it and says the coin is gold. Takes only the experts in the matter to show you the mistake and, with the delusion, goes the admiration. See how beauty is not in nature? The same happens with silver. If you happen to see a piece of tin, you admire it as silver, as also you admired bronze for gold. It is necessary that there are people that teach us what should be admired. The eyes are not enough to discern. This does not happen with the flowers, which are more beautiful than gold and silver. If you see a rose, you don’t need to be told that is a rose. You are able to distinguish by yourself between an anemone and a violet. The same occurs with lilies and the remaining flowers. Thus, all the gold is simply a question of prejudice. And, so that it is demonstrated that all this calamitous passion is a simple question of prejudice, it is enough for you to answer: if the emperor enacted that silver is worth more than gold, would not your love and admiration transform? See to what point we are dominated in everything by avarice and by opinion. That this is like this and that things are estimated by their rarity, not by their natural value, proves the fact that exist among us neglected fruits, that are appreciated at Cappadocia, as there are others that we estimate that have even more value in the land from where the famous silk fabric comes. The same phenomena happens in Arabia, land of perfumes and in India, mother of the precious stones. In conclusion, everything is prejudice, everything human convention. Nothing do we do judiciously, but everything at random.”

[6] cf. The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware, Part. 1, Moscow and Petersburg, 1º Ed., 1968; The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch; London, The Oriental Translation Fund, 1836, Book VII.

[7]http://tradortodoxas.blogspot.com/2008/01/o-deserto-no-quintal.html

In a sense, to say that something is true is redundant. The words “is” and “true” essentially signify the same thing. Thus when we say that God is truth, we understand that we are predicating of God absolute being. We leave aside for the present the final, or, perhaps more properly, primary distinction between God as pure being and God as completely transcendent and not receptive of any predication. Our current subject of discussion is not the absolute transcendence of God but God’s relation with creation. That God is truth and that this truth is one, not many, follows logically; for as truth, God is the objective measure by which all other things are measured. There cannot be two separate objective measures of truth; for if these two measures agreed on every occasion, then they would be not two but one, and if they disagreed, then at most one of the measures could accurately be said to be such a measure. A statement that claims that an individual creature has a given quality is true only insofar as it reflects the existence (i.e., the being) of that quality in that creature. This existence (being) is derived from God. Thus the existence of all qualities are granted by God, and it is true that a creature has a quality only if God has granted existence to that quality in that particular. On a fundamental level, even a mundane assertion is true if and only if God has granted it existence.

Keeping this in mind, we move on to the perhaps controversial statement that all men believe in God. That is, all men believe in objective truth, even those who refuse to admit it to themselves. Men of course vary in the accuracy of their belief. We can give a graded list of these different types of belief. The list is in no way exhaustive and merely represents a few examples. We begin with those who have the most perfect belief possible for men, belief that God is one, good, and transcendent. This is the traditional view. Next we have what we may call the scientific view. Many of the proponents of this view vigorously deny God, but yet they do not explain what the one measure of objective truth is. Sensing this problem they claim that they are merely attempting to approximate reality, but this just pushes the problem back. There is still one objective thing (truth) at which they are aiming. If they are aiming at truth, then truth must have existence, or else they might as well be aiming at nothing. This brings us to the root of the problem: there can be no ontological distinctions without metaphysics. Try as they might to denounce metaphysics, it always lurks in their psyche whenever thy make an assertion in speech or thought. That is why we say that they believe in God, only in a very distorted and degenerate form. Even lower than the scientific view is the extreme pseudo-dialectical view of the Marxists.

We say pseudo-dialectical because what the Marxists regard as dialectic is in fact an inversion of the dialectic of the ancient philosophers. For the latter dialectic was a means of removing contingent truths from the psyche as a means of reaching the one unqualified principle of all things (God). For the Marxists dialectic is an insane process of constant and radical revision of theories, a removing of current beliefs but not to achieve transcendence, only further and constant removal of ideas. There is a desire for constant flux and movement, never resting on one theory. For example, there are Marxists today who reject modern science, despite the fact that the their world view was partly based on it. They do this because they claim that modern science developed in a chauvinist, feminist, oppressive culture, and is therefore suspect. By so doing they undermine the very basis of their philosophy, but this does not bother them, for they care not for foundation, only revolution. How can we say that such men believe in God? Because in their frenzy of theorizing and revision, even they wish to assert the truth of a particular theory. Their understanding of truth is so poor that they can claim that a theory is true for now, subsequently abandoning it. But nevertheless, in promoting a theory they are implicitly making a claim about its existence, about it having a relationship to what really is in the world, to the truth. Of course their claims must be taken for the nonsense that they are, for they have no solid ground to stand on.

Only a consciously and proudly metaphysical system can legitimately make claims about truth.

“The ruler of the South Sea was called Light; the ruler of the North Sea, Darkness; and the ruler of the Middle Kingdom, Primal Chaos. From time to time, Light and Darkness met one another in the kingdom of Primal Chaos, who made them welcome. Light and Darkness wanted to repay his kindness and said, “All humans have seven openings with which they see, hear, eat and breathe, but Primal Chaos has none. Let us try to give him some.” So every day they bored one hole. On the seventh day, Primal Chaos died.”

-Chuang Tsu

What is our understanding of Chaos? Certainly, for the modern mind, chaos is there to be avoided, in the search of an order which grants humankind a controlled distribution of all economic and cultural affairs.  This order has not the properties of equilibrium that we would expect from the divine harmony, but it is a pursuit which seeks to avoid risks and sufferings, through the implementation of rationally planned strategies. Therefore, chaos is understood as the opposition of human made order, and being obscure, in opposition to the light of reason.

Human is just a form that the Heaven gives, not an ultimate object which as to be understood as a peak of the universe. But in a humanist mindset, human is the highest being, as the world must be transformed according to his humanly made values. What’s beyond his own humanity, must be ordered, this is to say, that uncertainty must be eliminated, and passions rationalized. In this regard, a Nietzschean perspective of the “enlightened” man who is afraid to give a gaze to the abyss comes to mind, as one man who fears nature in himself, and the unfathomable strength of nature to move us.

From a postmodern perspective, denier of structures, chaos is a state of uncertainty that sinks man into his material conditions. Chaos is horror and fear and a shameful sinking in apathy and despair. This vision of Chaos, has not the insightful properties of the Taoist vision, but it makes chaos a justification of solipsism and individualism, in the universal validity of moral perversion. Chaos is misunderstood as random idiocy in art, chaos becomes fatalism in daily life, a fail that it is pushed to others in the pretext of the purposelessness of the universe. Chaos is not wishful order, but it becomes wishful disorder of how man must desist and fail on all transcendental and organic purpose.

This way, the only accurate understanding of Chaos is through reverence. Our reverence comes from the recognition of our limits as species and as agents, we revere nature because nature is more powerful than us, but, it sustains us and fills us with wonder to keep living… Chaos, wild yet divine, inspires us to higher ends, beyond our senses.

I can’t revere God otherwise than wholly, because otherwise, I would revere an illusion.

Here’s Rumi, “Say I Am You”:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

-William Wordsworth

We are too much in the world, and so, the world is too much with us. Alas, there’s no glory, peace or reconciliation in this union, because it is not an union, but an imposition of our human desires into the world. We crowned technique and tamed the world to make it human, to make it safer to our desires. We  transformed the world, and now the world is so human, that there’s no place for reverence to be there between man and nature. The world is too much with us because we made it to assimilate us.

But when we stand there, in the night, with the innocent eyes of a pagan, the world seems to be so far from us, a world in the stars, a world in the untamed wind and lighting, so beautiful, powerful and savage that it does transform us and embrace us, in a way that no humanism and safety desire could ever force the entire world to be inside our narrow humanity.

That is wonder, and without wonder the world is all already known.

On seeing their old teacher approach, the five bhikkus agreed among themselves not to salute him, nor to address him as a master, but by his name only. “For,” so they said, “he has broken his vow and has abandoned holiness. He is no bhikkhu, but Gotama, and Gotama has become a man who lives in abundance and indulges in the pleasures of worldliness.” But when the Blessed One approached in a dignified manner, they involuntarily rose from their seats and greeted him in spite of their resolution. Still they called him by his name and addressed him as “friend Gotama.”

When they had thus received the Blessed One, he said: “Do not call the Tathagata by his name nor address him as ‘friend,’ for he is the Buddha, the Holy One. The Buddha looks with a kind heart equally on all living beings, and they therefore call him ‘Father.’ To disrespect a father is wrong; to despise him, is wicked. The Tathagata, the Buddha continued, does not seek salvation in austerities, but neither does he for that reason indulge in worldly pleasures, nor live in abundance. The Tathagata has found the middle path.

All waters are brooded over by Nârâyana, but every kind of water is not fit for drink. Similarly, though it is true that the Almighty dwells in every place, yet every place is not fit to be visited by man. As one kind of water may be used for washing our feet, another may serve the purpose of ablution, and others may be drunk, and others again may not be touched at all; so there are different kinds of places. We may approach some, we can enter into the inside of others, others we must avoid, even at a distance.

Ramakrishna

The only way to understand what’s evil, and how evil is not a dual reality outside the Absolute, is through the understanding of contingency, simple events, that lies in the manifested realm of existence. This manifested realm must contain the elements that permit movement which are ultimately represented in the Ying-Yang symbol, a fluctuating duality between light and shadows, where possibilities are open to be in endless combinations, and none of these combinations is outside of the One.

The fall from grace is an event which is proper from the manifested realm, but this fall comes from the confusion itself of the uses we give to the things in this world rather than the things by themselves. Whereas food is there to nourish us, we have separated this purpose to only focus in the instant gratification of gluttony, as we do with sex, with sleep, with art, etc.

Therefore, the right uses of the things in this world, can lead us to a holier life. “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” Corinthians 6:12. In the contingency of this world, and in our independence, we feel free to take any pleasure with no consequence to our good, nonetheless, we must be wise to choose what things are really helpful, in order to reach God through His will, in the use we give to the things in this world, to finally transcend the duality of this manifested realm, to be not brought under the power of any thing.

To use the right waters in the right places is the ultimate act of human in accordance to the design itself of reality. That’s the end of sin and the beginning of grace.

“Modernity is hubris; decadence is its Nemesis.”

-Mark Anderson

With his book “Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One” philosophy professor Mark Anderson gives a concise and powerful diagnosis of the problem of modernity and points towards a possible remedy within the framework of Platonic philosophy.  In just over 100 pages he moves from identifying the symptoms of modernity in current American culture to offering insightful guidance for those who wish to purify themselves of the degenerate elements that have surrounded them since birth.  By referencing only sparingly the eastern traditions that occupy the attention  of many traditionalists, Prof Anderson explores the decline from tradition to modernity in a purely western context.

For the purposes of his book Plato represents tradition and Nietzsche represents the modern.  The choice of Nietzsche as a representative of decadent modernity is a significant, perhaps even defining feature of the book.  The style of writing is clearly modeled more on Nietzsche than Plato, including aphorisms and word play that mimic the German philosopher (a good example of this is the quote given at the beginning of this review).  One of the book’s chapters is entitled “Nietzschean Reflections Contra Nietzsche,” and that description could very well characterize the entire book.  This focus is a result of Nietzsche at once being an extreme example of the disease of modernity and being painfully almost right on so many important questions.  Because of the latter quality Nietzsche often ensnares moderns who are beginning to awaken to the horrors of the current situation, leading them away from truly revolutionary thought with an intoxicating prose style (one which, with all due respect, Prof Anderson does not match) and impassioned, biting insights.  Given the amount of work that Prof Anderson has done on Nietzsche, one wonders if he initially followed this same path himself.

The author identifies as the root of Nietzsche’s error, and the root of modernity, the problem of misology.  He carefully emphasizes the fact that although misology is closely linked with modernity, misology, and indeed modernity itself, were present in antiquity.  Plato recognized this problem, and declared it to be the greatest evil.  Misology is defined as the hatred of logos, or the belief that rational thought and discussion are incapable of arriving at objective truth, and this is Nietzsche’s nihilism.   Misology is such a grave problem because it prevents all honest discussion of truth.  Objective truth is indeed a redundant phrase, for once there are multiple truths there is no truth at all.  This is the cause of modernity’s dishonesty when it comes to truth, as it at once wishes to discredit the idea of objective truth as primitive and naive, but at the same time to make statements that should be taken as true.  Only by declaring openly, joyously, and without embarrassment “this is true, and this is why it is true” can a philosophy have any validity.  Plato’s philosophy produces true health and freedom, and never for an instant doubts itself or the possibility of objective truth.  Prof Anderson points out that its freedom is not concerned with the freedom to do good but with doing good freely.  By describing Platonism in this way Prof Anderson turns the accusations that Nietzsche brought against Socrates and Plato back against the accuser.

Recognizing the falsity of modern assumptions and accepting the truth of Platonism through logical, discursive considerations is only the beginning of what a philosopher hopes to accomplish.  The true goal of philosophy is purification of the soul, and the structure of the book mirrors this progression, ending in a lengthy chapter providing a sketch of the Platonic practice of katharsis (purification).  Metaphysical knowledge can be accessed only by the soul and the purpose of purification is to render the soul clean and healthy in order to perform this function.  Only a healthy eye can properly access empirical knowledge and only a healthy soul can reach divinity.  For an eye to function properly it needs to be physically healthy, and for a soul to function properly it needs to be morally and intellectually healthy.  The result of these considerations is that a bad man cannot know metaphysical truth, although he can know truths about the physical world (or as the author says, “even a criminal can operate a microscope”).  This shows the vast gulf that separates the modern, scientific quest for knowledge and the search of the philosopher.  The main difficulty in explaining the problem of modernity to moderns is that they do not understand this difference, that when the ancient philosophers talk about “knowledge” they do not mean the accumulation of facts or even the physical laws abstracted from these facts that so fascinate today’s scientists.  Purification is a complete ordering of every facet of one’s life and a continuing project over many years that leads to the ultimate goal, union with God, in only a very few, select cases.

Although Prof Anderson emphasizes throughout the book the importance of metaphysics, the work is not a detailed exposition of Platonic metaphysics.  It is unlikely to convince or inform those unfamiliar with the details of Platonic philosophy.  It is recommended that such individuals consult the works of Plato and Plotinus.  But it is not the goal of the book to give such an exposition.  Rather it seeks to give a picture of what it looks like to live and think as a Platonist, especially one living in modern times.  The author speaks tenderly and from experience about the intoxicating power of Platonism and its possibilities for health and wellbeing.  He does not shy away from asking the difficult question “can we really overcome our own modernity?”  He never doubts truth or the ability of Platonism to reach the truth, but questions whether we moderns can actually remove the ingrained traces of modernity that haunt our souls, especially considering the centuries that have intervened since the disappearance of Tradition in the West.  But in keeping with the Platonic spirit, the author never becomes gloomy or pessimistic, and reminds us that even if the fullness of metaphysical realization is beyond our grasp, the mere foretaste of such rewards that we gain through reading the great philosophers far exceeds anything that modernity has to offer.

“By God, we mean gods.
By gods, we mean the Olympians.
By the Olympians, we mean nature.
By nature, we mean the inscrutable forces of nature.
By the inscrutable forces of nature, we mean the metaphysical
reality that manifests itself in and through them; their source; the
One.
By the One, we mean God…”

-Mark Anderson

Link to the book

Mark Anderson’s home page

What is more important, virtuous behavior or faith in God?

This question can be asked when one comes across religious individuals who act in an un-virtuous manner. The question is answered by realizing that true faith in God is incompatible with un-virtuous behavior. Virtuous behavior is certainly possible for those who lack faith in God, but where there is true faith un-virtuous behavior is not. This conclusion follows from a particular definition of “true faith.” By true faith we mean belief concerning God that accords with God’s true nature. Virtuous behavior is behavior that is in line with what God’s will deems to be the best course of action. If one believes in God but has false beliefs about Him, then any un-virtuous behavior can be explained by this false belief. This often manifests itself in a misunderstanding of a virtue. For example, even if one believes in God and believes justice to be a virtue which God approves of, one can easily misjudge what the just action is in a given situation. Even if a particular action is unjust one can justify that unjust action with religious belief. Although in the agent’s mind he is acting justly, he thinks this only because his belief is flawed, i.e., he believes things about God that are untrue. Hence un-virtuous actions can be coincident with false belief, but not with true belief, or truth faith. For many, faith in God means merely to believe that God exists, but this is not enough. This definition is too broad and includes an indefinite number of false beliefs about the nature of God. This should mollify any arguments against religion based upon anecdotal examples of the behavior of religious individuals. One final point is that having belief about God that is absolutely correct is nearly impossible for mortals. By our nature we are prone to ignorance and mistaken belief. Achieving this perfect belief would be almost a merging with God, a complete understanding of His will.

This time we introduce you Father Thomas Keating, a catholic Trappist monk who has dedicated his life to the study of contemplation not only in  Christianity, but also in the world’s most important religious traditions.

In this video, Father Thomas Keating discusses the experience of oneness and perpetuity of God through the dynamism of His temporal manifestations. Although the perspective of spiritual evolution in this video is not shared by the orthodox traditionalist school,  the approach Father Thomas Keating takes about to the non-dual nature of divinity is undoubtedly insightful, affable and very inspiring.