The Problems Confronting a Liberating Prophet

The task confronting the liberating prophet was formidable because he had to overcome all our evasions not just some of them. Some truth was dangerous while the full truth is not. The full truth which explains why we humans have been upset and divisive is compassionate. It does not criticise us. However, as is revealed in this book, that truth can only be arrived at via all the partial truths such as integrative meaning which on their own criticised us. Similarly, viewed separately the concepts of love-Page 183 of
Print Edition indoctrination and development criticised us. But when these ideas are presented as part of the full story as they are in this book they do not criticise us. It was a case of having to deliver all the truth or no truth — no critical truths anyway — if we were to be liberated from criticism rather than merely adding to the criticism with which we had to live. We needed from a prophet composure not exposure. We needed our sense of guilt alleviated not increased. We have lived in fear of dangerous/hurtful prophets, prophets who have left us exposed to criticism. We wanted a prophet who would lead us all the way through the minefield of hurtful partial truths, through the potentially devastating criticism, to safety on the other side, where the full truth and compassionate explanation for our divisiveness would be found. Humanity has been milling at the edge of that minefield in ever increasing numbers but could not venture out into it. Using another analogy, only a David (an exceptional innocent) could go out from the besieged ranks of humanity’s army and slay the giant Goliath (ignorance).

The formidable task facing the prophet was to defy all our evasions and hold onto all the critical partial truths in the face of the determined and normally overwhelming efforts of his fellow humans to keep them repressed. Only by doing this could he find the full liberating truth. To be able to do this, to stand by what his conscience said he should believe instead of what the rest of us told him to believe, he needed an exceptionally strong conscience. He needed to be exceptionally innocent of hurt/‘mistreatment’ and thus free of alienation and thus secure or uncorrupted in soul and conscience. He had to be so secure he would not be swayed by our evasions/falsehoods/distortions/ confusions/upsets/denials/superficialities.

In his younger years especially the world of a prophet was one of fight — of defiance — of hanging onto what his soul was telling him was right in spite of what the world around him was telling him to believe. A prophet was not like a saint. The Encyclopedic World Dictionary says a saint is ‘one of exceptional holiness of life’ and a prophet is ‘one who speaks for God’. A saintPage 184 of
Print Edition lived a holy life while a prophet spoke of holiness. A saint was passive while a prophet was active. If Saint Francis of Assisi, loving the animals as much as he did, was strong/secure enough he would have taken that love into battle and tried to solve the ‘wrong’ on earth. The problem that had to be solved if animals were to be saved was our human upset. Necessarily saints were people who had lost their innocence but been ‘born again’ or gone back to purity of life in an exceptional way. On the other hand prophets were necessarily people who had not had their innocence spent or destroyed. To speak for soundness, to get the truth up, the soundness had to be very strong and clear in you. In fact it had to be you and not something you had returned to. Leonard Cohen in his book, Beautiful Losers (1966), made the distinction when he said:

‘A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order.’

Another difficulty confronting a liberating prophet was that he had to work alone because we were unable to cultivate/institutionalise the art of introspection or even recognise its unevasive thoughts. Further still, he could not reveal and find recognition and support for his work until he had found the full compassionate truth and even then, in our shock at being confronted with the truth, he would have to expect to be assailed rather than supported for the work he had done.

As well, throughout his battle to defy us he would find no appreciation for the subjective way he thought, being the complete opposite to the normal mechanistic approach. The mechanistic approach was detail-particular and whole-view-Page 185 of
Print Edition uncaring or unconcerned while the subjective approach was whole-view-caring and detail-uncaring. For example, a holist could not very well study mathematics or chemistry or learn to spell or be concerned with grammar while the questions of why people were unhappy and even starving were not being addressed. He could not let go his belief in integrative meaning. While this author did finally gain a science degree in zoology after attending two universities it took me five years to complete the three-year course. In that five years I had to repeat the compulsory first year chemistry and mathematics three times before I passed them and now, forty-one years old, I still can’t spell or use grammar correctly. For this book a great deal of editing (400 hours) was required to make (I hope) my holistic way of thinking meet our mechanistic expectations. My school, Geelong Grammar in Victoria, is world famous for the special effort it makes to foster innocence/soundness. To quote from an article in the school’s magazine titled What we profess and practice: ‘Primal innocence, like primal Eden, is destroyed: yet both can be restored; the Divine Image lives on, the burden and the glory of mankind, and true education consists in its recognition and its restoration . . .’¹ Geelong Grammar held no entrance exams and was one of the first schools to go outward [nature] bound, do away with uniforms, play down competition in work and play, scale down disciplining military cadets, and go co-educational. Yet even this school told my parents that I ‘would find a science course at university too difficult’² and encouraged me to do manual subjects — tried to exclude me from humanity’s search for understanding.

We can get a glimpse here of just how much humanity had overshot the mark in terms of stressing cleverness and in the process excluding soundness. Through the support of my parents I was able to qualify for university by studying and passing the State Leaving Certificate exams by correspondence from Page 186 of
Print Edition home on the family sheep station/farm. I was always in the lowest classes through school and at university never gained better than a pass in an exam. Proof that it was the false mechanistic evasiveness of academia that was the problem was that on the one occasion I was allowed to think holistically, in the biology exam for the Leaving Certificate, I gained first class honours and came fiftieth in the state of New South Wales. In the exam I was allowed to write an essay of my choosing and I wrote about ‘Why don’t some ants become lazy and live off the rest’. It is amongst ants that co-operation/integration is most apparent or least deniable in our world. A prerequisite for success in academia as it has existed was alienation. Tragically, soundness was not able to be considered. I still have nightmares about exams.

While we have had to be evasive the holistic truth, which can now be admitted, is that the incredible importance placed on the fabled ‘three Rs’ (reading, writing and arithmetic) of the mechanistic education system was absolute bullshit (evasion) compared to the need to teach love, enthusiasm and happiness. In truth our schooling was all about introducing children to death, not life. While death of soul and spirit was the reality of life during humanity’s adolescence and this had to be prepared for ‘true education consisted of the recognition and restoration of primal innocence’.

The holist’s (‘wholist’ seems more appropriate) world was the complete opposite of the mechanist’s world. You assessed the quality of a holist’s work according to how accurately he or she had understood the whole view. You assessed the work of a mechanist by judging how accurate the details were. Mechanists could have the details perfect but the whole view in complete disarray and be happy. Holists could have the whole view perfect but the details in a complete mess and be happy. The priorities for a holist were the opposite of those for a mechanist. The more exhausted or battle-weary we became the more the boundaries of our world were reduced. In the end our world often became so limited we were only capable of keeping our car nicely polishedPage 187 of
Print Edition or our room perfectly organised or our dress immaculate; everything beyond these limits had to be ignored and left in chaos. On the other hand, if we were completely unembattled the boundaries of our concerns would not have been reduced at all in which case we would not have been able to sleep at night knowing there were people in Ethiopia who were starving and the last thing we would have been concerned about was whether our hair was done and ‘how we looked’. It should be stressed that lack of pride in self did not necessarily indicate a holist and similarly the desire for perfection of detail did not necessarily imply a mechanist. We are talking generalities here. Someone who makes furniture (as this author does for a living) could try to design furniture in a holistic way, free of embellishment/extravagance/self-glorification/ego and concentrate on trying to find the simplest and most natural design possible. He could pursue confrontational, thoughtful, sound solutions rather than escapist, thoughtless, therapy solutions. When looking at the furniture that resulted, mechanists would evasively not see the simplicity, ingenuity and soundness in it and instead see it as boringly plain. Further, mechanists would prefer furniture that was superficially perfect to that which was genuinely perfect. They would prefer furniture that had an immaculate finish and was built with junk materials rather than furniture that was profound and had little care taken with the finish. Mechanists and holists had completely different concerns. Recalling Sir Laurens van der Post’s quote on the sensitivity of the Bushmen of the Kalahari, a holist (in this case the Bushmen) could ‘know what it felt like to be a Baobab tree’ but not know the botanical name of it while a mechanist could know the botanical name of every tree on earth but have no feeling for trees at all. In studying the relatively innocent Bushmen, van der Post himself encountered the extreme superficiality of the evasive mechanistic world. In his book, The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958), he says: ‘I found men willing enough to come with me to measure his head, or his behind, or his sexual organs, or his teeth. But when I pleaded with the head of a university in my own country to send a qualifiedPage 188 of
Print Edition young man to live with the Bushman for two or three years, to learn about him and his ancient way he exclaimed, surprised: “But what would be the use of that?” ’ A holist dietician could well enthuse about people going onto a vegetarian diet (to say that we should be vegetarian is holistic and not mechanistic/ evasive because it confronts us with our post-innocent angry/upset lifestyle where we changed from being vegetarian to killing animals and eating meat) without being concerned that he or she did not know what vitamin E or cholesterol was. On the other hand a mechanist dietician would talk endlessly about the existence in the intestine of cholesterol-colloid-mouse-umbrellas or some such extraordinary substance without ever looking at the real dietary concern for humans of getting back to a natural diet. As well, the mechanist dietician would likely heap scorn on the holist dietician for not knowing what vitamin E and cholesterol were and the holistic dietician, not being aware of the way mechanists think, would have no idea why he or she was being criticised over matters that are to his or her way of thinking not the priority concern at all. It has been a mad world to live in. Thank heavens the madness can end. Holists and mechanists were worlds apart and neither understood or appreciated the other’s way of thinking at all. Christ’s description of mechanists as ‘blind guides’ who ‘strained out gnats but swallowed camels’ (Math 23:24) was accurate. Again it has to be remembered that until we could defend ourselves in the presence of the truth we had no choice but to evade/escape the truth — to be mechanistic. To be evasive was the correct procedure. Holists were dangerous because they unfairly criticised/exposed us.

As mechanists we had extremely superficial measures for what represented quality, we didn’t think straight and we were non-lateral or unimaginative and, above all, insecure in our thinking. Living with the whole view was an entirely different approach to evading the whole view. Not being aware of the art of living with the whole view we measured the quality of holistic/subjective thinking in our extremely restricted terms and tried to force it to adopt our extremely limited way of thinking.Page 189 of
Print Edition As has been explained, the world of innocence was a totally uncared for and uncatered for world.

Finally, to return to the task confronting a liberating prophet. When he found the full truth the prophet had to try to present it to us even though we did not want to hear it. We did not want to hear it because even though it was compassionate it still involved confronting many truths about our world and ourselves that we were trained to repress/evade/deny and as well it meant a challenge and complete readjustment to our way of thinking which are in themselves traumatic events. Revelation day is also ‘judgement’ day, exposure day, confrontation day and readjustment day!

While the task of a liberating prophet was formidable, to help him he had the power of love — of access to the beauty, truth and happiness of our soul’s world. Also, he could share his thoughts with and derive comfort from integrativeness/God. In truth the strength that could be derived from the wonder and happiness of the true world that our soul had experienced and knew all about was a force so strong that our exhausted, battle-wearied world could not overcome it no matter how incredibly great the fury of a mind unjustly criticised. In our upset we could attack the earth and even have destroyed it but still love would have survived and remained untouched. What is everlasting or immortal and profound or unmovable in our world is integrativeness or love.

Of course, having said this, we have to remember that the fury of a mind unjustly criticised was due to the fact that it was unjustly criticised, that it was fighting for the permanent establishment of love on earth, that its work was for the benefit of integrativeness (even though paradoxically it did not appear that way) and was thus of everlasting and profound significance. The spirit of man, which has been passed on from generation to generation for two million years, was committed to establishing recognition of its ‘goodness’/love/​beauty/​worthwhileness/​Godliness — to its immortal and profound significance.

_________

¹The Corian, April 1982.

² From the author’s last school report card in 1963.