The Future Mutation

God-consciousness in the present human being, which is uncommon, is a glorious yet virtual glimpse--or a future-mutation–of the biological evolution to God. It is not meant as a final destination in Itself, it is a glimpse, however glorious, of how it will be to actually reach God through evolution.

The apparent necessity in most religions of blocking the senses of biology to experience God-consciousness is paradoxically a way to find the primary purpose of biology and evolution, which is the bio-spiritual evolution to God. Blocking biology in meditation in order to experience a glimpse of God should not be confounded--as it often is--with blocking the evolution of biology to God.

One might close one eye to better see a star or a planet in the sky but this does not mean that the eyes are useless in traveling to the star.

Spiritually Animating Materialism

Human nature indeed seeks survival and reproductive success, but human
nature also primarily seeks higher evolution to Godhood, which we
believe may one day be understood scientifically, as it is now
understood religiously. The Evolutionary Christian Church animates
materialistically explained human nature with the religiously explained
Soul, Spirit and Evolution.

ECC also affirms the Conservative view of culture, where biological drives are best fulfilled in conservative societies, which are built upon the foundation of sociobiologically explained human nature and religion, with a deeper and longer term goal than merely successful survival, which is Godhood.

The New Vision

Does the science of evolution encroach upon the Primordial Tradition which we find in all revealed religions?

The present level of decadence is such that first we must reaffirm the Word of Primordial Tradition, in whatever religious form. For us this is Jesus Christ as revealed in the Traditional Church.

Following the reaffirmation of God in the world, then can come the affirmation of the Evolution to Godhood, the same God seen in the Primordial Tradition.

This is the new vision of the Theoevolutionary Church which in this way does not encroach on Primordial Tradition.

The past meets the future, science meets religion, biology meets spirituality in the Theoevolutionary Church.

Rigid Ritualism Or Living Symbolism?

When a ritual has lost its symbolism, its living symbolism---i.e. contact with God or the numinous---recovery sometimes takes the form of a rigid ritualism, where the rites have become almost meaningless yet preserved, the symbol has become a mere sign, exhausted of living symbolism. One hopes this was not the case in the recent reaffirmation of the Traditional Mass and that this was done to restore the living symbols.

Carl Jung, who is insightful regarding the use of symbols, pointed out that a symbol only lives when it is the highest expression of something divined but not yet known, this is how a symbol advances and creates life. The Theoevolutionary Church, with its evolutionary yet ancient symbol of St. Andrew’s cross, has brought back a powerful living symbolism.

Let us learn to contact the God within, as affirmed by Jesus Christ, and then let us join together and evolve toward higher man and higher consciousness, and ultimately to Godhood.

Imperfection

Eastern esotericism says that the image of God cannot be that which it represents and that the world is imperfect for this reason since the world is only the image of God.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) says that the world is imperfect not because it is the mere image of God but because it is unevolved. The world is essentially related to God via the Spirit, we have God within us.

We are imperfect until we evolve to Godhood. Does ECC therefore see man and nature as more Godly than the East? In any case, man has a long way to evolve.

Reaching Up And Reaching Down

Biology reaches up toward evolving to God, religion reaches down and up toward contact with God and the soul within; biology and religion are complementary in the Evolutionary Christian Church.

On the psychological level this is like dreams reaching up toward the conscious mind from the unconscious, and like meditation reaching from the conscious down to the unconscious. They are complementary.

This helps balance the conflicts that arise between the within and without, biology and cosmology, religion and science. In the same way conflicts subside in human psychology when the unconscious and conscious mind are better integrated. Totality this way arrives. Evolution is the key.

Integrating The Exoteric And Esoteric

The suggested “split” between the exoteric and esoteric, or the religious and metaphysical, is better understood in the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) than in the typical Traditionalist perspective.

Typically the exoteric affirms morality and action, the esoteric contemplation and symbolism, and limits are usually placed on the exoteric, related to action and morality. The typical esoteric reintegrates himself into the Divinity, the Absolute, but stops there in the glory of Oneness, united with the Divine Essence. This is not considered completeness in ECC, however glorious it may be.

In ECC, uniting with the Divine Essence in this world and in this body is considered a uniting but it is not the end goal of religion. We must evolve, with exoteric action and morality, all the way to the God, the same God whom the typical "esoteric" virtually unites with in his intellection.

To be fair to the esoteric Traditionalists, they tend to speak of the exoteric as another dimension and not something directly inferior. Yet the condition of superiority and hierarchy are there in the initiation process, and the exoteric is considered a lesser knowledge.

Far more evolution of the body-and-soul is required to actually reach the Reality of Godhood. We prefer to think of a union of the exoteric and esoteric perspectives, as pilot and navigator, on the path to Godhood. Let us join the exoteric and esoteric and evolve to the Supreme Reality of God.

Continuing The Conservative Synthesis

Theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church continues the Western synthesis of Greek-Christian civilization. Both the Greek and Christian world views have been expanded in modern times by the theory of evolution. Evolution need not be considered new revelation or new science strictly speaking, it is an expansion on past revelation (Christian) and past science (Greek.)

The addition brought by theological materialism includes the evolution of life all the way to Godhood, which expands on the traditional knowledge of God, understood through the experience of the soul within, and also expands the natural science of evolution, from the simple to the complex, to include evolution all the way to Godhood.

Keeping The Husk With The Kernal

One of the reasons we have tried to keep various spiritual insights of the Church is our belief in the general practicality of Conservatism. The spirit beneath the form, as Frithjof Schuon pointed out, has a tendency to breach its formal limitations. (Schuon, however, would not have affirmed our view of evolution.) One could consider every new religious adaptation as an esoterism adapted to a preceding exoteric religious form. Meister Echart said, “If you must have the kernal, you must break the husk.” But we are not breaking the husk, we are enlarging the husk.

Religions tend to decline to the point where they outlive their usefulness and they survive as forms without much substance. The religious form tends to be made for a time and place and a human collectivity. In the West, Catholicism remains the best preserved.

Knowledge of Evolution has taken form in the Theoeolutionary Church, the form being adapted, supposedly, by the "spirit." This evolutionary knowledge is being kept, at least by us, within the structure of the Traditional Church. What is this knowledge? The God we have seen within, in our traditional religion, must be naturally and materially evolved to, from the material to the supermaterial, all the way to Godhood.

Who can affirm this?