Friday, August 09, 2013
Instinct and Reason
Who has defined reality
completely or successfully? The instincts have been misunderstood by
philosophers and psychologists who have often seen the instincts as
antisocial or anti-civilization forces. Freud thought religion and
civilization were built upon the repression of egoistic and chaotic
instincts. Nietzsche in later life affirmed the chaotic instincts
over their repression by weak rationality. But the human instincts
are not merely selfish and chaotic and in need of repression.
The great religions also
disparaged the instincts even more than the rationalists, and the
higher disciplines of religion sought to rid the body of all
instinctive desires so as to experience the God Within. This was the
Inward Path to the Father Within minus or missing the Outward Path of material evolution to Godhood. What is
needed is the Twofold Path where the Inward Path points the way to
the Outward Path, which affirms the conservative perspective in this change.
Although there is a tension between the individual and the group, basic human
instincts are more altruistic than egoistic, that is, group survival
dominated and was stronger than the individual, which allowed us to
survive and reproduce successfully, and this behavior was encoded in
basic human nature. But I go further and deeper in seeing the instincts as
related to the sacred, because the instincts are essentially activated inwardly
by the material Spirit-Will, even as life is shaped by natural outside
evolution. The instincts are not merely selfish chaos or Dionysian
frenzy, the instincts are based in the sacred and even rational drive
to evolve life to Godhood in the cosmos. Our sacred task is aid in this ongoing process.
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