Reclaiming the body and the material world for religion and philosophy

“The motive forces and valuations have lain long below the surface.” (Nietzsche)

Conservatives and traditionalists can take heart in that we can keep the first symbolic-experience of the God Within or the Father Within, which was at the founding of all the revealed religions. But then we can move beyond the concepts and abstractions of the mystics and philosophers who deny the value of the material world as the central requirement to experience the God Within, since ridding the body of all material desires is needed for this state/condition.  This has put up the great spiritual blockade.

The denial of the senses in order to experience blissful inner states began perhaps with Plato in the West, but before that in the East in the Vedas, which prepared the way for Christianity and Islam. Saints developed in all the revealed religions from this discipline. Modern philosophy has also developed elaborate abstract conceptions of Being far removed for the body and from material life in its attempt to out-shine religion.

The rather weak nods given to real life, real living, real desires, real instincts (think of St. Paul saying, “Well, if you must marry...”) helped to assuage the majority of people who are naturally not wanting to take the ascetic path. But this mystic condescension is not nearly enough, it can even be as an insult to the great activation of life to evolve to real Godhood, the Godhood first seen only inwardly. We need to reclaim the evolving material world for religion and philosophy and then include, but not expunge, the preliminary findings of the early mystics. Theological materialism can begin the reclamation process.