Be Not Afraid!

Our dehumanising world needs the affirmation of Mystery more than ever … these words concluded my last entry. Because, although my last entry was very personal, I am also writing this webblog with concern for the world …

Thus I stress that John Paul’s keynote words, ‘Be not afraid!’ are not simply addressed to lonely individuals such as myself, they are addressed to a bamboozled world. A bamboozlement, which paves the way for evil …

It is a bamboozlement, which renders all things beyond rational and empirical certainty open to doubt. And in this openness, a vacuum develops, devoid of any depth and meaning beyond rational and empirical certainties.

A vacuum is created then, in which almost ‘anything goes’. Brainwashing children to a lifetime addiction to sugar – to cite only a single example, among a vast multitude of other instances of manipulation and coercion. A vacuum is created, in which countless Forces casting doubt on nearly all values, can use to their advantage.

Their advantage, that is, in creating a culture that is ever **less free** . All of this, for example, is what Rudolf Steiner saw more than eighty years ago. The opening of an abyss, which he tried to bridge with epistemology.

All of this also involves what the Holy Father means by the ‘dictatorship of relativism’. In a world of relativism, all kinds of matters lose their value, and in fact, under the pretext of neutrality, ‘political correctness’ ‘openness’ and so on – one is co-erced, actually co-erced to give up one’s aspirations to a higher world of truth.

As Allan Bloom has said of our ‘politically correct’ climate: 'The point is not to correct the mistakes [of the past – religious, philosophical etc] and ***really be right***; rather it is ***not to think you are right at all*** (Emphasis mine).'

One is pressured then, to be in doubt. But ‘doubt is more than a psychological state of indecision; it is the soul’s sojourn in the intermediary sphere between the two fields of spiritual attraction – terrestrial and celestial.’

So writes anonymous d’Outre Tomb. He means we are caught between one world constituted simply of rational and empirical certainty and another world of unfathomable depth and meaning, but which as John Paul would have said, we are naturally frightened to embrace.

The anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot, I believe, had come to a similar conclusion as John Paul saying, ‘Be not afraid!’ For he continues his thought, by saying that from the above situation of doubt:

‘There is no other means of escape than a pure and simple act of faith, issuing from the soul itself, without heaven and earth taking any part in it. It is therefore a matter of an act of the free personality … where the following is at stake: either an act of faith, or despair and madness.’

Anonymous d’Outre Tomb addresses the individual, but from the context of the entire book, it is clear he is concerned about the ‘schizophrenia’ of the modern world. He writes with blazing compassion for the 'despair and madness' of the world.

And unlike, for example, Rudolf Steiner who emphasised epistemology as the principle way across the abyss, he aligns with the answer of John Paul II to the crisis of modern schizophrenia: Be not afraid!