Max Kappeler’s Teaching Moments
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The Education of the Future:
Our Future Form of Consciousness
Max Kappeler
“The education of the future will be instruction, in spiritual Science, against the material symbolic counterfeit sciences. All the knowledge and vain strivings of mortal mind, that lead to death, — even when aping the wisdom and magnitude of immortal Mind, — will be swallowed up by the reality and omnipotence of Truth over error, and of Life over death.” Mary Baker Eddy (Mis. 61:4)
Charles P. Steinmetz, one of America’s distinguished electrical engineers in 1923, when asked what direction research would take in bringing about the greatest discoveries within the next fifty years, echoed Mary Baker Eddy in his reply:
“I think the greatest discovery will be made along spiritual lines. Here is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatest power in the development of men and history. Yet, we have merely been playing with it and never seriously studied it as we have the physical forces. Someday people will learn that material things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men and women creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of God and prayer and the spiritual forces which as yet have hardly been scratched. When this day comes, the world will see more advancement in one generation than it has in the last four.”
There is the realization now that a material concept of existence, that claims success in new technologies and social innovations, has created greater problems than it can solve. The problems that are the most life threatening and resistant to any solution are completely man-made. For example: today humans are faced with the possibility that evolution by natural selection could be replaced with evolution by human intervention [Artificial Intelligence]. It is no surprise that today’s crisis is a total crisis, for it involves the total form and structure of what it means to be “man” —the entire structure of our consciousness. To go forward we must: 1) find out what is the structure of spiritual reality, 2) see how our consciousness can become one with the structure of spiritual reality.
Pascal, in his book, Pensées, wrote: “Know that man transcends man infinitely.” Karl Jaspers, philosopher, states: “Insofar as we are in the world, from somewhere else, our job in this world is to transcend the world.” According to an underlying self-evolving and governing Principle, God, the post-historical “man” must represent and embody a completely different concept of man.
An article by the physicist, philosopher, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, “Shock as the Beginning of a Change of Consciousness,” (1984) deals with four subjects, where peace must be accomplished: 1) world economy, 2) ecology (peace with nature), 3) foreign policy (peace among people), and 4) political morale, requiring a change of consciousness. In summarizing the fourth point he states: “Political morale demands today a change of consciousness…. Mankind cannot survive if it continues to put the new instruments (science, technology, economy, i.e. the realm of reason) in the service of the old consciousness with its structure….”
Like von Weizsäcker, we should be convinced that the hope of the future depends on a fundamental mutation of consciousness. This change will be advanced the more we come face to face with a recognition and understanding of the spiritual, with its demands on us to conform to its high divine standard.
The new “man” in the light of divinely scientific categories
Since the middle of the 20th century, many thinkers in all fields of research have felt the growing need for a profound evolution in spiritual understanding. Such an evolution demands an entirely new concept of “man,” not man of the earth…earthly [material, mortal man], (John 3:31), but man as a spiritual idea whose divine nature translates itself to every level of human and material experience. Departing radically from the corporeal, psychological image of man as presented by the natural sciences, the new concept of man requires a new definition. C.G. Jung put it in these words: “I cannot define for you what the theologians call God, but what I can tell you is that my work proves empirically that the pattern of God exists in every man.”
The new man (as God’s idea) reflects the pattern of God. To know the new man, we must first know God. This brings up the challenge of the age: What is the Science of God? Only as we begin to answer this question, can we answer the question: What is man?
When the Science of God, and its system of universal laws, is understood through its three divine categories of Being,* the structured understanding of God that results, forms the new definition of man. To convey this, Jesus said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). In this context, the divine Principle, God, is no longer far above, but unfolds within and as us. The true man therefore is the individual expression of the whole Principle of Being and its system of universal laws.
*The three divine categories of Being as found in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy:
1) 7 Synonymous terms for God: Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love
2) 4-fold operation of God: Word, Christ, Christianity, Science
3) 4 levels of spiritual consciousness: Science itself, divine Science, absolute Christian Science, Christian Science
This article is an edited excerpt from:
Visions 2000:Our Future Form of Consciousness—Max Kappeler
Autumn 1999, Volume 7, KAPPELER INSTITUTE USA NEWSLETTE