Celtic Christianity regarded all nature as spiritual and worshiped God in nature. Unfortunately, Roman Christianity separated spirit from nature. This “Cardinal” mistake haunts us to this day. The de-spiritualization of man and nature is, to large extent, responsible for the destructiveness of modern man as well as the general psychological and spiritual despair in Western culture.
The modern Christian belief system of Panentheism is attempting to re-capture the spirit of early Celtic Christianity, but the living mystical connection with nature – which came natural to the ancient Celts because it was an integral part of their religion and culture – is lacking in Panentheism and in modern Christianity.
Fortunately, we Canadians have an indigenous culture in which the living mystical connection with nature is still very much alive. If we sincerely asked our Native sisters and brothers to forgive us the wrongs we have committed against them and their culture, and humbly and respectfully asked them to share their culture and spirituality with us, then I imagine they would.
I seriously suggest that we Canadian Christians make the indigenous spirituality of our country into our new Old Testament. I do, however, not propose that we put Native spirituality in writing and use it in place of the Old Testament; I only suggest that we do what the early Celtic Christians did: make the indigenous nature religion of our country the basis for a renewed Christian faith.
Our present Christian belief system is based on an unquestioning belief in a set of doctrines which are, by and large, unprovable hypotheses. Now, in our scientific age, unquestioning belief is no longer acceptable. Improbable hypotheses are being discarded. This leaves our Christian faith on shaky grounds.
“But I feel what I believe!” many of us will say. When we feel what we believe, however, we leave the realm of logic and enter the realm of intuition, mysticism, and animism, all of which are shunned by modern day liberals and intellectuals. The more intellectually sophisticated we became, the more we denied the importance or even the existence of intuition. Finally, we overlooked completely what our “primitive” ancestors have perceived intuitively: that the world is an organic and synchronistic whole.
Intellectuals who regard intuition as unintelligent have it all wrong – Intuition is highly intelligent! Intuition is the governing intelligence of the cosmos, the intelligence of wisdom. Intuition is syncretic intelligence, godly intelligence, the intelligence that has governed the universe since the beginning of time.
Intuition is not illogical or irrational. Illogic is unsound logic; irrationality is twisted rationality. Intuition is neither of those; intuition is the diametric opposite of rationality. Intuition is the experience, apprehension and conscious awareness of the state of synthesis as the basic state of being.
Intuition is central to any civilized society. The primary intent of intuition is to receive perceptions that could otherwise not be perceived. In intuition we experience reality as is, not as we think it is. The use of intuition enables us to resolve issues that could not be resolved any other way. Intuition is the mother of all arts; it introduces us to the magical and mystical, the mysterious and miraculous. To experience reality as a dynamic, interactive and synchronistic whole; to experience ourselves as an inseparable part of that whole; to sense our place within the whole and act directly from that knowledge – this is intuition!
Of course intuition can go wrong, but so can reason. The self-destructive direction into which we humans are headed is an example of reason having gone very wrong. We are committing ecological suicide by destroying our own ecological resource base. We are destroying the results of millions of years of evolution and, at the same time, desecrating the creator in and around us. To reverse this self-destructive trend, to save ourselves from ecological suicide and to save our Christian faith, we need to re-discover intuition and re-spiritualize man and nature. And the best way to re-discover intuition would be to consult those who never lost it: Our First People.
Everything in nature has evolved from pre-existing forms; the natural process of evolution uses pre-existing forms as the foundation for new forms. This applies not only to biological evolution but also to cultural evolution. In our self-created evolution of spirituality, we Christians forgot that intuitive spirituality was there first, and that logical spirituality needs to be based on intuitive spirituality. Instead we built a framework of logical beliefs on an illogical foundation. It is high time to put a firm intuitive foundation under our framework of logical beliefs and again worship God in nature.
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Hermann Harlos recently wrote “The Awakening – A letter-guided Quest for mystical experience” This Quest is pure in the aforementioned sense of the word, and is available on-line at www.hharlos.com or http://ca.msnusers.com/TheQuest Anyone who reads it and wants to contact him personally can do so by email at hharlos@live.com
By Hermann Harlos
Inspired by Christian teachers like Pelagius, Ninian, Eriugena, and Patrick, 6th-century Ireland underwent a synthesis between the nature religion of pre-Christian Druidism and Christian religion. The early Irish Celtic Christians, as well as the early Celtic Christians of Scotland, Wales, and England, incorporated rather than eliminated many aspects of their earlier religion, so that their pre-Christian mysticism became sort of an Old Testament to them. Unfortunately, the Synod of Whitby (664) put an end to Celtic Christianity. Roman Christianity became the official religion of Christendom.
