In the past, I used the terms “quantum reasoning” and “quantum logic” to refer to a process of breaking down our assumptions to the lowest level possible. What’s the smallest quantum of thinking? What are the constituent elements of awareness? And how did we get where we are today? How is this different from where people were in some previous era, in some other land? What do we take for granted today that is different from other contexts?
Further, the process of questioning such things must account for different levels of recognition. Can we see reality on different levels when we seek to evaluate a thing as good or bad? This becomes an issue because westerners in particular are really very good at seeing the needs of the individual, but are exceedingly poor at accepting responsibility for a wider community. Everything is measured in terms of the individual. Thus, western minds have virtually no concept of broader common welfare; it’s subconsciously redefined in terms of the individual. The concern for benefit to any aggregate is completely absent in western reasoning.
The reason for this peculiar blindness is the singularity of western heritage against every other civilization or heritage in human history: All things are purely a matter of cerebral evaluation. The intellect is intractably self-interested. You cannot use intellect to evaluate a reform for the intellect. The intellect presumes itself to be god. If the intellect is your highest faculty, you cannot make the thing itself morally responsible.
Every other civilization and culture in the world throughout human history has assumed the existence of a higher faculty of awareness that fed into the the intellect, but was not a part of the intellect. Thus, it was assumed human nature could include an awareness of higher moral considerations that might trump the self-interest of the intellect. The West flatly denies this. Thus, the development of this higher faculty is severely stunted among westerners. It becomes a major endeavor to simply wedge open a space for this faculty in western minds, since the very notion is treated with hostility and derision.
This is where we begin talking about the heart as a separate faculty of consciousness. The problem is the serious deficit in awareness westerners bring to the Bible. The Bible arises from a heart-led culture with little trust in the human brain. Even very serious scholars in the field of Biblical Studies can spend their entire career ignorant of this.
And this is part of why western streams of Christian religion are so utterly foreign to the Scripture. The reflexive western promotion of the individual forces religion to take a false path away from the entire foundation of biblical faith. The western definition of “faith” is merely a matter of individual cerebral consideration. In the Bible, faith is an exercise rooted in the heart.
But for westerners, the heart is reduced to a repository of sentiment, tradition, social conditioning, etc. This makes it inferior to the mind. In the Bible, the mind is part of the fallen flesh, while the heart is the only faculty capable of connecting to the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, if you do not submit and commit to the Lord from your heart, He simply will not communicate with you directly. Faith is not data, but a personal communion with a transcendent Being.
American Christian religion and institutions are obsessed with public fame, which in turn requires measurable accomplishments. It’s all about bodies, buildings and budgets. In the Bible, the concept of “church” was a spiritual family that simply existed as a family. There was nothing to accomplish, no measurable goals. The whole point was organic, a question of the nature of development for a living entity.
The two images are radically different.
