60. Old and new dogmas

The audio recording is available at https://youtu.be/6foS4ZL8s5M.

We can affirm that to understand the classical religion as a form of power, three conditions must be met simultaneously. These are the existence of traditional doctrines or dogmas, moral laws, and the cult or ritual of the God. In this criterion system, the essence lies in the dogma (rule) or doctrine, while the other two serve it. As mentioned earlier, transcendental belief in the One does not require human-created dogma, morality, or ritual, because faith is not religion. Indeed, we profess our faith, not belief in religion. Therefore, everyone can have a religion, but not a faith. It can also be said that there is no man without religion; thus, even the non-believer can have a religion and dogma. The most common religion today, for the masses, is the "faith into matter”, the priority of matter, the power of the body over the soul, which is no other than the quantitative, modern liberal religion. Its dogma is based on democratic equality, profit-seeking, and overconsumption. Those living in post-communist countries are aware that this has not always been the case. We will address the modern and new religion of the masses in a separate entry. 

Many shortcomings can be identified in the classical religious dogmas. Primarily, they were created not by spiritual understanding, but by reason and rationality. For example, in several religions, the goal of our Initiation Master’s wisdom is emphasized as salvation, forgetting that before the salvation of the soul, there must be room and time for creation and stretching. Salvation can only be applied as the third step. Is it possible that creation and stretching are unimportant? Without them, salvation is meaningless, or there is nothing to save. It is like skipping the first and second grades in school and immediately wanting to attend the third. Religion cannot have the singular goal of salvation, because then it only designates the goal, but says nothing about the means of realization, the task. 

From this perspective, the rule of salvation (making order) does point the goal, but how to achieve it, what practical steps to take, and according to what guidance, is missing from the dogma. Therefore, the fourfold human vocation—creation (both material and spiritual), stretching (adding our universal consciousness, self-awareness), salvation (returning matter to spirit, setting things in order), and resurrection (returning)—is fractured. Dogma speaks of conversion and not returning. Due to these deficiencies, the unity of human universality is broken, just as when in dogmas, either only the action or only the faith is emphasized from the triad of thought, word, and deed. Existence will always be fragmented if the triad is not fulfilled together. 

For example, if we state another dogma that the human soul is predestined for salvation, we must also add that this is only true if the soul strives for it, otherwise not. As mentioned earlier, salvation is a task, not a gift. Free will is precisely the implementation of the human choice between salvation (spirituality, wisdom, self-consciousness, faith, space) and non-salvation (materialism, ignorance, time). If we exclude human free will, the validity of predestination is lost. If we sacrifice the meaning of knowledge, self-consciousness, and the free choice entrusted to us for the omnipotence of the One, then we cannot see clearly and do not understand what our task is. Both examples show that theology still owes answers to many questions. 

The essential purpose of dogmatic rules are not what is accepted and what is excluded, but rather what they point to, what they can be used for, and how they help the man with their everyday concerns. Dogma proclaims that "This is so." In contrast, gnosis, the intellectual understanding of the soul (not rationality), asks, "Why is it so?" One takes the existence as given, while the other searches for its meaning. One classical dogma example is the creation of man. If interpreted literally, it pits chaos against chaos, making the interpretation seem fabular. Christianity, which has existed for more than two thousand years as a tradition (order, truth, love), does not have dogmas because it exists without them. Christianity is reality, an eternal existence. If it had dogmas, it would not be a tradition. Religion requires dogma to assert power. Religious Christianity is visible through dogmas, while traditional Christianity is invisible.