A Journey through the Twelve World Views – as a theme for 2020 - Rationalism

by Rev Reingard Knausenberger

Each month one of these world views will be expanded.

Rationalism

We often don’t realise that light is not visible. We see it reflected from objects, but by itself it is not visible. We see the moon, a planet, but there is no ray from the sun that shines on it. We can rationally prove that. The rationalist will show through experiments that light is invisible as a self-evident fact.
 
We also experience light as thoughts and even feelings, yet there is no experiment to prove this light. The only way to prove this inner light to oneself is to develop love for our thinking, not for the content of thinking, but for the activity of thinking itself. Then this activity can be brought into our feeling. In this way, what is at work in it becomes an experience, a perception of an invisible power which expresses itself as light and warmth simultaneously. So there is also invisible light of Spirit.
 
When Christ came after the Resurrection to his disciples through locked doors into the room, they experienced him as a light-being. He generated original light. But Thomas, the rationalist, wasn’t among them. He needed to prove it to himself: I can only believe if I touch him and see for myself. When he had that opportunity, he immediately had a self-evident experience: this is the One I know, he is my Lord and my God! It was a light experience of comprehension and uplifted enlightenment which encompassed him wholly.

Truth and reality were in symbiosis. Sensory impression and moral meaning were attuned to each other in such superior harmony, that it was a self-evident, self-generating quality: a moment of enlightenment from within.
 
In the language of Plato, one would say that Thomas encountered the radiant, creating reality of the Idea of the Human Being, in its highest form of being: this is God. Plato compares the Idea of the Good, the most elevated of Ideas, with the sun. Like the sun is the condition for life and seeing, so is the Idea of the Good the condition for existence and comprehension. The quality of Good is identical with God; a meaningful symbiosis which enables knowledge and truth. Seeking and testing the harmonious balance between the cosmic-earthly powers of the Good, both in the visible and invisible aspect, is the real domain of rationalism. It is noteworthy, that this is essentially about inner moral and ethical qualities, which relate in a meaningful, reason-able way to both an outer and an inner reality. Rationalism appeals to the responsibility of the individual to seek within oneself, inwardly, the invisible reality that lives in visible earthly appearance. ‘The Pharisees asked: when will the Kingdom of God come? He answers: the Kingdom of God does not come in an outer visible form. It also doesn’t come in such a way that one can say: look here or see there it is. Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.’
(Lk. 17: 20…)