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Chapter 5 - Science of Four RiversSteve announced his plan for our future during the next morning's breakfast. "We have a job to do that no one has ever done before," he said. "Nor has there ever even been a group of people more qualified to do that job. I hope you will all be with me on that." He didn't say what it was that he wanted us to do. Instead, he spoke about the Byzantine model, the top down religious model for controlling people. On the top is God, the Father. Below the Father operates the son who acts as an intermediary to get humanity to carry out the Father's wishes. This became the model for the vertical interrelationship between the state, the church, and society, the model that many empires were built on. Steve said, that if one turns this perverted model upside down, then the original model comes to light. Here, once again, at the top we find God, the Father, or Truth. At the bottom we find humanity endowed with the Holy Ghost. That corresponds with our ability to think, to reason, to understand. The intermediary between the two, is science. Science is represented as the Christ, the spiritual idea of Truth. In other words, science is the key to human development. It is the key to our understanding of the truth, even our understanding of the truth about us. After this, Steve called on Ross to present his research on the sixteen-element matrix that he got out of Mary Baker Eddy's books. Ross described this matrix as a structure of four vertical columns with four elements each. Then he described the columns' functions internally. He said that the flow of development in the column is a two-stage process that represents two different vertical models of three elements each. He said that the two models overlap each other. Ross described the lower of these two models as a confrontational model. He said that at the top of this confrontational model is the element of science, at the center is humanity, and at the bottom is the element of depravity and deprivation. "Deprivation is the rut we get into if we don't recognize our humanity as the most valuable thing that we have," said Ross. He explained that in order to get ourselves out of this rut, we have to upgrade our sense of humanity, and for that we have to look to science. Our capacity for scientific understanding is the key factor that makes us human. He said that our capacity for scientific development defines us as spiritual beings. It gives the potential for creativity, culture, technologies, and love. According to the model that Ross described, science confronts whatever depravity put us into a rut. He said that science creates for us an ontological paradox between what we have allowed ourselves to become, and what we have recognized ourselves to be in the spiritual sense as human beings. He promised that as we resolve the confrontation in this paradox a new sense of humanity will dawn that defines us with a higher image, characterized as Christianity. "That's what Christianity represents in its highest sense." said Ross. Ross then explained that when this begins to happen, we leave the confrontational model behind. We shift ourselves into a totally new geometry in thinking. In this higher level geometry, our Christianity is no longer the pivotable element that it was before. It becomes the base element. It shifts to the bottom. Ross said that this is where we are now. He said that what has been developed before, has now become an established foundation. We have established a foundational humanist intellectual tradition. He pointed out that the element of science, that was in the top position before, now becomes the central pivot. It becomes the gateway to the realm of the absolute of reality. Above the element of science, therefore, lies Truth. || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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