slide 6 of 19
What is the result of convincing ourselves—or of our society convincing us—that the ‘branches within us’ that seek a Divine Light are mere delusion? And what brings this about? The Swedish writer, Tage Lindbom, in his essay “Lucifer" (1), equates the progressive fall of mankind with a tendency to no longer look outside itself, namely to the Divine, for reference points but instead to imagine itself as ‘divine’:
Draped in the shining garment of idealism and humanism, the West has accomplished a manipulation whereby the deepest meaning of the Fall of man is concealed. In the name of idealism and humanism, secularization is legitimized. More and more, Western man is living in a world in which he listens only to his own voice, which begins as the voice of rationalism; and listening to this voice, he is able to refer continuously to the “legitimation” that he believes the idealist and humanist pseudo-spirituality confers on him. In this world, secularization progresses because man can be represented as a higher being, carrying “the eternal” in his breast, conquering all creation, and at last proclaiming himself as universal sovereign. .
(1) Taken from page 74 of Every Branch in Me, this chapter is also found in Lindbom’s book The Myth of Democracy (1996).