1 Kings 18:15-46
Deuteronomy 32:4-9
Hebrew 12:25-29
I848 (175 years ago) Soren Kierkegaard, the great Christian philosopher published the book “PURITY OF HEART – IS TO WILL ONE THING”
The book was originally published in Danish and in 1938 translated into English by Douglas Steere. Professor Steere also wrote the introduction where I found two very interesting paragraphs that will help us understand the problem people face, no matter when or where they live.
“When Kierkegaard speaks in his dedicatory preface, he means more than we do by our words ‘that individual’. The nearest English expression that approaches it is ‘THAT SOLITARY INDIVIDUAL.’ He means the individual as separated from the rest, the individual as he would be if he were solitary and alone, face to face with his destiny, with his vocation, with the Eternal, with God Himself who had singled him out.
Perhaps Descartes was on the right road when he sought to isolate the individual ‘I’ in man from all other experiences and make it the starting point for his system. But he was wrong and even culpable in not pressing on in his exploration of the ‘I’ beyond its capacity to think, for thought, Kierkegaard would insist, is not its most unique endowment. Here in the core of the ‘I’ is a center from which choice springs, from which the ultimate responsibility for one’s acts springs, from which the ultimate sense of uneasiness and weariness with anything that is short of the highest of all in reality ultimately issues, from which remorse and repentance arises. Allow this center in a man to remain dulled by the crowd; allow it to continue dissipated by busyness; permit it to go on evading its function by a round of distractions, or to lull itself by a carefully chosen rotation of pleasures; abandon it to its attempt to drug, to narcotize suffering and remorse which might reveal to it its true condition; let it wither away the sense of its own validity by false theories of man’s nature, of his place in the social pattern, of his way of salvation; in short, allow any of these well-known forms of domestication of man’s responsible core as an individual, to continue unchallenged, and you as a thinker and a friend of men have committed the supreme treason!” ‘Purity of Heart’ by Soren Kierkegaard
Desmond Berghofer, a very influential contributor to the project GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION through the UN and UNESCO published the book titled:
“The Visioneers”
“The battlefront is now at the level of the mind. The ultimate force is mindpower. We begin to understand that the world can and does have a mind. It’s a manifestation of the collective conscious of all the minds existing on the planet. The great project of the 21st century will be the gathering of these minds into a single, resolute purpose for the betterment of Earth and everyone on it. The nation state that we have designed is an imperfect concept. At best it’s a stepping stone to the place where we must now go; planetary stewardship. And we can’t get there unless we turn billions of minds from a multitude of cultural ignorances into a unified mind-frame. They must see that human fellowship in union with the life systems of the planet is the only possible way for a decent future life.
Creating that mindscape is the momentous task of our band of Visioneers. They must seek out the pressure points and touch them to move the power levers of politics and wealth and military might with a new more powerful force; enlightened visions of human destiny……That’s the vision of our Visioneers.”
Robert Muller, former UN Assistant Secretary-General, published the book
“New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality” (1982)
“…humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with the ‘divine,’ its transcendence into ever higher forms of life. Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine. This ancient simple truth is slowly dawning upon humanity. It’s full flowering will be the real, great new story of humanity, as we are about to enter our cosmic age and to become what we were always meant to be: THE PLANET OF GOD.”
Carl Teichrib in his book “Games of God” writes:
“As an independent attendee of the Global Citizenship congress I was assigned to a team of university students who hoped to become educators. This group was focused on tangible ways to integrate Muller’s ‘WORLD CORE CURRICULUM’ in the classroom. HOW? Was the question. Recognizing the spiritual nature of Muller’s worldview, and that our mission of global citizenship had entered the arena of beliefs and values modification, the talk turned to traditionally held parental convictions and how to ‘deal with parental pessimism.’ It was noted that if a child’s values could be changed in the classroom, then family attitudes would shift also. This, the future teachers acknowledged, was a worthy goal.
After some discussion it was agreed that creatively placing global citizenship values into all subject areas was the most important way to influence young minds. International problems requiring global solutions – such as overpopulation – would be embedded into literature, history, and mathematics. Planetary awareness would be emphasized, along with calls for collective action. By entrenching emotionally charged global concerns into the lifespan of formal education, in turn facilitating the responsive values, the correct Oneness philosophy would become profoundly infused within the fabric of society. We would create social justice warriors.”