By
Per Jespersen
If you see the
spiritual development of mankind as a mirror of the spiritual development of a
human being from baby till adulthood, there are similarities. Step by step the
young child develops from a fairy tale way of thinking to rational and
emotional thinking. It’s the same with mankind. The first human beings did not
know that they were there. They followed their instincts without any kind of
thinking. Then the rituals occurred forming a pattern of living that provided security, so that the
species could survive.
Conscious
thinking came later and created the wondering: why are we here? What is the
purpose of Life? What is the purpose of exactly me?
Children start to
wonder very early and they have thousands of questions to their parents and
peers: why, why, why. Life is a Why – through the whole childhood. The child
learns, that certain questions have answers, and certain questions have not.
And it learns that adults cannot answer every question they put. But they can
discuss them – and should certainly do it.
The first science
of the world was philosophy. The first Why was thought in ancient Mesopotamia.
And from this first Why sciences of all kinds developed. Man wanted to know
everything – but why? To be rulers of the whole world? No! To find a meaning of
Life as such? Yes.
The nucleus of
philosophy is the wondering – the Why. Thinking is a constant questioning and
answering. Waves of questions run through our minds day and night. The early
mankind needed these questions in order to know their own inner being, as a
child does. You have to be conscious of yourself. If you are not, you are just
a living robot doing things without knowing why. And you sometimes find people
doing things blindfoldedly, because other people do it. They do not know they
are around.
Science grew out
of philosophy – out of the Why – and developed into a way of thinking, that
provides final answers and provides us with proofs. These proofs are illusions,
but they make Life easier and simultaneously they blindfold us. We do not have
to think for ourselves, independently – we do as the majority does. We grow
into robots. Searching for proofs is a weakness we possess – the opposite of the
Why, which throws us out over the abyss. The Why scares us, if we are not
taught properly about it. The proofs make us secure, and there is no abyss or
traps og any kind.
Politically this
could lead to dictatorships, while independent thinking could lead to
democracy. The number of democracies of this world of ours is fewer and fewer.
It is much easier to live in a dictatorship, because you do not have
responsibility and do not have to care about anything but yourself.
The nucleus of
learning to think positively and independently dwells in education. Education
is the most important part of Life, especially in the childhood. Therefore, we
have a choice: to teach scientifically or to make our teaching jump out of the
big Why: philosophy for children.
Children are in a
way pre-philosophical, i.e. children wonder about what they see, hear, smell
and experience. Why has a cow four legs? Why does a dog bark? How can a car
start when you turn the key? Parents are bombarded with questions, and if you
think about it, you will see that many of the children’s questions are very
philosophical.
In my
consultation I happened to have a talk with a little girl about God and the
Devil. And she told me: there is a line somewhere, God is ruling at one side,
the Devil at the other. And the two of them all the time tries to conquer the
other’s area.
My question: is
that the conflict between good and evil?
Pernille: Of
course, don’t you see that. When there is a war going on somewhere, the Devil has
conquered some of God’s kingdom, and when hundreds of people try to help hungry
people in an African country, God has conquered a bit of the Devil’s kingdom.
Me: Does that
mean, that our Life is lived directly on that line?
Pernille: Sure,
that’s easy to understand, isn’t it?
Me: Or the line
is in every human being.
Pernille got very
thoughtful, pondering. Then she said: I never thought it that way, but that
must be the way it is.
Oh yes, we had a
good talk, the girl and I. And we both learnt from it.
When she had left my house I got
thoughtful. We were talking about God and the Devil. That is a religious talk.
But we used philosophy to solve our little problem. So what is deeper: religion
or philosophy?
“First there was
philosophy, then came religion.”
Religion gives us
the final answers to the enigma of Life. We do not have to ask anymore – we
just have to believe. It is similar to science: it provides theories as proofs.
Philosophy gives
us questions and does not claim these questions to be the one and only truth.
Questions are the paths that lead us to lift the curtain to the stage where
Life is lived. We only see a tiny bit of it – never the whole stage.
That is exactly
what philosophy is: wondering questioning, which gives us glimpses of the
spotlights on the stage, where the play we call Life is performed.