Colleges or Churches?

In mankind's history, glorious radiance of knowledge and wisdom has at certain times burst forth like glowing rays of light in a rare unexpectedly beautiful sunrise. Some of the great inspired breakthroughs have been in realms we call "scientific" or "technical," while other breakthroughs have not always been thought of as "knowledge" because they have to do with definitions of honor and integrity and heroism. With respect to the latter, each society has a different tone, so to speak, and this tone is set either in colleges or churches.

In a capitalist society, undreamed of material progress and prosperity derives from the freedom inventive individuals enjoy to experiment in their garages, home workshops, and company research laboratories. But the guidance as to how such a society wisely and beneficially uses the great inventions of free thinking individuals still comes from those in either colleges or churches who set society's standards.

Every ray of knowledge or wisdom that has significantly benefited mankind has been inspired. In other words, it has arisen not from intellectualism, not from trial and error, but from an innate source inside of individuals, from their inner being, from their free spirit. Throughout history, when churches have become so rigidly dogmatic as to stifle the free spirit of individuals, truth seekers have turned to colleges. Likewise, when colleges have become so trapped in political correctness that free inquiry is punished and inspiration is altogether squelched, those of common sense have turned to churches. The wave back and forth from churches to colleges to churches to colleges is the ebb and flow of history.

As readers of A Course in Miracles, we know we will be guided by our holy spirit to attend colleges or churches (or both, or neither) according to our true needs. We have learned that as we listen inside to our spirit and do as told by our spirit, we will always find the exact path to knowledge and wisdom that is appropriate for us.

A really advanced teacher of God learns that actually there is nothing to do but wait ... and see what happens. Ultimately we need do nothing to learn because everything is already known in our total being. We need only disengage our mind to let our inner knowingness show itself. Although we are called "Teachers of God," such a label merely refers to the teaching which happens when we refrain from attempting to teach.

"The role of teaching and learning is actually reversed in the thinking of the world. To teach is to demonstrate. There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true all the time. From your demonstration others learn, and so do you." (A Course in Miracles: Manual for Teachers)

The question arises: where will these three books from Jesus, A Course in Miracles, do their next major work? As the Miracles movement matures and enters a new phase of Course dissemination, will the fields be most fertile in Colleges or Churches?

In America today, almost all once renowned centers of learning have abdicated their historic truth-seeking role and become black holes of radical leftist dogma preaching that government, not God, is the source of mankind's salvation. Among university faculty members, blinders are cemented in place and it's as if Karl Marx had never proved himself to be the prophet of extinguished spirit and justification provider for more politically motivated murder than mankind had ever seen.

Would a person of pure heart and soul be attracted to a state-supported university these days?

Call it a "backlash" if you wish, but more and more people have found themselves in charismatic churches where they can raise their arms in the air, feel alive as never before, and hear words of hope and promise of freedom for their spirit.

In Europe's long lost Age of Enlightenment, men and women rebelled against a rigid church by seeking truth in universities. In America's current movement toward an even more advanced experience of enlightenment, truth seekers have little choice but to turn away from the academy and find themselves in churches.

In old Europe there ravaged a murderous inquisition led by adherents of the church who feared losing their power and influence. Will there be a modern inquisition led by university faculty members?

It has already started. The widespread expansion of charismatic churches with an accompanying anti-socialist pro-freedom sentiment has caused the banshees of university campuses, the screaming dogmatists, to launch terrible anti-Christian pogroms in current American culture in the name of a concoction called "modern secularism" which is about 95 percent Marxist poison, splashed with a few drops of misguided atheism from other more benign philosophies.

Marxist socialism invented a benevolent sounding World Peace Movement to sucker people into supporting their hidden cause of world domination. How many of the original intellectually-oriented readers of the Course have already confused the inner peace Jesus promises with this political movement of fear, anger, and power-lust which masquerades as a peace movement? How many Miracles-oriented intellectuals are already in bed with leftists who want to squelch our free spirit? How many have forgotten the words of the Course: "It has been said that there is a kind of peace that is not of this world. God's peace is recognized at first by just one thing; in every way it is totally unlike all previous experiences." (A Course in Miracles: Manual for Teachers)

Who can doubt that the next diffusion of the Miracles movement will be in churches where our holy spirit is honored and not confused with intellectually derived philosophies and political front organizations?

If you have really opened up spiritually, are extremely sensitive to cultural vibrations, and have walked on a university campus recently, you have felt the proof of this for yourself, probably saying to yourself: "This is hell!" Hell is what state-supported universities inevitably become.

Yet if we are guided to obtain college education, Jesus does not leave us without comfort and means. There are church-related schools which have an altogether different vibration, such schools as Liberty University in Virginia, and Snow College in Utah.

"But I would be out of place in the atmosphere of a church or church-based school!"

Really? You'd be surprised. If your holy spirit is guiding you to bring the Course into mainstream Christianity, you will not have any trouble joining in spirit with your Christian brothers and allowing them to be taught by your holy being. The language you would use (if any) might not be technical Course language and might be the subject of future inner hearing, but the rays of light, the glorious beautiful radiance of real knowledge and wisdom are meant to shine into the world from within you.