The influences on the acceptability of Dreams and Visions during Enlightenment

There are quite a few interesting Enlightenment thinkers and Philosophers, but I will only mention a few in the setting of this blog in brief summary (I will further explore these with you in my book).

John Locke argued against several schools of philosophy, including Plato's, which maintained a belief in an innate knowledge. (Something I would call God-given knowledge) Locke argues against innate knowledge, asserting that human beings cannot have ideas in their minds of which they are not aware. He concluded that people cannot be said to possess even the most basic principles until they are taught them or able to think them through themselves.¹ He develops the idea of the tabula rasa, or blank slate which means born with no knowledge at all.

Tabula rasa leaves several things out, however. Locke assumes that after people were taught, that which they learned would be able to equip them with enough knowledge to be self-aware. In addition, concluded that only that taught knowledge would make them proper moral and intelligent human beings. This would leave out and negate any original thought and creative ideas. If one were to build only on what humans come up with, our knowledge would indeed be very limited. In order for humans to have creative ideas there needs to be inspiration from another source, the Cosmos, a higher power, God. Inspirations come through dreams, a vision, or sudden insightful thoughts, which have no basis in any human thoughts but are a God thought given to a receptive human.

My theory is that the human can only be receptive if there is an innate predisposition already present. According to my understandings, a human comes from the God realm, they bring a piece/or spark of that realm with them and with that their soul can stay in communication and receive inspiration.

Locke's idea that there is no innate knowledge does not work unless he would think that there is nothing else out there, no Creator or Sustainer. We all have an innate knowledge, even animals. They know when to breed, where to find their food. Baby animals that are of a species in which the parents are not present at their birth can do that.

In humans, this innate knowledge does not pertain to food and shelter but to other areas. Mainly, those consist of finding happiness and one's life work and life mission. If one has found one's life mission such a person is incredibly happy. That is connected with remembering our source. This innate knowledge might have been educated out of us, beaten out of us, but what is left is still a deep longing for more, for something higher. It is the longing or the dissatisfaction with life, which gives the innate away. We know there is something else. If we cannot reconnect with our innate knowledge given by our Our Creator,  we become depressed and dissatisfied. It is that innate knowledge, which we may not be able to name, which will propel us forward until we find what we need to know and know what we need to find. Once we answer the call of our innate knowledge, we will become whole and truly happy. We will find our life's work.

Locke claims that the only “innate knowledge” he can see is in the drive of humans to want to be happy or an aversion to misery.² That is exactly true. Locke thinks of a material happiness that in the long run is not happiness. True happiness is (or actually joy which is a much higher form of happiness) a happiness in the fulfillment of purpose, happiness that brings wholeness and is inspired and can overcome aversion. Locke leaves out the inspired realm.

Without the awareness of an inspired realm, or God realm, one would have to assume that babies are tabula rasa. Yet I myself observed innate knowledge in my children, things I have not taught them yet and still they were able to do those things.

Immanuel Kant challenged the assumption that the mind is actually a blank slate. “The mind does not simply receive information, according to Kant; it also gives that information shape.”³ Kant does not talk about a divine or inspired realm from a point of revelation. He tiptoes around this subject. He concludes that pure reason is capable of knowing important truths. “However, Kant does not follow rationalist metaphysics in asserting that pure reason has the power to grasp the mysteries of the universe. “⁴

“Kant, along with Hume and Hegel, played a central role in the development of philosophy of religion as a matter of inquiry. One important function of this kind of inquiry was to determine the extent to which human reason, operating without assistance of divine revelation, could by its own power establish the meaning, validity and truth of concepts and claims about God.”⁵

It may be understandable that Kant and many others distrusted revelation. The Catholic Church had a questionable history by then (selling indulgencies, relics, some of which were fake etc.). However, I believe that it was this distrust and the inquiry into religion as a human phenomenon, which contributed to undermine the acceptability of dreams and visions as revelation.

Darwin moved even further away from the idea that God is our creator and influences human life. He wrote in length in his essay Natural Selection-Survival of the Fittest, about the adaptability and variability of species when conditions change. Obviously those who do not adapt die out – hence 'Survival of the Fittest'. He goes on to explain in his essays: Descent of Origin of Man that humans are such a variability coming from lower forms of life; or simply said, the human evolved from the animal. The thing is, even if natural selection or evolution were to be true, we must consider that such adaptability of a species, allowing them to survive, is an act of mercy. One can see God's hand in this process.

 Darwin says in his essay: Struggle for Existence: “Natural Selection is a power incessantly ready for action and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art.”⁶ He did not mention God; that is a problem later on for us humans. He did however admit that there is a great power at work; he called it Nature. Obviously, he did not see that Nature itself does not have that power. He did not see that there must be something that gives Nature that power.

Through Darwin’s theory, the higher intellectual and spiritual human becomes degraded. Even though humans have at times acted like animals, they have the power of the mind and spirit to make choices and reason right and wrong. They have feelings and the ability to have compassion and love.

The three possibilities I see: (1) If man evolved, we may either have mistakenly thought that he evolved from the animal but had a parallel evolution, (2) man, if he truly evolved from the animal, has been divinely bestowed to move beyond the animal qualities, which if true, these animal qualities may haunt him. Nevertheless, he has available to him reason, intellect, and higher feelings such as love and compassion, or (3) the third option is creation of the human by God, who is however sinful and stoops to animal qualities; not something Darwin shared. Reason makes it necessary to conclude divine intervention and even revelation for man to move forward. By degrading man to an animal, dreams and visions as revelation, of course, are not even considered.

Unfortunately, people who decide not to help someone in need also quote natural selection in many instances. That is not natural selection. Nature is not capable of being selfish. A selfish choice is not natural selection, it is immoral since we have intellect and emotion and the ability to reason.

This just shows very briefly how some of these thoughts and philosophies affect the acceptability of dreams and visions as well as our sense of morality over time.

1 Http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/johnlocke/section1.rhtml (accessed 6/23/13)

2Willian Benton, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in Britannica Great Books, Vol 35. (Encyclopedia Britanica, Inc. 1952), 104.

3SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Critique of Practical Reason.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. Web. 20 Jun. 2013.

4SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Critique of Practical Reason.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. Web. 20 Jun. 2013.

5Philip Rossi <philip.ross@marquette.edu> on http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/supplement.html. (accessed 6/25/13)

6Darwin, The Descent of Man, in Britannica Great Books, Vol.49, Editors: Brockway and Adler, (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1951), 32-47,  253-270.


© 2013 Angelika Mitchell