The document discusses true consciousness and false consciousness. It states that a Christian's inward progress is linked to an awakening level of consciousness, with conversion representing emergence from a state of somnolence. True consciousness involves experiencing God and seeing all things in a new light. However, there are also false forms of consciousness that can corrode one's interior life. These include excessive self-reflection that destroys genuine absorption in objects or situations, and over-intellectualism where one takes a purely cognitive approach even when action is called for.
The document discusses true consciousness and false consciousness. It states that a Christian's inward progress is linked to an awakening level of consciousness, with conversion representing emergence from a state of somnolence. True consciousness involves experiencing God and seeing all things in a new light. However, there are also false forms of consciousness that can corrode one's interior life. These include excessive self-reflection that destroys genuine absorption in objects or situations, and over-intellectualism where one takes a purely cognitive approach even when action is called for.
The document discusses true consciousness and false consciousness. It states that a Christian's inward progress is linked to an awakening level of consciousness, with conversion representing emergence from a state of somnolence. True consciousness involves experiencing God and seeing all things in a new light. However, there are also false forms of consciousness that can corrode one's interior life. These include excessive self-reflection that destroys genuine absorption in objects or situations, and over-intellectualism where one takes a purely cognitive approach even when action is called for.
THE inward progress in the Christian’s life is linked to a process of
awakening to an ever increasing degree of consciousness. Conversion itself is comparable to an emergence from a state of somnolence. In rising from self-contained worldliness towards the reality of God, in experiencing the metaphysical situation in which God has placed him and the new light in which all things and his own self are now appearing, the person attains to a new level of consciousness. The convert, in Cardinal Newman’s words, is like a man ascending from a mine to behold daylight for the first time. He looks back upon his former life as a state of somnolence, a twilight of semiconsciousness.
Types of false consciousness
Again, with our unreserved decision to imitate Christ, a new brand of
consciousness will necessarily permeate our life. However, there are many kinds of consciousness, only one of which will constitute the proper mark of our process of transformation in Christ. There also exists a false kind of consciousness which tends to corrode our interior life, and which is definitely opposed to true consciousness. Before discussing this true Christian consciousness, which indeed marks the “measure of the age of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), we must first identify and discard that false way of being conscious. Its prime characteristic is this. The man who is falsely conscious is no longer capable of full response to an object or situation. His mind is no longer able to sense the substance of things or of situations, nor the appeal which emanates from them; the normal contact between subject and object appears severed. We may distinguish two basic forms of this false type of consciousness. First, there is the mental perversion which consists in the fact that we destroy the attitude of genuine absorption in the object by an excess of reflective self-observation. Secondly, there is the tendency to over-intellectualism, implying that even in a situation which calls upon us to decide or to act rather than merely to know, we persevere in a purely cognitive attitude.
Sobre a verdadeira autoconsciência
O progresso interno de uma vida cristã está relacionado com um processo de despertar, cada vez mais intensamente, a autoconsciência. A conversão em si mesma é comparável a um emergir de um estado de sonolência. Levantando-se da contida mundanidade para a realidade de Deus, experimentando a situação metafísica que Deus o coloca e a nova luz em que todas as coisas e seu próprio eu agora aparecem, a pessoa caminha para um novo nível de autoconsciência. O convertido, nas palavras do Cardeal Newman, é como um homem ascendendo de uma mina para ver a luz do dia pela primeira vez. Ele olha para trás para sua vida precedente como um estado de sonolência, onde há apenas um entreluzir de um protótipo da consciência. Tipos de falsa autoconsciência
Novamente, com nossa irrestrita decisão de imitar o Cristo, um novo tipo de
consciência necessariamente permeará nossa vida. Há, entretanto, vários tipos de autoconsciência, onde apenas uma delas constituirá o símbolo mesmo de nosso processo de transformação em Cristo. Há também um tipo falso de autoconsciência que tende a corroer nossa vida interior, e que é definitivamente oposta à autoconsciência. Antes de discutirmos essa verdadeira autoconsciência Cristã, o que de fato marca “a estatura da maturidade de Cristo” (Eph. 4:13), devemos primeiro identificar e descartar essa forma falsa de ser consciente. Primeiro, há a perversão mental que consiste no fato de que nós destruímos a atitude de genuína absorção para dentro do objeto através de um excesso de reflexiva auto- observação. Em segundo lugar, há a tendência de hiper-intelectualismo, o que quer dizer que mesmo numa situação que pede de nós para decidir ou para agir além de meramente saber, nós perseveramos numa atitude puramente cognitiva.