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The Story of the Young Soul Who Became a Pope
first published in German on February 12, 2013
Translation in English by the author
www.stankovuniversallaw.com
I wrote this sarcastic parable about the young, unripe soul of the resigned pope Ratzinger
in 2006, one year after he became a pope, in order to illustrate what
old, fear-based behaviour patterns drive such young souls like this man
to follow a religious career in the Christian Orion Church. This parable was part of my investigations on the philosophy of Descartes in my gnostic book “Philosophic Sources”
(see page 68). In my analysis, I departed from some ingenious
elaborations of this greatest thinker of modern Western civilisation on
human mind and morality.
This parable was first written in German language and uses some very
specific expressions and facts dealing with the life of Ratzinger, which
I studied carefully during my sojourn in Freising, where the resigned
pope graduated from the local seminary and became a priest in the same year I was born. Due to this reason, the language of this parable is very difficult to translate in English.
On several occasions in the past I have made the readers of this
website aware of the fact that my life is closely intertwined with that
of Ratzinger and that I have lived in all places that have also shaped
the destiny and career of Ratzinger, such as Bonn, Münster, Munich, Freising and Regensburg. In the latter university town I presented officially the new theory of the Universal Law at the annual conference of the German Physical Society
in March 1998. Regensburg is not far away, half an hour drive with a
car to the north from where I last used to live in Germany.
Ratzinger lived in Regensburg many years
as a professor in theology before he became bishop and later cardinal
and he has a house there. His brother who is also a theologian still
lives there. When this pope first visited his homeland Bavaria in 2006,
he held his infamous lecture at the Regensburg university, known since
then as the “Regensburg lecture“. In his speech he condemned
the ferocity and “bloodthirstiness” of Islam, but omitted to make
similar comments on all the atrocities which Christianity has committed
throughout its history of 2000 years. I have discussed this lecture in
depth in my gnostic-philosophic book “Neoplatonism and Christianity”
He was severely criticized for this speech and was forced since then
to adopt a low profile, thus hiding officially his highly controversial,
conservative Christian beliefs. But this did not help him improve his
already bad reputation as the “Panzer-Kardinal” (“Armour-Cardinal“, another valid translation is also “Tank-Cardinal“). This nickname, which he brought with him to the Vatican initially as the head of the Inquisition,
summarizes in a paradigmatic way the mentality of this young soul, who
sought refuge in the alleged stability of Christian dogma, as he was so
fearful of the pulsating life outside the church walls that he hated
being exposed to its imponderables.
This was also the main reason why he gave up his career as a
professor at German universities that were in turmoil in the late 60s
and 70s due to the rebellious movement of the “Generation 68”
that had encompassed whole Europe at that time and in which I also
participated as a dissident in Bulgaria and later on as an émigré in
Germany.
At the end, the young soul Ratzinger betrayed his Higher Self and
compromised his own quest for truth, which he cherished as a young man
when he was adamantly searching for the “Proof of God“.
This is essentially the plot of this very lucid parable, which I
dedicated to pope Ratzinger in the year of 2006, knowing from my HS
that he will resign around the time of my ascension when I will take
over the Vatican and the Church of Christ based on a fraud of the gnostic teachings of our PAT predecessor – Apollonius of Tyana – as extensively discussed on this website (e.g. here and here).
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The Story of the Young Soul
This is the story of a young soul with priester soul essence
and intellectual centering who followed her inherent religious
sentiment and spent a lifetime searching in vain for tangible evidence
of the transcendent that she could not immediately sense in this soul
age, for her fear-based structure prevented her from exploring this soul
dimension. But she had no idea of these inner connexion and lived in an
innocent, joyful expectation of her future enlightenment.
She has been afflicted with strong doubts since early childhood and
was afraid to fail in life. Her frail constitution, which was not well
accepted by her peers, contributed to this fear. In order to find a
foothold, she turned to theology, for the Church had already existed for
2000 years and the Christians seemed to firmly believe in the existence
of God. In addition, her family and the whole environment were strictly
religious and supported her in this endeavor.
However, it was not enough for her to become a simple believing soul,
she wanted rather to find the impeccable scientific-theological
evidence for the existence of God. After all, she was intellectually
centered and needed to evaluate everything she heard through
intellectual reason. Since she was also unable to experience and express
emotions intensively, because her 4th heart chakra of emotions was
still closed, she could not handle psychic turmoil and harbored an
abysmal mistrust towards all emotional impulses, be they her own or that
of others souls.
Therefore, our incarnated soul plunged into the study of theology
and, due to her intellectual talent and lack of emotional distraction,
quickly became a recognized young theologian who mastered all the
important works of Christian doctrine and could recite them very well.
Without putting much effort into it, she quickly became part of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy in her country, because at that time society
became more and more atheistic, so that fewer and fewer people chose a
clerical profession.
The original doubts about the existence of God had still not been
overcome by our soul, for she had found nothing in the Scriptures or
other works that would have convinced her even a little. At the same
time, however, she read that many famous personalities in the history of
the Church had made such far-reaching experiences with the Divine that
had changed them forever and then had processed them into acclaimed
mystical or Gnostic writings.
Our young soul was deeply impressed especially by Augustine and his Confessions.
So she decided to write her habilitation (a higher degree of doctor
thesis in Germany) on this church father, hoping someday to follow in
the footsteps of this saint and also being touched by the Divine.
Until then she was inspired by an unbroken spiritual idealism. But,
contrary to her expectations, the habilitation proved to be an extremely
difficult affair, not because our proficient soul had written her
thesis badly – it was of extraordinary precision and Christian fervor –
but because all this passionate devotion of our soul deeply displeased
her professor who was a disillusioned, agnostic old cynic. As a
compensation for his spiritual failure, this professor avenged himself
on his students by systematically harassing them under the pretext of
high scientific standards when assessing their doctoral thesis or
habilitation. At that time the German universities were full of such
sadists who were the intellectual remnants of the brown (Nazi) past.
So, for the first time, our soul realized that her theological career
was not an upward spiral to the Divine, which could just as casually be
moulded into a higher and higher church career on the hierarchical
ladder, but that the way to God was sown with countless mines and
pitfalls.
She was now at a crossroads. She might choose to leave the church to
preserve her spiritual idealism and nurse him in private study or she
could stay in the church and advance her theological-intellectual
perfection until she surpasses most clergy. In this way, she hoped to
overcome her doubts and refused to admit that there was danger
everywhere that the endeavored theological scholarship would only prove
in the end to be a cheap substitute for the lost divine enlightenment.
As chance would have it, our desperate soul came just at the right time across Descartes’ treatise “A DISCOURSE ON THE METHOD OF CORRECTLY CONDUCTING ONE’S REASON AND SEEKING TRUTH IN THE SCIENCES“.
On the one hand, the reading of philosophical works was part of the
theological training of our soul, on the other hand, one regarded
Descartes with great suspicion in the church. After all, his proof of God
was far too much imbued with inner doubt, and the point of departure
for his argument was not in the Divine, but in the undoubted existence
of his own “Self” (I AM Presence).
This Cartesian approach was deeply suspect to the Church, for if it had
been applied consistently, one would have to give up the Church
altogether as a mediator between believers and God.
“If I would decide now,” contemplated our soul, “to leave the Church
forever, then I would also have to familiarize myself with proofs of God
outside the Christian teaching.” Because our soul did not want to live
without God, no matter what. In the end our soul found a compromise path
which Descartes himself had chosen, and which now seemed like a divine
providence to her mental distress.
However, our overjoyed soul seemed to overlook in her enthusiasm the fact that Descartes understood this path as a “temporary morality”
with which he merely wanted to advance his scientific research, and did
not recommend it as a “life strategy”. Thus our soul, being in dire
straits, chose to fully embrace the “three precepts” of Cartesian
“temporary morality” in her life and wrote it down with minor
modifications in her diary as follows:
“My first Precept:
To obey the laws and customs of my Church, adhering firmly to the
Catholic faith in which, by the grace of God, I had been educated from
my childhood and regulating my conduct in every other matter according
to the most moderate opinions, and the farthest removed from extremes,
which should happen to be adopted in practice with general consent of
the most judicious of those among whom I might be living. For as I had
from that time begun to hold my own opinions for nought because
I wished to subject them all to examination, I was convinced that I
could not do better than follow in the meantime the opinions of the most
judicious.
And although there are some perhaps
among the atheists and non-christians as judicious as among ourselves,
expediency seemed to dictate that I should regulate my practice conformably
to the opinions of those with whom I should have to live; and it
appeared to me that, in order to ascertain the real opinions of such, I
ought rather to take cognizance of what they practised than of what they
said, not only because, in the corruption of our manners, there are few
disposed to speak exactly as they believe (I can’t do this either), but
also because very many are not aware of what it is that they really
believe; for, as the act of mind by which a thing is believed is
different from that by which we know that we believe it, the one act is
often found without the other. Also, amid many opinions held in equal
repute, I chose always the most moderate, as much for the reason that
these are always the most convenient for practice, and probably the best
(for all excess is generally vicious), as that, in the event of my
falling into error, I might be at less distance from the truth than if,
having chosen one of the extremes, it should turn out to be the other
which I ought to have adopted…
My Second Precept: To be as firm and resolute in my actions as
I was able, and not to adhere less steadfastly to the most doubtful
opinions, when once adopted, than if they had been highly certain;
imitating in this the example of travelers who, when they have lost
their way in a forest, ought not to wander from side to side, far less
remain in one place, but proceed constantly towards the same side in as
straight a line as possible, without changing their direction for slight
reasons, although perhaps it might be chance alone which at first
determined the selection; for in this way, if they do not exactly reach
the point they desire, they will come at least in the end to some place that will probably be preferable to the middle of a forest.
My Third Precept: To
endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my
desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom
myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing
absolutely in our power.”
Armed with the Cartesian Precepts of a misunderstood “morality for
the whole life”, our soul quickly solved the problem with the professor
by accepting without a murmur all his suggestions for modification,
which were deeply repugnant to her. She graduated and soon became a
professor herself.
The precepts seemed to perform miracles, for at that time the country
was in a state of upheaval, and nothing seemed to be safe anymore,
neither morality nor customs, let alone faith. Our soul could not hold
on to anything except Descartes “Precepts”.
An old man and an embarrassment candidate was surprisingly elected as
church leader. Instead of taking care of his tomb in Venice, this
peasant pope decided the unheard of – to fundamentally renew the
doctrine of the church. After the first shock that hit our soul to the
core, she recognized the opportunity that this renewal of the Church
offered her to overcome her doubts about the existence of God in
practical activity.
“What if I would take an active part in creating the new rules of
faith?” Our soul wondered. “Maybe I’ll be able to catch a corner of the
divine?” So our soul set out on the way to where “all the ways lead” and
where the Catholic faith is known to be administered, and spent several
years in meaningless, tedious discussions that focused on the
preservation of the church and its unity, but left the religious feeling
out in the dark.
The first Cartesian precept helped our soul even in this time of
profound change to follow her path without any doubt: she did not judge
her peers according to their beliefs, for most of them did not seem to
have any, but according to their deeds, of which not a single one really
convinced her. The creeds did not seem to matter anyway – what mattered
was the preservation of the church, whose future was then considered
very uncertain. Following the first precept, our soul took a very close
note of this view because it was shared by the most thoughtful of the
Church. A bitter aftertaste remained, however, which our soul could not
hide from herself.
Back home, she plunged into feverish academic-theological activity,
as if to numb her doubts about the existence of God. She chose the most
difficult topic in theology, which all prudent connoisseurs of the
matter strictly avoided: the eschatology of death and eternal life.
One would have thought that with this choice our soul would have
betrayed her Cartesian precepts, and some critical voices from her
academic environment seemed to confirm this assumption. But our soul
remained faithful to her principles and surpassed herself. Even though
she had outwardly given the impression that she was reaching for the
stars with this transcendental theme, she succeeded to tackle this
difficult Gnostic topic, on which most philosophers and theologians
before her time had bitten out their teeth, without even falling once in
the innumerable theological pitfalls. What fell by the wayside was the
transcendental knowledge of the true existence of God; it simply did not
fit into this theologically correct, but philosophically very meager
work.
The success of her book was notable for academic standards and earned
her unanimous recognition. Our soul was intoxicated by this success
and, much to her great surprise, noticed that her theological doubts had
become quieter in the excitement around the publication of her book.
She began to get used to this condition and came to the conclusion that
this was the only correct way of dealing with the idea of God: “One
should only perceive God with the mind and not with the emotions or, God
forbid, with such an insecure authority as human intuition, may
Descartes still praise it so much in his proof of God.”, our soul was
cogitating: “And what about my soul?”, asked our incarnated young soul
the key rhetoric question of any truth seeker with anxious expression as
she could not quite suppress her theological curiosity: “Is she
immortal or does she even exist before my time as a human being?”
But the concept of the soul was much too suspect to our little, young
soul. After all, the pagan philosophers of antiquity had always placed
it at the center of their thinking and renounced the Christological God.
Even the idea of her possible reincarnation was so
scary to our soul that it plunged her into thousand distresses of faith.
In short, she refused to think about herself because she had already
chosen the Church. To hide these uncomfortable questions from herself,
our young theological soul began to consider herself a “tireless, humble gardener on the vineyard of the Lord.”
And that self-portrait pleased her very much. At the same time, our
soul decided to distance herself from all the ideas of ancient
philosophy which the Church has adopted and made it a Hellenistic religion, and only to accept the Logos
– however, not the pagan Logos of Heraclitus, for God’s sake, but only
John’s Logos, for she did not want to end up as a heretic soul. The
Logos was intended to embody the Christian reason to which our soul was
attracted by its intellectual centering, but Christian reason meant
nothing else to our soul except to keep the Church together in these
troubled and adverse times.
This was because our soul had to experience the social upheaval of
that time directly. It was the first time she had really looked down
into the abyss of political life – the Nazi repercussions had more or
less passed her by unnoticed – and she did not like what she saw. The
rebellion of the uncouth revolutionaries of the 60s, who occupied
universities, prevented her from holding her lectures and, with their
aggressive reformist rage, which they intended to display in a long
Mao-style march through the institutions of this republic (possibly also
through the church?) in order to turn upside down all these outdated
bourgeois structures deeply frightened our delicate, squeamish soul:
“Could she allow an external, social chaos to be added to her inner
pre-existing theological chaos? No! She could not do that!” She decided
to repress once and for all the inner chaos that had arisen from her
doubts about the existence of God and to fight the external chaos with
the determination of a vengeful Savonarola.
The indefatigable “gardener on the vineyard of the Lord” mutated into
an indomitable knight of religious faith, who went in shining armor
(Panzer – Ratzinger, the Panzer-cardinal as he was known in Germany at
that time) out into the world to defend the purity of Christian
doctrine.
Before I conclude my story, I have to make use of a trite literary
artifice that with an eye wink reads as follows: “Any resemblance
between our fictitious soul and living persons is purely coincidental
and by no means intended. If it, nonetheless, exists, the author should
not be held accountable for possible slander in our litigious time,
because he can not help it. “Now that I am off the hook, I will quickly
end the story of our God-seeking soul so that I can turn onto more
serious topics.
The Cartesian precepts were worth gold to our soul. From then on, she
fervently embraced the Church and rushed through its hierarchy, which
earned her much praise from within the church, while she received even
more criticism from outside, for she had begun with a promising openness
and curiosity that she had unfortunately sacrificed very early to her
misunderstood Cartesian precepts. And she ended up as high as one can
end up in an institution like the Catholic Church.
But that’s not the end of the story – it’s still open. For if
everything is turned upside down and vice versa, then there exists the astral probability that our soul will close her great Arcana Circle and find herself there again, where she started her career – in her pristine state of tormenting doubts about the existence of God. Only this time, our little, agnostic soul can look back on an extensive experience: “Isn’t that the purpose of every incarnation?“, she may ask herself at the end of her life. Who knows? Let’s wait and see!
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