Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Afterlife, Mortality, Imperishability Metaphors
Contents
Grounds for assuming mystic vs.
literal afterlife
"Death penalty" as mystic
metaphor
Mystic definition of "eternal
life"
Raising the dead: supernatural
miracle in mystic-state, Lazarus
Lazarus: mysticism, magic, miracle,
and the supernatural
There are
two conceptions of afterlife: metaphorical and literal. After spiritual ego death, one's mortal
corruptible self has been sacrificed and has died, and one is by definition in
the afterlife, in the kingdom of god, ascended, beyond the last judgment.
That type
of death and immortal life after death is certain and is the ultimate
experience for which we have evidence.
What about literal bodily death and some literalist type of eternal life
in heaven? There's little support for
it in Biblical scripture. Scripture
lends itself more to the mystical, "awakening to the kingdom of god"
approach, with "death" and "last judgment" interpreted
first mystically per mystery religion, and only weakly in the literal
sense.
The
"mystery" of the scriptures is set up through deliberate, playful
conflation of literal with mystical death.
I have yet to check the concordance, but there is much more about the
kingdom of god, than the conventional heavenly afterlife in the scriptures.
Mystically,
it is certain that we can awaken to timelessness, learning to think of time as
essentially illusory. This kind of
eternal life is certain. Literal
eternal life is entirely speculative, conjectural, needed to prop up the
illusion of conventional freewill moral agency, and is motivated by wishful
thinking rather than evidence, so I formally reject it as groundless.
The only
evidence for literal eternal afterlife is mystical timeless rebirth. The only "evidence" for literal
life after death is mystical rebirth.
Thus mystic death and rebirth looms much larger than the literal
afterlife, which is inherently and necessarily entirely hypothetical. There is not the slightest reason to believe
in the afterlife. If you believe in it,
then you might as well believe in anything you want, at all -- ESP, crystal
worship, UFOs, and miracles.
I only
believe in that which we have grounds to believe in, such as that the greatest
religious experience is that of mystic death and rebirth, also known as seeing
God or becoming enlightened, regenerated, saved, or redeemed out of the
deterministic cosmos. In this
characteristic style, I concluded that the real meaning of religion is firstly
mystical/esoteric (no historical Jesus, Paul, Buddha, Peter, John, James, and
so on), and only weakly and degenerately literalist.
I
concluded that time, free will, and the separate self as control agent are all
significantly illusory, in all likelihood -- it was a matter of choosing
between this view, and chaotic "anything goes". I concluded, in this same spirit, that
entheogens (not meditation/contemplation) are the true central and original
method of the major religions.
In
conjection with these views, I concluded that enlightenment is actually simple,
rational, and comprehensible, and that the fully developed mind only
"transcends rationality" in a specific, mild, restrained sense; I
generally reject any attempt to characterize enlightenment or mystic insight as
being essentially beyond comprehension -- instead, mystic insight is essentially
comprehensible and even simple and summarizable, and has only a limited element
of transcending rationality.
Revelation
is mainly rational, and just partially beyond rationality. In line with these conclusions, which all
choose a comprehensible and justifiable definite position instead of an
"anything goes" alternative, I reject the literal afterlife as
groundless conjecture.
The
"belief" and "faith" in Christianity are really about
surviving mystic experiencing of ego death and rebirth and somehow transcending
the presumed- and experienced-deterministic world -- not about gaining a
literal afterlife. In fact, I strongly
associate the literal afterlife with the entire egoic, lower way of reading the
Christian mythic system. The literal
afterlife is a belief fit only for those who read all religious myth literally.
We have
reason to believe in mystic rebirth after ego death; such transcendent faith is
a necessary part of the mystic drama, for life to resume and continue out of
the depths of powerlessness and ego death.
This sort of afterlife is definitely relevant and tangible, in contrast
to literal afterlife, which is entirely conjectural, hypothetical, and
speculative, and lies outside the realm of the known and experienced.
My
intention here is to put forward an entire mentality: it is the mentality which
enabled me to crack the puzzles of myth-religion and the Christian mystery
religion, making full rational mystic systematic sense out of the scriptures.
>-----Original
Message-----
>I'm a
born catholic, turned Baptist, turned agnostic. During my Catholicism childhood, I just followed the teachings of
the people I trusted (family, teachers, and priests). When I started to think for myself, I became interested in the
wealth of Bible knowledge offered by Baptists.
When I really started to think for myself, I became even more interested
in the Bible and religion. The more I
dug into scripture and history, the more I lost faith.
>Now
I'm agnostic. I can't help but look
into that big sky of ours and still wonder, "Is there something more to
this life?"
>There
are many concepts I don't understand.
If there is no afterlife, how can atheists be so peaceful with this
thought? If I ever come to the
conclusion that there is no afterlife, how can I cope with the pain of this
realization? How does an atheist cope
with the finality of death, the end of their loved ones, and the end of their
own self?
>If I
was 100% positive that death was final, would it even be beneficial to tell
anyone? Who's better off? The person who must cope with the finality
of death, or the person who sincerely believes in an afterlife? How could I tell my grandmother that she'll
never see my grandfather again? Isn't
she better off just "believing" she will see him........until she is
dead anyway?
>My
aunt was reading a near death experience book the other day, and I picked it
up. I decided it was a big lie after
investigating the author's character.
If NDE's do happen, what are they....really? Could it be that we create our own NDE by what's in our own
unconscious? Are near death experiences
just a flicker of what our unconscious has been fed to believe throughout life?
>I love
the emotional, spiritual, and psychological insight I have after smoking
marijuana. I love the appreciation I
have for every moment after experiencing ego death. But what does this really benefit me eternally? It pales in comparison to an unending
life. Does anyone on this newsgroup
believe in an afterlife?
Current
breakthrough of the hour: "death penalty" as metaphor for mystic
death. "Death penalty" for
revealing the secrets of the mysteries: just a figure of speech? Prometheus as suffering (ego death)
*unjustly*.
The
genuine mystic may ask: Why do I
deserve to die*, when all I did was hold the delusion of my own metaphysical
sovereignty?
*mystically
I have
been on one long breakthrough recently.
I have cracked the code, have learned to think in the mythic framework
of the Greeks.
I have
finally made full connection between the Greek mythic themes and the theory of
ego death. I can trace Paul's "we
die and rise with Christ", to Mark's "we are metaphysically like
Jesus: upstart rebels who carry ourselves as sovereigns and are crucified
mystically with Jesus", to the orthodox "We are all sinners in rebellion
against God and are rightly subject to the death penalty. Only Christ's death, as us, can clear our
sins and make us right with God's perfect judgement."
The
historical study of the origin of Christianity leads us back to Dionysus,
Prometheus, Mithras, Paul's Christ, Mark's gospel crucified Historical Jesus,
to the Orthodox Jesus Christ. Either
you can explain the mystic code behind all these, or none -- and they are each
distinct.
Explaining
the metaphorical allusions to mystic experiencing in Paul's framework (the
early, "authentic" epistles), is different from explaining the
metaphorical system in later Orthodox Christianity, just as much as Dionysus
and Prometheus are different permutations or a different dialect of essentially
the same mystery-language.
It is
interesting to see this same mystery-language encoding in acid-rock
lyrics. Acid-oriented rock is the
authentic mystery-school of our time.
Now I am
entering a period of *systematically* mapping out each myth in terms of the
theory of ego-death, just as, once I cracked the code of acid-rock allusions to
altered-state phenomena, I was able to sweep across the lyrics of many Rock
artists, to identify the clearest examples of such allusions.
Now I do
the same with myths: armed with the interpretive framework of the cybernetic
theory of ego transcendence, including the code of the mystery religions, it
becomes routine to spot these mythic patterns in myths I have only recently
heard of. Research is now reduced to
pattern matching, and by this point, I don't even really need to follow
through. Here is the key that does
unlock the doors -- try it yourself.
Example:
Metallica song "Ride the Lightning"
During the
global meaning-shift during initiation, the mind's understanding of the concept
of "eternal life" shifts along with the understanding of concepts
such as time, self-control, and personal agency. In experiential allegory, "eternal life" refers to the
experience of timelessness, or the discovery of the fact of timelessness. This is the true, main mystic meaning of
"eternal life".
The mind
that overcomes delusion and takes a higher perspective consciously enters
Heaven and the eternal life now, in this life.
That is as certain as anything could be. What happens after bodily death?
We can only conjecture. The
mature mystic stance is to be relatively certain in the kind of salvation and
meaning-network reindexing that we can have in this life during initiation, but
to be agnostic and not cling to the lower hopes for infinite extension of
mundane personal existence within time.
Thus we
can say that the mystic elevates the mystic definition of salvation, Heaven,
Belief, and eternal life above the mundane, lower, Literalist Christian
definition of salvation, Heaven, Belief, and eternal life. Is there a Heaven or Hell for us after
bodily death? moral judgement
then? That's sheer speculation, which
the mystic considers to be in some way unimportant.
By any
measure of value of the things in life, surely mystic enlightenment and mystic
awakening to the kingdom of Heaven while in this life is the most important
thing in this life.
The
Extropian wish for endlessly extended personal continuation, even envisioned as
a more or less Christian-style eternal afterlife, must be seen as an almost
irrelevant issue. Enlightenment, sin
cancellation, reconciliation with God and so on does not centrally pivot around
Literalist eternal afterlife in heaven, but rather, the discovery of
timelessness in the mystic altered state, shown and revealed and unveiled by
the Holy Spirit during the uncovering ("apo-calypse") of the hidden
mystery.
I'm
finding some interesting "ego death" newsgroup postings.
Subject:
Trip Report: 1 Geltab as [at] a Rock Concert
Newsgroups:
alt.drugs.psychedelics
Date:
2001-08-12
> (we
were gonna meet up with him later). His response was something like: "I
don't know, we'll see what happens when it happens." And that simple point
got me thinking about how time is like a book, in that it's all already
happened, but you just haven't read that far yet. When you buy the book, the
whole sequence of events -- from start to finish -- is already written, but
you, the reader, must experience it linearly -- one word after another. It's
one of those things that seems so profound when you first think of it, and it
seems so world shaking (like I've figured out the fabric of time), but then
when you sober up, you realise that it's no big deal; like "what's so
special about that?"
Michael
wrote:
>Actually,
your altered self was correct in seeing this as profound. The insights in that
direction lead toward the full experience of ego-death. If your future thoughts
are set, this implies a single future that effectively already exists, in which
case the present you lacks a certain kind of control over your own future
thoughts. Instead of you controlling time (or your future mental actions), time
controls you.
Phant
wrote:
>The
sense of timelessness in deeper trips was one of the biggest - and sometimes
scariest - revelations to me. Christopher Mayhew, a British MP, took 400mg [ug]
of mescaline before TV cameras 1955 and became absolutely convinced that part
of us exists 'outside time':
"After brooding about it for several months, I still think my
first, astonishing conviction was right - that on many occasions that afternoon
I existed outside time. I don't mean
this metaphorically, but literally. I mean that the essential part of me (the
part that thinks to itself, "This is me") has an existence, quite
conscious of itself, in a timeless order of reality outside the world as we
know it. Though perfectly rational and
wide awake (Dr. Osmond gave me tests throughout the experiment which showed no
significant falling-off of intelligence) I was not experiencing events in the
normal sequence of time.""
>>A
number of references speak of a Gnostic sarcophagus that depicts Jesus as
beardless man with a wand raising Lazarus who is wrapped like a mummy.
Book:
The
Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the
Christian Vision
Andrew
Welburn
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0863152090
The cover
shows a mosaic portraying a beardless man, no wand visible, raising Lazarus who
is (always) wrapped like a mummy; the back cover gives information about it.
Beardless,
wand:
http://saraca.1plan.net/images/catacombe/LAZARUS.JPG
http://saraca.1plan.net/photogallery/catacombe.htm
Can't tell
whether beardless or wand:
http://www.cts.edu/ImageLibrary/Images/June_2000/Lazarus.jpg
http://www.cts.edu/ImageLibrary/Catacomb_frescoes.cfm
There are
many of the standard, bearded Jesus, no wand:
http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/arenachapel.html
http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/Images/ARTH213images/ArenaChapel/ministry/Lazarus.jpg
Do these
show a miracle? Or is it merely
symbolism? Actually, it is a
descriptive report of an actual supernatural, miraculous, magical occurrence
that happens in the mystic state of consciousness: the restoration, though logically
undecidable and ungroundable and logically non-defensible, of the practical
sense of being a power-wielding, freely self-controlling agent.
This
mystic-state controllership event is an experiential miracle of consciousness,
similar to Douglas' Hofstadter's study of infinite regress of levels in the
book Godel, Escher, Bach, in which the last normal section is "The
Self-Symbol and Free Will" (presenting a
"no-metaphysical-free-will" view).
http://www.egodeath.com/geb.htm
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0465026567
The
World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors by Kersey Graves
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/093281395X
The
forward by Acharya S in this edition of the book addresses the reliability of
Graves and destruction of scholarly texts.
Acharya
rests her view mostly on a category of books expressing a particular
interpretive framework defined by a certain type of turn-of-the-century-style
demythologization or history of religions.
Is Barbara
Walker's book credible at all? Does she
cite credible evidence? Acharya often
cites Walker's book.
The
Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
Barbara
Walker
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/006250925X
1983
If there
are clear parallels between the "Jesus raising Lazarus" story and
some Egyptian "Horus raising El-Azar-Us or El-Osiris" story, and
given that there is a gnostic sarcophagus or maybe two that depicts Jesus as
beardless man with a wand raising Lazarus who is wrapped like a mummy, that
would suggest the primary of the mythic mystery interpretation over the literal
historical report interpretation. In
that case, the story of the raising of Lazarus should be considered through the
interpretive lens of pagan mythical mystery layer, as opposed to first viewing
the story through the interpretive lens of literal, unique incident report.
A search
may or may not find credible sources demonstrating the existence of some
Egyptian "Horus raising El-Azar-Us or El-Osiris" story. There is at least one ancient picture of a
Jesus-like figure with a wand raising a mummy-wrapped figure. A wand would indicate divine magic power to
raise the dead. The canonical Jesus
figure is portrayed as a channel of some sort of transcendent, supernatural
power to raise the dead.
The
central question at hand is, what sort of thing is the canonical story of Jesus
raising Lazarus? Which kind of
interpretive framework is appropriate to give primacy to? Was the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from
among the dead intended to be primarily read as a mythic description through
the pagan mystery interpretive lens, or as a historical report of a unique
incident through a literalist interpretive lens?
The first
work to do toward resolving that question is to clarify what the mystery-myth
description amounts to. Today's
audience already knows full well the literalist interpretive framework that is
offered as the fully predominant one in today's church and in today's
conservative and liberal historical-Jesus scholarship. The interpretive framework which is not
obvious today and needs work to clarify and spell out, is the pagan mystic
mythic mystery view of Jesus' raising of Lazarus. What is the opposite of the interpretive framework of modern
historical-Jesus scholarship? What have
they eliminated?
Modern
historical-Jesus scholarship has eliminated the realm of the mystical, magical,
supernatural, and miraculous. Liberal
rationalist scholarship has particularly eliminated that realm. There is an interpretive framework which is
neither conservative Christian, nor liberal-demythologizing, nor atheist
debunker, but another interpretive framework, that of metaphor describing
transcendent mystic-state phenomena.
The realm of the 'mystical' is covered there in the phrase
'mystic-state', and the realm of the 'magical', 'supernatural', and
'miraculous' is covered there in the phrase 'transcendent phenomena'.
The
ancients grouped mystic, magic, supernatural, and miracle together; therefore,
to understand what they meant, modern researchers must also construct some
interpretive framework which likewise accounts for, as a group, mystic, magic,
supernatural, and miracle.
Did the
ancients mean for the story of Jesus' raising of Lazarus to be read first of
all as a literal report, through the interpretive framework of literal
historical reportage?
Or, did
the ancients mean for the story of Jesus' raising of Lazarus to be read first
of all as a mystic, magic, supernatural, and miracle, through the interpretive
framework of mystic, magic, supernatural, and miracle?
Which of
these interpretive frameworks the ancients meant will suggest whether the Jesus
figure and his lifestory was meant first of all as a literal report to be
viewed through the interpretive framework of literal historical reportage, or
through the interpretive framework of mystic, magic, supernatural, and miracle.
There is a
certain commonality and alliance between supernaturalist conservatives and
mystic transcendent-experiencing allegorists, against liberal demythologizing
literalists. Consider formulating a
certain combination of the "supernaturalist conservative" conceptual
framework, the "liberal rational demythologizing" conceptual
framework, and the "mystic transcendent-experiencing metaphor"
conceptual framework.
According
to a 2-layer conception of myth and initiation, which is well supported as
characteristic of Hellenistic culture, the story of Jesus' raising of Lazarus
was intended to be "first" read as a literalist report --
"first" as meaning "initially" as against
"ultimately". For the
beginning initiates, the story is intended literally, but for the advanced
initiates, the story is intended as metaphorical description of transcendent
mystic-state experiencing.
Before
even bothering to scour the libraries for parallels that are closely matching
in the *surface* story elements, a more substantial and promising approach is
to formulate a robust model of the underlying themes according to a
interpretive framework and conceptual system of "transcendent
mystic-experiencing metaphor".
Then we
can analyze stories across religions even though they usually don't match as
closely as Kersey Graves claimed, and still recognize the same general meaning
and character and allusions to mystic experiencing throughout general types of
stories and themes, such as, rather than focusing literally on the surface
story-element of "crucifixion", focusing instead on the idea of
fastening, hanging, and bonding of the body with the physical world.
There are
few references to crucifixion in myth-religion, but there are many references
to fastening, hanging, and bonding of the body with the physical world:
Mask on a
garment-covered pillar (Dionysus)
Turning
to stone (Medusa)
Turning
to a pillar of salt (Lot's wife)
Chained
to a rock (Prometheus)
Chained
in prison (Paul)
Nailed
to a cross (Jesus)
Lifted
up and stuck in a tree's branches (Pentheus)
Fastened
to a wheel (Ixion)
Hanging
from a tree (Absolom, Wotan)
Nailed
into a box (Osiris)
Enclosed
in a basket in water (Moses)
Stuck inside
a big fish in water (Jonah)
Embedded
in a tree (Osiris)
Stuck to
a throne (Hera)
Stuck to
a throne in Hades' (Peirithous)
Surface
story elements aren't identical and therefore don't suggest reading the Jesus
stories through the mystery interpretive framework as we agree to read the
pagan myth-religion themes -- but we *can* look for and then find a deeper
thematic level which *does* suggest reading the Jesus stories through the same,
mystery-mystic-mythic framework as the pagan themes. If advocates try to rest their case for the mystery-myth
interpretation of Jesus on the basis of exact *surface* parallels, that's a
weak foundation and a weak theoretical model, a thin an easily dismissible
interpretive framework.
Exact
surface element matches are fine to look for, but the main action to focus on
is what those surface elements functionally express as far as transcendent
mystic-state experiential phenomena -- an area that the 19th-Century modern
rationalist mode of scholarly thinking is barely equipped to theoretically
model, typically falling too far toward wide-open, anything-goes occult
esoteric interpretation (devoid of much concrete satisfaction for our wish for
rational, explicit understanding of mythic meaning), or too far toward
rationalist scientific demythologizing.
The
post-Modern, 21st Century is better equipped than the 19th to draw from the
best of scientific thinking, mysticism studies, myth studies, comparative
religion, and esotericism scholarship, as well as conservative and liberal scholarship
of Christian origins. One of the latest
areas becoming open to fresh scholarly investigation is the relation between
pre-modern thinking about mysticism, magic, miracle, and the supernatural.
Book list:
History of Esoteric Philosophical Magic (or, History of Magic in Western
Esoteric Religion)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/1UJL0IYF5P24S
Books:
Who Wrote
the Gospels?
Randel
Helms
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0965504727
1997,
178p
Gospel
Fictions
Randel
Helms
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0879755725
1988,
154p
The
translation of El-Azur as "God Helps" is relevant for reading the
Lazarus story primarily through a "mystic-state metaphor" rather than
"literalist reportage" interpretative framework. In the midst of the experience of mystic
spiritual death, one is powerless to recover vital life as a power-wielding
agent; such recovery is given from outside the agent/initiate, from a source
that transcends or underlies the personal agent who, in the ordinary state of
consciousness only, is conceived and experienced as a simple primary
self-moving control agent or king-like governor or steersman moving himself
through spacetime.
No
allegorical name could be more relevant for the spiritual rebirth theme than
"God-Helps".
John 11:16
indicates that the story of Lazarus is not primarily about literal death and
resurrection, but rather the standard, common, and widely known spiritual death
and rebirth experience: 'Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the
disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."'
http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=JOHN+11
--
Now a man
named Lazarus was sick. He was from
Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one
who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus,
"Lord, the one you love is sick."
When he
heard this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son
may be glorified through it." Jesus loved Martha and her sister and
Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus
was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.
Then he
said to his disciples, "Let us go back to Judea."
"But
Rabbi," they said, "a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you,
and yet you are going back there?"
Jesus
answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? A man who walks by day will not stumble, for
he sees by this world's light. It is when
he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light."
After he
had said this, he went on to tell them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen
asleep; but I am going there to wake him up."
His
disciples replied, "Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better." Jesus had been speaking of his death, but
his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
So then he
told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not
there, so that you may believe. But let
us go to him."
Then
Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, "Let us also
go, that we may die with him."
The
Lazarus story has a connection with Egypt, parallels to the Pyramid Texts, the
'word play' of Bethany (Beth-anu...House of the Sun) and Lazurus (El- Azur...
God Helps, El-Osiris) and the general Alexandrian influence of Hellenistic
Judaism.
Randel
Helms in the book 'Who Wrote The Gospels' examines this subject pp 121-126.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/healings.html#lazarus
Helm's
book, Gospel Fictions, seems to state that some 'pyramid texts' describe a
story of Osiris being raised from the dead by Horus. Many of the details of that story have analogs in the story of
Lazarus.
Helms'
book 'Who Wrote The Gospels' has a section on Lazarus. On pages 121 - 126 he
talks about the Lazarus myth in relation to the Pyramid Text. He uses Faulkner
as his primary reference.
Pyramid
texts English reference:
http://efts.lib.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/eos/eos_title.pl?callnum=PJ1553.A1_1908_cop3
The
Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
Translated
into English
Raymond
Faulkner
Oxford
University Press, 2000
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