Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Celestial Ascent Metaphors: Merkabah, Hermetic, Gnostic, Christian
Contents
Cosmic escape through nature
mysticism
Cosmic escape: read mysticism
allegorically/descriptively, not literally
Tearing of heavenly veil at start
& end of Jesus' ministry
Entheogenic astrological allegory
Astrology domain is the surface,
not the core of religion
Someone
wrote:
>>Natural
means not of man's making …
I disagree
with 20 things in that post and it breaks some sort of discussion group rule
about discussing or speculating about personal drug use. Swearing is also bad per the landlords. Some combination of extreme radicalism and
tasteful good judgement is required.
This is a family-oriented discussion group.
It's a
good posting for this group, highly on-topic; I hope to reply in detail as
before.
It's
awkward arguing for the soundness of entheogen mysticism during the age of
prohibition -- the debate has to artificially float in the abstract,
theoretical level. "If people were
permitted, this technique would prove to be effective, for the following
theoretical reasons, which we can read about in these books..." It's safer to argue that Christian history
is entirely bunk, that Jesus and Paul and the rest never existed -- there's no war
against that.
>Try
reading the book about him written by a member of his own family, the book is
called - The Genuine Fraud.
Some
reading:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Genuine+Fake+Watts+monica
The only
thing unbalanced with Watts was that he merely put in a footnote his point that
mystics commonly reject "personal free will". My work largely corrects and realigns
Watts'.
>>If
you guys assume that you are going to instigate a social paradigm wherein
society is popping pills to seek enlightenment and sensory enhancement then you
are living in cloud-cuckoo-land and your ideas relate to reality as does
Disneyland to matters of phenomenal fact.
That's
what prehistory, Antiquity (600 BCE-500 CE), and the Middle Ages (500 CE-1500 CE)
had: a social paradigm wherein society was routinely ingesting visionary plants
to obtain enlightenment and sensory enhancement.
>Even
the hippie movement was originally founded by such frauds as Alan Watts (an English misfit), and Co, who
were popping pills until it killed him/them.
Who is
"and Co"?
My
understanding is that Watts died from alcohol, not from the more visionary
plants and chemicals.
>And
look at the legacy that movement left; it is still with society
>today
What is
the legacy of the psychedelic mid-to-late 20th Century? It's broad and diverse. Kerry Mullis credits his nobel prize in
physics partly to LSD; much of the personal computer revolution is associated
with psychedelics; it's easy to construct a list of such legacies of that late
modern phase of the ongoing history of psychedelics and culture.
- about
five percent zapped out junkies.
That is
not a fact; it's nothing but a notion: an urban myth. No correlation has been shown between incidence of entheogen use
and insanity. Some madmen tripped; this
in itself proves nothing about statistical or causal correlation.
>Some
ideal, some movement, some inspiration - some legacy.
Some
amateur, unconvincing, hackneyed postings.
Evidently, your position has no legs to stand on, so you have to invent
facts and build your case on urban legends and attitudes and mental
associations rather than on sound arguments that can withstand critical
consideration.
>Forget
enlightenment and live life - if it wants you it will find you.
>And that
too IS A FACT - like it or not; face up to it or not.
Pilate
asked Jesus, "What is FACT?"
Which facts does a person choose to adopt, and how to weigh them?
The above
is a bad-news scenario: "there is nothing you can do to pursue
enlightenment."
The good
news is, there is something anyone can do to pursue enlightenment immediately:
study the mystic theory of entheogens, including the secret oral teachings that
are necessary but are forbidden to post in any discussion group visible to the
uninitiated, on penalty of death.
People are free to choose which interpretive paradigm they want to live
within: the one that forbids the apple and says you must postpone awakening for
decades, or the one that offers the apple and says you may easily awaken
immediately.
Wittoba
wrote:
>And by
the way, the stars aren't fixed. They're moving rather rapidly, actually. It's
all relative.
If you are
a literalist, you'll never have half a chance of comprehending astrological
gnostic hermetic mysticism.
In the
allegorical systematization of mystic experiencing, the stars are considered to
be fixed, in a certain sense, while they revolve. In the lower, earthly, fallen, illusory realm, things are held to
move.
"Cosmic
escape" is nothing but a humorous mystic-state allegory or description,
alluding to the desire to escape from the control-loss instability entailed in
perceiving frozen block-universe determinism.
Literalism is most rampant in interpreting mystic allegory and taking it
literally, then dividing up mystics into camps based on what they
"believe", when in actuality, they don't believe any of the allegory
*literally*; it's all just equivalent reportive description of the same class
and mode of experiencing.
The veil
of the heavens is cosmic determinism, metaphorized as the sphere of the fixed
stars. Tearing through this sphere
metaphorically describes peak experiencing of determinism and in some sense
transcending determinism.
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/veil.html
THE
HEAVENLY VEIL TORN: MARK'S COSMIC "INCLUSIO"
David
Ulansey
[Originally
published in Journal of Biblical Literature 110:1 (Spring 1991) pp. 123-25]
>>In
the past few years, several different scholars have argued that there was a
connection in the mind of the author of the Gospel of Mark between the tearing
of the heavens at the baptism of Jesus (Mk 1:10) and the tearing of the temple
veil at the death of Jesus (Mk 15:38). [1] The purpose of the present article
will be to call attention to a piece of evidence which none of these scholars
mentions, but which provides dramatic confirmation of the hypothesis that the
tearing of the heavens and the tearing of the temple veil were linked in Mark's
imagination. [2]
>>To
begin with, we should note that the two occurrences of the motif of tearing in
Mark do not occur at random points in the narrative, but on the contrary are
located at two pivotal moments in the story-- moments which, moreover, provide
an ideal counterpoint for each other: namely, the precise beginning (the
baptism) and the precise end (the death) of the earthly career of Jesus. This significant
placement of the two instances of the motif of tearing suggests that we are
dealing here with a symbolic "inclusio": that is, the narrative
device common in biblical texts in which a detail is repeated at the beginning
and the end of a narrative unit in order to "bracket off" the unit
and give it a sense of closure and structural integrity. ...
Adept
Magus wrote:
>>The
seven levels of heaven and the underworld are found in ancient Judeo-Christian
lore and was accepted belief, well into the Middle Ages and was taught by 14th
century theologians. In ancient Greek
mythology, Hades has at least six levels separated by rivers. The seven levels of heaven are found in the
Dead Sea Scrolls such as 1 Enoch, early Christian works such as Ascension of
Isaiah, Heckahalot literature, Hermetic works, and Neoplatonic works.
The
classic levels of astral ascension are summarized in terms of maturing from
freewill/separate-self delusion, to a peak experience of cosmic determinism and
imprisonment in spacetime unity, on to a kind of spiritual transcendence of
cosmic determinism resulting in "spiritual freedom", to gaze upon the
godhead.
10. The
utterly hidden black-box benevolent controller of the deterministic
cosmos. Apophatic level, indirectly
intuited or deduced or felt. Throne of
the Good god.
9. The
divine transcendent realm. The initiate
is pulled up and spiritually born out from the deterministic cosmos.
8. The
fixed stars; cosmic determinism. Peak
experience of no-free-will/no-separate-self.
5-7. The
slow planets. Intermediate level
mystic-experiencing. Glimpses of frozen
time and of unity.
2-4. The
fast planets. Beginning of one's
mystic-experiencing initiations.
1.
Earth. Childish/animal delusion of
freewill and motion; time passage taken as simply real.
The
Hermetic astrology of around 250 CE is similar to that of the Renaissance. The New Chronology postulates that the years
600-900 didn't exist; that would help explain this similarity, this apparent
intact, wholesale leap of mystic astrology across the supposed long divide from
the Roman era to the Renaissance era.
The astral
ascent occurs in conjunction with eating manna -- the bread of heaven -- or
drinking from the krater of mind (krater means a bowl for 'mixed wine').
Entheogenic astrological allegory, or entheogenic astrotheology
Astrotheology provides solidly plausible, satisfying explanations of various elements of Christian myths -- answering some questions that aren't answered as well using entheogenic allusions. Such astrotheology is defined in Acharya S' book _The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold_, and early 20th century Christ-myth books. An example of astrotheology: the 12 apostles are nameless but the number alludes to the 12 signs of the zodiac.
Search my home page for "Christ myth" to find my table of books. Search google.com to find her home page, if my page doesn't link to it.
The Gnostics, late antiquity, and Mithraism were all extremely oriented toward astrology and allegories of it. And these traditions used a consumed sacrament connected with death and resurrection. The mystery religions used entheogens with an allegorical, largely astrological framework, to discover, experience, and transcend cosmic determinism. The later mystery religions (125-300 CE) were back- projected to the age of the fall of the Jerusalem temple to form a version of the universal mythic religion that was set in a particular historical context -- thus was created catholic Christianity.
Acharya's book has plenty of hooks for the entheogen theory. There is a subsection focusing on this subject favorably, and a few other mentions of the idea. She says the entheogen theory of the origin of the mystery religions is certainly true to some degree but is only one part of the puzzle; Christianity was designed to universally incorporate all traditions, including entheogen sacraments.
I make the same limited favorable assessment of her astrotheology theory: it is correct, but is only part of the puzzle. Insofar as she minimizes the role of entheogens, she builds a theory of religion, minus the religious experience -- or at least, minus the higher-eschelon religious experience, which can be considered the most important layer of religious experience in the multi-layered initiation cults.
Like the Gnostic theory of the origin of Christianity put forth by Freke and Gandy in their new book Jesus and the Lost Goddess, Acharya's theory provides a complex allegorical mythic scheme but on the whole, lacks a compelling explanation for the experiential aspect; the astrotheology and Gnostic theories lack a compelling explanation of how one attained *experience* of the mythic allegories. Both theories, however, place a consumed sacrament in the very middle of the rites and myths.
Consume the sacrament, experience the myth and understand its spiritual meaning. The complex mythic theories don't put enough emphasis on the eucharist as trigger of experience and insight and mythic thinking.
Just as I treat received evangelical Christianity as a framework to concretize ego-death concepts and experiences, apparently the astrotheology out of which Christianity was formed acted as the common universal framework for Hellenistic and other religions.
We need a rich cross-understanding of the entheogenic cognitive state, astrotheology, and mythic allegory -- how do the three layers or threads feed into, support, and give rise to each other? It is a mistake to say that Christianity is explained by astrotheology, or is simply an allegory for entheogenic experience.
What Christianity really amounts to at its inspired fountainhead is a form of entheogenic astrotheological allegory. The characters in the stories "are" astrological elements but just as much "are" entheogenic experiences. The god is the plant and heavenly elements and sacrament and sacrifice and higher self and sacrificed self. I grant astrotheology a premium place of importance in the real nature of Christianity, but entheogens are of even more special importance. There is a dance of 3 threads -- astrology, mythic allegory, and entheogenic cognition.
Both astrology and entheogenic cognition are too fundamental and important to be called merely one element in the catholic universal- religion mix. I have managed to map entheogenic cognition to ordinary Christian allegory so that allegory is a tangible framework to convey entheogenic spiritual experiences. Acharya and other Christ-myth theorists have mapped Christian allegory to general astrological religion.
Right from the start, the proposal for an ancient universal religion of entheogenic astrotheology makes sense. Entheogens occur globally, and astrology is global. These are two common factors. Entheogens bring everyone religious experiencing, and astrology presents everyone with interesting lofty patterns of occurrences.
It is natural to find universally some overlap of entheogenic religious experiencing and astrotheology. Entheogens spark the imagination in many ways, so we can propose entheogenic astrotheology as the highest universal religion, providing allegories and religious experiencing in concert. Humanity thus all had a framework and inspiration system: entheogenic astrological allegory, out of which were formed dying/rising god myths that also related to first-hand egodeath experiences and some experiential encounter with time and fate as reflected in astrological cycles.
Keywords I'm currently circling in History of Religion books:
Eucharist, sacred meals, sacraments, eat, drink, lord's supper, eating the god, God's flesh, wine, vine, plant
fate, providence, grace, will, necessity, control, govern, king, soveriegn, power, sacrificial king
time, astrotheology allegory, cosmos, cosmic determinism
It is easy to find eucharistic eating in all Hellenistic religions. It has also proven fairly easy to find encounters with fate and time, with an attempt to rise above and become free from cosmic determinism. What has not been done yet though, is to map eucharists with fate-transcendence. The cybernetic theory of ego transcendence is distinctive in bringing these together explicitly for the first time, with the cognitive transformation of the sense of will and self- control providing the key link.
Acharya's
book is distinctly pro-entheogen -- but the unread Christ_Conspiracy group
moderators and discussion group members don't know that. The group is to talk about "Acharya's
work" and that includes a chapter on sex and drugs in religion, which has
pro-drug sections -- so what I wrote is, in fact, on-topic, and agrees with
Acharya's published work in her book.
I'm
preparing to review her book and the weakness of her book is interesting: she
proposes that the real essence, the real meaning, and real esoteric content of
religion is astrology, and that astrology is valuable because it is
useful. She very occasionally mentions
"initiation", and has the section on entheogens, yet she in fact has
zero feeling for initiation as a mystic-state experience; she totally lacks a
feel for or awareness of altered-state psychological phenomena.
The few
traces in her book don't cohere together -- 80% of the book says the esoteric
secret is that religion is really secretive astrology -- with no implication of
a mystic altered state. Then suddenly
and discontinuously, the section on psychoactives says they were used for
initiation, vaguely implying that "initiation" in general can be a
matter of the mystic altered state. The
book practically puts forth two views, not integrated.
She does
state that mushrooms would be just one part of the Christian religion and the
Jesus figure, a wise point to emphasize.
Her paradigm is, at core, the non-altered state early 20th Century
"History of Religions" paradigm, which knows practically nothing of
the altered-state origin of religion.
Sure, a
bit of altered-state is taped onto the core after the fact, but the paradigm
remains essentially ignorant that the essence of Greco-Roman initiation was
entheogenic visionary-plant psychological experiencing; the intense
mystic-altered state.
Acharya
cannot be reviewed as an isolated book; one must instead review and critique
the paradigm she is working in. This is
why I study comparative paradigmology, as Peter Kirby's page does when
categorizing Jesus theories. The issue
isn't her book, so much as the paradigm in which she operates.
The main
paradigm in her book is as off-base as the Golden Bough "fertility"
theory of religion -- hers is the astrology equivalent of the misguided
fertility emphasis; both make the identically same mistake of explaining
religion by evaluating its surface. Her
school claims to identify a core below the surface -- the surface is the
Jesus-type stories and the core is supposedly astrology.
But neither
really is the core -- religious *experiencing* is the core, and astrology
points to that; same with fertility as an allegory-domain. Astrology is surface, not core.
I had no
hesitation at all in giving a full 5 stars in my review of Luther Martin's thin
book Hellenistic Religions. His book
focuses on one thesis, and it's a key thesis -- that the essence of Greco-Roman
religions was to somehow reconcile with or transcend cosmic determinism. That's truly insightful, a key building
block.
Acharya's
book is so right about so many things, and she justifiably says that I'm
splitting hairs when I make a big deal out of arranging just right the
different domains of concern of Christian myth-religion. I shake my head against her book's emphasis
on astrology, even though so much is right about emphasizing astrology. It took me years to pinpoint my fundamental
disagreements with Ken Wilber.
It is
difficult to pinpoint my big complaint about what's so wrong about Acharya's
so-right book. Same with Wilber: so
much of what he writes is right, and yet he totally misses the most important
mark, nevertheless. My big complaint
about Jungian psychology is the same sort, and I concluded that the modern age
overall, in the theories of religion and psychology, are missing the key
element of intense mystic-state experiencing.
Psychology
assumes that psychology is concerned with the ordinary state of
consciousness. Religion theorists
mostly assume that religion is concerned with the ordinary state of
consciousness. Most astrology scholars
assume that astrology is concerned with the ordinary state of
consciousness.
So
although today's conception of Psychology, Astrology, and Philosophy (and
magazine Buddhism/spiritual) are valid so far as they go, I completely spit them
out and condemn them as "having nothing to do with Dionysus", they
are like ersatz "Rock" music that knows nothing of LSD. Astrology that isn't firmly grounded in the
intense mystic altered state?
Yuck! Ptui! No way, absolutely not!
If you
assume that astrology is just out there, and not a matter of intense
altered-state experiencing, then sorry, you don't know the living heart of
astrology, the worthwhile type that compelled ancients. As above, so below -- and "below"
means intense altered-state experiencing, vividly and tangibly profound
activities in the psyche. Not merely
astrology of the ordinary-state intellect, but astrology on acid, in the midst
of the soul-seizing session.
*That* is
what the better Greco-Romans or ancients had in mind by "astrology",
not modern ordinary-state "symbolism" or fortune telling. For those who *experienced* astrology in an
intensely mind-transforming way, fortune was something to tremble about, to
fear, to pray about because your life depends on it.
The modern
era puts forth bunk, ersatz, neutered, placebo "non-experiential"
versions of what were the high domains of inquiry. The bulk of Christ Con -- like the bulk of clueless uninitiated
modern topics of investigation -- is low astrology, when what motivated the
ancients was *high* astrology. We could
characterize each field as having a hot and cold version or a high and low
level.
It is
completely wrong to say that religion is about astrology(cold). It is about something essentially different:
astrology(hot). What makes a
domain-version hot instead of cold is the presence of the intense mystic
altered state, normally brought about by visionary plants. Myth-religion was *not* importantly about
{astrology without visionary plants}; myth-religion was really about {astrology
with visionary plants}.
The core
of religion is not astrology, but rather, visionary-plant astrology --
astrology *where* visionary plants are used.
Without the visionary plants, forget it -- there's nothing of import
there. Same as Rock -- if there is no
LSD allusion, then it's mundane junk, pseudo-Rock, neutered "Rock" --
merely a minor derivative trivial entertainment. Myth-religion is absolutely not about trivial astrology; it's
about hot astrology, high astrology, visionary-plant astrology.
Without
the visionary plants, the so-called astrology is just a minor, derivative
trivial entertainment, practical a mundane navigation aid, useful for
storytelling to young children, like Greek Mythology in the grade-school
classroom, devoid of any real religion, devoid of Dionysus, devoid of visionary
plants.
To rightly
comprehend Christianity, the key, important task at hand is to properly relate
the following domains:
Visionary
plants
Experiences
and cognitive state produced by visionary plants
Self-control
and freewill
Astrology/cosmology
Ruler
Cult
Progress
has been made in these individual fields by scholars such as the following:
Visionary
plants - James Arthur, Clark Heinrich, Carl Ruck, Chris Bennett, Dan Merkur,
Dan Russell, Robert Thorne
Experiences
and cognitive state produced by visionary plants
Self-control
and freewill - Richard Double, ...
Astrology/cosmology
- Acharya S and the "History of Religions" school
Ruler Cult
Possibly,
Fertility religion
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