Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Resources: Esoteric/Experiential Christianity
Contents
Book: Beginnings of Christianity -
Andrew Welburn, 1991 - Review
Book list: Original, experiential,
mystical Christianity
Book: Luke T. Johnson: Religious
Experience in Earliest Christianity
Amazon book lists about mythic
Christianity
The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision
By Andrew Welburn. $19.95. 14 sample pages. Paperback - 351 pages
Reprint edition (October 1995)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0863152090
Orig.
1991
Review title: Original mystic, esoteric mystery-initiation Christianity
A strong 5 stars. I read this cover to cover and have found about a dozen similar books on original mystery-initiation experiential Christianity; I intend to create a listmania list (see my Amazon area). This is a hot subject.
One interesting proposal in this book is that the figure of Lazarus is the author, fictionally speaking, of the Gospel of John.
As is standard for almost all late 20th Century scholars, Welburn uncritically assumes that Jesus existed, even as he presents a totally non-orthodox paradigm of what Christianity was really all about and where it came from. He wonders why the canon doesn't tell about Jesus' initiation practices, even though he explains Steiner's portrayal of Jesus' betrayal, arrest, trial, judgement, humiliation, crucifixion, burial, and ascension as themselves the experiential content of such Christian-style initiation.
Actually I hope Steiner's theory here is a little more complete than Welburn's explanation, which omits the trial and judgment phase of experiential mystic Christianity. The trial and judgment phase of the mystery drama is experientially crucial -- it is here where the mind questions the concept of the sovereign egoic moral agent and judges the idea to be monstrously incoherent, suitable only for animals and children. I don't know if Steiner covers this phase; Welburn doesn't.
At this point in recent history-oriented studies, in such theories as mystery-religion Christianity, the Historical Jesus assumption is just a clumsy and superfluous complication getting in the way, adding complexity without enabling theories to be simplified.
Welburn should at least ask whether the hypothesis of the existence of a single Historical Jesus is helpful for a coherent theory of the true origins of the Christian mystery religion. The *idea* of a historical figure is great and profound, but shouldn't be confused with the *actuality* of a historical figure who undergoes literal biographical events of betrayal, trial, and crucifixion. Welburn, of all scholars, should realize this. Nevertheless, this is an excellent book deserving a strong 5 stars.
As in any study of Christianity compared to mystery religions, this has enough mentions of sacred eating and drinking to hook into the entheogen theory of the origin of religions, and enough mentions of fate, determinism, necessity, or heimarmene to hook into a block- universe determinism theory.
Top-quality scholarship. Strongly recommended for those interested in original Christianity as essentially a mystic experiential mystery- religion. The endnotes contain pointers to related interesting books.
One companion book that I haven't yet read, but which you'll surely want as you read this book, is Rudolph Steiner's book Christianity as Mystical Fact. I intend to include both books in my listmania list covering original, mystic, esoteric mystery-initiation Christianity.
__________________
Additional comments not in the above review:
This book
shows the close relations and distinctions between Jewish mystery religion
(experiential initiation esotericism), Gnostic dualistic initiation, and early
esoteric Christian initiation. The book
covers exactly the right ideas, on almost every page, and provides hundreds of
sensible interpretations of various passages from the Christian canonical
scriptures, in light of related traditions and writings.
I am no
longer ignorant of the history of Christianity. In addition to the general history of Christianity, I've been
studying the origins of Christianity so much that I am beginning to look
forward to returning to contemporary theorizing about ego death experiencing
using contemporary approaches. I've
always been strangely split between a very contemporary approach to explaining
the mystic altered state and Christian perspectives -- or content -- of
religious experiencing. Erik Davis
(TechGnosis) can shine light on this combination of the newest approaches with
the ancient approaches -- it's actually typical of mystics or Gnostics to live
on the leading edge while also reaching back in time.
I am
explaining the old in terms of the new, to provide, at the same time, the best
new system (cybernetic theory of ego transcendence) and the best explanation of
the old system (earliest Christianity).
It would
take awhile to list the books I've read and am reading, to convey why they are
so fascinating. The competition among
my books for which ones to read first is more intense than ever. I've been surveying all kinds of books on
Christianity, and have found some of the best that cover Christian myth,
mystery religion, literary interpretation of scripture as sacred myth, and sacred
meals. The strangest thing is that the
authors who declare the canon to be essentially mythical rather than
historically true, almost always uncritically retain the assumption that Jesus
existed. They say that all the
scriptures are inventions for spiritual purposes, and then seriously assert
that Jesus was a man who realized and embodied these spiritual
realizations.
But
instead I expect these books to conclude that an actual human Jesus feels
entirely out of place in such an arena of spiritual fiction. They've burned away all the assumptions of
the historical-reporting character of the scriptures, and yet they unthinkingly
retain a human Jesus -- it's so incongruous.
Acharya S. continues to lead the field, because she is the only one to
take it all the way to declaring not only Jesus, but even Paul to be a
fictional construct created to carry spiritual meaning.
At this
point, after reading all about the mythic, spiritual purpose of the writing of
the scriptures, it is so artificial to introduce a human Jesus, it would take
much more non-rational faith to assume that he existed, than that he
didn't. The far more natural
assumption, in the context of such books about the real origin of Christianity,
is to assume that Jesus is as fictional as is appropriate for a mythic
character -- but almost none of these "sophisticated" authors even
*consider* the question: wouldn't everything you are trying to describe and
explain fall together much easier if you would but read Jesus as fiction rather
than as an actual historical human? So
reading these "sophisticated" books is filled with cognitive
dissonance at the core.
The more
books about Christianity I read, the more profoundly I appreciated how valuable
and *rare* are the contributions from the Christ-myth researchers such as
Doherty, Acharya, and Freke & Gandy.
And the more I realize how essential and crucial is the dry,
non-spiritual research by Doherty.
Both
approaches are urgently needed: spirituality-free Christ-myth research (to
establish that we have no more grounds for assuming Jesus existed than that
Dionysus existed) and an esoterically sophisticated Christ-myth approach that
shows how the early context of Christianity *actually* conceived of the figure
of Jesus in terms of esoteric experiential initiation, including sacred eating and
drinking.
There are
many religious systems involved in the origin of Christianity, but my general
proposition remains viable throughout: religion in late antiquity was about
using loose cognition to experience and in some sense transcend fate/determinism/destiny. We can also say it concerned the development
and the transcendence of the individual as a self-controlling agent. These religions are all variations on the
themes of:
o Individual agency
o The relation of moral agency and time
o Initiatory experience and revealed insight
o The conflict between fate/determinism and
individual agency.
The more I
read about the context of the origins of Christianity, the wider the assortment
of variations on these themes, but these themes are always present -- and
therefore always of central importance.
What the ancients believed about fate, time, and agency is not as
important as the fact that they were religiously interested in these themes. In my contemporary theory of religious
experiencing, fixed destiny, time, and moral agency are crucial central themes,
and I have always experienced Christian myth as forcefully conveying these
themes. I have always been interested
strictly in a contemporary theory of self-control and transcendent knowledge,
but Christianity always intrudes forcefully and declares itself to be of
ultimate relevance.
I'm
naturally interested in self-control and transcendent knowledge, but I've never
been interested in Christianity -- yet that outdated way system of notions
interjects itself against my will into my clean, modern theorizing. Christianity clings to my neat modern theory
against my will, and I am forced to ask rhetorically, "What has Jerusalem
to do with Palo Alto?"
A Church
father asked "But what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" to dismiss
the value of philosophy for Christianity.
For me, Palo Alto represents the contemporary, cognitive science
approach to religious experiencing, and a major entheogen conference was held
there at Stanford in the early 90s.
However, Stanford is not so far, after all, from Jerusalem; the main
road into Stanford leads to a chapel with a large mural in the front.
As you
walk from the oval end of the road into the quad, the mural is hidden but as
you are carried by the Spirit into the quad while in the religious cognitive
state, with an outline of the cybernetic theory of ego transcendence in hand,
the mural of the sermon on the mount is revealed and there is no doubt that
Christianity, religion, and the theory of transcendent insight are essentially
the same thing. Explaining why this is
so, is the real challenge. Given a
rational, contemporary, cybernetic-control theory of religious experiencing,
what has some old myth-system of Christianity got to do with that? The answer is not too hard to express, but
is hard to pinpoint at first. A key is
to think from within the bubble of the mystic altered state.
When
trembling in realization of the implications of how a frozen future worldline
kills the conventional idea of self-control -- when feeling, sensing, and
perceiving that you are frozen into the iron-block universe -- no explanation
is needed to see how the Cross or chained Prometheus, or a tree-fastened Attis,
efficiently expresses this first-hand experience in mythic form. The symbolic connection between present
altered-state experience is especially clear if you recognize the figure on the
cross as a false claimant to sovereign rulership and similarly see ego death as
a denial of one's metaphysical sovereignty, or of one's ability to autonomously
control and create one's future worldline of thoughts and actions.
The most
important kind of myth expresses not abstract philosophical theory about
spirituality, but rather, first-hand experience of the initiate. High myth reflects experience much more than
it reflects theory about experience.
When one's
thoughts are obviously perceived as being injected into the mind as the clock
ticks along, that perception shames one's accustomed assumption of creating
one's thoughts as their father and owner.
The thoughts are labelled "created by the Ground, as part of the
timelessly created Ground"; they are not labelled "created by me,
king ego".
Sometimes
my theorizing neglects the experiential, loose-cognition point of view, which
is actually the fountainhead which provides the source material or data which
the theory serves to explain and make sense of. No more will I neglect to consider first-hand experiencing as
well as theory about such experiencing.
The theory of ego death is largely a theory about a certain altered mode
of experiencing. That altered
experiencing is the home base, the main ground upon which the theory
stands."
This list
covers Christianity as a political-style version of the mystic altered state,
fate-revealing Hellenistic mystery religions. Jesus the Christ as a mystical
"virtually real" figure in a 2-level exoteric/esoteric religion.
Greek
mythic mystery religion gave tales *as such* to the uninitiated and revealed
the experiential allegorical meaning to the initiated. Christianity took this polarity to an
extreme of hyperliteralized tales to the lower "believers" and a more
jarring intensity of revelation when the allegorical-only, mythic-only Christ
was revealed.
Book list:
Original, experiential, mystical Christianity
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/2IOZZKQQRWHLX
My Amazon
listmania lists page:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-fil/-/A1YFCQT60M4XAJ
I should
improve that list as I read the books and bibliographies.
One
indicator that this is leading edge research: when you follow the "related
books" links, it always leads *away* from this type of
experiential/allegorical treatment of the origins of Christianity. People aren't yet discovering multiple books
on this allegorical/experiential reading of Christianity. There are many lists covering
"Gnosticism", but "Gnosticism" as it has been studied
misses the point.
The story
of betrayal, arrest, trial, scourging, crucifixion, burial, ascension, and
kingship is an allegory for the kind of mystic altered state experience
conveyed in the essentially equivalent Hellenistic mystery cults, which were
concerned with ingesting the sacred food and then encountering and transcending
fate or Necessity.
One must
include the Essenes and this allegorical-experiential esoteric Christianity in
the category of "Hellenistic equivalent mystery cults" and then
consider what differentiates one cult from another. Christianity is distinguished by the use of political allegories,
rebellion against the Ruler Cult, apocalyptic Kingdom of God, and a fully
developed lower, exoteric layer added to the usual esoteric layer to form a
most dramatic 2-level switching transformation of the mental model.
The degree
of insight of a theorist of the origins of Christianity is indicated by their
proportion of considering Christianity as esoteric/experiential/allegorical
versus involving a single founding figure, Jesus. We're starting to see some almost sophisticated theories of
experiential mystical allegory but typically they also unwittingly and
thoughtlessly assume a single, founding Historical Jesus. (They typically also lack awareness of
Necessity/determinism, and sacred eating as psychoactive ingestion.) In practice, I've found that the more one
takes for granted that there was a single Historical Jesus, the lesser one's
insight into experiential/allegorical Christianity.
The new
"Just Like You" Amazon feature demonstrates that the people who know
about the mythic-only Christ theory also know about entheogens. As usual, I note that entheogenists are
usually unaware of the mythic-only Christ theory, while Christ-myth readers
often embrace the entheogen theory of the origin of religions. I would expect serious Christ-myth scholars
and experiential mystery-Christianity scholars to be aware of determinism.
Who is
aware of the mythic-only Christ theory *and* fate/Necessity *and* entheogen
theory of the origin of religions?
Philosophers of determinism tend to be narrowly read and lack mystic
altered state experience. Entheogenists
tend to be narrowly read. Christ-myth
scholars tend to be broadly read, so that some of them have heard of the
entheogen theory and the cosmic determinism of late antiquity."
Religious
Experience in Earliest Christianity: Tagline: A Missing Dimension in New
Testament Study
Luke
Timothy Johnson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800631293
April
1998, rank 157K
Review
title: Religious Experiencing perspective on Christian origins
Rating:
5/5
A clear,
concise, much-needed perspective on the beginnings of Christianity. Critiques the limitations of the Theology
perspective and the Historical Sociopolitical perspective, and explains why
scholars are averse to looking at the origins of Christianity from the point of
view of religious experiencing.
Central
chapters cover glossalia and especially sacred meals, looking for the kind of
experiencing that was common to the Mystery Religions and Jewish
initiation. The convenient footnotes
have valuable references to the books he praises and critiques. Ends with a call to start looking for religious
experiencing as the main cause of Christianity.
The cover
has a good painting of Mary "John" Magdalene the Beloved Disciple,
and Jesus feeding the Eucharist to Judas.
http://www.radikalkritik.de
-- Radical Criticism: Contributions for the Radical Criticism of Early
Christian History
Dr. theol.
Hermann Detering,
I've done
alot of bibliographical work lately.
Amazon's features are revolutionarily useful.
I've made
great progress on interpreting Christian myth in terms of the phenomena that
are encountered in the mystic state of cognition. Given any passage, I can tell the esoteric mystic-state
meaning. This method is more concrete
than usually assumed; it's like looking through a particular interpretive lens
based on metaphorical allusions to the specific phenomena of the mystic state.
The book
lists below are surprisingly potent and influential. They are shockingly prominent at Amazon. Far more people are seeing these innovative
and highly unorthodox groupings of books than are reading my Web site and
discussion group postings.
My recent
online work is reflected in two places: these lists, and my discussion group
postings.
I have two
new Web pages:
Chapter
Summaries of The Jesus Mysteries --
http://www.egodeath.com/jesusmysterieschapsumm.htm -- a great study guide and
useful outline of the book. I've read
the book twice, cover to cover.
Taxonomy
of Christ Views (Taxonomy of Ways of Thinking about Christianity) --
http://www.egodeath.com/christviewstaxonomy.htm. There are only two archetypal main denominations: Literalist
Christianity (official Christianity) and esoteric Christianity
(mythic-experiencing allegory).
Esoteric, mythic-only Christianity has actually been the main, popular,
dominant form -- and the official version of Christianity is only *claimed* to
have been the "main" and "traditional" and
"standard" version.
Primary
religious experiencing demonstrates that the main action in Christianity is
experiential insight in this life, like the character Paul's experience on the
road to Damascus. I also base my
inversion of "main vs. deviant" Christianity on the evidently very
strong tradition of a female Most Beloved Disciple, shown clearly in all the
good paintings of the Last Supper.
A recent
article about Gabriel's Datura "lily" in the Anunciation in Entheos
journal also implies that esoteric Christianity was likely the main popular
version of Christianity, despite the official history books' claim to report
"official, traditional" Literalist Christianity having clear
dominance.
Something
that shook me into seeing esoteric Christianity in the midst of Catholic
Christianity was a book of Mexican Christian iconographic art: it was obvious
at last that purgatory and the Cross were *reports* of mystic-state experiences
the esoteric Christians had, including through use of the traditional
Mexican-Indian sacraments as opposed to the phony Catholic Church placebo
sacrament.
We could
even have a contest between the two forms of Catholic/esoteric Christianity:
the genuine folk sacraments of Europe, and their mythic representation through
European Catholic iconography, versus the different genuine folk sacraments of
Mexico and *their* different mythic manifestation in Mexican Catholic
iconography.
The
*majority* of Catholic symbolism was truly inspired by genuine sacraments, and the
official aristocratic Church "leaders" only *pretended* to lead and
control the religion, forcibly trying -- and failing -- to force the Literalist
version of Christianity onto the commonfolk, although all the commonfolk knew
full well that the true version of Christianity is the esoteric-only
version. "Witches and
sorcerors" were ordinary popular esoteric-only, anti-Literalist Christians
who used the true sacraments.
There was
both a continuous tradition of true Christianity, called "heresy" by
the officials, and, the true version of Christianity was continually directly
rediscovered directly from the Ground of being -- from primary religious
experience -- in other words, *the Holy Spirit kept teaching people about
esoteric Christianity* and kept teaching them so rise above the lower,
"milk Christianity" of Literalism.
Also, the Crusades brought back knowledge of the true sacraments from
the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
http://www.egodeath.com/#_Listmania_Book_Lists
(This
#anchor could change)
Another
view of my lists:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-fil/-/A1YFCQT60M4XAJ
Lists 1-10
Ego
death as deterministic self-control cancellation
Original,
experiential, mystical Christianity
Christianity
as political rebellion against "divine" Caesar
Mythic-only
Christ theory
Entheogen
theory of the origin of religions
Block-universe
determinism, Necessity, divine predestination
Historical
Jesus, or Christ Myth?
Reformed/Calvinist
theology and determinism
Tenseless
time, eternity, and timelessness
Religious
myth: allegorical metaphor of mystic experiencing
Lists
11-20
The
kingdom of God is at hand
The
active eucharist that reveals the kingdom of God
Mystery
Religion, Myth, and the Mystical State
Rock as
philosophical mystery-religion
Ancient
Near Eastern religion
Religious
Experiencing
Philosophy
of Mother of God
Mary
"John" Magdalene, The Beloved Disciple
Picture
story Bibles
Picture
story Bibles 2
Lists
21-24
Picture
story Bibles 3: Baby Bibles
Sophia,
religious comprehension
Holy
Spirit and Christian Spirituality
Word and
Power (doctrine and spiritual experience)
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)