Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Good Theory Must Be Explicit and Direct
Contents
Explicit, intelligible, unambiguous
communic. of truth
Must theorize far more forcefully
to disrupt the new status quo
Why keep knowledge hidden and
secret?
Truth
can't be moderated, as by a discussion group moderator. It wouldn't make literal sense to talk about
"moderating truth"; the word "moderate" isn't used that
way. To talk that way would only make
poetic sense.
There are
two ways of expressing truth. Poetic
aphorisms, which are often unclear and confusing to other people, and explicit
statements. It is an abuse of this
discussion group, per the group's original purpose and charter, to express
truth in aphorisms without explicit clarification. A significant number of people have complained because of
postings here that are unclear.
The
problem isn't a matter of whether postings express truth. The problem is that aphoristic style
postings, without additional clarification, are ambiguous and practically
meaningless. Postings that are
practically meaningless are out of scope and subject to moderation, even if
they contain truth.
That is
the problem people are complaining about.
It would be rude and inconsiderate as well as a violation of the posting
rules to post only aphoristic truths in this group. Many people take the stated character of this discussion group
seriously. They come here because of
the group's mission and design. When
that design is ignored
One of the
biggest reasons enlightenment is out of reach is the tendency to use poetic
rather than explicit language, and the tendency to insist that only poetic
language and not explicit language, can describe religious or transcendent
insight. The blend in this group should
be about 80% explicit and 20% poetic language.
The whole goal is to make explicit about religion what has only been
poetic previously. Poetic expression is
the problem to be solved and explained.
The end
goal is not to post poetic expressions, but rather, to explain poetic
expressions explicitly. Given these
goals, postings that lack explicit expression are the problem rather than the
solution.
If more
people complain about the lack of explicit and unambiguous content in postings
here, even if the postings express truth in their poetic and aphoristic way,
moderating the postings would be a reasonable and fair way of protecting the
interests of the community that has been and could be attracted here
specifically because of the main promise and charter of the group: to make
explicit and unambiguous that which has been chronically and persistently
poetic.
The goal
is to clearly explain, not just poetically characterize, transcendent insight
such as occurs around the high religio-philosophical-psychological experience
of ego death and rebirth. Postings that
aren't cooperating and helping in this project of clarification will be
moderated, to make good on the promise and mission and dedication of this
discussion group. Such moderation isn't
about the truth content in postings, but rather, the degree of explicit,
unambiguous clarity in postings.
I will do
the least moderation that produces the greatest benefit toward the mission of this
group. I have been uncertain whether to
clamp down on the poetic postings -- it doesn't make much difference to me,
directly. But if people are complaining
that the postings violate the group's mission statement, I am concerned that
the postings in question are driving away participants and reducing the success
of the group.
Maximizing
the membership of the group has always been a non-goal. If I moderate postings, it is out of
sympathy for people who want to participate as defined in the group's charter
and posting rules, than a desire to maximize the number or quality of
members. Perhaps I have given up too
much on the hope of attracting highly valuable contributors. Maybe the group could be great and could
provide lots of intelligible, insightful, explicit postings. I hardly dare hope for that -- it's an
investment that seems like a long shot.
Also a
factor is the highly controversial nature of the group, and the public exposure
in it: that forces some of the most valuable members to just lurk and not
express their wishes for the group. I
must take more into consideration the wishes of the lurking scholars. However, I doubt I want to invest the time
to fully moderate the group. Time is
the most limited thing -- not the quality of other members' postings. Even if people want me to moderate the group
more, I'm not sure I'd be willing to spend the time.
I will
take into some consideration how on-topic and in-scope people want the postings
to be. I know that many people would
rather I lead more discussions about the struggle to attain personal
self-management and practical self-control, but that is not where my interest
and time commitment is lately, even though it's on-topic.
Truth
communicated vaguely is only a little better than falsity or silence. The only thing I want and love in a theory
of transcendent knowledge is truth expressed unambiguously, literally,
directly, and without room for misunderstanding, and this discussion group's
charter and posting rules reflect that love for specificity and clarity as
opposed to the reigning mode of explanation which is limited strictly to poetic
and metaphorical expressions that could be taken multiple, unspecified ways.
The world
has more than enough poetic expression of truth. This group is a haven for that poor beleaguered other mode of
expression of truth, the scientific and rational mode. There are 99 groups that are perfectly well
suited for beautiful poetic postings about truth, and this group for that microscopic
minority, the 1% of researchers who are dedicated to explicitly systematizing
higher insight. If the poets block that
project, then the poets should be moderated.
Such
moderation is not a significant censorious block on posting truth; everyone is
free to start their own group. Anyone
who doesn't accept this group's charter is enthusiastically encouraged to start
their own group or join those other 99 groups that revel in today's
all-too-common mode of thinking which is limited only to the poetic mode and
incapable of using language skillfully enough to also communicate intelligibly
in the literal and specific mode.
Those who
disagree about the possibility of explaining mystic insight are welcome to post
intelligible and specific arguments for their case, but posting vague and
poetic commentary or vague denials of the rational communicability of mystic
insight can only be considered as an active, willful, deliberate interference
with the work of this group.
If I don't
moderate such postings when numerous people complain about them, I'm being
negligent and failing to follow through on the group's stated charter. I'm mad at being put on moderation on
various groups, but I fully respect and support the moderators for having the
character and vision to uphold a specific concept for their group.
Unmoderated
discussion groups concerning higher religion usually degrade into the kind of
soft, formless, shapeless noise and essentially social interactions that is
typical of spirituality discussion groups.
Those groups that are a negative definition of what my favored,
structured approach to transcendent knowledge is all about.
That kind
of vague expression and informal communication, and that denial of rational
communicability, is the very problem that I have always been committed to
overcoming in the field of transcendent knowledge or mystic experiencing.
If there
are further unintelligible poetic postings in this group, it's likely I'll
moderate them, especially if multiple people complain about them.
The
subject of whether mystic insight is rationally explainable is centrally
on-topic and fair as a subject of *intelligible* debate here. Those who aren't willing to debate the issue
by writing clearly and unambiguously and intelligibly are refusing to follow
the fixed rules of structured debate that govern posting. What position you take is optional, but the
mode of communication is not optional.
Most
discussion groups are mostly for socializing and they recoil in fear at the
sight of ongoing structured debate. But
this group is designed to not be like most groups. Here, it's all about structured debate and clear, detailed,
specific communication. Truth is not
something to be moderated, but it's the most reasonable thing in the world to
moderate words, which may be an expression of truth that meets or fails to meet
the criteria of the posting rules.
Writing
this has made me appreciate how rare and precious a rational approach to
mysticism is, and has strengthened my commitment to making this group a haven
for those very few people who are committed to the power of clear, explicit
communication in this field that is so put upon by the majority who like
thinking of truth as eluding elude straightforward rational
comprehensibility.
Despite
what everyone says, recourse to poetry is not necessary or the best we can do
for explaining mysticism. The dominant
view I'm out to disprove is that poetry can express mysticism but rationality
and language cannot. Rationality can
fully explain mysticism, and poetry such as mythic figuration can add high art
to mysticism. It's a deep, common
fallacy to think that only art can adequately address mysticism, while
rationality and language cannot comprehend mysticism.
Art and
poetry without fully developed rationality and language skills fall short of
being transformative. A posting here
may or may not contain art and poetry, but it must contain developed
rationality and language skills. Those
who are slack in their commitment and effort at the latter will be moderated,
in the spirit of commitment that defines the group.
The world
of spirituality is grotesquely imbalanced, inundated with misty haze and fog,
always promoting an extreme overkill of art and poetry combined with
disparagement of rationality and language.
This group is a sanctuary and haven for the beleaguered few, the
minority who want to, for once, give rationality and clear language a
chance.
People who
like misty haze and fog, art and poetry but not clear communication, are
encouraged to find a group -- all too easy to do -- where that mode of
expressing truth is the accepted norm.
Mushrooms
and Mankind: The Impact of Mushrooms on Human Consciousness and Religion
James
Arthur
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585091510
The
Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience
Daniel
Merkur
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/089281862X
Zig Zag
Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics
Allan
Hunt Badiner (Editor), Alex Grey (Editor), Stephen Batchelor, Huston Smith
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811832864
Michael
wrote:
>>Who
before me has made a general proposal that the real meaning and origin of all
the religions is entheogenic?
James
Arthur wrote:
>I
published the following at http://www.jamesarthur.net in 1997:
>"Information
on this space explores the possibilities and evidence supporting the concept
that the unique states produced by these plants are intricately connected to
the development of mankind and that the plants have multiple connections to the
evolution of religious thought and symbolism on our planet. ... Every indigenous culture used these
plants and each culture had a person or group of people they looked to for
spiritual leadership and they were the plant-knowers (among the myriad of names
you can ascribe to them). ... The
Amanita muscaria mushroom can be found at the roots of most of the religious
writings our planet has to offer. ... These writings have dealt with the use of
such substances by spiritual practitioners in most every religion formed on the
planet."
>Does
this seem vague? Am I not clearly
stating that the origins of religion is the use of drugs?
Not as
clearly as is needed in this foolish, upside-down era that habitually forces
ideas into the status-quo framework unless jarringly awakened and
interrupted. Your points need to be
greatly amplified. The main point I am
trying to magnify and amplify more than has been done previously is that *even*
the main religions, *even* in their later development, *not only* in their
earliest expression, involved, in a very important way and to a very important
extent, the use of entheogenic plants.
For
example, Amanita and likely other psychoactives were not only used in some of
the various diverse groups which eventually coalesced into Christianity, but
were also used by some groups and individuals in Christendom during all later
periods up to and including today's American Christianity, forming what
certainly should be considered a venerable ongoing tradition, even if
semi-suppressed.
My recent
emphasis on the need for emphasis concerns my resolution on the delicate
subject of the legitimacy of meditation on today's popular spirituality. It was hard to find a way to pound home a
certain forceful rejection and condemnation of meditation, while also doing so
in a viable, reasonable way.
Common
thinking keeps on reverting to ordinary ways of considering the role of
meditation versus entheogens, and it was time for someone to stop and shout
"No, no, no! Enough! That's wrong, and I must insist more clearly
than clear that it is deeply wrong, the opposite of the truth." There is a great difference between simply
stating truth, and clearly and effectively communicating truth.
These
points about the presence of entheogens must be pushed home far more
forcefully, far more broadly, far more emphatically. We've got to forcefully disrupt the status quo, which is
reflected in the book Zig Zag Zen.
Sure, Zig Zag Zen has a little, it touches on the point that entheogens
weren't entirely lacking from all of the Buddhist groups -- but that's the
problem, that tepidness, that *imbalance*.
The status
quo that we must battle with all our energy to overthrow now is the Huston
Smith types who gently assert that entheogens were present in the most ancient
origins of ancient religion, and are a valid simulation of meditation that
should be considered as legitimate and authentic as meditation. To hell with that imbalanced picture! With friends of entheogens so tepid as that,
who needs enemies?
Quit all the
excuses and apologetics and just look, in Zen reality-attuned fashion:
*clearly* and *obviously*, New Age American Buddhist Meditation is placebo
bullshit pretending to be the real thing, when obviously it's nothing of the
sort. Entheogens are the real method;
meditation is merely an adjunct -- *not* the other way around like Zig Zag Zen
and all the rest of the old status quo scholarly "defenders" of
entheogens would have it!
It takes a
certain boldness and shaking oneself awake to throw off the dogmatic slumber of
humble respect for meditation. Screw
meditation! It can jump off a
cliff! It is effectively an obstruction
to actual intense religious experiencing.
It doesn't require that one try meditation before earning the right to
reach this inevitable conclusion. The
most elementary and simple reasoning in the world shows it.
The
emperor of meditation has no clothes, just look and see. Almost everyone reports that *meditation
doesn't work* as a way of triggering intense religious experiencing, while
almost everyone reports that entheogens work very well to trigger this.
Only the
most stick-in-the-mud apologists for repressive, evasive orthodoxy could
possibly hold that meditation is more effective for triggering intense mystic
experiencing -- in fact, even the most obstinately in-denial anti-entheogen
meditation proponents are not so utterly foolish as to claim as much --
instead, like weasels and eels, they play a cheap shell game of redefining the
goal.
They say
"Ok, we admit that entheogens totally run circles around meditation,
toward the goal of triggering the intense mystic state. Then we'll save face and prestige by
conceding that ground and claiming that we didn't want it anyway. Now we'll redefine the goal of meditation in
a way so that we'll be unaccountable.
So, the new purpose of meditation, is, um, mindfulness and
lovingkindness, yeah, that's the new story!
Meditation
is way more effective than entheogens for this one true spiritual goal, of
gaining in mindfulness and lovingkindness." That's the low, pathetic argument the obstinate stick-in-the-mud
Buddhists have stooped to in the book Zig Zag Zen, associated with Tricycle
magazine. It is high time the
entheogenists cry out, What total, stinking bullshit, deliberately shifting the
goal of meditation to a nebulous, vague, New Age empty-speak that could never
possibly be measurable and accountable.
That's
just as bad as the Christians. How dare
these American New Age Buddhists think they are one bit better than the most
fork-tongued Christian literalist officials who preach about regeneration of
the sinner, while offering exactly nothing but theological verbiage and
crackers and grape juice to effect the regeneration. No wonder the only growing part of Christianity is the Pentecostals
-- people have had it with empty, placebo, cargo-cult Christianity.
If you
don't make a detailed, emphatic, forceful, unambiguous statement that
entheogens are *everywhere* in *all* religions, in *all* eras, you will be
steamrollered by the status quo and absorbed into it just as the feeble
entheogenic scholarly status quo has been eaten alive and absorbed helplessly
into the totally bunk, completely fake and inert false religion of New Age
American Buddhist meditation, or dogmatic meditationism such as falsely taught
by the pandit Ken Wilber.
The
Wilberian method *doesn't work*! Not,
at least, by any useful, practical definition of "work". Wilber is exactly the same as a Protestant
theologian: he talks about transformation but tells you to attain it by a
method that works so poorly, it actually serves to prevent transformation. He preaches the Devil's gospel that
salvation is difficult. That's the most
powerful interpretation of "works salvation".
Wilber
preaches a works salvation in that he says enlightenment is difficult, slow,
intangible, ethereal. Dan Merkur's
Psychedelic Sacrament is essential for pointing out that there is another view:
what in Buddhism is the vajrayana "lightning path". There are two gospels, two religions, two
attempts at salvation and enlightenment: the hard path of salvation through
works, and the easy, short, lightning path of salvation through faith, which
amounts to consuming the real, entheogenic flesh of the savior, Dionysus.
When all
is said and done, Wilber preaches a false gospel of works-salvation, like
Merkur's non-entheogenic Jewish mystics with whom he contrasted the rational,
entheogen-using, fast-track, short-meditation-session mystics. My gospel or teaching is the lightning
tradition: enlightenment and salvation are easy, fast, simple, rational,
entheogenic.
The others
like Wilber spread another gospel or teaching, the slow, hard, works tradition:
enlightenment is difficult, slow, complicated, beyond rationality, and
non-entheogenic. Wilber has ingested
MDMA a few times and he reports one non-consenting, probably LSD experience in
college.
Regardless
of his own personal experience with meditation and entheogens, he only needs to
read the massive evidence of the reports, to reach a better conclusion than he
has: the reports clearly indicate that meditation works very poorly, while
entheogens work very well, to produce experiences that people report as
intensely mystical and life-transforming.
So he has
to do a complicated, elaborate dance to elucidate in "integral
theory" fashion how entheogens are important, yet much less important than
meditation. Wilber is Mr. Epicycles,
starting by building an infinitely elaborate system, before he has grasped how
utterly straightforward, fast, simple, and easy the bulk of enlightenment is,
in the truly traditional entheogen path.
The
straightforward core of effective initiation is completely lost and scattered
in his baroquely comprehensive system.
He manages to put transformation ever beyond reach by approaching it
through the works-salvation stance in which transformation is considered hard,
complicated, and slow.
We need to
use a much bigger hammer and pound much harder to forge an entheogen theory of
religion that doesn't get instantly swallowed into the dominant middle-level
religion worldview, that swamps the theory in mediocrity and defuses and
assimilates reductively the immensely effective power of entheogens compared to
meditation and conventional ordinary-state Jungian psychological mysticism.
Middle-level
religion defuses and neuters the entheogenic tradition by damning it with faint
praise and falsely reasserting the meditation path, with its gospel of slow,
lengthy, difficult, rare, non-rational enlightenment. We must amplify the entheogenic position and theory so that this
pattern of absorption is forcefully and finally disrupted.
We must
throw down the gauntlet to the official histories of religion and the
mainstream proponents of meditation and assert that they are totally full of
shit and are telling the opposite of the truth -- our mistake has been to play
along with them and affirm their way of painting the picture and balancing its
elements. It's time to stop playing
along with the meditationists and the official historians of mysticism, and
declare that their picture is *completely false*. The meditation dogma is completely false.
The
official mysticism portrayal is completely false -- just as the portrayal of
Gnosticism as a later deviation from the original pure Christianity is
completely false.
Researchers
overemphasize the presence of the entheogens at the temporal beginning of the
religions, at the expense of pointing out their presence in the continued later
development of the religions.
Your
quotes could be interpreted as covering this ground, but they are abstract and
I had to read them twice and hunt down, to bring out, the meaning that I'm
looking for. After reading your site
and your book, I did *not* come away with any idea of a maximal, strong
hypothesis that psychoactives have been a thriving, though beleaguered, ongoing
de-facto tradition from the start of Christianity to present-day Christianity.
To
communicate your ideas you need to express your points vividly -- the quotes
are not a vivid expression of the radical proposal that, say, the Christian
mystics were tripping on Datura, that the Central American Catholic indigenous
were integrating entheogenic visions into Catholic iconography. You convey your points about Amanita
Christmas very clearly -- there is no way someone could read you without coming
away with Amanita=Christmas.
But it is
too easy to read you without coming away with "Christianity in all eras =
Amanita".
The quotes
below don't clearly express the maximal entheogenic theory of religion: that
essentially all religions have always really been about entheogens, from the
start through their later developmental eras, and never were really held to be
about literalism.
A most
fascinating revelation is that all civilizations always held the earth to be round;
it was never held to be flat -- we were just *told* by self-aggrandizing
19th-century science-promoter/propagandists that we were the first to not hold
backward views -- like white man claiming to discover medicinal drugs, when
he's really just co-opted timeless indigenous plant use.
To make
progress in this field, we must almost overstate the case, such as overstating
it and then clarifying and qualifying.
Your
quotes below, by themselves, are too genteel, soft-spoken, and complex to push
the point home that Christian mystics of the Middle Ages were tripping on
psychoactive plants, and that Christian theology is actually based on the
intense mystic altered state induced by entheogens, more importantly than it is
based on any other sources such as non-augmented flagellation or contemplation.
I think we
must consider Middle Ages Christianity and its equivalent in other religions as
three populations: the officials, the mystics, and the populace. Who used entheogens? Most mystics, many of the populace, and some
officials.
We must do
better than merely asserting that the temporal "origin" of
"religion" is drugs.
Entheogen religion researchers must claim *far* more ground, in the
number of eras and in the number of religions covered by the theory.
Both the
origin and all of the later eras of all the religions, certainly including
Christianity, Judaism, Hellenistic mysteries, ancient philosophy-religion,
indigenous religion and shamanism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism,
Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestantism, *all* contained the venerable
de-facto tradition of using psychoactive plants to trigger intense mystic-state
experiencing, and that *all* the literalist history embodied in the religious
stories is entirely allegorical mythic metaphor expressing the psychological
and cognitive phenomena experienced during the entheogenic mystic altered
state.
Entheogens
were used routinely; they were ever-present and *not* just at the origin -- so
the literalist officials today cannot use the dispensationalist cop-out of
saying, "Well, the founders or early heretics used these, but these plants
have no proper place in our later tradition." Gentle qualified statements that there were some plants at the
beginning leave the literalist officials far too much weasel-room.
This is
why we have yet to express the maximal theory in a way that successfully
communicates it forcefully and unambiguously.
It has
been hard working up, forcefully enough, these ideas, pointing out in fiery
detail with vivid condemnation just how intensely and radically opposite of the
truth the official portrayal of the history of the religions is.
We've got
to light the entheogen theory on fire, really highlight and emphasize it, stop
soft-pedaling it, come out and clearly make a very forceful statement -- taking
all of your statements several notches up and expanding them several degrees to
emphatically cover all religions, all eras -- and only after, qualify and
smooth out the assertions. I don't think
you have explicitly, effectively expressed the maximal entheogen theory.
It's too
easy to read your quotes and still discount entheogen use as safely limited,
scattered deviations that happened at a few points in the past. That's too amenable with the official story
-- "Oh, those were just isolated heresies that sometimes popped up here or
there, out on the far periphery -- never mind those, they aren't important to
the core tradition."
We need to
emphasize more the *continuity* and *ubiquity* of *many* entheogenic plants in
practically *all* the religions, even in the extreme of Middle Ages
Catholicism. Many more Christians --
officials, mystics, and populace -- were aware of the entheogenic nature and
essence of theology and Christian myth, than the 20th Century modern-era
mainstream assumed.
To put
forth a new paradigm, one must show a new balance of emphasis of various
points. The maximal entheogen theory of
religion would be expressed more in your quotes if they compensated more for
today's biased assumptions. The
reigning bias that I'm out to overthrow by framing the maximal theory with a
new balance of emphases is the recent assumption that entheogens were present
at the origin of Christianity but not in its later development.
I'm
encouraged in this change of emphasis by Dan Merkur's study of entheogens in
later Judaism, not just in ancient days of the early scriptures. I have never read, as I recall, any proposal
that the Christian mystics used entheogens -- except by implication in the
article about the lily as Datura in Entheos journal.
If you or
anyone has written that, it failed to make a conscious impression on my
thinking, and needs to be hammered home as effectively as your Amanita
Christmas research -- at this point, all that's needed is a crystal clear
proposal, showing the general plausibility, not evidence toward proving it.
>Gnostics
could agree with practically anything said about Jesus' existence, by declaring
the words acceptable as metaphors. Why
use such obscure language instead of saying clearly what you mean? Was there a social, cultural, or theological
problem to circumvent through veiled language?
That is a
good question that needs further investigation. It is fortunate that we don't have to devise ways to talk in
obscured and veiled language these days.
During the
Radical Enlightenment, 1650-1750, writers routinely had to pretend to take the
opposite view of that they actually held, because the State controlled the
publishing apparatus and considered eternal torment in Hell to be a threat that
was essential threat to maintain the social order. To put forth a view other than Literalism, you'd have to write as
though you were a Literalist, explaining clearly the heretical ideas in detail
and then summarily dismissing them in haughty Literalist authoritarian
fashion. No one really was quite sure
what any other writer actually believed -- just as the early "theological
debates" were obviously just smokescreens for sheer power-politics.
There are
many reasons to adhere to a more restrictive way of communicating than today's
personal website publishing where nearly anything goes. We struggle to appreciate how rarely people
have been allowed to publically simply say what they mean.
There are
some aspects of the psyche that are secret and hidden, so the psyche itself
suggests a kind of secret hidden knowledge.
Some hidden aspects of the psyche can be discovered, but some aspects
remain inherently hidden, like the origin of thoughts. You can watch thoughts arise from a hidden
source you can't control, but you can't see the source itself, only "God's
back".
During
initiation there is the ability to watch thoughts this way, but upon doing so,
spiritual death is experienced and is experienced as a kind of terrifying
chastisement and death, like a punishment of the lower self -- this suggests
allegories of being punished for seeing Truth; if you go hunting in the forest
of the mind and come upon the goddess naked, she will punish you with spiritual
death of the lower self.
Some theories
propose that the Eucharist or initiation was considered to be restricted and in
limited supply. Secrecy and the
centrality of the Eucharist are two key ideas.
Political formations certainly entered into the mix; religion and
politics and the sacred meal were all mixed up together, and mythic allegories
always start with a framework involving kingship and rebellion.
I also
have a political theory about why it was forbidden to reveal the
mysteries. Determinism (necessity,
fate, hiemarmene) was revealed in the core of the mysteries, and was dangerous
to admit in the democratic society, because sovereigns always try to justify
their actions as being religiously fated, meant to be, and smiled upon by the
gods: I'm in charge therefore I am righteously meant to be in charge by divine
right. Fate, the gods, put the scepter
in my hand and put me on the throne, so to resist me is to rebell against the
gods themselves.
Kingship
is rulership is godship is, with the Fates, above all restriction -- that's the
thinking that the democratic purveyers of the mystery religions want to control
and keep safely hidden in the ceremonies.
With the new legal city-state in Athens, people had to pretend to be
each a little sovereign freewill agent, despite the fatedness and timeless
frozen determinism that was clearly revealved and experienced in the mysteries.
Another
reason for secrecy about enlightenment is similar to keeping sex hidden from
children. Initiation is sacrificing
your first-born childself. If we
initiate young people before their time, we would prematurely overthrow and
destabilize their egoic mental formation.
We should not initiate people before they have mentally developed to the
stage that is ready to go beyond the illusion of egoic self-controllership and
encounter the paradigm-shattering no-free-will/no-separate-self revelation, the
child-devouring Minotaur that awaits the sacrifice in the labyrinth of the
mind.
Mythic
allegory suits this need well, the need to develop the ego for awhile and then
transcend it. The child can safely hear
the myth without understanding it, and then when the lower mind is mature and
stable enough, we can experientially reveal the soul-shattering meaning of the
myth.
The
mysteries lead to an encounter with great danger. Four rabbis studied the mysteries. One of them died, one went mad, one caused great destruction, and
only one of them attained peace and understanding.
There are
a couple books on secrecy in antiquity I want to read.
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