Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Literalist Mid-level Myth, The 'Ordinary-State' Fallacy
Contents
Christ Con: Need simple but not
materialist model of religious origins
L. Ron Hubbard, drugs, scientology,
nitrous oxide
Literalism is
tribal/exclusivist/anti-Christ
Limitations of astrotheology
mapping of Christianity
Astrotheology in bk of Revelation
to refute literalist Christianity
Religious myth -- there is nothing
amiss with the "modern rational mind"
Low, mid-level, and high religion;
2- vs. 3-tiered model
Limitations of Freethought &
History of Religions school
The Swoon/Shroud/India theory of
Jesus' death
Against medium-level religion of
meditation & psychological symbolism
The idolatrous, self-fabricated
religion of literalist "Christians"
Scientific rational atheism is uncomprehending
of myth
Against reductionist religious
theories; esoteric mystic-state experiencing is core
The
challenge is to enter the labyrinthine study of this new field of Western
Esotericism without getting lost in dissipation like some Alexandria table of
contents listings appear to.
Fortunately, I emphasize the need for an ultra-simple model. Acharya S urged me to "keep it
simple", but her idea of simple discards all the higher,
mystic-experiencing dimension, together with the mapping from symbols to the mystic
phenomena.
Her idea
of "keep it simple" in revealing esoteric meaning is "Jesus
means the sun, that's all. Christianity
means astrology -- the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets. That's all." We must find the simplest possible explanation that fits.
Terminating
symbology mapping with the mere literal sun and literal astrology fails to fit,
because it omits the mystic-experiential dimension that according to *all*
scholars of the esoteric is the definitive key characteristic of esotericism, instantly
tossed into the wastebasket by the literalist "esotericism" of
Acharya's Christ Conspiracy theory of the true meaning of Jesus and
Christianity.
Christ Con
contributes insight into the lack of a single individual historical Jesus, but
replaces the Historical Jesus theory of the creation of Christianity by the
literalist astrology (only) theory, which tosses right out all the real
*religion* -- that is, the mystic experiencing -- that is the backbone of
Hellenistic Jewish, Pagan, and Christian religions, world religions, and
Western Esotericism.
It's a
totally, stunningly reductionist alternative theory to the literalist
Historical Jesus assumption, so that literalist Christianity is replaced by
literalist astrology, resulting in no real conversion of thinking -- no more
than converting from literalist Islam to literalist Christianity.
The irony
is the short strong defense of entheogens in the book, as being vaguely useful
for "initiation" -- while out of the other side of her mouth, she
denies Jesus was allegory for mystic-altered state psychological experiential
phenomena. Note that her chapter on sex
and drugs is about 85% about sex, and only 15% about drugs, and consider that
sex is literal and physical, while drugs gets into the cerebral nonordinary
state of consciousness.
It is
astounding how scholars can be so learned, while utterly missing the nature of
their subject -- especially in such an extremely literalist fashion. I continue to feel that Christ Con is based
on narrow reading: it cites only one kind of scholar; it lies entirely within a
particular bounded school of scholarship.
Can it be
excused by pointing out how clueless all scholars are? No: in the field of studying the esoteric
meaning of Jesus, the vast majority of scholars correctly start with the axiom
that the meaning of any sort of esoteric gnostic interpretation is centered on
a nonordinary state of experiencing -- an axiom not accepted, not even
addressed, in Christ Con, with the exception of the one paragraph that contradicts
the rest of the book's theory of the esoteric meaning of Jesus, stating that --
contrary to the rest of the book -- the Jesus figure was drawn from multiple,
numerous meaning-domains.
Consider
modes of interpretation:
1. Literal
interp., ignorant of entheogens, omit experiential-psychological allusions
2a.
Symbolic interp, ignorant of enth., omit experiential-psychological allusions
2b.
Symbolic interp, ignorant of enth., include experiential-psychological
allusions
3.
Symbolic interp., aware of enth., include experiential-psychological allusions
Level 2 is
mid-level interpretation, which is the mainstream standard. What's disturbing is that the vast majority
of mid-level theorists adhere to reading 2b: when they reject literalism of the
surface symbols, they don't simply claim those symbols (Jesus) point to
*physical* items (the sun); they are Jungian, claiming the symbols point to
psychological experiences.
I don't
know of anyone who will agree that the "esoteric" meaning of Jesus
and Christianity are purely material rather than psychological
experiences. It's hardly worth my
defining a level "2a" because practically no scholar today, except
one, holds that view of the meaning of myth-religion. Practically all mid-level theorists use reading 2b, reasoning
that the alternative to standard literalism is psychological experiences per
Jung.
As far as
its model of the esoteric meaning of Jesus and Christianity, Christ Con is
rooted in pre-Jungian, early 20th-century conceptions, and is in that respect,
surprisingly outdated -- a relic -- while other old theories such as the
Radical Critics (no Jesus, no Paul) can be considered far ahead of their
time.
Do the
Radical Critics postulate an "esoteric" origin of the Jesus figure,
and if so, do they assume that such esoteric meaning points ultimately to
psychological/cognitive phenomena? If
so, those 1800s scholars are a century ahead of the concept of "esoteric
meaning" that drives Christ Con.
Christ Con
has a good theory of no-Jesus, a good model of certain aspects of mapping
Christian concepts to astrology, but a really bad or nonexistent model of
"esoteric", "initiation", and "astrotheology" in
that the mystic experiencing core dimension is utterly missing -- and that,
despite the presence of the pro-entheogen defense and the associated
thesis-demolishing assertion that the Jesus figure was assembled from many
meaning-domains.
Christ Con
is grounded in pre-Jungian thinking, just as is Frazer's fertility model of the
meaning of the sacrificial king. Christ
Con often seems to rest on just a few books, such as Barbara Walker's women's
reference -- therefore I wonder if Walker's book also has never heard of Jung
or the theory that myth-religion is description of cognitive phenomena of the
mystic state of consciousness.
The
Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
Barbara
Walker
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006250925X
1983
The
preconceived goal of overthrowing Christianity at any cost leads Christ Con to
put forth an unusually literalist (materialist rather than psychological) and
amazingly narrow model of the esoteric meaning of Jesus and Christianity.
My quickly
selected excerpts from the Web page are below.
Ideally I would read the page and briefly summarize it. Not sure of the relevance to egodeath, but
has some odd connections between 20th-Century religion, drugs, the PWOD (Phony
War On Drugs), and magick that might provide insights on the connection between
propaganda, religion, moralism, and drugs.
-----Original
Message-----
From:
Chris Bennett
Sent:
Wednesday, September 03, 2003 2:00 PM
To: mh
Subject:
L. Ron Hubbard on Drugs
http://www.pot-tv.net/archive/shows/pottvshowse-2144.html
Fascinating
Weirdness! Was the founder of Scientology and the drug rehab program Narconon a
user of Drugs and a Practitioner of Black Magick? Was L. Ron Hubbard working
for Naval Intelligence and involved in the drug induced mind control
predecessors of MK Ultra? Are Scientologists planning to take over the world
and make it Drug-Free? Watch this fascinating video from Detroit's Red-Eye
Rising Productions for all the answers.
Although
he liked to claim it was from a vision inspired from a near death expereince It
may have been L. Ron's strange relationship with drugs that initiated his first
Sci-fi fantasy, a book which he believes laid the ground for his later
philosophical achievments....
"Hubbard
had experienced a peculiar hallucination in 1938, while under nitrous oxide
during a dental operation. He believed that he had died during the operation
and while dead been shown a great wealth of knowledge."
- Tony
McClelland, "The Total Freedom Trap"
"He
told me it was going to revolutionize everything: the world, people's attitudes
to one another. He thought it would have a greater impact upon people than the
Bible."
- Art
Burks
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:X2umfO-1LlgJ:www.mystae.com/streams/gnosis/magick.html
ron
hubbard marijuana&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Clip
Forrest Ackerman and Gerry Armstrong about Nitrous Oxide expereince
Sometime
after allegedley trying to bilk the navy out of permanent disability funds for
ulcers he developed well in Naval Service, Hubbard met and befriended
pioneering rocketeer and occultist Jack Parsons. Besides being one of the
founders of Cal Tech, Jack Parsons has the dubious honor of being the only pot
head with a crater on the moon named after him.
Hubbard
and Parson's shared adventerous and creative spirits, the two apparently shared
another facination, that being a taste for the occult works of Aliester Crowley
... when well visiting the library of congress in washington DC, he discovered
Crowley's infamous Book of the Law, a tiny booklet that Crowley claimed was
channeled from discarnate Egyptian deities and promised a new era for humanity.
We have
nothing with the outcast and the unfit; let them die in their misery.
Compassion is the vice of Kings; stamp down the wretched and the weak; this is
the law of the strong; this is our law and the joy of the world.
I am of
the snake that giveth Knowledge and Delight, and stir the hearts of men with
drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs.... They shall not harm
ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self.... Be strong, Oh man! Lust,
enjoy all things of sense and rapture ... the kings of the earth shall be kings
forever; the slaves shall serve.
Them that
seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter,
and destroy them utterly. I am unique and conqueror. I am not of the slaves
that perish. Be they damned and dead! Amen.
...
The use of
both sex and drugs in Crowley’s form of magick cannot be understated. In an
interview with Penthouse magazine in 1983 it was at this point his father began
his use of drugs
Penthouse:
Did your father take a lot of drugs?
Hubbard:
Yes. Since he was sixteen. You see, drugs are very important in the application
of heavy black magic. The personal use of drugs expands one's conscious ability
to break open the doors to the realm of the deep.
Penthouse:
What kind of drugs did he generally use?
Hubbard:
At various times, just about everything, because he was quite a hypocondriac.
Cocaine, peyote, amphetamines, barbiturates. It would be shorter to list what
he didn't take.
Elsewhere
Hubbard Jr. states:
“I
remember in 1952… while he was taking a needle in the arm, containing cocaine.
He grinned at me, winked wryly and said “Shades of Sherlock Holmes!’
“Dad gave
a lot of lectures on Cocaines or stimulants of one kind or another. He could
really get brilliant on the stuff.” (Corydon)
... He
instead headed directly for a house in Pasadena, California, where an eclectic
assortment of people lived including forementioned rocketeer Jack Parsons. At
that time Parsons was the head of a California Branch of the Order templar
Orientis, or OTO, a Masonic brotherhood that was headed by Crowley. ...
That
Parsons was seen as a person of interest at the time is quite obvious. Rumours
of cannabis smoke and erotic rites taking place on parsons' estate, where he
had a number of bohemians and occultist living with him, had his 1940's
neighbors quite concerned and both the FBI and local police had investigated
him
Parson's
wrote in the 1943 edition of the OTO's Oriflamme:
…I live on
peyote,
marijuana,
morphine and cocaine,
I never
know sadness but only a madness
that burns
at the heart and the brain.
Interestingly,
it was this same year that researchers working for the OSS, the predecessor for
the CIA, began ultra-secret work titled Bluebird and Artichoke began the quest
to find the ultimate "truth-serum" starting with a cannabis-indica
solution and later ciggarettes laced with the potent liquid, said to be a
predecessor of the famous "honey-oil". Harry Anslinger, the father of
Reefer Madness, was working with the OSS on this project.
By 1947,
the U.S. Navy had also launched Project Chatter, which included experiments
with mescaline, a hallucinogenic drug derived from the peyote cactus (with
effects similar to LSD). Mescaline was studied as a possible speech-inducing
agent after the Navy learned that Nazi doctors at the Dachau concentration camp
had used it in mind-control experiments.
Concievabley
it could have been due to a OSS & Naval Intelligence interest in the
potentials of cannabis and mescaline as truth serums that Hubbard began spying
on the sex drug cult headed by Parsons and crowley. According to Scientologist
sources Hubbard had infiltrated the OTO on behalf of Naval Intelligence who
became concerned when a number of their top physicists began getting involved
and this was creating a national security situation.
...
Despite
these high admirations, and testing Parson’s adherence to Crowley’s law of “Do
As Thou Will”, which condones the total free will of every individual, Hubbard
ended up charming away Parson’s girlfriend Sara Northrup, eventually marrying
her himself before divorcing his first wife and the mother of his children.
...
"Hubbard
insisted that he had been working undercover for Naval Intelligence to break up
black magic in America and to investigate links between the occultists and prominent
scientists at the Parsons' mansion.
The
Excluded Middle
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:wIsKbtAdjFEJ:www.elfis.net/tem/jack_parsons.htm
ron
hubbard marijuana&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
...
According
to L. Ron Jr., Hubbard Sr. continued with his own use of drugs and even used
them in conjunction with the e-meter continually jotting down the results.
“He
started me out by mixing phenobarbital into my bubble gum, when I was ten years
old. This was to induce deeper trances in order to practice the black magic and
to get an avenue to power.”
One of
scientology’s most influential texts was said to have been created by these ve
ry means with Ron Jr. acting as the Drug channel.
Bennies
clip
Hubbard
not only drugged his son to act as his scribe but apparently also used himself
in such experiments, typing out frantically the drug induced revelations as
they came through. As Ron Jr. describes “He’d sit at his typewriter late at
night and boost up on drugs and hit way at the top, and write like crazy. He
could type 97 words a minute with four fingers. That was the maximum the old
IBM electric typewriter would go. When he got into one of these drug trips he’d
write until the body just collapsed.
That’s the
way he worked. Usually what he had written in a burst would then be allowed to
trickle out to the public, the classes he taught. It would then be allowed to
trickle out to the public, the classes he taught. It wouldn’t just show up
right away. But it was an uneven thing. Sometimes he wouldn’t write for a week,
then he’d strap on the heavy duty rockets and up he’d go again.”
The first
American “Clear”, meaning one who had successfully removed enegrams, or mental
complexes they had developed through the e-meter and dianetics was one John
Star Cooke. Besides being a Crowley disciple and owning Crowley’s own hand
inscribed tarot deck, Cooke had heavy CIA connections and was also
instrurmental in the spread of LSD and in initiating the first Human Be-in in
1967, the famous LSD inspired “Summer of Love”. As MK-Ultra developed out of
the earlier OSS cannabis experiments Bluebird and Artichoke, it is interesting
to note that Hubbard is credited with being the first to expose MK Ultra
According
to researcher Jon Attack, Hubbard had himself used LSD himself prior to its
illegality and Scientologists have dosed their unsuspecting enemies with the
drug. Interestingly Hubbard himself later complained to the FBI that a number
of Scientologists had suffered "psychotic episodes" which he claimed
were the result of psychiatrists surreptitiously giving them LSD:
“1951
Hubbard authored a second book on Dianetics, Science of Survival which set out
to delineat the human emotional range. Science of Survival is also notable on
another count - as the first public disclosure of psychiatric-intelligence mind
control techniques (later confirmed by Central Intelligence Agency testimony
regarding the MK Ultra projects and the Navy's Project Chatter)..”
(www.scientology.org)
"Mr.
Hubbard's statement was found to be true in the 1970s, when the CIA's program
became public knowledge after the freedom of Information Act enabled
investigators to document the agency's inhumane and grotesque experiments on
human subjects. The ensuing outcry over the use of mind-bending drugs, which
combined with electric shock caused the deaths or maiming of untold numbers of
people, drew comparisons between the CIA and the infamous Nazi doctors and led
to Congressional hearings into the intelligence agency."
-
an40286~at~anon.penet.fi (probably from the Scientology Guardians Organization)
...
L: Who
else told you Hubbard was pretty far gone and couldn't hold a train
of
thought?
J: Rick
Aznaran.
L: How
would he know that?
J: Because
he was there, and the hired farm hands that they had said that -- Rick Aznaran
related this story to me -- that often they would hear L. Ron Hubbard screaming
at BTs late in the night. He was heavily medicated with drugs from Dr. Dink
like valium, the this the that, and the other thing.
L:
Tranquilizers?
J:
Tranquilizers, and then he's experimenting with drugs, he's getting any kind of
drug he wants to from Dink.
L: Any
possibility of anti-psychotics?
J: Yeah, I
do believe he had some of those too. Rick said there was a cabinet full of all
kind of prescription medicine that you could ever imagine when they went to
where he was an opened his medicine drawer. He said that amazed him because
it's a strict policy of Scientology not to take any drugs whatsoever, any kind
of medical drugs whatsoever. You just don't take them. And here he had a
zillion of them. I've also since talked to Dennis Erlich who told me about a
person who used to deliver cocaine and marijuana to L. Ron Hubbard, as well as
LSD and other things, and knew him just in passing because Dennis was having an
association with him or something. They were at some concert together, because
Dennis does concerts. They got to talking, Dennis mentioned that he'd been in
Scientology, and this person said to him, "Oh, I know L. Ron Hubbard, I
used to bring him his drugs up there in Preston where he was."
Jesse
Prince
Hubbard
was STRONGLY AGAINST drugs [for OTHER people, in later policy], although he
himself consumed huge amounts of drugs and alcohol during most of his life. We
also know that in the early days there is plenty of evidence that he
experimented with auditing under the influence of drugs [speed, for instance],
and used drugs to make his own children pliant and controllable [phenobarbital
laced chewing gum, for instance]. Later, he was MOST STRONGLY AGAINST
psychedelic drugs like marijuana and LSD, [perhaps because they have very
strong anti-hypnotic tendencies, and have the potential to bounce people *OUT*
of consensus trance
Despite
Ron’s love of both illicit drugs and potent pharmaceuticals, Scientologists are
avowedly anti-drug, that is except for the ciggaretes they smoke in imitation
of the Great Ron, and they use of booze and coffee. They even have a drug-rehab
branch, Narconon, which critics accuse them of using as a front group for
collecting new and unsuspecting membership through.
...
“Narconon
was started by convict and drug addict William Benitez, in the mid-1960s. It
claims to be a rehabilitation programme for alcoholics and other drug addicts,
and at different times and in different places has gained state support .
Hubbard’s interest in the group may have been inspired in part by Crowley's
first published novel in 1922, The Diary of A drug Fiend. A detailed account of
drug addiction and the drug experience. It tells the story of a man and a woman
who fall madly in love, and travel throughout Europe in a frienzied haze of
herion and cocaine usage. When their drug supply is cut off, they face despair,
and they turn to the guidance of King Lamus, a master Adept, to free themselves
from their addiction through the application of practical Magick. An
interesting story that addresses the psychology of drug addiction and its cure
through the use of true will.”
No
connection clip
In a 1970
letter Hubbard gave clear indications that Narconon was a good way to get new
recruits for Scientology.
...
Currently,
Narconon works alongside Scientology's "Say No to Drugs Campaign",
their youth groups “The Drug Free Marshalls and Drug-Free Ambassadors. Narconon
is advocated by Scientologist and former cocaine addict, Kirstie Alley.
...
It is
probably Narconon and Scientologies image as a "drug-Free" religion
that accounts for the Church's penetration into more mainstream culture.
Currently the Church claims over 8 million members world wide.... The Drug
Rehab element of Scientology has been what has attracted a number of stars to
the organization
...
One of the
ways the Scientology has become so popular is the extensive work it has put
into the Church's Public Relations campaign. ... Being faced with so many
critics Hubbardites have sometimes resorted to what has been deemed Black PR
...
These
comments are particularly interesting in relation to comments made by former
Scientologists Garry Armstrong :
By far the
best, safest, cheapest, holiest protection against $cientology, which virtually
anyone with lips and a lung can obtain, is to smoke pot every week.
….A clear
message to $cientology, a net oxygen producer, and an aesthetically pleasing
addition to any home, is to grow a pot plant...
...
Gerry
Armstrongs point of view seems to be reinforced by the Scientology funded piece
of Drug war propaganda “The Truth About Joints” sites related to scientology
which focus on cannabis, such as www.marijuanadetox.com , the Vancouver
Narconon site that has a picture of Marc Emery and a Cannabis day add with the
following comments
The
Promotion and Marketing of Marijuana is taking the same avenues as legitimately
marketable products in BC. You'll see promotion of pot in magazines, newspaper,
given political support, health officers endorsing or failing to denounce it,
Judges failing to convict, Newspapers report smoking it, and 'compassion' clubs
selling it. Marijuana has been positioned below or 'not as bad as' alcohol and
cigarettes for only one reason: To gain acceptance with an unfamiliar public
market, i.e. those who aren't pot heads or haven't smoked pot. These
positioning efforts are NOT an effort to show how safe marijuana is. If that
were true why would the promoters have chosen the two most deadly substances in
the world? … Marijuana promoters and pushers would like marijuana to take
ranking against the big two of alcohol and tobacco. But who is cashing in on
this huge marketing and promotional effort and who is paying for it?
...
Whether or
not you are worried about the Scientologist, they are certainly worried about
you. And the cult’s past history of infiltrating government agency and hiding
its identity with the use of front groups cannot be ignore, particularly when
it comes to the war on Drugs, for the Scientologist’s ultimate plan for a
“clear” planet, means ultimately a Drug-Free planet.
The evil
ruler in Revelation can be anyone, at any time, who rules the world at the top
of an evil oppressive hierarchy.
A more
interesting interpretation, equally valid, is that anyone at the top of a
Literalist corrupted pseudo-religious power-hierarchy is the anti-Christ.
The book
Lost Goddess makes the point plain and undeniable: all mystics of all religions
basically agree, and strongly tend to get along with everyone. All Literalist religionists tend to not get
along with other people.
All
typical religions have a higher, esoteric level (with a transcendent kind of
morality) and a lower, Literalist, exoteric, mundane-morality level. Freke & Gandy have a great innovation:
instead of focusing on "Judaism vs. Christianity vs. Paganism vs. Islam
vs. Buddhism", they focus on "Gnosticism vs. Literalism" and
define "Gnosticism" to be the esoteric higher level of each typical
religion.
"Literalism"
is the lower level of each typical religion.
Wilber calls Gnostic "esoteric", and Literalist
"exoteric". Wilber's
terminology is a little more abstract.
Freke & Gandy are great, clear, popular writers -- their terms have
an immediate connotation that only needs a little clarification as I provide
above.
The
standard fate of a religion, per Freke & Gandy, is that it's started by
Gnostics, and is good and healthy, and is then corrupted by power-mongers, who
degrade it into Literalist religion.
The
relationship of mapping between Christian mythic elements, the core model of
initiation/enlightenment, and astrotheology: Christian mythic elements are not
explained finally as meaning astrotheology.
Rather, astrotheology finally points to the core model and Christian
mythic elements point to the core model.
Astrotheology is not the final destination of meaning and the core
model, but is just one more metaphorical expression that must be resolved by
mapping to the non-metaphorical core model.
Christianity
is not really astrotheology in the end; Christianity *uses* astrotheology and,
as Christ Conspiracy points out, every other metaphorical system as well. Neither are visionary plants (per the book
Mushrooms & Mankind) the final meaning or what is finally revealed;
visionary plants are only one part of the non-metaphorical core model that is
secretly intended.
What is
revealed is the entire non-metaphorical core model of enlightenment, including
the transcendent mental worldmodel, not just the visionary plants themselves,
and not just the mapping of Christian mythic symbols to astrotheology
elements. Recognizing the incorporation
of astrotheology or visionary plants in Christian myth is not itself an understanding
of the *ultimate* meaning of Christian myth.
Thus
Christ Conspiracy and Mushrooms & Mankind are essential milestones but
don't contain or lock onto the bulk of the final framework.
Christ
Conspiracy achieves more than disproof of the historicity of Jesus. Moving from falsity to truth is not a matter
of revising one element (Jesus' historicity) but rather, a switch from one
whole worldmodel or interpretive framework to another. Christ Conspiracy helps in many ways to
establish many elements of the necessary alternative framework, especially by
considering Christianity as a mystery-religion among many other
mystery-religion versions.
Many
topics (subheadings) in Christ Conspiracy miss the bulk of the alternative,
mystical reading of the Christian mythic system -- for example, to an ancient
audience, it was explicitly obvious that the titles of Jesus were a rebuttal to
Ruler Cult: this should be emphasized more.
As another
example, the Jonah section in Christ Conspiracy didn't attempt to explain the
story in terms of mystic-state experiencing, though this story was one of the
very most important, popular mythemes, portrayed in catacombs together with the
sacred banquet. Take all the
alternative books (Bennett, Thorne, Acharya, Arthur, Heinrich) and merge their
outlines of alternative readings of the elements of the Christian mythic
system, and then we would have some real ammunition.
This would
amount to a fully bulked-up "commentary" volume or a "mythic
dictionary" showing a whole array of legitimate, justified readings of
each Christian mythic element. For any
element, we need to list many readings or mappings, and then discuss which
readings point most directly to the core non-metaphorical meaning (universal
mystic or transcendent truth as encountered in initiation).
The
mistake, which Acharya is somewhat aware of, would be to stop as soon as one
finds the first nonliteral reading. We
instead need to persevere to find *many* readings and judge their importance.
Wittoba
wrote (summary):
>Chapter
17 of Acharya S' book Christ Conspiracy covers the meaning of Revelation,
explaining that the book of Revelation has much to do with the events of the
great year of the astrological cycle.
For more in-depth explication of the astrotheological implications of
Revelation, what works provide greater detail about this, useful in refuting
literalist interpretations of Christianity and the book of Revelation?
The Christ
Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
Acharya
S
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932813747
First,
check the footnotes or endnotes and bibliography in that book.
There are
different degrees and types of "literal" and "allegorical"
Christian thinking. All Christians have
some combination of literal and allegorical thinking. Merely showing the presence of astrotheology in Revelation won't
convince literalist Christians that Revelation is strictly allegorical.
Standard
Christian thinking assumes that Christianity is fully coherent allegorically at
the same time that it is fully coherent literally; ordinary Christians credit
Jesus and Christianity with all the best that mythic allegory and mysticism has
to offer, *and* with literal truth as well.
For
example, they'd say that Christianity is superior to paganism because pagan
astrotheology was *only* allegorical, while Christianity has not only the full
allegorical truth of astrotheology, but at the same time, also has literally
incarnated these great astrotheological truths. The challenge for anti-literalists is to demonstrate that
Christianity is *entirely* and *only* mythical, which is why I don't just say
"mythic Christ", but more exclusively and explicitly,
"mythic-*only* Christ".
You have
to show that Christianity is *only* allegorical, strictly and exclusively
allegorical -- that's much harder than showing that astrotheological allegory
is fully present. After reading
Allegro's Sacred Mushroom & The Cross, I liked his coverage of psychoactive
mushrooms in early Christianity, but I instantly dismissed his
no-historical-Jesus claim as unworthy of serious consideration.
I
continued to assume that Christianity made complete sense mythically,
mystically, allegorically -- *at the same time* as making complete sense
literally. So I know first-hand the
problem at hand. Only during later
mystic-state reflection about how knowledge of Jesus provides mystic salvation,
did I realize on my own the great theoretical benefits and soundness of
abandoning the complicating assumption of simultaneous literal and mythic/mystic
truth of Christianity.
Only at
that point was I inspired to reconsider Allegro and read a stack of
mythic-only-Jesus books, which then simply confirmed in some details the
conclusion I had reached on my own while the Holy Spirit was upon me.
One lesson
here for anti-literalists is that the intense mystic altered state can provide
one method of convincing people that the literal Jesus assumption is not only
superfluous next to the mythic/mystic Jesus, such an assumption is an immensely
complicating and improbable hypothesis that prevents forming a clear and simple
and elegant theory of the nature of early Christianity and early Christian
religious experiencing of salvation through the psychoactive effects of
standard, common Hellenistic sacred meals of visionary plants.
The enemy
to battle is the standard Christian postulate of "simultaneous parallel
sense", the assumption that Christianity *both* contains full
mythic-mystic allegorical truth *and simultaneously* contains full literal
truth, uniting mythic allegory with incarnate instantiation of the allegory in
the historical Jesus.
The
following books might cover astrotheology in the book of Revelation.
Jesus is a
Myth: A Handbook To Reclaim Your Celestial Inheritance
Zain
Winter
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/097065880X
Postmodern
Revelation: Signs of Astrology & the Apocalypse
Jacques
Chevalier, 1997
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802079768
Reviewer:
Zosimos. Review title: Astrology and
Eschatology. "This book attempts
an exegesis of The Book of Revelation from the perspective of postmodernity.
The book considers the three interpretive modes of anagogy, teleology, and
geneaology, which have been used by exegetes of the Book of Revelations.
Anagogy views the text as a work expressing timeless propositions of the
Christian spirit. Teleology views the text as a genuine prophecy of things to
come. And, the geneaological perspective traces the lines of descent in the
text from their original sources. The author examines the history of each of
these interpretive modes, and then turns to the Book of Revelations itself to
provide his own exegesis. The author uncovers the hidden astrological
underpinning of the Book of Revelations, and shows how John wrote the book as a
reply to astrology from the Christian perspective. The book concludes with a
discussion of Revelation in light of Jung's "Answer to Job". Overall,
this is an excellent introduction to the Book of Revelation, and its
interpreters."
Pagan
Christs
J M
Robertson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0880291419
I don't
know if this covers astrotheology:
Christianity
Before Christ
John
Jackson, 1985
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0910309531
For
general studies of eschatology, apocalyptic, and Revelation, see my book list:
The
kingdom of God is at hand
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/7BYCVM3BJX05
I wrote:
>>There
are different degrees and types of "literal" and
"allegorical" Christian thinking.
All Christians have some combination of literal and allegorical
thinking. Merely showing the presence
of astrotheology in Revelation won't convince literalist Christians that Revelation
is strictly allegorical.
>Maybe
neither the allegorical nor the literal interpretations are correct if the text
is purely mythical, and does not correlate to any demonstrable
"reality", whether material or spiritual.
It seems
clear, but actually isn't clear, what you must mean by "purely
mythical". What would be the
purpose, point, or nature of Revelation if it is "purely mythical" in
some sense other than correlating to supposed material or spiritual
reality? Supposing that Revelation
doesn't correlate with material or spiritual reality, what does it mean to say
Revelation is "purely mythical"?
What theory or understanding of "myth" would that be -- random
meaningless entertainment?
Revelation
certainly has some intended reference to something; it's not self-contained
entertainment. There are several
theories of myth (mine is that the main function of myth is to allegorize the
experiences and insights of the entheogenic intense mystic altered state) and
you really conflict with these theories if you use "purely mythical"
to mean "arbitrary random self-contained constructions that don't refer or
don't intend to refer to anything".
If you're
going to bandy a term so purist or extreme as "purely mythical", in
the face of the existence of several scholarly theories of myth, I can't make
sense of what you mean, unless you define what you mean by "purely
mythical" in contrast to "not correlating with 'reality',
whether material or spiritual".
Could you
clarify what is entailed in that scenario or hypothesis of Revelation being
"purely mythical"? Are you
saying that it Revelation would not refer to political goings-on around the
turn of the era? I doubt you mean that
-- that would be unthinkable, as Revelation explicitly allegorically refers to
these. Then what would "purely
mythical" mean, as a hypothesis-label?
It just seems nonsensical, not even a determinate identifiable
hypothesis.
elyon
wrote:
>>The
religious myths of various cultures are an archaic description of the actual
psychological and physical events that occur in the death process.
That's too
literalist -- myth is about mystic-state ego death, *not* about literal
death. In myth, literal death is being
used as a metaphor for altered-state death-of-the-controller-sense.
>>This
process also occurs in the ego death process.
I'd say
*first of all* in the ego death process, not "also" in it.
>>The
descriptions of heavens,hells and deities are of the archetypical states of
consciousness that we collectively share.
>>A
clear and non culturally biased description of this process is being
investigated by Ken Wilber's Integral Institute http://www.integralinstitute.org/home.htm
Ken Wilber
is somewhat clear and nonbiased -- but he lacks what I pose as central:
entheogens, and the experience of determinism, and serious study and
comprehension of Hellenistic mystery-religion.
>>It
isn't that religious teaching is ineffective in integrating the fragmented
consciousness; it is just that the modern rational mind cannot interpret what
is hidden in the myth.
Nasr,
Wilber, and many other scholars/theorists claim that there is something amiss
with the "modern rational mind".
Against that, I maintain that the only thing wrong with the modern
rational mind is the lack of systematic integrated use of visionary
plants. Myth has been meaningful to
modern minds that use the "mixed wine" -- that is, visionary plants
-- used in Hellenistic mystery-religion initiations. There are hooks for this entheogen theory in the book The Christ
Conspiracy, in the short section on entheogens.
>here
is the answer as to what real Buddhism's "Goal" is ... collective
enlightenment. ... strictly speaking,
no real Buddha would declare a victory until that was accomplished.
By the
standards of Buddhism, Buddhism is a dismal failure. That's based on the premise or tradition that almost no one has
succeeded at attaining enlightenment using Buddhism. In that mid-level Buddhism tradition, Buddhism is treated as an
effort or ideal rather than taken seriously as an intended achievement -- like
one is supposed to revere Christian saints but not make sainthood easily
attainable.
In that
mid-level conception of Buddhism, you're supposed to strive for enlightenment
but you're definitely not supposed to attain enlightenment.
I may
agree with some Vajrayana-type lightning-path entheogenic Buddhism that
promises the soon achievement of enlightenment, as opposed to a lifestyle of
pursuing but never attaining enlightenment.
Between
some conflicting Buddhist schools there are parallels to the debate between the
fast-path entheogen proponents and the 30+ year meditation proponents, because
different methods naturally pair with different goals or claims. Alan Watts in Way of Zen favorably contrasts
short-path enlightenment with slow, ever-delayed enlightenment.
Dan
Merkur's book Psychedelic Sacrament, and Pagels' book Gnostic Paul also cover
this kind of contrast between mystic practice that is rational, finite-session,
short-path, and entheogenic or using a sacrament of apolytrosis/redemption; and
mystic practice that is anti-rational, endless-meditation, long-path, and
non-entheogenic religion. Just as there
are only two religions -- low religion and high religion -- so are there only
two mysticism approaches:
o Rational, finite-session, short-path,
entheogenic mysticism
o Anti-rational, endless-meditation,
long-path, non-entheogenic mysticism
Together,
the two pairs above can form my 3-level characterization of religion:
o High religion (has mysticism that is
rational, finite-session, short-path, entheogenic)
o Mid-level religion (has mysticism that is
anti-rational, endless-meditation, long-path, non-entheogenic)
o Low religion (lacks mysticism)
If we
assume that Christianity is usually a worst-case conception of Christianity,
while Buddhism is usually somewhat more elevated, then it would make sense to
use a simple 2-level model when criticizing Christianity, but use a 3-level
model when criticizing Buddhism:
In
Christianity, we can say literalists (low religion) are bad, and
gnostics/mystics (high religion) are good.
In
Buddhism, we can say that official meditation is ok (mid-level religion), but
entheogenic meditation (high religion) is better.
Consider
both religions within a 2- and 3-level framework:
2-level
framework:
o High relig. -- enth'ic mystic alleg'l Xy --
enth'ic meditation Budd'm
o Low relig. -- lit'ist supernat. Christ'y --
superst. & medit. Budd'm
3-level
framework:
o High relig. -- enth'ic mystic alleg'l Xy --
enth'ic meditation Budd'm
o Mid-lev. relig. -- offic'l Xn myst'm --
off'l meditation Buddhism
o Low relig. -- lit'ist supernat. Christ'y --
superst. Budd'm
As far as
Western Buddhism is concerned, the main kind of Buddhism to refute is mid-level
Buddhism; low Buddhism isn't a present problem. The main kind of Christianity to refute is low-level
Christianity; most Christians haven't even heard of semi-official mysticism,
much less entheogenic mysticism. This
makes it hard to generalize and critique both religions at once.
Charismatic
Christianity would be mid-level Christianity -- it has some experiential
emphasis, but not as much as the "original" paradigmatic Holy Spirit
eucharistic experiential Christianity.
>Today
though, I see more potential in the US for real entheogenic Buddhism in the
future, then I see in the orient.
Western
Buddhism at least grants entheogens 10% the efficacy, legitimacy,
traditionality of meditation -- better than 0%. Some Eastern Buddhism uses entheogens:
Shamanism
and Tantra in the Himalayas
Surendra
Bahadur Shahi, Christian Rätsch, Claudia Müller-Ebeling
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819138
>Also
of any of the religions on earth I see Buddhism as the most entheogenically
inclined.
But when
looking at the Hellenistic origin of Christianity, it is child's play to
recognize it as originally entheogen-based, and there are very clear traces of
entheogens throughout -- the Eucharist liturgy and doctrine about it is
obviously, clearly, recognizably, blatantly, and definitely based on and
modelled after entheogens. For those
who are equipped to recognize it, Christianity is clearly and virtually
explicitly about entheogen consumption, experience, and insights, but
officially lacks the entheogen itself.
In this
respect, Christianity is blatantly entheogenic, while Buddhism isn't. In Christianity, there is the potential
"Death Star vulnerability" ability to demonstrate that the Eucharist
is enthoegenic, bringing the whole literalist view crashing down. Theologians agree that the very heart and
core of Christianity is the Eucharist or Lord's Supper -- that is the peak of
the liturgy, the center of ritual, and it is clearly entheogen-shaped.
To clearly
point this out is to reveal to the world that Christianity rests on an
entheogen-shaped basis. We'd have to
also demonstrate that the seder and all the sacred meals of Hellenistic
religion were entheogenic. Buddhism has
no such vulnerable entheogen-shaped heart, no such entheogen-shaped pillar
holding up the wobbly status quo.
>from
the viewpoint of High enlightenment experience we are talking about more of
hoping for a human mutation, then expecting these institutions to ever wise up.
As
institutions, they are constitutionally designed not to ever wise up.
As freely
usable mix-and-match symbol systems or languages, the major myth-religion
systems are an immensely rich reservoir of valuable resources for ergonomic
religionists to utilize, as the gnostics did, but better, using a contemporary
striaghtforward systematic scientific system of explanation, engineered for
ease of use and straightforward expression, offering a variety of
user-interface skins or letting you go straight to the command line.
Most of
the popular readership of Christ Conspiracy, Freethought ,and History of
Religions has such limited views, they think that religion has no truth at all,
that there is no higher knowledge. They
are *traumatized* -- far too traumatized to think clearly; it's like trying to
do science in a battlefield hospital.
Most of the readers are like traumatized children.
They are
wholly against understanding any possible transcendent content of religion --
like the "freethinker" tone of the History of Religions school, it is
a scorched-earth, wholly negative reassessment of religion. That tone may have been necessary in the
1800s, but it is time to get over it and move ahead and develop a deeper, more
sophisticated comprehension of religion as deriving from extraordinary (but by
no means rare or difficult) experiencing.
Freethinkers
are right about so much, but their entirely reactive attitude prevents them
from latching onto the positive content of which religion is a distortion --
for them, the astrology explanation is worthwhile not because it in itself is
worthwhile, but because it is an alternative to the worst form of
religion.
They've
been traumatized by the worst form of religion, and parade a neutral revision
of religion, not because they give a damn about the content of the revised
conception of religion -- they really couldn't care less about astrotheology,
fertility religion, Jungian psychological archetypes, or suchlike, but purely "value"
such a view of religion because it serves in utilitarian fashion to negate the
version they so hate.
But a move
from a total distorted version of religion to a neutrally bland, irrelevant,
harmless, uninteresting, placebo version of religion, can only be a first step;
it's still a failure to *comprehend* what's really legitimately pointed to by
religion -- transcendent knowledge experientially encountered in the intense
mystic altered state, normally induced by eating the flesh of God -- visionary
plants.
Having
studied Christ Con further, I'm considering at
http://www.egodeath.com/christviewstaxonomy.htm
moving
Acharya from the category
Fully
allegorical mysticism
to
Radical
secular humanist debunking
(radical
Freethought)
In fact,
my descriptions need updating now that I understand how Freethought proposed
Fertility and Astrology as the "true core allegorical meaning" of
Christianity as the proposed alternative to "mere exoteric superficial
religion". What the Freethinkers
proferred as "true esoteric initiatory core allegorical meaning", I
disparage as merely -- like "magazine Buddhism" -- a more neutral and
harmless missing-of-the-point.
The
Freethought Astrology theory of the "real" meaning of religion is
entirely exoteric and superficial; it can be seen as every bit as exoteric and
superficial as supernaturalist literalism: it's what I hate and warn about so
much in pop Buddhism; today's real threat for those who really want to know
transcendent truth is *not* low, supernaturalist literalist religion, but
rather, mid-level religion which *seems* to be high religion because it is
higher than the lowest religion.
Freethinkers
have made the move from low religion to something like mid-level religion
("it's all really just symbols for fertility/astrology"), a level of
religion perhaps less harmful but in some ways even more clueless and farther
from the transcendent truth than supernaturalist myth-religion. Low, mid-level, and high religion could be
stacked either way:
High
religion -- the truest
Mid-level
religion -- clueless about experiential religion, harmless -- doesn't reflect
truth and doesn't distort truth
Low
religion -- harmful, but its myth-religion does reflect truth though also
distorting truth
By some
measure, mid-level religion is even farther from the truth than low-level
(supernatural literalist) religion:
High
religion -- the truest
Low
religion -- harmful, but its myth-religion does reflect truth though also
distorting truth
Mid-level
religion -- clueless about experiential religion, harmless -- doesn't reflect
truth and doesn't distort truth
In
addition to my "high/mid/low" labels, I need descriptive labels:
Experiential
allegorical religion
Ordinary-state
non-literalist religion
Ordinary-state
literalist religion
High
religion -- Experiential allegorical religion
Mid-level
religion -- Ordinary-state non-literalist religion
Low
religion -- Ordinary-state literalist religion (supernatural literalism)
Pros and
cons of the 3 types of religion:
Experiential
allegorical religion ("high religion") - doesn't take symbols
literally, comprehends the multiple meanings including the allusions to
experiential phenomena such as no-free-will experience
Ordinary-state
non-literalist religion ("mid-level religion") - doesn't take symbols
literally, comprehends 1 or 2 meanings alluded to, ignorant of experiential
phenomena and allusions to them
Ordinary-state
literalist religion (supernatural literalism) ("low religion") -
takes symbols literally, doesn't comprehend other meanings, ignorant of
experiential phenomena and allusions to them
This is
what Ayn Rand or Freethought and magazine Buddhism have in common. They are the same; they are essentially the
mid-level view of religion. They don't
take symbols literally, but neither do they comprehend the most important
meaning of the symbols: experiential allegory alluding to the psychological
phenomena of the mystic altered state.
A key
strategy is to identify and name standard, common "fallacies". The Freethought/History of Religions school
-- well reflected by Christ Conspiracy -- in practice commits two fallacies
(even if they sometimes qualify their views): the single-allegory-domain
fallacy, and the ordinary-state assumption fallacy.
The
single-allegory-domain fallacy:
"Christian
elements are not really about what official Christianity says; rather, they are
about astrology." In fact, the
Christian symbol-system drew from all possible sources -- a point Acharya
states, yet a point that she ignores in practice in fully promoting the
astrotheology view as the core "esoteric" meaning of religion.
The
ordinary-state assumption fallacy:
"Religion
is actually about some area of life [where the ordinary state of consciousness
is always assumed] such as fertility, astrology, or sociopolitical
relations."
So *this*
is where I criticize Freethought and the History of Religions school: I reject
their single-allegory-domain assumption (usually fertility or astrology) and I
especially reject their assumption that myth-religion is concerned with life as
experienced in the ordinary state of consciousness.
I maintain
instead that myth-religion is normally a compound mix of multiple
allegory-domains, with central pride of place given to the cognitive phenomena
of the intense mystic altered state, normally induced by visionary plants. For example, one "allegory domain"
that is the ultimate and not really allegorical in itself is self-control
seizure.
The
cognitive phenomena of the intense mystic altered state include the
experiential insights of timelessness, block-universe with frozen single
preexistent future, no-separate-self, no-free-will, and fatally problematic
loss of practical control agency, followed by receipt of stabilizing
transcendent trust. The latter
meaning-domain is the Final Stop in the play of signifiers, in the great
allegory game of myth-religion.
It takes
work for me to hammer home my commitments into my own thinking. I'm too apologetic, too tentative in my
views. I must *commit* to the axioms
that work -- I must steer by that spirit of paradigm stabilization. The waffling and self-humbling feeble
attitude of equality of allegory domains won't fly. All allegory domains are not created equal. One of them drives the others, one of them
stands high over the others: the cognitive phenomena of the intense mystic
altered state.
I commit
to mystic-state experiencing as the master domain which the others generally
point to -- but it's necessary to clarify what I mean by so electing one
meaning-domain as the central or ultimate one.
In
myth-religion, you'd never say that [element from the domain of cognitive
phenomena of the intense mystic altered state] alludes to [element from the
political or fertility or astrology domain] -- unless you live in the
entheogen-soaked Greco-Roman culture, but even there, I'd maintain that one
domain stands above all: the cognitive phenomena of the intense mystic altered
state. All areas of the culture were
keyed into this master key, this master domain.
As a
result, you could allude to an idea in any domain by starting from the domain
of [the cognitive phenomena of the intense mystic altered state]. That domain is key and master and is the
most special domain, the most high domain, because it, and only it, serves as
the common connector between all the domains of Greco-Roman culture.
I
axiomatically maintain that "the cognitive phenomena of the intense mystic
altered state" is the most central, most key, most essentially and
important meaning-domain of myth-religion.
Astrology, although popular and important to Greco-Roman culture, cannot
effectively function as such a central, main, master, key meaning-domain. Astrology is especially interesting *because
of* its involvement with the cognitive phenomena of the intense mystic altered
state.
Without
the cognitive phenomena of the intense mystic altered state, astrology is only
somewhat interesting -- not interesting to a religious extent. Astrology only becomes interesting to the
degree of being religious, when it is fully informed by the cognitive phenomena
of the intense mystic altered state.
Astrology without the cognitive phenomena of the intense mystic altered
state cannot serve to start a religion; it is inherently mundane astrology,
even if decorated by labels of "spiritual" astrology.
Mundane
astrology, labelled as "spiritual", but lacking the cognitive
phenomena of the intense mystic altered state, remains just mundane astrology.
>http://www.tombofjesus.com/Conclusion.htm#bavish
- This may be a wild theory. I haven't
seen exposes of this fraudulent theory.
What's your opinion about this scenario? Is there known relevant literature about these traditions
debunking this evidence as fraudulent?
Could traditions in those parts of the world have some truth about the
historical Jesus?
The
India-death scenario is part of the "Turin Shoud shows a still-alive
Jesus" scenario.
Mythically,
there is a *lot* to be said for the idea that Jesus died only "in a
way" but retained bodily life.
Mystic death involves such a close call and a kind of death that
preserves bodily life. Supposing that
the Messiah king must be unblemished as a qualification for legitimacy, Jesus'
wounds disqualify him as a worldly king so he "dies" as a candidate
for kingship, yet he lives bodily and in spiritual righteousness.
I greatly
enjoyed the book The Jesus Conspiracy, and I highly recommend that anyone who
believes there was a historical Jesus consider this scenario. The Turin Shroud remains a great scientific
enigma.
As a
mythic-only Jesus theorist, I axiomatically reject the authenticity of the
Shroud in this sense: there were a hundred genuine historical Jesuses, and if
the Shoud is in fact from the year 33, this merely demonstrates the existence
of one of these many Jesuses who in fact existed. It emphatically does *not* demonstrate that there was a single
distinctively outstanding and unique Jesus.
Here's my
Amazon review from before I heard of the mythic-only Jesus theory. I am an example of the Swoon/Shroud/India
theory being a transitional stepping-stone to the mythic-only Christ
theory. Most Literalist Christians
aren't ready to leap all the way to the Gnostic, mythic-only view of Jesus; a
suitable transition is through the Swoon/Shroud/India theory.
-----
>>This
is one of the very most important books I have read. It is intriguing how the
Church is set atop a single slender pillar, so that such evidence as this
threatens to bring the whole institution crashing down upon everyone's heads.
>>It
seems that just as the novelty of Abraham is that he did *not* follow through
with the custom of killing his firstborn son as in the ancient religions that
God so strongly condemns, so does God indicate that he is *willing* to kill his
son to allow *our* power of rulership -- but does not need to actually follow
through by killing Jesus. From ancient human sacrifice, Christianity rises up
to the level of purely gestural, symbolic, substitutive, *mock* sacrifices.
>>There
is rich material here for a drastic revision of theology, though this book
concentrates on proving that Jesus was alive when taken down from the Cross. It
is interesting how the authors are not able to propose why Jesus willingly gave
himself into the hands of the worldly government.
>>After
reading this book I concluded that Jesus' mission was to prop up belief in and
commitment to moral agency and personal human responsibility, despite God's
omnipotence; to prop up the illusion of moral agency, Jesus supported popular
belief in resurrection, while also giving clues for others that our
resurrection and moral punishment or reward is a psychological need (part of
our personal self-control system) rather than a warranted hypothesis.
>>--
Michael Hoffman, at Amazon.com
-----
These are
the leading scenarios:
o Literalist supernaturalist Christianity --
Jesus died bodily and was miraculously resurrected, and ascended into Heaven
o Liberal Christianity -- Jesus died bodily on
the cross, and didn't resurrect or ascend into heaven.
o Swoon/Shroud/India theory -- Jesus was resuscitated
from near bodily death (proven by Shroud) and went to India and died bodily
there
o Gnostic Christianity -- Jesus is
mythic-only, and only allegorically represents what happens to each initiate in
the mystic state
Book list:
The
Swoon/Shroud/India theory of Jesus' death
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/2NFJWRZ03GUKH
Literalist
thinkers who don't have a rich understanding of mythic allegory of mystic-state
experiences can naturally take to the physically reductionist Swoon/Shroud/India
theory, which reduces the Cross to a Fakir bodily stunt with a strong emphasis
on the bodily realm rather than the mythic and mystic-experiencing realm.
The theory
uses physiological science to prove that Jesus didn't die bodily on the Cross,
but was rescuscitated, and the Shoud is analyzed with physical science to
reveal that it shows a still-living man, and then Jesus bodily travelled to
India, and taught the Kundalini physical-spiritual science of spiritual
energies, which he learned while in India before his temple visit at age 12,
and then he lived many years in India, and died an ordinary bodily death there,
and his body is buried there.
This is
spirituality in the most physical, bodily aspect possible -- within the domain
of spirituality, this physical version of spirituality is the opposite of the
mythic, esoteric, mystic, Gnostic way of thinking. Being so physical, and almost entirely lacking any sense of the
mythic allegorical mode of thinking, it is easy for Literalist Christians to
grasp.
>If one
of the contributers to the Jesus myth is a genuine teacher, the legends of his
having trained in India are quite feasible.
I have no
problem with the possibility that a Jesus, one of the Jesus-like men on whom
the Jesus myth was partly based, went to India. The mistake comes in when that Jesus-like or Jesus-type man is
thought of as *the* Jesus. Given that
there were 100 genuine historical Jesuses, it's likely that at least one of
them went to India. Perhaps several of
them went to India; that would help explain why so many know of a Jesus that
visited and lived there.
Those who
maintain that there was a Jesus in India have the hardest task of showing that
there was only one Jesus, and that there was only one, distinctive and unique Jesus
in India.
If you
want to do more research on this subject, the books are reviewed here -- a good
starting point.
Jesus in
India: A Review of the World Literature (1899-1999)
Dr.
Tahir Ijaz and Qamar Ijaz Ph.D.
http://www.tombofjesus.com/BookReviews.htm
The only
reason I would help out with such research is to account for this scenario as
one of the top 3 that should be considered, and to inform people who are
discovering this solution that there is yet another, even better solution: the
allegorical-only scenario of Jesus' life.
I was
enthralled by this paradigm during a transitional period. Relative to the official story of the origin
of Christianity, it is a step toward the direction of Reason, but I found the
mystic-esoteric-allegorical-only paradigm of understanding Jesus to be richer
and more likely and plausible, and more relevant to my interests. I'm interested in redirecting Swoon/India
researchers to the Jesus Mysteries Thesis (defined by Freke & Gandy),
rather than bolstering the Swoon/India Jesus theory.
Historical
Jesus researchers should be aware of the Swoon/India Jesus theory and the
mystic-allegorical-only Jesus theory.
Michael
wrote:
>>The
only reason I would help out with [swoon/India Jesus] research is to account
for this scenario as one of the top 3 that should be considered, and to inform
people who are discovering this solution that there is yet another, even better
solution: the allegorical-only scenario of Jesus' life.
I propose
that the Jesus figure was assembled from multiple pieces of multiple types:
o Actual men that were rescued from the cross
and survived.
o Actual rebel leaders.
o Actual religious teachers who went to India.
o Various mythic godmen figures and mythic
heroes.
o Personified aspects of mystic experiencing.
When all
those actual men are artificially focused into one, the historical Jesus
results. Leaving out mythic figures as
a basis, in sheer human historical terms, what's mistaken is to think of Jesus
as a *single* person rather than a composite based on multiple people.
The
formation of the Jesus composite figure is based on scenarios including the
fully possible swoon/India thesis, and the mythic-only Jesus thesis is
compatible with the swoon/India thesis on the principle of the "hundred
genuine historical Jesuses" thesis.
Even if one of the actual men upon whom the Jesus figure was based was a
man who was rescued from the cross and went to India, Paul and Ignatius are
still basically literalized/fabricated.
The same
problems arise when splitting hairs about what we mean when saying Paul
"existed" or "didn't exist" as when we toss out as
meaningless the assertion that "Jesus existed" or "Jesus didn't
exist". What is *really* at issue
is not something so simple as whether some man existed, but rather: What really
happened, and how was involved, and what were these people like?" It's much more a debate about which whole
story is true than simply yes-or-no question of some man wholly existed or
wholly didn't exist.
When
arguing about whether Paul existed, all these same semantic, connotation, and
paradigm issues arise that we worked through with Jesus' oversimplistic
yes-or-no existence. The same solution
I define for talking about the true nature of Jesus' existence applies to
Paul. It's meaninglessly oversimplistic
to talk of whether Paul existed. The
Paul figure is based on multiple actual people and multiple mythic and literary
figures, artificially focused down into a single persona.
Paul isn't
a person; he *represents* people and literary/wisdom figures. Jesus isn't a person; he *represents* people
and mythic/heroic figures. Did Paul
exist? I can only agree that *multiple*
Pauls existed. Similarly, Ignatius
isn't a person; he *represents* people, orthodox officials. Where do we draw the line between actual
individual people and mere figureheads representing multiple people? It's a judgement call and requires us to at
least begin investigating.
This is
how the ancients thought and wrote, and if we want to understand the sense in
which Jesus and his leading cast existed and didn't exist, we must understand
how representative figureheads, collective personification, and mythic
anthropomorphization work.
Is the man
in the shroud dead or alive? Followers
of official Christianity say "dead".
Others such as Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber say
"alive". I hold Jesus to be a
composite figure based on no single historical man, and I say that the Shroud
is scientific proof that "Jesus lives!" -- that is, in the best
mystic reading of the Gospel stories, Jesus was still alive when removed from
the cross, which is why "Pilate didn't believe that Jesus was already
dead."
This
question is distinct from whether the Shroud shows a man we may fairly identify
as the Jesus of the Bible. Suppose the
Shroud is genuine (by the conventional standard which needs no definition) and
shows a living man? The issue of the
Shroud's genuineness should not continue to shut out the question of the
theological ramifications of the Shroud showing a living man, a still-alive
Jesus.
Given that
Jesus is a composite figure, not a single historical individual, the Shroud may
be genuinely from the year 30 yet still be completely incapable of supporting
the proposal of a single, distinct, literal Historical Jesus. There may be ten such Shrouds, some of them
showing dead Jesus-like men and some showing still-alive Jesus-like men.
There
remain two separate paradigms or interpretive frameworks that are fully capable
of incorporating any and all such evidential data: the literal Historical Jesus
paradigm and the composite mythic-only Jesus paradigm. Ultimately the question for each person is
which paradigm or intepretive framework seems to ring most true: *this* whole
integrated set of axioms and interpretations, or *that* one.
The Jesus
Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About Resurrection
Holger
Kersten, Elmar R. Gruber
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852306661
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852304855
May 1994
I am
deeply impressed by the Shroud, so much that the easiest thing to do is accept
that it was made by a man in a coma, as described in great detail in the book
The Jesus Conspiracy. I then dedicate
myself to asking: supposing the shroud really reflects a man in a coma
recovering from the cross -- what are the possible interpretations of this
scenario?
It would
be an uphill battle against the evidence to assert that the Shroud was
painted. I prefer the easiest
non-supernatural explanation, and it's much easier to assume the Shroud was
made via the process described in The Jesus Conspiracy than by painting. However, it is *not* necessary to assume
that the Shroud shows a dead man, or that the Shroud was made early or late, or
that the man of the Shroud is the purported historical Jesus.
There are multiple
interpretive options, not just one or two.
People need to systematically brainstorm on various scenarios more --
there are many ways to fit the puzzle pieces together. I accept the Shroud as a serious, major
enigma -- but I have designed a "mythic-only, mystic/political composite
Jesus" interpretive framework that can accomodate any of these alternative
scenarios without changing:
o The Shroud shows a dead man or a still-alive
man
o The Shroud was made in the medieval era or
the early Christian era
o Other scenario-aspects that have
alternatives
Under none
of these scenarios is it necessary to assume that there was a single historical
Jesus.
Asserting
that the Shroud was painted seems desperate and wrongly seems to imply that the
non-painted Shroud scenario forces us to assume a single historical Jesus. A stronger mythic-only Jesus position is one
that can welcome any such scenario. It
would be really cool if the Shroud was made by coma-imprint, early or
late.
Jesus
remains inexorably a composite figure, not a single historical person; the
hundred historical Jesus-like men and the hundred mythic Jesus-like godmen
cannot possibly be fused into a single distinctive historical man; that's the
robust, easily defensible axiom I'm committed to in my interpretive framework.
You're
welcome to postulate that the Shroud is painted or similarly faked -- having
seen the evidence, I'm relieved I don't feel obliged to defend that position,
which is an uphill battle. The Shroud
is well done and utterly different than any known piece of art. It's like rummaging through an ancient
buried ruin and finding a single life-sized photographic negative, on cloth,
among all the ordinary paintings. The
Shroud poses a major problem that the mythic-only Jesus theorists can't avoid.
There are
degrees of genuineness in religion. The
simple idea of low and high religion can be usefully extended to contrasting
low, medium, and high religion.
Literalist, orthodox Islam, Christianity, or Judaism are the epitome of
low religion. Quasi-official mystic
Islam (Sufism), Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, and mainstream American Buddhist
meditation are definitive of medium-level religion. The Buddhism that packs the magazine stands is medium-level
religion.
High
religion is entheogenic religion and is essentially entheogenic even if a small
percentage of people have the rare ability and aptitude to cast away the
training wheels of entheogens and think themselves into an intense altered
state. More typically, meditation is a
method of augmenting entheogens.
Medium-level religion is a pale shadow of high religion, and low
religion an even paler shadow.
Low
religion is a pale shadow of high religion, and discarding the supernaturalist
literalism of low religion for a slight increase to medium psychologized
religion is only a slight correction of the pale shadow. Real, definitive, original religion isn't
about supernatural or psychological religion as in ordinary-state Jungian
psychology; it's about the specific archetypal experiences of the intense
altered state.
The worst
problem and greatest enemy now of real religion isn't supernaturalism, it's
psychologized ordinary-state religion and mainstream meditation practices. We must firmly reject identifying real,
original religion with Jungian archetypal psychologism and with meditation that
isn't used as an augmentation for entheogen experiences.
There is a
huge difference between treating non-augmented meditation as an advanced
alternative to the real, entheogenic religious trigger, and the current
dominant notion of treating non-augmented meditation as the real thing while
entheogens are held to be a nearly-as-good simulation or way of augmenting
meditation.
Entheogens
must be firmly held as original and central, while meditation can only be
correctly conceived as a later, derivative, alternative variant of the
original, entheogenic trigger of the mystic altered state.
Today's
mainstream meditation magazines are wrong.
They are good in acknowledging or grudgingly admitting that entheogens
were by far the main factor in awakening the Baby Boomer generation to
meditation and Buddhism, and they are good when they occasionally mention as an
aside, in a footnote, that entheogens aren't absent from pre-American
Buddhism. What really sucks hard about
these dominant magazines is their distortion of priorities of emphasis.
They put
meditation on a pedestal as original, core, real, essential religion, often
including archetypal symbolism applied to the mundane or slightly altered state
of consciousness, while denigrating entheogens and relegating them to a
controversial adjunct. When you put the
cart before the horse, you don't understand the main thing about the cart and
horse. Medium-level religion is better
than low-level religion, but it's a threat to real religion because it
threatens to hide the existence of an even higher religion.
Just
because medium-level religion is higher than low-level religion doesn't mean
that medium-level religion is the high-level religion; it's not. Medium-level religion is just medium-level
religion, even if some of its elements can appear in high-level religion, such
as the rarely effective technique of meditation without entheogens, and
psychological allegory per Jung, Campbell, and the pre-1960s Alan Watts.
Most
non-entheogenic meditation and most psychological allegorized religion suffers
from Boomeritis, a useful idea described by Ken Wilber -- it claims to be high
religion, when it's not, and it claims to be intense and effective and
transformative, when it's not. It's one
degree of improvement claiming to be full improvement, denying that there is
yet another, higher baptism to be had.
This
debate between the existence of two versus three levels of religion is found
clearly in the Christian tradition as a major debate in theology and
heresy. It's a heresy to hold that
there are two baptisms and three levels of religious status: those who are not
catechized and water-baptized are the lowest, those who are superficially
catechized and water-baptized are medium-level Christians, and those who are
also baptized by the fire of the Holy Spirit, with ideally the sacrament of
apolytrosis, are high-level Christians.
Charismatics,
Pentecostals, or per the book title "Gnostic Protestants", hold that
there are two baptisms (lower and higher) and two levels of Christians, forming
three levels of religion -- however, mainstream Charismatics appear to be
unaware of entheogens.
From the
Christian orthodox point of view, there are two degrees of heresy: claiming
like the mainstream mystics that Christianity is essentially about
contemplation and psychological archetypes (medium-level religion), and worse,
claiming that Christianity is essentially about entheogenic intense mystic
experiencing, reflected by mystic metaphor.
Look with dismay upon medium-level religion that dominates the
newsstand, with its deep fallacy of labelling mere medium-level religion as
high-level religion.
A sign of
the presence of the Holy Spirit and genuine, authentic high-level religion is
an entheogenic plant -- any entheogenic plant.
Any one magical plant species is a symbol for entheogenic plants in
general, so clues indicating Amanita mushroom don't indicate the predominant
use of Amanita, but rather, the inspiring presence of the use of various
entheogens, such as the deliriants like Datura. An Amanita halo or archangel Gabriel's lily indicates the
complete open pharmacotheon of magical plants -- one meaning of the image of
the vast assembly of angels.
Psychological
meditation religion is lukewarm religion -- it's a better form of religion, but
only better than the worst form of religion.
Medium-level religion may not support wars, but neither does it provide
full religious experiencing or enlightenment.
Boomeritis isn't a matter of labelling low religion as high religion,
but of labeling medium religion as high religion.
In
Wilber's theory of transpersonal developmental psychology, a main idea is that
the mind must in some way reject its existing dominant level of development in
order to move beyond it to a higher level that in some way incorporates the
previous level. So must we reject or
negate today's predominant medium-level religion in favor of high-level
religion.
Today's
magazine stand shows the great extent to which medium-level religion has
recently become predominant over low-level religion: there are ten Buddhism
magazines, and only two Christian magazines, one of those being a humor magazine
(The Door) that serves to discredit low, mundane Christianity and the other a
skeptical archaeology magazine (Biblical Archaeology Review) that serves to
disprove low, literalist Christianity -- sometimes near its sister magazine
Bible Review, which serves to use literary study to disprove literalist
Christianity.
It has
become rare to find believing (low) Christian magazines such as Christianity
Today in mainstream urban bookstores or newsstands. The available religion magazines at the newsstand clearly
indicate the direction the mainstream has recently been moving: away from
believing (low) Christianity, through skeptical disproof of low Christianity,
to psychological mythic Christianity and mainstream meditation-oriented
Buddhism.
In the
popular mind, Christianity is identified with low religion, while Buddhism is
identified with better religion or high religion. For all practical purposes, the magazines that should be
identified with high religion are found in the psychoactive drug magazine section:
Heads, Trip, MAPS, Cannabis Culture, and High Times. Even better and closer to original, high religion would be the
journals Entheos and Eleusis, which emphasize not psychedelics, but entheogens
in religion.
So
congratulate today's Buddhist magazines on fully attaining the medium level of
religion, but refute them if they make the Boomeritis move of labelling
themselves as high religion and thus obscuring the existence of actual high
religion. High religion can very well
be identified as entheogenic religion, although the goal is not the use of
entheogens, but rather, integrating the state and insights and fullness that
are most effectively and reliably and originally triggered by entheogens.
A rare few
may be able to attain this state without entheogens, but there is good, sound
reason to name the high mystic state the entheogenic state. High religion is essentially entheogenic
religion, even if a few have the rare aptitude of simulating the authentic entheogen
state without entheogens.
Heads http://www.headsmagazine.com
Trip http://www.tripzine.com
MAPS http://www.maps.org
Cannabis
Culture http://www.cannabisculture.com
High
Times http://www.hightimes.com
Eleusis http://www.eleusis.ws/en
Entheos http://www.entheomedia.org
Biblical
Archaeology Review, and Bible Review
http://www.bib-arch.org
The
Door http://www.thedoormagazine.com
Wilber
characterizes Boomeritis as some sort of narcissism. I think of Boomeritis as ordinary egoic deluded thinking, with
ordinary clueless religiosity, mistaken as transcendent thinking, ego
transcendence, and high religiosity.
What he characterizes as "narcissism" of the would-be
progressives, I think of as egoic thinking that is mistaken for transcendent thinking
-- simply the age-old idea of people thinking they are being religiously
advanced or enlightened, when they aren't particularly religiously advanced or
enlightened at all, just religious-styled.
Boomeritis is the condition of unenlightened, untransformed, uninitiated
people who consider and style themselves as enlightened, transformed, and
initiated.
The
idolatrous, arbitrary, and self-fabricated religion that is invented by
literalist, self-labelled "Christians"
>Of
course the Bible record is true and trustworthy. Therefore anything else must be considered rebellious speculation
and highly disrespectful at that.
The Bible
record is true and trustworthy when read in a certain way, with certain
meanings taken literally and other meanings interpreted allegorically. Holding to anything other than the Bible's
correct meaning is rebellious and disrespectful speculation. It is sinful to wrongly divide the scriptures,
misreading the Bible according to one's own interpretation rather than that
given by the Holy Spirit and the tradition of the true Church.
Christians
who make an idolatrous religion of literalism don't even believe their own,
hypocritical words, their declarations of pure literalist belief. They *pretend* to be a believer in the
Bible, and claim to read all the historical aspects in a pure and faithfully
literal way. This illusion can only be
sustained by avoiding engaging with the text and by staying in the realm of
vagueness -- such a religion is a religion of fearful vagueness and fog,
despite its effort at committing to concretistic thinking.
It is a
way of approaching scripture that is accepts some vague imagined "pure
literalist" reading and attributes that reading to the surrounding crowds
and imagined authority figures, but the fact that such a stance is incapable of
debating specific points regarding the historical versus metaphorical aspects
of scripture indicates such religionists are full of self-doubt and unable to
debate rationally.
Self-labelled
"Christians" who preach the gospel of
salvation-through-pure-literalism are only capable of making empty, vague faith
statements, which amount to nothing and communicate nothing.
The
supposedly pure literalists preach a Gospel of meaningless adherence to some
supposedly concrete, but actually wispy and unspecified literalism -- do they
even *know* what they believe, and why?
They claim to believe in a gospel of literalism, but are they able to be
more specific than that, or would that strain the content of their weak-on-content
"faith" past the breaking point?
"I believe... in blind acceptance of literalist
orthodoxy."
It would
be better to believe in the truth about the savior, whatever that truth
actually is, without building one's house of faith on a sandy foundation of
vague, unspecified "pure, faithful" literalism.
Christianity
based on a refusal to consider the possible anti-literalist meaning of the
history aspects of scripture is a religion of responsibility-evading literalist
assumption, a hastily fabricated preconception pulled out of one's own mind,
that is no Christian faith at all, but just an arbitrary fabrication of one's
own version of what one labels "Christian faith".
Contentless,
unspecified, committed literalism is idolatry, worshipping a savior made with
one's own hands. That false, man-made
Gospel is filled with groundless a-priori assumptions about what the right way
is to read the holy scriptures. These
false and content-averse Christians pull the assumption out of thin air that
literalism is the righteous way to read the history aspects of the
scriptures.
They think
they are safely with the crowd they can trust in. On the contrary, many claim to follow Jesus but are not
recognized by him as his elect sheep.
How can they be sure that a literalist reading of the history aspects of
the scriptures is wise instead of foolish?
Their blind, arbitrary, overly self-trusting assumption of literalism,
pulled out of thin air by their own sinful preconception about what the
scriptures ought to be about, is a rebellious speculation.
Christians
who place their salvation on a foundation of supposedly pure literalism should
call into question their prideful assumptions and consider that they may be
completely mistaken. Who are these
investigation-fearing beginner Christians, that they presume to judge what is a
respectful reading of holy writ, and what is not? The humble followers of Christ should worship the truth however
it is found in the canonical scriptures.
Those who
are quick to worship the idol of a historical literalist interpretation of the
scriptures fancy that they "respect" the scriptures by reducing them
down to their own sinful, idolatrous, hazy and unspecified literalist revision
of them, and then shy away from admitting that they are sitting in judgement
over the scriptures, picking and choosing which passages to read as literal
history and which to read as allegorical.
Those
self-labelled "Christians" who imagine and assume that they can be
pure by uncritical adoption of a consistent literalist reading of the history
aspects of scripture ought to come clean and admit that we are all burdened
with the responsibility for interpreting the historical aspects of the
scriptures; there is no escape, not even by trying to deceive oneself and
pretending not to interpret.
The
unspecified "purely literal" interpretation of the history aspects of
scripture is still one's own personal interpretation; there is no escape. You will be cast into the fire or admitted
into heaven based on whether you read the scriptures with your eyes opened by
the Holy Spirit or with your eyes clouded by the animal thinking of the
deceiving demons. Salvation depends on
our stance toward the scriptures.
Is a
"pure, literalist, respectful" stance toward the scriptures
righteous, or is it an incoherent abomination -- how can we know, without the
regeneration provided by the Holy Spirit?
Is a pure, literalist stance toward the scriptures even possible at all,
or a monstrous self-contradiction
that is the worst insult possible toward the divine Word? Is it actually good to erect a religion of
commitment to a pure literalist interpretation of the scriptures?
If so, how
can we do so, when the literalist readings contradict each other, and when
scripture so often warns us to carefully interpret it? On what grounds can we base our religion on
the *assumption* that a literalist reading is the surest foundation?
How can
anyone know that the most "respectful" reading of scripture is some
"pure", extreme literalism -- when such "purity" remains
vague and unspecified, through an evasive cop-out? Do the self-proclaimed "purely faithful literalist"
interpreters of scripture really believe their invented fantasy that the crowd
of authorities around them confidently asserts a literalist reading of the
history aspects of the canonical scriptures?
They
cannot fool themselves convincingly, and so project their doubt onto other
people around them, harboring pride in the "purity" of their
"faith", while seeing doubt all around them -- their own secret doubt
about their own arbitrary, idolatrous assumption that a "pure"
literalist interpretation is possible and holy.
The
self-proclaimed "pure" worshippers of literalism enjoy the righteous
mood of their own invented religion of "pure, faithful" literalism,
even though it feels shallow and spiritually unfulfilling and ultimately
disappointing. But pure and perfect
literalism is impossible as well as unsatisfying, and is only viable as long as
one refrains from serious engagement with the text, seeking to rightly divide
the scriptures.
"Pure"
historical literalist reading of the scriptures an imaginary position imagined
by the shallow lifestyle-only Christians.
When one actually investigates the scriptures and critically thinks about
the history aspect in them, "pure" historical literalism
disintegrates into a meaningless
position that isn't held by any theologians or Christian scholars.
It's a
shallow, willful delusion to think that one can rest confidently in a religion
of "principled faithful literalism", a religion not of Jesus Christ
and the Holy Spirit but instead a religion of historical literalism which
insults the word of God by reducing it to a mundane history book.
"I
doubt my faith. How can I know I'm
among God's elect? I know -- instead of
being faithful about God, instead I will be faithful to a perfect and pure
literalist reading of the history aspects of the holy scriptures." Is Christianity essentially a religion of
reporting literal history? On what
grounds can one assume such an interpretation?
And what does religion really have to do with history reporting?
Can
Christian faith and a righteous stance toward scripture be conceived as belief
in a purely literalist reading of Christian scripture as history? Can one even coherently read Christian
scripture as literalist history, or does an attempt at this form of faith
immediately collapse when prodded and examined critically? Isn't the historical literalism reading of
the scriptures exactly what Paul disparages as childish things that the adult
needs to put away, mere beginner's Christianity?
Christianity
today has been degraded to imbecilic historical literalism combined with
irrational emotionalism and magical superstition -- there is no salvation in
that way of reading the scriptures, or perhaps refusing to read the
scriptures. In that stance is no
regeneration, no wisdom, just the religion of fools, founded on sand. Many say they follow Jesus, but he does not
know them; they are of the devil, the prince of pride, the self-willed
goat-man.
Literalists
try to let other people tell them what the righteous way is of reading the
Bible. They are apprehensive of what
they call "speculation", yet they speculate and arbitrarily assume
that their soul is saved by following the *interpretation* given to them by the
crowds who are walking through the wide and apparently easy gate. They deny that they are speculating and
pulling assumptions about the scriptures out of thin air.
What do
*they* know about reading and interpreting the Bible? Have they ever even *heard* of mysticism? Do they know what allegory is? Does their Christian bookstore sell
Christian-styled self-help books for devils in Sunday dress, or books that
contain the wisdom of the saints and the saved, the true sheep of Jesus?
Did it
occur to the worshippers of dogmatic literalism that there are many ways of
reading "the Bible record" and that how one reads scripture is a
choice that the sinner must make in fear and trembling?
The
literalist strive to commit their souls to a literalist faith and demonize the
critical mind. They must work hard to
avoid allowing into consciousness the realization that few or no Christian
scholars and theologians assert that every historical aspect in the "Bible
record" is true. It takes a will
of iron to avoid admitting to oneself that the entire problem is a matter of
*which* Bible records are true.
How do the
vague and evasive, supposedly "pure and consistent" literalists
propose that we determine which Bible records are literally historically true,
and which aren't? On what foundation do
they assert that we have to choose one or the other: that one must accept some
vague "the Bible record is true" belief (whatever that is supposed to
mean) or else, as the only other possible option, be
"disrespectful"?
Is their
invented form of religion so delicate, their faith so weak and phantasmal, that
they insist that the scriptures must not be interpreted, but only literally
believed as vulgar and mundane historical records -- despite what the
scriptures themselves say about requiring interpretation?
Why should
one assume that critical reading of the "Bible record" is inherently
disrespectful? The mystics have greater
respect for the Bible than anyone. To
not read critically and interpretively is truly disrespecting the scriptures,
and dishonoring them by reading them in accordance to how the mind-averse
crowds decide, in mob-like fashion.
The true
gospel is a metaphorical expression of the following core philosophy, which
accords with much of Reformed dogmatics.
The most
common-sense plausible model of the world and of transcendent knowledge is that
all religion is essentially mythic, not literalist, and that the main purpose,
origin, and nature of myth is to allegorically and metaphorically express the
transcendent insights and experiences of the intense mystic altered state. The mystic state is the state of loose
cognition enabling revising mental-construct matrixes.
The main,
ultimate experience and insight of the loose-cognition state is the experience
(sense, feeling) of no-free-will and no-separate-self, combined with an easy
and natural mental perception of a worldmodel that is plainly coherent,
involving re-conceiving time as frozen, with all of the mind's future thoughts
already preexisting in a single fixed track.
This
mental perception of this worldmodel is natural, coherent, plausible, and plain
to see; once constructed by the exploring mind, that mental worldmodel would
require more mental work to doubt than to accept.
The
transcendent move of the mind also involves not only seeing that worldmodel,
but also requires an unfamiliar act of *deliberately* choosing to believe or
pretend to believe, what the mind no longer can easily believe, that the ego is
in control of its future thoughts and wields the power of free will, as a
sovereign, prime-mover control-agent.
The irony
of transcendent rationality is that after overthrowing the delusion of
individual free will and separate self, for purely practical reasons, the mind
must now, God-like, deliberately pretend and retain and embrace what you use to
uncritically take for granted but can no longer rationally accept: conceiving
of a worldmodel built around the notion of self-controlling, free-willing egoic
agency.
The mind
must learn to do consciously and insincerely what it previously did naturally
in its former animal/child state: engage a worldmodel based around the
separate-self, open-future assumption.
A hundred
aspects of this model intensely contradict today's accustomed ways of thinking
and regarding models as "plausible".
But this model and explanation is remarkably unassailable, and when
researched, turns out to have massive evidential and traditional support from
many philosophers, theologians, and mystics, and scholars. The very *heart* of myth and religion is the
mystic altered state and no-free-will, and emphatically *not* literalist
religion.
By far the
most sober and common-sense plausible model of transcendent mystic insight is
that religion is firmly centered around intense mystic altered-state
experiencing, firmly centered around no-free-will as experience and
irresistibly coherent and natural worldmodel, and not at all centered around
literalist thinking, hazy spiritualism, and mundane ethics.
This
theory is dirt-simple, easy to express, easy to experience and mentally
perceive in the state of loose cognition, and we ought to have very good reason
before rejecting its plausibility in favor of the alternative, which is no
religion at all (mundane ethics), or complete haze and fog (New Age-style vague
spirituality and tranquil meditationism), or vulgar magic-thinking and
supernatural superstition (literalist religion).
Michael
wrote:
>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".
Melody
wrote:
>Why
isn't the word 'unconscious' used -- is it too psychological for purposes here?
I rarely
find the term 'unconscious', especially 'the unconscious', useful. That term is part of a network of concepts
that is central to the lens, perspective, or framework of Psychology. The field of Psychology does have much to contribute
to a theory of transcendent knowledge, but I find cognitive psychology a more
natural fit.
The
concept of the unconscious is overused in Psychology, while Psychology needs to
be more informed by entheogens and the loose cognitive state -- there was some
fruitful overlap until LSD was made illegal in the U.S. in 1966. I most dislike Freudian Psychology, though
that did contribute some valuable perspectives -- it was just vastly overrated
and overextended.
Freud has
lost his authority, so that the king of Psychology is now Jung. Jung wrote before LSD became
mainstream. It's time to forget half of
the Psychology perspective and retain half.
Mythic archetypes are worth retaining.
The concept or construct of "the unconscious" is conventionally
filled with connotations I don't find helpful, useful, or valuable, and it is
tainted and corrupted by Freudian sex obsession.
Freud
isn't so much wrong, as overextended and reductionistic, saying that
*everything* in the psyche is really sexuality in disguise.
>What
can a person to do to deal with the deep disappointment that comes after an
experience of conscious will?
The term
'experience of conscious will' is not familiar enough to me to address your
question confidently. A mourning period
is common in the Hellenistic and ancient mystery-religion-myths --
"mourning for one's dead and lost child who has gone to the land of the
dead". Such "deep
disappointment" is common and standard in life; it's part of life and
maturing. What can we do to deal with
it? Revise our worldmodel, including
its values.
The mature
person is one who has chosen to adhere to transcendent thinking despite the
sacrificial price, sacrificing one's childself or lower framework of thinking
and valuing.
>I am
more interested in the psychological ramifications of all this, rather than
delving into the religious problems of it. The experience of conscious does
bring with it a feeling of freedom from religion. It took me 13 years to break
free of the chains that religion held on my uppermost subconsciousness and I
don't want anything to do with it now - at least for awhile.
Psychology
and Religion are distinct but interpenetrating -- thus the term and concept
"psychospiritual development".
The Jungian perspective on religion and Ralph Metzner's study of
standard mythic-religious themes point the way. I began theorizing from a perspective that is as far beyond
Psychology as Psychology is beyond Religion.
For one
generation, Religion was the problem and Psychology was the progressive
solution. For a later generation,
Psychology was the problem, the established but unsatisfying menu proffered,
and Cognitive Science (including Cognitive Psychology and Altered States) was
the progressive solution.
After I
worked out a finished theory thoroughly based in the Cognitive Altered States
framework, I didn't strive hard to connect this core theory to established
Psychology, but rather, Religion -- to excavate the Cognitive Altered States
core of authentic Christianity. William
James forever remains on my reading list, and I grew up reading almost
everything written by Ken Wilber and Alan Watts, who are not theorists of
Psychology, but of the combination of Psychology and Religion.
I have
read a little Jung and he remains on my reading list, but what I've read so far
has not impressed me enough to elevate him on my reading list; he's just
another typical author to me. It's
uselessly general to ask whether I feel Psychology is applicable for
constructing a contemporary, effective, ergonomic theory of transcendent
knowledge. It's ambiguous what someone
has in mind by the terms 'Psychology' and 'unconscious'. It would be better to talk about particular
subfields and authors.
Psychology
is overextended and reductionistic if it seeks to be the modern upgrade that
replaces Religion and provides that which Religion promises but fails to
deliver. But my assertion depends on
the meaning of "Religion" and "Psychology".
I have to
imagine and guess what people mean by "Religion" and
"Psychology" -- probably "Religion in general, and Psychology in
general, as conceived in Europe and the U.S. in the mid-to-late 20th Century --
such as, dominated by official Christianity and Freudian-into-Jungian
approaches". This amounts to the
commonplace conceptions of Religion and Psychology that were dominant in the
U.S. of the 20th Century.
What's
better, for constructing a theory of transcendent knowledge:
o The commonplace conception of Religion that
was dominant in the U.S. of the 20th Century
o The commonplace conception of Psychology
that was dominant in the U.S. of the 20th Century
Neither of
them alone did anything satisfying for Watts, Wilber, or me. An even more overarching problem during 20th
Century modernity was the overisolation among all fields of knowledge, which
was good at differentiating fields but poor at integrating them.
No
existing field, framework, paradigm, perspective, or approach provided what I
knew was certainly missing after being exposed to conventional Judaism,
Christianity, Psychology, New Age, Self-Help, Human Potential, Course in
Miracles, and the other prominent perspectives commonly available in the late
20th Century. Even before I began
systematic multidisciplinary studies, I already knew that there was no
prominent, effective theory of transcendent knowledge.
I knew I'd
have to systematize the right framework myself, coming from a Cognitive Science
and Altered States perspective, more from a Douglas Hofstadter Cognitive
Patterning mindset than a Ken Wilber Spiritual-Technical mindset. When I looked at conventional Psychology, it
looked wretched -- far from the William James perspective; after some time I
found the Cognitive Psychology perspective as being potentially useful, and
most recently, mythic archetypes -- the best of Jung and Ralph Metzner.
The
Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience
Ralph
Metzner
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1579830005
1998,
rank 75K
Psychology
is weak in the area of intense transformative experience. My main feeling about religion and myth is
enthusiastic suspicion that there is something there regarding intense
transformative experience, whereas my main feeling about Psychology is
disappointed potential. Conventional
religion is excitement in degraded form, while conventional Psychology is the
mundane in uplifted form.
The
solution isn't simply Religion or Psychology, but rather, High Experiential
Religion and High Experiential Psychology.
In practice, this means thorough integration of the mystic intense
altered state. Without being informed
by that state, no field or theory of psychospiritual development goes far
enough to be interesting -- as proof of this, consider the unsatisfying nature
of Ken Wilber's framework, which is unsurpassed and sets the standard which
other theorists of transcendent knowledge must respond to.
Wilber is
inadequately familiar with intense mystic-state experiencing -- despite his
ability to attain certain measurable cognitive states associated with
meditation. Wilber's theory of
collective psychospiritual development leaves a lot to be desired -- witness
his gross misconstrual and selling short of Hellenistic Mystery Religion. I created a core Cognitive Altered States
theory of transcendent knowledge.
Lately I am using this core theory to explain how world myth-religion
works.
My central
exemplary religion could be either "earliest Christianity" or
"Hellenistic Mystery Religions including Jewish Esoteric Initiation"
-- that is, "Greco-Roman initiation religion" including esoteric
Judaism. I'm considering the construct,
"Ancient Initiation Religion".
When I consider "religion", that's what is most worthwhile to
bring to mind -- not Christianity as officially and commonly conceived of in
the U.S. in the mid 20th Century.
There is
so much that is right with William James' conception of the field of Psychology
and his conception of Religious Experience.
It would've been interesting to see his investigation of entheogens in
addition to Nitrous Oxide, especially if he were informed of the entheogenic
theory of the origin of religions.
Earl
Doherty (JesusPuzzle.com) and the other scientific rational atheist skeptics
have done so much to show that literalist Christianity is incorrect. But that kind of rationality is mistaken,
incorrect, and illogical, in that it fails to comprehend and understand the
genuinely valid rationality in high myth-religion. That middle-level science fails to understand the symbolic
encoding or language and correct, rational meaning of myth-religion-mysticism.
To make
the problem worse, most mystics and even theorists of myth don't understand the
rational meaning of myth-religion-mysticism either. So we bounce between camps: Indeed, the scientists are correct
that the literalist religionists are wrong.
Should the scientists then concede that the typical mystics and
myth-theorists are correct? No.
It
requires balancing and modifying notions about science and myth-mysticism;
today's scientific rationalists misunderstand, and the mystics and theorists of
myth also misunderstand. No existing
camp is very close to the truth about myth-religion.
Scientific
rationalists think that if there is any valid insight in myth, science knows
that insight better. This is partly
correct. The best science fully
understands the meaning of myth, and the best of mythic thinking is fully
rational and scientific.
Mediocre
scientific rationality fails to comprehend mythic meaning, and mediocre mythic
thinking fails to attain to rationality.
Excellent scientific thinking is fully in accord with excellent mythic
thinking -- at the top, they embrace and the mind can make rational scientific
sense out of myth and enjoy it as a kind of mathematical art.
It's sad
to see great researchers such as Earl fall so short of full rational
comprehension of myth-religion. They
assume that because literalist Christianity is irrational, myth-religion can't
be explained easily and rationally -- but it can. The situation is very much like two intelligent people arguing
about a series of signals, or a stereogram.
The one
thinker manages to decode the signals and lock focus on the encoded stereogram
image, and the other doesn't, and therefore maintains that the signal is
meaningless noise and that the stereogram is just a flat picture with no hidden
picture.
As much as
I want rationalists to recognize that myth may make perfect sense when
understood correctly, I immediately warn that today's researchers of myth and
religion fully misunderstand their subject, not recognizing that myth expresses
the transcendent but very definitely comprehensible and specific insights and
experiences of the intense mystic altered state, characteristic of entheogens.
Ultimately,
fully developed scientific, rational thinking is able to enjoy theology and
myth as clever artistic plays and commentary on the logical insights of the
loose cognitive state. Today's rational
scientists are every bit as dull, uncomprehending, unintelligent and
irrational, as today's middle-level religionists.
They are
all unsatisfying in practically the same way: they reject low myth-religion and
frank irrationality, while failing to attain to comprehending and understanding
high myth-religion and the ultimate end-state of rationality, a cognitive state
that gives rise to a worldmodel so perfectly rational, the mind's accustomed
background assumptions of free will and self-control become non-viable, leading
to a system crash and reboot that desperately requires a mental move that
escapes, a la Hofstadter and Godel, any particular, determinate system of
rationality.
How does
that crashed ego-controller, who crashed by attaining perfect rationality,
rationally regain practical control?
Only by stepping up the sense of what it means for rationality to be
perfected. Regular perfect rationality
is what caused the dire problem of ego death and loss of control in the first
place; the only type of perfection of rationality that could work to reboot the
system is a qualitatively different, more transcendent type of perfection of
rationality.
Simple
perfect rationality is not a viable operating system for a responsible
control-agent; an element of transcendence must be added, for practical reason
of seeming to be a control agent. The
lie of egoic control and free will must be reintroduced into the mind's
worldmodel even after the mind's rationality has developed to the point of
showing egoic free-will self-control to be logically incoherent and no more
than a practical convention of illusion.
The simple
perfection of reason that shows freewill to be as nonsensical and unlikely as
literalist religion, combined with the experience of no-free-will, is not an
absolute proof of no-free-will.
However, the ego-death experience is a real phenomenon to be explained
-- it is the king of the mythic archetypes.
The
ego-death experience doesn't depend on attaining perfect certainty, but rather,
just an intensely strong confidence and feeling, such as can result from a few
years of intense grappling with the difficulty of personal self-management
while using entheogens to provide the loose-cognition state that contributes
insight into the problem.
Ego death
is an intense experience that happens when the reflective mind realizes how all
the self-control problems it has been wrestling with would be cleanly and
simply solved by the worldmodel of the timeless block universe with no
individual free will.
When a
mind intellectually appreciates and feels what an elegant solution this is, or
amounts to, or would be, then the practical problem of self-control arises, and
ego death occurs, and rationality concludes that ordinary perfect rationality
must leap into transcendent perfect rationality to regain, and to discover a
rational justification for, the illusion once again of being a free-willing
egoic control agent with an open future.
Myth
coherently expresses and points toward this mental dynamic, in a perfectly
intelligible and rational way, never requiring religious literalism or
superstitious magic or psychic abilities.
Everything about the mental dynamic is a move from lesser to ordinary to
higher to ultimate rationality. It is
easy to mistake high myth and ultimate rationality for low myth and
irrationality.
Free will
is seen as being as nonsensical as a literalist reading of the supernatural
aspects of the Bible. A rational mystic
experience is that of seeing two paths suddenly open up before your eye: either
miracles and all kinds of Bible nonsense are admitted as possible and freewill
is admitted as possible, or, every last miracle and bit of Bible
supernaturalism is purely allegorical and there is no free will. The possibilities cleanly split into these
two exclusive groups.
What I'm
particularly set against is reductionism: theories that "explain" religion
in terms that are not really religious, that is, esoteric mystic-state
experiential. The real primary
*religious* meaning of myth-religion is not based in the realm of
sociopolitical reformation or resistance or manipulation as conceived by the
sociologists; it is first of all, metaphysical esoteric mystic-state
experiential.
That
esoteric experiencing definitely shines new perspective on the sociopolitical
realm, but the basis is in the mystic state of consciousness. Various theories of religion are suggested
other than the really religious (esoteric state of consciousness) theory, such
as fertility, sociopolitical resistance, mundane morality, existentialism,
practical utilitarian astrology (for navigation, prediction, and control), and
"individuation" per Jungian psychology, or a sociopolitical pacifier
(opiate of the masses).
All the
theories are right, but one is much more correct than the others: the esoteric
state of consciousness theory. This is
not an arbitrary value judgement, but is a discovery and report of the mind's
higher potential for nonordinary, truly religious-state experiencing.
Even if
*most* religion is reductionist semi-religion (such as mundane
morality-systems), the *best* aspect of religion -- the most venerable and
lofty, classic, important, profound, impressive, original, deep -- is the
esoteric mystic-state dimension of religion; that is the real fountainhead of
religion as such -- the other aspects of religion are mere side-effects or
applications of religion, rather than pure religion as such.
To treat
some aspect of religion other than esoteric mystic-state phenomena as the core
or basis of religion is reductionism, a pseudo-explanation of religion by
explaining religion as something other than religion proper. The bulk of religion may indeed be not
really religion as such, but merely sociopolitical manipulations; however, the
best of religion, the core and fountainhead, remains pure religion as such,
which is esoteric mystic-state experiential religion.
I am not
presently putting forth a full defense of elevating this one aspect as the
single true, nonreductionist aspect of religion; I am here merely setting up
and defining what the task is.
The task
at hand amounts to setting forth an argument of why explaining religion on any
basis other than esoteric mystic-state experiencing is reductionist, and the
only non-reductionist and adequate explanation of religion must be centered
around esoteric mystic-state experiencing; must argue why esoteric mystic-state
experiencing is the only truly, *purely religious* aspect of religion.
Such an
argument might rest on arbitrary axioms -- but a good compelling argument can
be made and portrayed as the best, simplest, most reasonable and most plausible
and convincing argument, that any explanation of religion not centered on
esoteric mystic-state experiencing is reductionist and fails to explain
religion proper, but only seems to explain religion, by falsely reducing or
narrowing religion to some relatively incidental or non-primary aspect of
religion.
The only
way to avoid falsely narrowing the topic of religion while explaining it is by
including all aspects, including esoteric mystic-state experiencing, but even
more essential, the only way to avoid falsely "centering" one's
explanation of religion is by picking esoteric mystic-state experiencing as the
true center, the pure fountainhead of authentic religion, and the original
source for even the degraded, cargo-cult, lower forms of religion.
I'm deeply
set against the new doctrine/dogma that the purpose of meditation is not mystic
experiencing but is primarily or strictly to elevate daily life. I'm against it because it is a kind of
reductionism. Authentic, actual
religious experiencing as such, such as satori, can elevate daily life, but the
center of religion *as such* remains in the realm of satori, not in the realm
of daily life.
The
concept of 'religion proper' should be kept, and the meaning should be
constrained and not allowed to dissipate into meaninglessness as 'religion' is
so broadened that it comes to mean merely the optimalization of day to day
life. Sacred means set apart, or
distinct, or distinguished. Authentic
religion as such is grounded in the mystic state of consciousness; it is
centered or initially located there.
Perhaps
later it can be somehow merged into daily life, but the most classic model is
that esoteric mystic-state experiencing is differentiated from and contrasted
to daily life and the ordinary state of consciousness.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)