Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Resulting Religion Is Shaped by both Literalist & Metaphorical Thinking
Contents
Continuous grappling between true
& false religion
Genuine and co-opted Christianity
Sudden marginalization of
Christianity
False story of Christianity as
monolithic
Christianity always had esoteric
& exoteric approaches
Religion formed by
mystic/literalist conjunction
Filtering effect: mystics reject
non-allusive, & officials reject explicit writings
>The
diversity and exchange has always been present, both before and after the official
"establishment" of Christianity.
In the West it was driven deep underground and suppressed, appearing
from time to time in various reform and renewal movements which were either
exterminated (the Albigensians) or canonized (the Franciscans). In the East it remained safely hidden
beneath a thin verbal veil of creedal formularies, finding a haven in the
deserts and monasteries, flourishing in the hesychast tradition, and bursting
out into the streets in the teachings and antics of various Holy Fools, Crazy
Women and Divine Madmen.
>Now,
with the advent of the Internet, it's clear out of the closet.
A good
model is that Christianity is the product of two ever-existing, ever-battling
camps: the esoteric ("Gnostic") and exoteric ("Literalist")
camps. Each camp puts forth its own
worldview. According to the history
told by exoteric/Literalist thinking, there are many isolated groups
distinguished from the true, Literalist Church:
o The Gnostics
o The mystics
o The heretics another
o The radical reformation
o The Anabaptists
o The witches
o The Pentacostals
But
according to the history told by esoteric/Gnostic thinking, it's always been
the esoterics, rather than the exoterics, who have defined Christianity --
esoterics have been vastly more influential than exoterics officially admit.
So in
practice, Christianity is the product of an ever-ongoing battle, a constant and
continuous tug-of-war between the esoteric and exoteric parties. You can always see esotericism woven into
exoteric Christianity. There are
esoteric interpretations of every official Literalist dogma and doctrine. There are really only two paths: the path of
light and the path of darkness -- esoteric and exoteric conceptions of
religion, respectively.
There are
really only two denominations of Christianity: esoteric Christianity and
exoteric Christianity. This is the only
division that matters. Both of the two
significant denominations have always existed, vigorously and
influentially. We should not say that
the esoterics were suppressed and forced underground -- that's history
according to exoterics. We *can* say
that the *writings* of esoterics were destroyed and suppressed. Don't believe any history that's a product
of exoteric Christian thinking.
In Western
Europe, there was a wide alienation between the esoterics and the institutional
official exoteric Roman/Protestant church.
But in Eastern Europe, there was much less alienation between the
esoteric "denomination" and the exoteric "denomination".
Dualism
takes this idea of "there are really only two significant
denominations", and takes it all the way to logical completion: there are
two ways of thinking about everything, and thus two of everything. There are two kinds of salvation: the lower
and higher kind. There are two kinds of
moral systems, two kinds of Jesus, and two kinds of god -- the lower conception
of God and the higher conception of God.
Reject the lower, seek the higher.
A firm
commitment to playing with complete polarities this way quickly reveals the
solution to many puzzles about Gnostic thinking. I've even come to realize that in practice there is higher
esotericism and lower (false) esotericism: Gnosticism which isn't actually
Gnosticism. True Christianity and false
Christianity. Exoterics don't understand
how I can know all about Christianity without being a believer. I have to explain to these children that I
am a believer in the true Jesus and the true Gospel and the true God, not the
false Jesus and the false Gospel and the false God.
>That
which is original in Christianity is not good - and that which is good in
Christianity is not original.
>Acharya
S shows when and how Christianity was crafted, and why it was designed to
incorporate within itself all the myths and godman traditions of the ancient
world. She documents the process whereby the original mysticism in
Christianity's precursor religions was eliminated from the new system. Acharya
S shows state Christianity to be engineered in such a way as to be functionally
exoteric only, the outer mysteries without the inner.
The later,
official, State Christianity (313 CE) was exoteric-only. Christianity after it was taken over by the
ruling class or System of Caesar, a domination hierarchy, was bad. Christianity was originally good, and in its
popular suppressed, resistance form remained good. True, original Christianity was an innovative and effective
popular resistance movement that integrated mystic-state allegory with political
allegory.
There are
in fact two Christianities. The first
Christianity was a popular effective legitimate resistance movement that took
the common and unremarkable intense mystic state that was present in all the
religions of the day, and expressed it in a resistance-politics version of
mythic allegory.
>Christianity's
forged scriptures and false credentials. ... Christianity was conspiratorially
created in the first centuries of the Common Era,
Radical
critic Edwin Johnson claims that the complex scriptures and Church Father
writings we have were largely written in the 1500s -- the age of the printing
press and Reformation wars.
>Christianity
was purposely designed to enforce ideological conformity, political control,
and economic exploitation of the masses.
That's
half correct. Christianity was also
designed to be a resistance movement against the domination hierarchy of the
system of Caesar, a counter and challenge to Imperial Theology of
"divine" Caesar. And
Christianity continued to be largely shaped by the popular underclass, who
continued to use true sacraments.
The
development of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Mother of God appears to have been a
resistance movement within Christianity that began after the ruling class had
co-opted the Jesus figure who was central to the popular resistance movement
that was original Christianity. But
Mary in turn, at least the higher, Virgin Mary, has eventually been co-opted to
some extent by Caesar's continuing Roman Empire.
The
problem can't be called simply "Christianity". It is meaningless and nonsensical to simply
characterize "Christianity" without qualifying which Christianity you
have in mind: the Christianity of the popular underclass, or the Christianity
of the ruling class and domination hierarchy.
Christianity
is a tool. Some use it correctly for
enlightenment and political resistance to oppression, as it was originally
designed. Others try to co-opt that
popular religion and use it against enlightenment, as a tool of oppression. It's inarticulate and meaningless to simply
blame "Christianity", when the problem is instead, the ruling class'
domination hierarchy. It is misguided
to blame Christianity for the abuse of Christianity by the ruling class.
>After
debunking the hagiographical legends of the martyrs, the author spares neither
the Church Fathers (some of the most intolerant people in history) nor the
post-Constantinian church
Note the
all-important qualifier again, "post-Constantine".
We need a
better understanding of original Christianity *not* just as an enlightenment-oriented
mystery religion, but rather, as a mystery religion that was expressed using
the mythic and realistic form of a socio-political resistance movement.
Original
Christianity was much more than just another mystery religion -- it was also a
deservedly popular system of socio-political resistance to oppression -- so
popular, it was natural for the ruling class to try their best to co-opt it and
change it from something mystical and socio-political into something merely
supernatural, in an attempt to coerce the popular underclass back into
supporting the domination hierarchy.
Original
Christianity was about resisting early empire and revealing, esoterically and
socio-politically, God's empire instead, with anti-oppresive morality such as
is attributed to the Jesus figure, who was originally designed to counter the
"divine" Caesar and his system of "honor" and
"peace" which amounted to perpetual violent oppression for the
benefit of the ruling 2% on top of the heap.
People who
hate Christianity because it was used against people by the rulers don't have
the first understanding of why Christianity was popular in the first place;
they don't realize that they are praising the main idea behind original
Christianity, which was a socio-political resistance movement against
oppression, and not merely ethical or supernatural... or mystical, for that
matter.
The more I
understand the mystical dimension of Christianity, the more I understand the
importance and distinctive force, within the context of the Roman Empire, of
the socio-political dimension of Christianity.
In the
end, we discard the supernatural, Literalist conception of Christianity, which
is the version the ruling class tries to shackle the populace with, and
re-conceive Christianity as a pair of pillars: mystical experiencing and
socio-political resistance to empire, each expressing itself through the
language of the other.
It's a
deep mistake to conceive of Christianity as primarily mystical-esoteric, and a
deep mistake to conceive of it as primarily socio-political resistance. (And it's a gross misconception to think of
it as mundane ethics or supernaturalist Literalism.) Christianity is essentially, above all, a dyad: an integrated
pair, of esoteric intense mystic experiencing, and socio-political resistance
against domination hierarchy, boths domains expressed through each other.
>which,
in tandem with the throne, tortured and oppressed the entire populace of the
known world into conformity. Ancient
religions
Not only
esoteric Hellenistic religions, but original esoteric Christianity as well.
>and
native cultures everywhere were obliterated under Christianity's missionary
impulse, their books burned, the treasures of their learning and experience
obliterated in the face of the imposition of monotheism by threat of present
force and eternal punishment.
Michael
wrote:
>>People
who hate Christianity because it was used against people by the rulers don't
have the first understanding of why Christianity was popular in the first
place; they don't realize that they are praising the main idea behind original
Christianity, which was a socio-political resistance movement against
oppression, and not merely ethical or supernatural... or mystical, for that
matter.
>It's
as if the rulers attempted to make sure that along with Christianity being used
for control, they would also try to ensure that as the empire falls, along with
it would fall all of Christianity -- all or nothing; a double-edged sword.
Two women
claimed a baby. Wise king Solomon
ordered the baby killed by being cut in half.
One woman said "Go ahead."
The other said "Don't!"
Solomon decided that the woman who said "Don't!" was the true
mother.
The baby
is religion.
The false
mother is the aristocrat-priests who are part of the ruling class in a
political domination system. If they
can't control religion and use it as a tool of oppression, then they want
religion destroyed.
The true
mother is the popular and esoteric underclass.
Even though they can't fully control religion and use it completely for
enlightenment and socio-political emancipation, they want religion preserved,
for the great enlightenment and emancipation potential it does have.
After
September 11th, suddenly Usan ("American") Christendom has belatedly
realized that the predictions from a hundred years ago have practically come
true: suddenly, conservative Christianity is merely a marginal cult, and the
majority of self-identified "Christians" are Biblical illiterates and
hop not only between denominations for their occasional Church visit, but among
different religions -- it's a fluid, post-modern kind of Christianity that
takes an extreme cafeteria pick-and-choose approach. My preliminary research shows that official Christianity is
seriously running scared. The trends
started before Sep. 11, but that event has crystallized this awareness of the
trends. During the past few months,
Christianity is entering its greatest time of tribulation since the
Reformation. I am saving money to buy
some of the next wave of books on Christian trends. It should be interesting.
And one
popular, all-too-typical Christian apologetics book, The Case for Christ, is up
at sales position 343 at Amazon -- there are only 342 books that sell more
copies than it, and the reviews mention Earl Doherty's detailed point-for-point
rebuttal frequently. Meanwhile, I am
seeing Freke & Gandy's books The Jesus Mysteries, and Jesus and the Lost
Goddess at every regular bookstore, even an Episcopalian bookstore. On top of that, Huston Smith's book
Cleansing the Doors of Perception is spotted in most Christianity sections of
regular bookstores. It should be
interesting.
Back to
the books. Please keep the discussion
group alive. I may be able to start
work on a glossary of ego death while reading the books.
>>...
the semi-monolithical body of "Christian" doctrine began to crack in
the pre-renaissance with the Work of Massilio Ficino, reintroducing Plato,
Plotinus and the Hermetic Corpus into the main stream of European thought.
>>He
was on a parallel with Columbus, discovering worlds inside, as much as Columbus
was doing outside. The Hermetic Corpus, Platonism and Neo-Platonism had a
growing influence from then on; in the 19th century as NT apocrypha start to be
discovered and translated, increasingly the monolythic theological front begins
to crack, starting in the 19th century with F. C. Bauer (ca 1853), and R.A.
Lipsius ca 1860, continuing with Adolf von Harnack ca 1885, Richard Reitzenstein
in the 1920's, then Arthur Darby Nock, ca 1930, and most remarkably Kurt
Rudolf's Die Gnosis, originally from ca 1934, still before the big finds of Nag
Hammadi and Qumran, and then Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion.
Die Gnosis
was evidently originally published in 1977.
From page IV of
Gnosis:
The Nature and History of Gnosticism
Kurt
Rudolph
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060670185
"First
published in the German Democratic Republic … 1977 as Die Gnosis …"
>>So
more or less "solid" only between Constantin and the Greek/Roman
split, then continued to suffer internal splits, but from the Ficino and the
Pre-renaissance on down the cultural good that it had suppressed so actively
started re-entering the main stream, and after that discovering the documents
was just the icing on the cake. The finds of Qumran and Nag Hammadi then speed
up the process, although it took a while for them to sink in. ...
I have
discarded the official Catholic Church history as propaganda fabricated in the
Reformation era. It grandiosely
portrays the Catholic Church as having a firm lock on Christian metaphor
systems, allowing only the official metaphor system to thrive. Instead, the evidence indicates that
Medieval/Renaissance religion was about as rich, diverse, and mystic-state
experiential as Hellenistic Alexandrian radical syncretism around 200 CE.
The only
big break I see in Christian history is not in the Constantine era, nor at the
Greek/Roman split, but at the Reformation; so like the theorists of Tradition,
I analyze Christian and Western Esoteric history in terms of pre-modern versus
modern, marked off by the Reformation.
Premodern religion -- before the Reformation -- all has the same general
character, and modern religion -- after the Reformation -- all has the same
general character.
We're used
to thinking of Hellenistic Alexandrian religion as endlessly rich and colorful,
followed by a monolithic dark age, followed by that same sort of endlessly rich
and colorful esoteric syncretism in the late medieval/Renaissance era, followed
by dour monochromatic monolithic nonexperiential religion in the modern
era.
The
official history of the Dark Ages (476-1000) is entirely up in the air; I
basically treat the year 1000 as just another label for the year 477, so that
the character of antiquity can be treated in the same breath as that of the
Late Medieval/Renaissance era, with the only Dark Age of concern being, as far
as esoteric religio-philosophy and initiation, the Modern era starting with the
Reformation.
Maybe some
form of religion or syncretic religio-philosophical mystic initiation existed
during 477-1000, but I don't buy the official history of the period, a
historical tall-tale fabricated during the Reformation. The history of the "powerful and ancient"
Catholic Church is the history of a mouse, puffed up with literary vapor to the
size of a lion. I was impressed by the
amount of coverage Bart Ehrman gave to forgery in the book Lost Christianities.
Lost
Christianities
Bart
Ehrman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195141830
Christianity
always had both esoteric (read "entheogenic") and exoteric (read
"Literalist") approaches. It
is wrong to assume that Christianity always had an exoteric approach, while the
esoteric approach only occasionally or originally popped up as an isolated
exceptional development. Exoteric
Christianity developed over the years, and esoteric Christianity changed and
developed over the years.
The two
approaches were *always in competition* against each other in public, and as
competitors do, took from each other opportunistically, and sought to gain
dominance of the symbolic world of Christian myth.
Interesting
acid-rock group name and album title: Blind Faith. In the helpless depths of ego-death, where reason is no help but
only serves to create the problem that kills personal power, some people
conclude that the only way to restabilize personal controllership is some kind
of classically religious "blind faith".
It is
interesting how the mentions of the Jesus Freaks of the late 60s-early 70s
never mention psychedelics except in the safe context of "leaving my
sinful/unhealthy life of drugs" -- which despite itself, like the
authoritarian Church Fathers preserving Gnostic wisdom by refuting it in
detail, confirms the pattern: "People used drugs, and then became
religious". The pattern was
distorted by demonization and prohibitionism, but the pattern is there.
We can
assume it is certain that some albums in Christian bookstores were centrally
influenced by entheogens: the only question is, to what degree? is there a
semi-underground subculture of entheogenic Christian musicians mixed in with
the placebo-eucharist evangelical exoteric Christians? It is certainly a viable formula: use
entheogens, write truly inspired Christian rock, be financially supported by
those who support Christian rock.
The
half-informed view talks of periodic outbreaks of mystic truth in Christian
history, with periodic persecutions by various Literalist authoritarians. The reality is more interesting:
Christianity has always been an ongoing tension between the esoteric
entheogenic mystics against the exoteric placebo-eucharist Literalists. I would no longer say that the entheogenic
mystics are "underground" -- perhaps
"semi-underground".
I would no
longer say that there is a "periodic resurgence" of
"underground" entheogenic mystic Christianity. The first point is to simply acknowledge two
timeless approaches that have always existed -- bracketing the issue of how
public or apparently unbroken these traditions are. There *is*, overall, a timeless tradition of entheogenic mystic
esoteric experiential Christianity.
It's
missing the main point if you say that Christianity was "originally"
that way, or that there was a self-existing "outbreak" of such in the
Middle Ages. Esoteric Christianity has
always existed, and Exoteric Christianity has always existed, and there has
always been tension between them, and there has always been two-way contributions
between the two approaches.
I will
take a 3-tier approach to putting forth a theory of religions. My first focus is Christianity; my second
focus is the mystery religions and Judaism, and my third focus is on all other
religions -- because:
o It makes sense, given what everyone cares
about in the social and political realm, to emphasize Christianity
o It makes sense, to understand Christianity
in its original context
o It makes sense, to theorize about all
religions.
In some
ways, this 3-tier approach is too hard for me; in some ways, it's turned out to
be much easier than I dared anticipate.
Religious
doctrine is formed by an ongoing process of compromised and conjunction between
mystics and literalists.
Think they
can dismiss entheogens by equating them with Eastern religion or with heretical
doctrines or with monism (immanent-only God) or because they are an innovation,
or because they are an innovation in Christianity, or because they provide an
inferior mystic experience. That's all
nonsense. There is diversity within
Christianity, within orthodoxy, within Christian mysticism, within world
mysticism, and within entheogen mysticism, and within entheogen
Christianity.
Orthodoxy
depends on caricature and oversimplification: drawing simple rigid pictures of
mysticism, of entheogen experience/interpretation, of Christianity, of Judaism,
of Buddhism, -- everyone but the careful and balanced scholars is guilty of
gross oversimplification and cartoonish caricature of all these religions.
Any
would-be narrow tradition or school depends on falsely rigidly portraying the
others -- to keep separate and fight off universalism. Depends on denying universalism -- but
mysticism of course tends toward universalism; any mysticism that isn't
universalist is just *pretending* to not be universalist. Exclusivist schools are driven not by the
quest for metaphysical truth, but by power and socio-political forces.
The
orthodox schools project their own exclusivism onto the mystics, criticizing
the mystics for being exclusive -- but there is good and bad exclusivism. The mystics have the good and true kind of
exclusivism. The orthodox have stolen
the good kind of exclusivism from the mystics and turned it into the bad, low,
false, superstitious or manipulative type of exclusivism.
The mystic
says only by correct mystic knowledge are you saved. The orthodox says only by our exoteric religion are you
saved. Both camps insist there are
conditions and hierarchy, the lost and saved -- but they put forward different
systems of what those conditions and key divisions are.
On the
surface, the literalists and the mystics agree that those in our religion are
blessed, righteous, and saved, and those in the other religions are cursed,
unrighteous, and damned. The elite go
to heaven and the unwashed to hell, and so on in other good/bad
insider/outsider notions. However, the
mystics conceive of these terms in a fundamentally different way. Mystics have a *spiritual* or mystic way of
thinking about elitism and exclusivism and what it means to be above the
ignorant.
Every
doctrinal term has two meanings: the literalist meaning-network and the mystic
meaning-network, even in the most harsh and extreme doctrines of sin, purgatory,
flames, repentance, hell, salvation, demons, possession, incarnation, original
sin, sacrifice of the firstborn, and so on.
Isolated doctrinal words are nothing, meaning-networks are everything,
and the mystics, who master and transcend conceptual languages, understand
this.
Mystics
successfully, systematically make sense of literalist notions, and conversely,
literalists systematically distort mystic allegory elements. Who is doing the origination and who is
doing the distorting or reinterpreting?
There is interpretation and counter-interpretation, and practically, the
innovation and transformational mapping is a circular process.
A common
notion is that the mystics discover an allegorical reinterpretation of orthodox
ideas. That's incorrect, or half
correct at best. The orthodox ideas
themselves are a transformational interpretation of the ideas the mystics came
up with. Are the mystics to blame for
the crimes of the literalists, because the mystics came up with allegorical
ideas that could be dangerously misinterpreted and distorted into a literalist
sense? No, more likely, the blame can't
be nailed down so simply.
In a
systems process, mystics labored under hostile literalist regimes since the
beginning of history, so they can't be blamed -- the mystics who spoke truth
frankly or framed allegory that couldn't be abused by the literalists were
forgotten and abandoned.
The
literalists only permitted to remain in open circulation those mystic
allegorical ideas that were also useful to the literalist power-mongers. The mystics came up with many ideas -- the
literalists are to blame for only selecting for preservation those mystic ideas
which were of socio-political use.
Is
mysticism orthodox? Yes and no. Mystics are very good at allegorically interpreting
orthodox notions because the orthodox notions themselves were formed in
compromise with mystics; it's a two-way influence. Mystics create religious/mystic/mythic notions, orthodoxy tries
to co-opt and appropriate those ideas... at the same time we say that
"mystics try to stay close to orthodoxy" we must especially remind
ourselves that orthodoxy tries to stay close to the mystics.
Even more
generally, the religion is formed by the interest that *three* parties have in
staying in orbit together: the orthodox, the mystics, and the popular folk all
have compelling reasons to stay close together. If the orthodox went their own way, they'd lose influence among
the mystics and populace, and would be cast aside and rendered powerless, in a
virtual excommunication of the official religion by the de facto mystic and
popular religion.
If the
mystics went their own way, they'd be excommunicated, losing influence and
relevance. Mystic schools that deviate
are forgotten and lose influence. If
the populace went their own way, ignoring the official religion and ignoring
the elite scribal mystics, they'd be left with inchoate folk superstition, not
a developed religion.
It's a
Darwinian selection process or a systems feedback development pattern. The tree trunk supports deviant branches
that veer off, but the main trunk is whatever is formed by the *confluence* and
compromised concord among the sophisticated mystics, the literalist officials
who are motivated by political power, and the folk populace.
Religion,
under the heel or constraint of socio-political forces, is whatever results
from the creative tug-of-war and continually developing compromise between the
orthodox and the mystics.
Standard
fallacies that serve to suppress the threat of entheogen mysticism in favor of
official religion:
All
mystics are unorthodox.
All
entheogen religion is Eastern.
All
entheogen religion is monistic, denying a transcendent God.
All
respected mystics are against entheogens.
Entheogens
are an innovation. false
The respected
mystics didn't use entheogens.
Entheogens
are a later, degenerate stage of shamanism.
Entheogens
are a later, degenerate stage of Hellenistic religion.
What
demolishes these fallacies all in one blow?
Finding the entheogen roots of Christianity in the "mixed
wine". If the wine is entheogenic,
this demolishes all the fallacies in one blow.
Battle of universalist entheogen mysticism against all the exclusivist
orthodoxies.
What has
been the actual role and influence of entheogens in world mysticism? To the same extent as mysticism was shunned
by orthodoxy ("official religion"), so was entheogen mysticism
shunned and suppressed by "official mysticism". Yet entheogens are the two-degrees
suppressed fountainhead of the religions.
Official religion is distorted and abused mysticism, and similarly,
official mysticism is distorted and abused entheogenism.
Consider
the notions of purgatory or original sin.
Were these created by mystics and taken over by the orthodox, being
first allegorical and then literal? Or
were they created by the orthodox and then taken over by the mystics, being
first literal and then allegorical?
Such a splitting of scenarios fails to understand systems theory.
Between
the mystics and the orthodox, a great variety of ideas were considered and
created and pieced together from many sources, and through a selection and
grappling process, any idea that was of interest both to the mystics for its
allegorical value, and to the officials for its literalist value, took hold and
was accepted into the canon, which we should think of not as the "official
canon" so much as the canon which is mystic as well as official.
The same
canon of notions serves two separate readings, two separate parties: the
mystics and the official literalists.
In general, any notion in a religious canon has two meanings and is
found acceptable by both parties: the mystic allegorical meaning and the
official literalist meaning.
Across
religions or canons, the mystics typically want to assert the equivalence between
the allegorical meaning running across all the canons, while the typical
officials in the religion want to assert the non-equivalence in order to keep
the exoteric religions artificially separate and exclusivist. In practice, mystics sometimes claim that
their religion stands alone, but they are typically coerced into endorsing this
type of exclusivist view.
More
characteristically, mystics assert that true exclusivism is between the
literalist exoteric official version of their religious tradition, and the
allegorical esoteric unofficial version.
Official religion suppresses mysticism within its tradition and within
other religions, and emphasizes exclusion of the other religions -- which are
also framed in a literalist light.
That's the
official type of exclusivism. Mystics
too are exclusivists, but assert a different type of exclusivism: that between
the mystics of all traditions and the literalists of all traditions.
My rewrite
of something found on the Net:
>Antiquity
was a world full of gods where the distinction between god and man was not as
we see it. Alexander the Great was
worshipped as God in his lifetime.
>There
has always been a mystical center within Christianity, but the official
religion has continued to deny its existence to the outer orders, at least
until the Reformation when true literalists took over -- and the Catholic
counter-reformation perhaps did the same to the Roman church. The Orthodoxies
retain a frightening mystical nationalism. It is surprising how much pagan symbolism
is on open display in the Vatican. We are used to regarding these popes as
hypocrites, but perhaps they considered themselves guardians of controversial
or politically dangerous knowledge.
There was
a complex relation between the mystics and literalists. Many within the official Church, at all
levels, were esotericists. The real
battle has been between two camps or approaches, and the battle split people
both within and outside of the official organized Church. Literalists within the official Church would
deny that many others in the official Church are esotericists.
Complicating
this, there are varieties of literalism and varieties of esotericism, even
within one religion or "religious tradition". The key boundary to emphasize is that
between literalists and mystics (exoteric vs. esoteric religionists). For example, there is somewhat of a dispute
within the esoteric camp regarding entheogens.
Just as we can study the dynamics between mystics and literalists, we
can frame equivalent contrasts between entheogenic mystics and non-entheogenic
mystics.
However,
the main division that's most productive is grouping the elements like Pagels'
book _Gnostic Paul_ on Pauline Valentinian Gnostics, with literalism and the
second sacrament (sacrament of apolytrosis) placed into opposing camps. As a first-order approximation and
generalization, mystics are pro-entheogen and literalists are
anti-entheogen.
Mystics
have a good use for entheogens, but literalists don't -- even if there are a
few mystics who reject entheogens and a few literalists who accept
entheogens. So on the grand scheme,
entheogens are certainly associated with mysticism but not with
literalism. Entheogen mysticism is the
quintessential type of mysticism, even though much mysticism isn't
entheogenic.
It's hard
to determine just how much mysticism is actually entheogenic, for the same
reasons that it's hard to know what most mystics really believed about the
literalist doctrines of the official version of the religion.
>>The
entheogenic origins of religion theory holds that reading religious texts
literally, denies the hidden meaning within a teaching. To find the proof of the entheogenic plant
theory of the origin of religion, one must learn to read and recognize hidden
meanings or allusions in the texts and in the mythology, and have the
corresponding, experiential recognition of the themes and allusions from
first-hand knowledge of the entheogenic nonordinary state of
consciousness.
>>Secret
teachings among secretive followers of entheogenic religion are due to reasons,
social and otherwise, for the obscuring of widespread religious use of
entheogens. Hidden and secret powers
and knowledege obtained from entheogenic experience are used with secret means
when communicating these things and forming religious sects.
>>In
high Buddhism, there is the idea of the "Himyo-hoben," "Secret
and Skillful Means of the Buddha" -- the answer to this secret exists
within Entheogenic experience. One must
go into another dimension of reality and retrieve a key and bring it back into
the consensus reality. Buddhism
explains the sequence of propagation, based on the receptivity of people in
each age.
I don't
know why there are seemingly few explicit writings about visionary plants in
historical religious writings. This is
not a problem that hinders the entheogen theory of religion, but it is odd, a
puzzle -- with some plausible solutions like the filtering forces that censored
explicit drug references in late 1960s Rock lyrics. Maybe much was written down -- and then destroyed by others.
Mystics
leave out and thus effectively destroy texts that have no double-entendres
alluding to plant mysticism; while officials leave out and thus effectively
destroy texts that have explicit references to plant mysticism.
There are
3 types of writing:
Explicit
references to plant mysticism.
Destroyed by officials.
No
references to plant mysticism.
Abandoned and disparaged by mystics.
Double-entendres
alluding to plant mysticism. Acceptable
to, and preserved by, mystics and officials.
Thus there
is a filtering effect leaving us with the type of scriptures we have:
scriptures that are generally more or less dense with double-entendres and
metaphors that allude to plant mysticism.
Gershom
Scholem completely waffles but tends to write that the mystics take an existing
text, *which does not have mystic intention of double-entendre*, and strive to
artificially find and project a mystic double-entendre into it. Inconsistently, he sometimes writes that we
can't know whether the texts actually contain deliberate mystic intended
double-entendre.
Scholem is
wrong: religious texts as a rule are characterized by a deliberate inherent
high density of mystic-state double-entendres.
If they didn't have much potential for such reading, mystics would shun
them and kill those writings -- profane writings, by definition -- through
disrespect and inattention. At least,
they'd relatively ignore such mystically inert writings.
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