» HDM Myths The Spiral Path

06 Sep 2012

RS30: The Second Coming?

A: I’d like to return, if we could, to the idea of a “genderless divine essence.” You’ve pointed out in our discussions that the apostle Paul had an understanding of God which blended both Jewish Essene beliefs and Hellenistic philosophical beliefs — especially Plato’s teachings. So somehow Paul ends up with an understanding of the Divine where there’s both a genderless divine essence — Spirit (pneuma in the Greek) — and a male God. How can Paul’s God be both male and genderless?

J: Plato had this strange mix, too. Would it help if I told you Plato was also a member of the Seekers of the Rock? That both Plato and Paul worked for the same organization?

Plato’s Cave? Is this really a helpful metaphor for understanding life on Planet Earth? (photo (c) Image*After)

A: Plato wrote his books over 400 years before Paul wrote his.

J: Yes. The Seekers of the Rock have a long history. Which is no surprise when you look at the history of other religious movements. When Plato wrote, his job was to try to pull Greek thought in the direction of the Seekers’ own agenda. When Paul wrote, his job was to try to pull Hellenistic thought (which included Jewish influence) in the direction of the Seekers’ own agenda. The heavy influence of Platonism, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Platonism on Christian theology is no accident.

A: One thing I noticed when I read Plato’s works for my Master’s thesis is the infuriating blend of monism with dualism. It’s, like, make up your mind, buddy! Are we “all One” or are we split between dualistic poles of “good and evil”? How can it be both at the same time? I know we’ve talked about this before, but I still find it exasperating.

J: Gnosticism in all its forms is an attempt to reconcile the inherent conflict between monism and dualism. Paul was a proto-Gnostic thinker, in the language of recent scholarship. In many ways, the raging debates about Gnostic heresies in the early centuries of the church were fights between Paul’s own “Platonic” brand of Gnosticism and the more floridly mystical brands of Gnosticism that sprang up from Paul’s and John’s teachings. Both brands — the orthodox Pauline position and the Gnostic heresies — were attempts to explain how we can all “be One” and at the same time be forced to deal with the problem of evil in the world.

Anybody who starts with the idea that we are “all One” — the idea that each soul is a fragment of the Oneness, a fragment that’s seeking union and blissful dissolution in the cloud of knowing/unknowing — will be forced, logically speaking, into the dualistic position. Otherwise how do you logically explain why you and your neighbour aren’t the same? How do you explain why men and women are different from each other in many ways? How do you explain evil and injustice and wars of oppression? If you insist on maintaining the monistic position of Oneness, nothing in the world makes sense. Nothing.

A: Yet Paul’s group — the Seekers of the Rock — have continued to hold onto this position all this time. When are they going to get the idea they’re wrong?

J: Not any time soon. They think they’re saving the world from the evil forces of chaos, etcetera, etcetera.

A: So is this supreme cloud of knowing/unknowing the same thing as Paul’s Spirit, Paul’s “genderless divine essence”?

J: Well, they would be the same in the ideal universe (Plato’s realm of perfect Forms). In the ideal universe (the healed and restored universe which Paul and the Seekers believed they were rebuilding) all the lost and broken bits of Oneness would return to their rightful places in the “region above the heavens,” as Plato described it in Phaedrus. According to Plato and the other Seekers, this is the region where the One True God lives, “being which really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates.”*

A: I can see from this description that the Seekers’ One True God is very big and bland and boring, kinda like a featureless cloud of hydrogen and helium atoms somewhere out in space. But Plato doesn’t actually say that this “being which really is” is genderless. So is the One True God of Paul and Plato genderless? Or is this Oneness male?

J (smiling): The One True God is male. In fact, he’s the perfect male. The Ideal Male. The Pure Male. The Form of Perfection. The Geometric Form of Order. The template for Oneness. Ultimate Knowledge. Omnipotent Mind. Creation without Chaos. The Source where the apophatic path and the anagogic path become the Perfect Circle outside time and space. The Womb where only pure Truth can be brought forth. The Mirror of Justice. All emotion is eradicated. Love, trust, and forgiveness become meaningless concepts, as meaningless as talking about rain in a village that has only known drought, desert, and harshness. The feminine principle is not so much abolished as swallowed — swallowed and controlled and assimilated — so that all impulses serve the unified purposes of the One. A lot like the Borg on Star Trek, only with a hive king instead a hive queen.

A: And this is their idea of science?

J: Yes. For them it’s the perfect combination of science and religion.

A: The part about the supremacy of the mind sounds a lot like Deism.

J: Yes.

A: Yes? It’s Deism? The Seekers of the Rock were — are — Deists?

J: Yup.

A: No wonder these guys seem so arrogant. They actually believe they can control the Law of Cause and Effect because God set it up that way for them! God set up the universe then walked away from it, so “the best and brightest” human minds can do whatever they want!

J: Yup.

A: And God can’t — won’t — intervene. Except for that one time when he apparently sent his only son through the barrier of time and space to anchor that big ol’ pyramid thing. Except you really screwed it up, according to Paul.

J: According to Paul.

A: So now they’re waiting for the next small window of time and space when the Logos can once again squeeze through from that higher realm to bring the Truth and reward them for their piety and hard work. Right?

J: You got it.

A: And when will this next window take place? When will the Second Coming happen?

J: Never. It ain’t gonna happen — not the way think people think it’s gonna happen, anyway. Same as the First Coming never happened the way Paul said it did. It’s a myth, a lie, a way to hide the truth about God the Mother and God the Father and all the ways they share their Divine Love and forgiveness with us each day whether we ask for it or not.

A: What about all the prophecies? What about the promises in the Bible and other sacred texts about chosen saviours and messiahs and prophets who’ll be coming soon to bring us revelation and salvation? Millions of people rely on the promises of prophecy for their sense of hope.

J (shrugging): Sorry. Can’t help. The kind of hope promised by Paul isn’t what angels mean by hope. For us, hope means working together with God in trust and free will and healing and forgiveness. Hope believes in the potential of all human beings to be their best selves regardless of what sacred texts say. Hope believes in the power of transformation and change when people accept their own courage and their own inner strengths. Hope is about the present, about seeing the ever-present Birth of Divine Love hiding quietly within each moment and each choice in the currents of Creation.

A: So no End-of-Times. No Judgment Day. No coming-in-clouds-with-great-power-and-glory Second Coming. The prophecies are wrong.

J: Yup. Prophecy’s a real bitch, eh?

* From the translation by Christopher Rowe of Plato’s Phaedrus (London and New York: Penguin, 2005).

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Posted in dualism, Gnosticism, HDM Myths, Paul, Plato, prophecy, prophets, Realspiritik, theodicy and tagged ethical mysticism, Jesus vs Paul | Leave a Comment

09 Aug 2012

RS22: Freedom and Slavery

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have certainty, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I many boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own ways. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor 13: 1 – 8a). This short passage, long attributed to Paul, is so unlike Paul’s teachings and is so resonant with Jesus’ teachings (especially as seen in the Gospel of Thomas), it’s amazing Paul still gets the credit. Shown here are the Pyramids at Giza, photo credit Historylink101.com (Egyptian Picture Gallery).

A: Last time you said Paul’s religious masters feared contamination by the forces of chaos. You then defined the forces of chaos as the forces of Love and All Things Feminine. My first thought was to ask about the reaction from Christians who insist that Paul speaks eloquently about Love. Then I remembered that you yourself wrote the famous ode to love in First Corinthians 13. I also remembered the academic papers I’d read about the meaning of the word “love” (aheb in Hebrew) in Second Temple Judaism. At that time “loving God” meant “obeying God” rather than “liking God” or “being in relationship with God.” Love for God was a duty, a contractual obligation, a way for human beings to hold up their end of the bargain with God.

Why did Paul talk so much about love (agape in the Greek) if he didn’t believe in love?

J: Paul was not a man who was capable of love. What he meant by love was something much closer to the mindset you and I have defined as humility — turning yourself into an empty vessel — an obedient vessel — so you can properly receive Paul’s authority.

A: He doesn’t use the word “humility” in his letters.

J: No. He uses the words “weakness” and “foolishness.” But it’s still humility.

A: The meaning is the same.

J: Paul didn’t believe at all in the concept of love as I understood love. He believed in obedience. In orderly, obedient communities. In pyramids of mystical power where the people at the bottom of the pyramid “knew their place” and obeyed those who were higher up in rank and authority and supported them in their “great mission.” But he doesn’t use the word “pyramid.” He uses the metaphor of the body — the one body in Christ. Christ is the head. All the members of the community are part of this one body, which makes sense from a practical viewpoint, because a body can move more swiftly if it has two healthy feet. But make no mistake — the feet are still at the bottom of this pyramid of power. So slaves are loved in Paul’s community because they help bring order and stability to the community. But they’re still slaves.

A: Christians today read Paul’s speech about the one body (1 Cor 12: 12-31) as a rejection of hierarchical values in Hellenistic culture. But you’re saying it’s not a rejection.

J: It’s a different understanding of hierarchy. For Paul, it’s a superior understanding of hierarchy. It’s an attempt to reveal the real truth about hierarchy, the real mystical underpinnings of hierarchy that exist within all the worlds of Heaven. It’s Paul’s attempt to bring “the one true” hierarchy into the corrupt world. Again, alchemy. An attempt to bring order and harmony into the corrupt physical world by controlling the powers of chaos. An attempt to corral the behaviour of everybody so they’ll fit properly within the pyramid of power that Paul and his religious masters are trying to build.

A: When you say they’ll fit properly, how do you mean that? Do you mean that figuratively?

J: No. I mean that literally. Don’t forget — “The One True Religion” Paul was commissioned to spread was about 3,000 years old by the time Paul came on the scene. This group had already spent 3,000 years researching and experimenting with different ways to acquire power. Their early attempts were focussed on external tools — projects such as the Pyramids of Giza and subsequent wonders of the ancient world. Eventually, though, they noticed they were having problems with other people’s brains. People had an annoying habit of trying to find freedom for themselves and their families. Then they wouldn’t behave!

The Seekers of the Rock decided that all those busy human minds that were always getting in the way of the group’s goals were nothing more than fractured little bits of the universal Order and Perfection that Spirit had already created in pure form for the higher levels of Heaven. Order and Perfection were envisaged as a pyramid of perfect, exquisite, divine geometry. Each of the four sides at the base of the pyramid represented one of the immutable Divine Laws (as this group understood them). One side — the north side — represented vengeance — in other words, the Divine Right to punish lawbreakers. The south side represented knowledge — the Divine Right to control all knowledge. The west side represented “mass” — great weight, strength, force, inertia — or the Divine Right to build great armies to seize what was rightfully its own. The east side represented sacrifice — the Divine Right to demand sacrifice for purposes that cannot be understood by mortal minds.

The Seekers believed that if communities of believers could be gathered together in accordance with these four main principles, they could literally create a metaphysical pyramid that would be pleasing to Spirit. But, as with a physical pyramid built of carefully cut stones, a mystical pyramid can only be strong and whole and worthy of Spirit’s approval if each “stone” is properly placed in relation to neighbouring stones. The pyramid is built of many smaller stones. So all the stones are necessary if the pyramid is to achieve its purpose. If you remove some of the stones at the bottom, the whole construct might topple.

A: So, for Paul, slaves are like the stones at the bottom.

J (nodding): When the slaves know their proper place, and stay where they’ve been placed at the bottom of the pyramid, the Divine Rights of Vengeance, Knowledge, Strength, and Sacrifice will remain in balance, and Order is achievable. But if the slaves dare step outside the bounds of the pyramid and into the frightening world of chaos that lies beyond, Spirit will have no choice but to exercise its Rights. That’s when you get divine actions like the Great Flood. It’s a simple matter of cause and effect.

A: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

J: As I said, this bunch saw themselves as scientists in pursuit of order and harmony. Their relentless attacks on free will were highly logical, if completely inhumane. From their twisted perspective, they were “saving” the slaves from the dire consequences of their foolish desire for freedom. They were acting in the best interests of the group as a whole. “We’re doing this for your own good. This hurts us more than it hurts you. One day you’ll thank us for this.”

A: Something tells me Paul’s rhetoric on “freedom” is not what it appears to be.

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Posted in anagogic mysticism, Divine Love, First Corinthians, free will, Gnosticism, HDM Myths, humility, Mother God, mysticism, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, Realspiritik, slavery, spiritual ascent and tagged Paul vs Jesus | Leave a Comment

29 Jul 2012

RS19: Paul’s Trinitarian Theology

A: Since our last discussion a couple of days ago, I’ve been pretty confused, to be honest, and I was wondering if we could go back over a few of the points you raised. Would that be okay?

J: Yes. We covered quite a bit of ground, introduced some new concepts. So ask away.

A: Thanks. Well, partly I’m still struggling with this idea that Paul’s religion is marketing God like a shampoo brand. It’s just so materialistic — small “M” materialistic — and I don’t see any connection between this idea and the idea of faith. I find it hard to believe that millions of Christians would agree to participate in such a crass pursuit. I mean, where is the sense of faith — the sense of ongoing relationship with God — in a religion that’s selling God like this week’s special at Walmart?

J: Well, Paul’s version of divine shampoo is more like the $4.99 brand that’s relabelled under the table and sold in a high-end salon for $89.99 as the best product for the best people.

A: But expensive shampoo is still just shampoo. It’s not faith.

Cockleburs - Sticky and Nasty, but Very Effective

“Jesus said: The Kingdom is like a man with a treasure of which he is unaware hidden in his field. He died and left the field to his son. His son knew nothing about it and, having received the field, sold it. The owner came and, while plowing, found the treasure. He began to lend money at interest to anybody he wished (Gospel of Thomas 109). Paul, who came after Jesus and Jesus’ confused disciples, saw the opportunity to take the buried treasure of faith offered by Jesus and lend it out to others with a promissory note for future salvation. Obedience was the interest Paul charged. In this photo, the cockleburs that can stick to your hair and clothing as you walk through field and forest are like Paul’s teachings: covered in nasty hooks but very effective. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: No. It’s not faith. But as you and I have discussed before, religion and faith are not synonymous with each other. Religion is an organized social, political, and economic institution, an institution that can be used under certain circumstances to create a desire for obedience among the middle and lower classes of society. As a tool for creating social cohesion, it can be quite effective — at least, for a while.

A: Social cohesion is good. But people still need faith! People long to feel that deep inner connection with God that makes them feel whole.

J: Yes. So within the annals of a religion such as Christianity, you see a constant tension between the people who are seeking God — that is, people who are yearning for faith — and the people who don’t give a hoot about God but are seeking to tap into the hidden power that underlies all universal laws. The ones who don’t give a hoot about God are the ones who have dictated the path of orthodoxy in the Christian church as it’s known today.

A: So you mean there were church leaders who didn’t actually believe in God? Who were atheists or maybe agnostics?

J: Let’s put it this way. The vast majority of church leaders whose writings have been preserved were not writing about God. They were writing about Paul’s Spirit — Divine Law writ large.

A: I noticed in my theology courses that orthodox theologians over the centuries relied heavily on Paul and much less on Mark, Matthew, and Luke for scriptural authority.

J (nodding): Paul is the biblical source for Trinitarian theology. John is usually considered a source, too, but John’s personal theology wasn’t as sophisticated as Paul’s, and didn’t have as much influence. Mark contains no Trinitarian theology, and not much usable Christology, either, from the point of view of Paul and his successors. Paul’s writings, though, are a font of “wisdom” on the topic of tapping into the hidden power of the universe. I say that facetiously.

A: Of course. So tell me more about Paul’s Trinitarian theology. You seem to be making a link between Paul’s Trinitarian teachings and the theme of selling God as a shampoo brand. But I confess you’ve lost me. I don’t quite see the connection. Could you explain that?

J: In the time when I lived, philosophy and religion and science were hopelessly intertwined. They were intertwined in a way that’s hard for people today to relate to. Chemistry and physics and medicine weren’t treated as subjects that were separate from philosophy or religion. They were treated as subjects that were subordinate to, or dependent upon, the highest aspirations of the human mind: pure philosophy or pure religious law. But devotion to philosophy or devotion to pure religious law (as in the case of the Essenes in my day) were both attempts to understand the immutable laws that lie behind everything that happens here on Planet Earth. So when you tried to study chemistry, you weren’t really studying chemistry. You were looking for the hidden religious laws that governed the chemistry. You were looking for the religious laws that applied not only to the metals you were extracting from base ores but to the people in your religious community. You were looking for the universal principles of authority, power, dominion, status, and chosenness. You were looking for proof — validation — that your religious teachings were correct and other groups’ teachings were wrong. So science was usually a means to an end — a religious end. Needless to say, this got in the way of objective scientific research.

A: That mindset still exists in certain quarters today.

J: Yes. But during the first century CE, the religious leaders who had the most credibility, the widest acceptance, were the ones who tried hardest to crystallize the mysteries of Divine Law, philosophy, and science into a simplified “package.” Paul was very good at this. He squeezed Law, philosophy, and science together into one shampoo bottle. Then he shook them up hard so you couldn’t see the separate strands and try to pull them apart. He labelled the product as “God.” But what Paul described as God has nothing to do with God the Mother and God the Father as they actually are.

A: Still not getting it.

J: Paul wasn’t interested in knowing who I was as a person. Paul wasn’t interested in knowing who God the Mother and God the Father were as people. He was only interested in his agenda of proving his own authority.

A: His authority as a messenger of God?

J: No. His authority as an avenging angel, sent to Planet Earth to spread the true message about Spirit — pure, formless, timeless, insuperable Law.

A: He wasn’t trying to teach people about God?

J: Like all severe narcissists, Paul was incapable of conceiving of God as a person — or as two people, which is what I taught. Narcissists can’t see anybody except themselves. They can’t see their own children as separate, worthy human beings, so they certainly can’t see God as separate, worthy beings. For narcissists, the world fractures into many different forms of myth — monistic myths, dualistic myths, and hierarchical myths. This is the only way they can make sense of their own internal suffering, their own internal experience of emptiness.

A: But Spirit is different because Spirit isn’t a person — it’s a formless cloud of endless power. I get it. It’s a projection! The narcissist is projecting his own internal self-image onto the universe around him. Spirit is pure power, pure ascendancy, pure authority — with no need at all for messy emotions like forgiveness or devotion or courage or trust! I get it!

Okay. So how does this relate to Trinitarian theology?

J: Paul’s invocation of Spirit, God, and Jesus Christ is alchemy.

A: Alchemy? Now my head is really starting to hurt.

J: When you try to force the actual laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and math to conform to pure religious law, pure religious authority, you’re practising alchemy. I’m defining alchemy as an attempt to control all the powers of “chaos” for the purpose of creating order and harmony.

A: By “powers of chaos” you mean things like . . . entropy?

J: No. I mean God the Mother and God the Father as they actually are. In Paul’s view, and in the view of many of his successors, God has not been behaving properly, and has done very illogical and unfair things such as allowing earthquakes to hit major religious centres and requiring saintly figures to die like everybody else. This implication is so clear in Paul’s teachings that a century or so later in Rome one of his most enthusiastic followers, Marcion, would create a firestorm of controversy by suggesting there was a hierarchy of gods in Creation, with a jealous, vindictive god who rules over this world, and above him, a supreme god who is just and loving but who remains “unknown” to people on Earth except through the revelation of Jesus Christ. For Marcion, Paul was the messenger of this great and radical truth about the unknown god.

A: So Paul was trying to force both God and you to “obey” Spirit, which is the supreme and formless cloud of knowing and love and justice?

J: Exactly.

A: By squishing you all together into “One”?

J: He would have thought of it as “reintegrating” broken pieces of divine truth that had fallen out of their proper places. Pieces such as the Logos (me). And Charis (grace), who was Paul’s God.

A: Frig. This is so complicated. And so Gnostic. I like your teaching about God as two loving parents much better. Paul’s version is so . . . so fluid. So malleable. So nebulous and undefined. So conveniently changeable. So easily manipulated, depending on the circumstances.

J: In a previous post you described the Trinity as a shell game. That definition still applies.

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Posted in Cause & Effect, faith, Gnosticism, HDM Myths, Law (Nomos), Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, Realspiritik, Trinitarianism and tagged ethical mysticism, Jesus vs Paul | Leave a Comment

10 Mar 2012

TBM26: A Practical Tip For Getting Along With Your Angels

Here’s a super-practical tip for people walking the Spiral Path: don’t ask your guardian angels to help you get more status.

Probably the single biggest mistake made by spiritual seekers anywhere (and I mean anywhere) is to assume that God and God’s angels are remotely interested in anything resembling status.

I know that countless religious tomes have told you otherwise. I know you’ve been told that God needs your worship and sacraments (i.e. status points for God). I know you’ve been told that God needs your prayers (i.e. status points for you). I know you’ve been told that angels (if they exist at all) are bound within a strict Celestial Hierarchy — escalating angelic tiers of seniority and importance and proximity to God. (Thanks for nothing, Pseudo-Dionysius). I know this is what you’ve been told again and again. But if you look at the evidence for success among pious devotees of these beliefs, you’ll find precious little in the way of consistent, positive, demonstrable outcomes such as improved health, improved standards of living, or improved family and community safety.

Which is how God measures these things.

God the Mother and God the Father know that your task here is to see what it feels like to juggle the needs of the 4D soul with the needs of the 3D body, with lots of chances to practise forgiveness thrown in (’cause it’s never too late to remember how). So God is very interested in helping you and your family achieve a state of relative good health (both physical health and mental health) until it’s your time to Go Home (colloquially known as dying).

Naturally, a God who’s interested in helping you stay healthy is going to be very worried about the painful effects of addiction in your life, since addiction is one of the major causes of suffering among human beings. Addiction issues create physical suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering, family suffering, and community suffering. Addiction also creates financial suffering and educational suffering and job-related suffering. It gets in the way of everything that’s positive and selfless and healing.

So . . . it should take you all of about five seconds to realize that God and God’s angels are not going to be supportive of choices based on status addiction.

Even if the myth surrounding the status addiction is a religious myth.

The general assumption seems to be that God is tolerant of all religious beliefs and all religious myths because, when push comes to shove, these religious traditions have one thing in common: they confer status points on God.

Only an emotionally immature person would conclude that God actually wants status points.

Unfortunately, all too many emotionally immature individuals have gradually fallen into the trap of status addiction, where, mired in the swamps of narcissism and bullying, and looking at others through the characteristic tunnel-vision thereof, it seems perfectly logical to conclude that the correct way to approach God is to offer status points. After all, the giving and taking of status points is a normal way of existing (though not a normal way of living) for many human beings on Planet Earth.

As humans, we don’t like to hear that angels have free will, but they do. Your own guardian angels use their free will to decide when, how, and if they’ll respond to your requests for aid – even if it means you have to go through some rough patches to get where you need to go.

So don’t do it. There aren’t a lot of strict rules to follow on the Spiral Path, and even this one isn’t really a rule, since you can ignore me and do whatever you like because you have free will. But before you make that choice, you need to know there are consequences for the choice to seek status on the spiritual journey. Here is the consequence: your guardian angels will stop helping you. They’ll still love you. They’ll still forgive you. But they won’t enable you as you rejoice in the high of an addiction disorder — any addiction disorder, including status addiction.

Just as family members of a person with addiction issues know it’s wrong to enable dysfunctional behaviours, angels know it’s wrong to enable dysfunctional and harmful behaviours. It’s courageous and loving and forgiving of them to refuse to enable the choices of status addiction. And why would we want it any other way?

Angels will help you find healing once you make the choice to be honest about your addiction. They’ll guide you to people and books and learning experiences and medical treatments that will help you heal. But they’ll let you fall flat on your face over and over until you accept the truth that your status addiction isn’t pretty and isn’t divine and isn’t acceptable to anyone, including your core self.

During my theology classes, I was required to read the teachings of Christian theologians from the time of Paul the Apostle to the modern day. I read many different explanations for why human beings suffer, but never once, except in the teachings of Jesus himself, did I come across the one explanation that fits all the facts: God refuses to be an enabler of status addiction.

The communities in the world today that have the highest standards of health, the highest standards of living for the middle and lower classes, the lowest levels of crime and corruption, and the highest standards of ethical, legal, and interpersonal conduct are the communities with the least cultural emphasis on status acquisition.

Too often it’s assumed the recipe for success in these communities is the abolition of faith, a rejection of belief in God — that is, atheistic societies built on humanistic values without religious superstitions to hold people back.

Faith in God never holds a person back. But religious institutions which are deeply committed to the preservation of status addiction can and do hold people back. This is a biological reality.

Keep the idea of God. Ditch the idea of status acquisition and status addiction in all its nasty and insidious forms.

As a spiritual practice, it’s simple. It’s sane. And it works.

Because your guardian angels are thrilled to help you when you aren’t being such an ass.

Next time I’ll talk about some of the ways in which your angels can help you. I think you’ll be very surprised to learn what matters to them.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), faith, free will, HDM Myths, healing miracles, prayer, relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

19 Feb 2012

TBM 22: Why I Don’t Endorse "A Course In Miracles"

In the past few days, I’ve been busily researching the well-known text called A Course in Miracles (Foundation for Inner Peace, Publisher. A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. 2nd ed. Mill Valley, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1992.).

The Three Magi (felt panel (C) JAT)

I purchased this book at Chapters a few years ago. I’m not sure exactly when I bought it. It was probably in 2004 or 2005. In more recent years, I’ve made a habit of noting the date of purchase on the title page of my new acquisitions, and there’s no purchase note in my copy of ACIM, as it’s commonly known. But I picked up a copy when I saw it at the bookstore because I like to have primary sources on my bookshelves — books written by mystics rather than books written about mystics. I like to read for myself what famous mystics and channellers of the past have written in their own words.

You can tell a lot about a person’s internal brain architecture by reading what they’ve written or what they’ve “transcribed” in a mystical state.

Although no author is listed on the title page of ACIM, it was written between 1965 and 1972 by a New York professor of medical psychology named Helen Schucman. She was aided in this process by her colleague William Thetford, who was also a professor of psychology. (You can read more about it by googling ACIM, Helen Schucman, and William Thetford.)

Schucman was 56 years old when she went through a four-month period of “unusually vivid dream sequences” and “unusual waking experiences.” She gradually began to discern an inner character, a voice who spoke to her and identified himself as Jesus. At first she heard this voice only in her dreams. One day, however, she was sitting in her home when she heard the same voice say to her while she was awake, “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.”

So she took notes. Lots and lots of notes. She used shorthand to write down what the inner voice was dictating, and her colleague Bill Thetford transcribed the notes onto a typewriter as she read them aloud. Apparently she at times needed a lot of reassurance from Thetford to keep going with this process. Thetford eventually edited the material with the help of a third clinical psychologist, Kenneth Wapnick.

I have a lot of concerns about this material. I have concerns about the state of Schucman’s mental function when she was hearing the inner voice. I have concerns about the motives of Bill Thetford, who coaxed her into continuing to “channel” even when she repeatedly expressed her uncertainty. (As a clinical psychologist, he ought to have known better.) I have concerns about the extent to which other people — including Thetford and Wapnick — oversaw and edited the raw material and helped popularize it through a Foundation created on the other side of the country. I have concerns about the report given by Benedict Groeschel, a Roman Catholic priest and psychologist, who knew Schucman well. Groeschel said that in the last two years of her life Schucman was suffering from a severe psychotic depression. (She died in 1981). If she were writing this material today, I would want to see her current brain scans and I would want to investigate through conventional medical means the possibility that at age 56 Helen Schucman was showing early signs of a dementia with dissociative features.

If you open up any page of A Course in Miracles, what you’ll find is stream of consciousness poetry that resonates with the words and the imagery of ancient mystical texts. It is apophatic mysticism in one of the purest forms I’ve ever seen — a sort of modern day Gnostic Docetism.

Here is an example (one of many, many examples) of the Docetic/Gnostic content of ACIM: “It should especially be noted God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its Oneness transcends the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then can the meaning of wholeness in the true sense be understood. Any part of the Sonship can believe in error or incompleteness if he so chooses. However, if he does so, he is believing in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement (Chapter 2, Section VII, para. 6).”

Sounds very lofty, very wise, very ethereal, eh?

Small paragraphs taken out of context in ACIM sound this way much of the time, which is probably why the text has been so popular with spiritual seekers who are fed up with traditional religious teachings. The book seems to have so many helpful insights! The problem comes when you try to paste all the paragraphs together. When you paste them together, you don’t have a coherent body of thought with a logical structure and a strong foundation in science. What you have is a circular stream of cliches, cliches that were robbed from other writers (albeit unwittingly) and pasted together in a hamster wheel of Wisdom (“Sophia” in ancient Greek).

A Course in Miracles will take you round and round in circles, but it won’t help you move forward along the Spiral Path because it’s not grounded in reality.

The “Workbook for Students,” which follows 666 pages of “revelation,” contains 365 lessons for spiritual students. Three hundred and sixty-five lessons! (Does anyone need that many?) In my opinion this isn’t a one-year course in miracles — it’s a one-year course in how to become dissociated from your own free will, your own thoughts and emotions, and your own soul’s inner wisdom.

I mean, come on, if you tell your biological brain for a whole year that “nothing I see in this room means anything” (Lesson #1), what do expect your biological brain to do with that? If you tell yourself for a whole year that “This table does not mean anything. This chair does not mean anything. This hand does not mean anything. This foot does not mean anything. This pen does not mean anything (page 3 of Part II),” what do you honestly think your brain is going to do? Your brain — whose job it is to follow the instructions you give it — is going to stop assigning meaning to anything.

Just as you’ve told it to do.

I don’t know about you, but I see one of the greatest causes of suffering in this world as people having too little meaning in their lives, not too much.

When I look at a chair, I see lots of meaning. In the chair I see chemistry and physics at work. I see God the Mother and God the Father sharing baryonic matter with their children who are incarnated here on Planet Earth — children who need all the help they can get! I see an important household item that adds to my sense of comfort and household beauty. I see a medical device, if you will, that helps support my back so I don’t get a backache. I see a product of economic health and well being. (I had to pay money for the chair.) I see the hard work of many people — the people who designed the chair, tested the chair, manufactured the chair, transported the chair, and sold the chair — all people who deserve to make a living.

I see relationships in the chair. And I feel grateful for these relationships.

Relationships are real. Relationships are the very foundation of everything that’s real and meaningful in our lives. I refuse to accept any spiritual or religious teaching that tries to force me to stop seeing relationships in the world around me.

Recently I spoke with a young woman I’ve been acquainted with for the past couple of years. When I saw her a few weeks ago, she looked distracted and unfocussed, and her affect was sort of “flattened.” I asked her how she’s been doing.

Terrible, she said. In the past two months, she’s been to eight funerals. One was the funeral of her elderly grandmother. But the others were all suicides. Suicides of “successful” twenty-something year olds.

I was shocked and horrified to hear her speak of friends she’s known since day care who are choosing to hang themselves.

People choose to hang themselves for a lot of different reasons, but it’s not something people tend to do when they feel there’s a way out of their sense of emptiness or hopelessness or depression. Seeking help from others, speaking about major mental illness, accepting appropriate medical treatment, and finding an ethical spiritual mentor are all ways that can help people restore a sense of faith and trust and love in their lives and in their relationships — including their relationship with themselves.

But telling people who are already suffering from emptiness or hopelessness or depression that their suffering isn’t real and is only an illusion . . . that’s just plain cruel.

This is why I refuse to endorse any of the teachings or methods of A Course in Miracles. In my view, the Course is just plain cruel.

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, apophatic mysticism, dissociation, Gnosticism, HDM Myths, healing, religion and mental Illness, The Blonde Mystic and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

20 Nov 2011

RS13: One Path to Manyness NOT Many Paths to Oneness

A: A few days ago I was talking to you — complaining to you, actually — about the idea of religious Oneness, the idea that all major world religions teach the same core values through many different paths. You responded in typical Jesus fashion. You said, “There are not many paths to oneness, but one path to manyness.” You wanna talk about this new Yeshuism? (I think I just invented a new word.)

J: As an angel, I’m getting pretty tired of listening to all the excuses and all the lies that are being told by devout conservative thinkers of all religions. And I’m not alone in my exasperation. God’s angels know what human beings are capable of, and you know what? Not many people these days even care. Most people are not being raised by their families or communities to know or care about human potential.

The current trend in the West is to put all religious leaders and religious texts on an equal footing, which is to say they’re placing them all on a sacred pedestal of immunity — immunity from scrutiny, immunity from common sense. It’s a misguided attempt to prevent anyone from having their “feelings hurt.” God isn’t in the business of preventing people from having their feelings hurt. God is in the business of forgiveness and transformation, of helping each child of God to reach his or her true potential.

A: When you say “his or her true potential,” what do you mean by that? Do you mean some sort of evolutionary advancement in human consciousness, as recent writers of popular fiction have been saying?

J (smiling mischievously): Hey, it’s a great way to earn some big bucks, but it ain’t no way to make your guardian angel smile.

A: I’ve been noticing over the past few years that the writers who make the biggest promises are the ones least likely to know what it means, what it feels like, to live in the Christ Zone. I’m very suspicious of anyone who tries to sell spirituality and faith as something that exists outside the realities of normal everyday life.

J: Most people live hard lives. They suffer a lot. Their children suffer a lot. They need ways to cope. One of the most popular ways of coping is Escape. Escape with a capital “E.” Many people use alcohol or drugs to escape. Many use sex. But many, many people escape through storytelling — through books, films, plays, or religious mythology. Religious mythology and plays have both been around for a long, long time. They’re popular. They’re traditional. But this doesn’t make them true — not in a literal sense. They may be true in an allegorical sense. They may help people express and cope with their own feelings, and in this sense the stories are useful and helpful. But for human beings to make up stories about God and then peddle them as literal truth . . . this is completely unacceptable. Unacceptable to God and unacceptable to the soul of each human being. A religious tradition that teaches its children elaborate, fantastical histories of Creation — when it’s actually not possible for any human being anywhere to understand or convey the scientific history of Creation — is not teaching its followers about God. It’s teaching the path of Oneness. It’s teaching the path of narcissism and contempt for God. It’s teaching children to blindly obey their human leaders. This is mind control, not faith.

A: I’ve been working for years with you on the question of Creation as a scientific and historical reality, and the more I learn the more I realize I don’t understand it. I have no interest in going “on the record” with the tiny bit I’ve learned so far. This would be hubris, in my opinion.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. You’re saying that faith and blind obedience are mutually exclusive choices.

J: Exactly. Faith, as you and I have defined it, is an experience of enduring relationship with God in the absence of sacred texts. This means that an individual who has never read the Bible is fully capable of being in mature relationship with God on a daily basis.

A: A lot of people would say it’s impossible to know God or be in relationship with God if you don’t have a sacred book to guide you. Sort of like trying to find your way to the North Pole without a map.

J: Well, here’s the thing. Everyone — and I mean everyone — is born with an inner map. The inner map is hardwired into your DNA and expresses itself through your brain architecture. If you’re raised in such a way that your biological brain is reasonably balanced, guess what? The map lights up inside your head even though you’re just a regular guy/gal who’s trying to live a humble life. In fact, the map will only light up inside your head if you’re a regular guy/gal who’s trying to live a humble life. This is the way God designed the biology of the human brain. The human brain and central nervous system are designed in such a way that there’s only one way to achieve a state of mature relationship with God. This one way is to balance the competing needs shown in the Christ Zone model.

A: Juggling the physiological needs with the safety needs, the love & belonging needs, and the self-esteem needs.

J: Yes. It is an indisputable scientific fact that when a child is raised in a way that consistently balances and honours these four main needs, this child will grow up to be remarkably stable, responsible, mature, organized, practical, funny, humble, and interested in building strong relationships with others, including God.

A: Why these attributes and not others? Why not competitive, aggressive, focussed, dedicated?

J: Because mature, responsible people aren’t competitive and aggressive. They’re hard working and competent without being competitive and aggressive. Furthermore, they don’t want to be competitive and aggressive. They prefer to be humble and happy.

A: So competitive and aggressive don’t fit on the same page with humble and happy?

J: Nope. “Competitive and aggressive” fit very nicely on the same page with traditional orthodox Western Christianity, but not on the same page with what I taught.

A: Hmmmm. The Crusades spring to mind. Plus Christian slave-owning. And Christian evangelism. I’m not too fond of Christian preaching on sin and salvation.

J: If you look closely at Paul’s theology of sin, salvation, sacraments, and separation from God, what you see is a systematic attempt on Paul’s part to undermine all four needs of the Christ Zone model. You see him savaging the soul’s need for self-esteem by telling people they’re full of sin and can’t get rid of it no matter how hard they try (which is why they need Christ’s intervention). You see him crushing all hope that regular people can be in full relationship with God — in a state of love and belonging with God — except maybe on the future Day of Judgment. You see him steal away people’s sense of safety and trust in God by preaching about grave perils and dangers and demons and cosmic forces such as Sin and Law. You see him even try to rob people of the chance to add meat to their diet through fear of committing idolatry. Small portions of meat protein are important to the physiological health of most human beings. Same with healthy, respectful sexuality, which Paul also tries to undermine by playing the guilt card.

Of course, one of the biggest tip-offs about Paul’s true intent is his attitude towards slavery. He doesn’t say that slavery is wrong, that it’s morally reprehensible. He side-steps all the brutal realities of slavery, which include the frequent withholding of proper food and shelter (physiological needs); the complete annihilation of all safety needs (safety of the core self, the psychological self, the sexual self, the relationship self, the trusting self); the replacement of true love and belonging needs (i.e. the “one path to manyness”) with false teachings on love and belonging (i.e. “we are all one in Christ” or “the many paths to oneness”); and as for self-esteem . . . well, come on, now, self-esteem is intertwined with egalitarianism and wholeness and self-respect and empathy, and a slave isn’t offered any of these things by his masters. It’s a rare slave who finds the inner courage to overcome all these obstacles on his or her own. However, it does happen and can happen. Human beings are extraordinary and awe-inspiring when they decide to take full possession of their own inner map and follow it instead of these numbskull religious teachings.

A: Just now you linked true loving and belonging needs with the one path to manyness. Can you explain that in more detail?

J: All people need love and belonging. They need to belong to families or communities or friendship groups. It’s normal and healthy. In fact, they can’t be in full relationship with God if they’ve never had any of their love and belonging needs met in their everyday human lives.

A: Why not?

J: Because their brains have never learned over time how to have relationships with anybody. They’ve never learned how to listen with all their heart to another person, how to maintain respectful boundaries with another person, how to communicate clearly without getting angry and controlling, how to compromise. Again, this is all scientifically verifiable. Thousands and thousands of books have been written on these topics. This isn’t New Age fluff I’m talkin’ here. This is the stuff of real life, real psychology, real change. People’s lives get better when they learn how to do relationships. People’s lives get worse when they ignore their relationship needs. Nobody gets out of this reality. Nobody. God doesn’t intend that individuals should be able to find their own inner map by going off into the desert to live alone for months or years. It isn’t normal and it isn’t healthy. You can only see who you are in relationship with God if you know who you are in relationship with other people. You have to love your neighbours — your neighbours on Planet Earth — if you want to know what it feels like to love your God.

A: Because God the Mother and God the Father are NOT you. They’re not One with you. They’re part of a family WITH you. But they’re not you. So you have to get to know them the way you’d get to know any of your other neighbours.

J: Yes. Angels walk side by side, hand in hand. We are the many who share the values of divine love, courage, devotion, gratitude, and trust. We are the many who are a family united in love. We are the many who can flourish in our own distinctiveness because there’s only one path to true love and belonging.

That path is the path of balance.

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Posted in "4 S's", "Escape", Christ Zone, Church of today, Favourite Posts, HDM Myths, Paul vs Jesus, Realspiritik, relationship with God, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged brain-soul connection, Kingdom teachings, science & faith | Leave a Comment

24 Jul 2011

JR60: The Utoeya Tragedy in Norway

Sadness. Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: Well, big guy, when you’re right you’re right. On Tuesday (July 19, 2011) you talked honestly but in general terms about the mindset of psychopaths. You talked about a psychopath who props himself up with ideology and believes he’s a nice person.

Three days later, on Friday, July 22, 2011, Norwegian police arrested a 32 year old Norwegian man Anders Behring Breivik on charges of setting off a car bomb in Oslo and later mowing down at least 84 young people at a summer camp northwest of Oslo — on the island of Utoeya. The report I read in Saturday’s Globe and Mail (“Death toll reaches 91 in Norway attacks” by Walter Gibbs and Anna Ringstrom (Reuters)) gives some background information about Breivik. Early accounts referred to the gunman’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. (Since then, his Facebook page has been blocked.) His Facebook page apparently listed interests in bodybuilding, conservative politics, and freemasonry. He described himself as “a Christian, leaning toward right-wing Christianity.” He may also have been a a gun club member.

The real kicker is this: The Reuters account says, “Norwegian media said he had set up a Twitter account a few days ago and posted a single message on July 17 saying: ‘One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.'”

This is a horrible real-life example of exactly what you’ve been talking about for months now on this site. It’s almost exactly word for word what you’ve been saying. An ideologue — a psychopath who’s got his teeth sunk deep into a Big Idea — is capable of the most vicious crimes.

J: People from all quadrants, especially the conservative Christian quadrant, will be rushing in to offer their breathless analysis of “what went wrong.” They’ll speculate and cluck their tongues on the question of why a man who had so much, a man who appeared to be so capable and logical and well-organized, went so badly off the rails. Many people will shrug and say, “It’s just life. Humanity’s a pile of shit anyway, so who should be surprised?” Pious religious folk, including devout orthodox Christians, will invoke the Devil, as they usually do when they don’t want to look at themselves and their own contribution to man-made evils such as the Utoeya tragedy. They’ll say, “Satan possessed him and took his soul,” and similar bullshit. Not many people will be looking at this man and his ongoing choices and saying, “This man turned himself into a psychopath. On purpose. Because he liked the high of hurting other people.” But that’s the only appropriate response.

This is the response the angels around me are having to this crisis. God’s angels know what this man did this to himself. We forgive him, as we always forgive our brothers-and-sisters-in-temporary-human-form. But we can see this man’s brain, and this man’s brain is a seriously fucked-up mess. It also happens to be a fucked-up mess in a highly predictable and observable fashion. There’s a pattern to his behaviour. A definite, clear, observable pattern. Brain scans would show this pattern. Nobody has to take my word for it. Prove it to yourselves through more research. Please!

A: Don’t blame the Devil. Blame the brain.

J: Yes. You have to place the responsibility where it lies: squarely on the brain of this man Breivik. He made the choices and he made the plan. It’s his responsibility. Years ago he stopped listening to his own soul. But he’s still in charge of the rest of his brain and the rest of his choices, and he’s still responsible — legally and morally responsible — for his choice to use his logic and planning skills to carry out an intentional crime against humanity. He’s not a nice person, and he needs to be held to account during his human lifetime for the suffering he’s chosen to create.

A: Is it actually possible for a person who’s just mowed down 84 teenagers with a gun to still believe he’s a nice person? How could he possibly think that? It’s beyond belief! (Note: As of July 30, 2011, the number of dead at Utoeya is reported at 69, with the number of injured at almost 100.)

J: It’s beyond belief to you because you’re not a psychopath. You have a conscience and connections to your heart and soul. Brievik has no such connections. He decided years ago to cut them off inside his own brain.

A: But . . . how is that possible? How can a human being actually sever connections inside their own brains? Aren’t there fail-safes for that? Aren’t there Darwinian imperatives to prevent that from happening?

J: The human brain is an extremely complex series of organs. Way more complex than any other system in the biological body.

A: This month’s issue of Scientific American says essentially the same thing on the Forum page. (“A Dearth of New Meds: Drugs to treat neuropsychiatric disorders have become too risky for big pharma” by Kenneth I. Kaitin and Christopher P. Milne, Scientific American, August 2011, p. 16.)

J: I can’t emphasize enough the stupidity of treating the human brain as if it’s a single organ like the heart, and the insanity of pretending that human beings don’t have information from their souls hardwired into their DNA. And when I say “souls” I mean only good souls. I have no time or patience for patently abusive religious doctrines such as original sin. I will not tolerate any Christian saying to me, “Oh, yes, of course we believe in the scientific reality of original sin being hardwired into our human DNA! Why, anybody can see he was born evil!” This is NOT what I mean.

Our man Breivik wasn’t born evil. He wasn’t born in a state of original sin. His biology has been gradually changed and altered over many years because of conscious choices he’s been making. It’s taken years for him to become a psychopath. Years. But the signs have been there. The signs of his status addiction and his obsessive compulsive dysfunction are clear from his Facebook page and other reports. He was fixated on bodybuilding, conservative politics, guns, freemasonry, right-wing Christianity, and the Big Idea of “us versus them” (i.e. Dualism). This is a package deal, folks. An observable package, an observable pattern of choices followed by an observable pattern of behaviour. Why would Breivik’s soul, his true self, like any of these things? Why would his true loving self enjoy obsessive bodybuilding that damages the physical body over time? Why would his true loving self choose conservative politics that take away the sense of balance in a community between the rights of an individual and the rights of the group? Why would his true loving self think it’s fun to shoot other people for the heck of it? Why would his true loving self accept the myths of Hierarchy and Dualism?

Why would he choose any of these things if he were in a state of balance and wholeness? He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t do it. It would feel wrong to him. But he can’t feel that wrongness because he opted years ago to start listening only to the stupid parts of his own brain — the parts of the brain that are supposed to help people look after aspects of their human lives that are purely 3D, purely temporary. Necessary but temporary because life on Planet Earth is temporary.

A: In the past you’ve called these parts of the brain the Darwinian circuit.

J: Yes. There are parts of the brain devoted to human physiological needs and human safety needs. These can be thought of in a general way as the Darwinian circuitry. There are also parts of the brain that specialize in the soul’s need for love and belonging, along with the soul’s need for self esteem. These latter two parts can be thought of as the Soul circuitry. All these parts have to be working together in order for a person to feel balanced and whole and sane and safe. Self-actualized, as Abraham Maslow called it. All these parts are needed for the experience of faith — genuine soul-based faith. It should go without saying that our man Breivik has the Big Idea but absolutely no faith. He calls himself a Christian, but he has no faith. All he has is the Big Idea.

A: You talked on Tuesday about score cards. You said a psychopath has a score card inside him instead of a heart.

J: The great dilemma for the psychopath — the person who’s dissociated from his own empathy and his own ability to love and trust — is how to get through the day. How to fill up all the looooooong, boooooooring hours between waking and sleeping.

A: Seriously?

J: Oh, yeah. Tell a psychopath he has to sit under a tree and be still and quiet for 8 hours and he’ll want to pull his hair out.

A: Really? I could sit under a tree for 8 hours and have a wonderful time.

J: Yes, but you don’t feel empty inside. You don’t feel purposeless and hopeless and restless and bored all the time.

A: Sometimes I feel restless.

J: How often?

A: I don’t know. Maybe a couple of times each week.

J: A psychopath feels like this all the time. He lives constantly for the next brief high, the next brief hit of status or cocaine or sex. It’s all he’s got to get him through the day. There’s only such much cocaine he can do each day, only so many times he can get an erection each day. So the mainstay for him is status points. He’ll do anything to get status points for his internal scorecard. He’ll keep his cell phone on 24 hours each day so he can get a “hit” from the fact that he’s needed by somebody at 4:00 in the morning. He’ll check his Facebook status 20 or 30 times each day. He’ll play computer or video games that rack up big points. He’ll gamble. He’ll gossip. He’ll focus fanatically on professional sports. Or, if he goes in a religious direction instead of a secular direction to find his daily supply of status points, he’ll become a man of the Book. A pious, obedient follower of the Law. An obsessive compulsive religious devotee.

A: But not a nice person. Not a person of empathy and patience and humbleness.

J: He has to choose between being an addict and being a nice person. He can’t be both at the same time.

A: Yet he’s certain he can be. He’s certain he’s a nice person who’s not an addict.

J: What’s the greatest obstacle to healing for those who suffer from addiction?

A: Denial.

J: Our Norwegian man, Mr. Breivik, is in a serious state of denial about his addiction to status. He’ll have no chance of recovery as a human being until somebody is honest with him about the nature of his addiction. Unfortunately for him, the doctrines of orthodox Christianity will only excuse his behaviour rather than force him to confront it. Pauline Christianity is, in essence, an anti-Twelve-Step Program.

This isn’t exactly the sort of helpful Church teaching God’s angels have in mind.

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, Christ Zone, conscience & morality, dualism, HDM Myths, Jesus Redux, Original Sin, psychopathy, psychopathy (niceness), status addiction, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

15 Jul 2011

JR58: The "My Fellow American" Interfaith Initiative

A: I was contacted this week by a person who’s working with the Unity Productions Foundation on an interfaith initiative called My Fellow American. The goal of the initiative is to encourage Americans to think of their fellow Americans who happen to be Muslim as fellow Americans. There’s a 2 minute film produced by Unity, and there are also uploaded videos and stories from various supporters of the idea that all Americans are equally American, regardless of religion. What do you think of this project?

J (grinning): I think you should post the address.

A: Oh yeah. Good thinking. The address is http://myfellowamerican.us/

I discovered when I went to watch the film how truly outdated my computer really is. Computer updates are not my thing. Good thing the computer at work has more juice in it.

The person who contacted me also wondered if I could maybe Tweet about the project if I checked it out and liked it. I don’t know how to tell her this, but I don’t even own a cell phone. So the Tweeting is pretty much out.

J: Everybody has their own way of communicating with others.

A: Anyway, I certainly can’t argue with the basic principle of treating all your neighbours with dignity and respect and compassion and kindness regardless of religion. This is what makes a society internally strong.

J: The one thing people have to remember is that all human beings are children of God. A Muslim woman is just as a much a child of God as the saints of Christian history. To deny a woman dignity and respect simply because she’s Muslim is to withhold divine love from your neighbour. It’s as simple as that.

A: I think some people are afraid that if they love and accept the woman with an open heart they’ll be required to love and accept all the religious teachings that are part of her tradition. At least that’s how they view it.

Regardless of religious affiliation, we’re all children of God. Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

J: Religious teachings are very much a human thing. Divine love, on the other hand, is a soul thing. Divine love always trumps religious teachings. Every religion on the face of Planet Earth today has problems — problems with abusive doctrines, problems with gender issues, problems with “law,” and problems with balance. Every religion. Islam is no different from Christianity in this regard. Sure, Islam has some problems. But so does orthodox Western Christianity. This is no excuse for failing to love your neighbour and failing to believe in his or her best self. Everybody’s struggling. People of all religions have to hold each other up. People have to work together. It’s the only way to find healing.

A: The 10-year anniversary of 9/11 is coming up. Some people haven’t got over the shock. They’re still looking for someone to blame.

J: If they’re looking for someone to blame, then they should be looking at the unassailable laws of neurophysiology, not at religion. Only a seriously, seriously dysfunctional individual thinks it’s okay to blow up buildings “in the name of God.” This applies across the board to all religions and all cultures. Christianity has had its fair share of psychopaths in martyrs’ clothing, too. Psychopathy is a social, medical, and educational issue. Psychopathy is about as far from genuine relationship with God as it’s possible to get.

The vast majority of Muslims and Christians and those of other faiths are doing their best to get closer to God — not farther away from God and faith — even though they make mistakes along the way. People of all faiths are constantly learning, changing, growing. Traditions change. Religious teachings change. The one core truth that doesn’t change is the reality of the good soul, and the potential of all human beings to help each other understand this reality. If you allow yourself to be open to this truth, amazing things can happen in your community. Whatever community you happen to live in.

A: There are some psychopaths in positions of religious authority.

J: Yes. But there are also psychopaths in positions of political and economic and educational authority. Psychopathy is an entirely separate issue from the question of faith. Inherent to the definition of psychopathy is a total lack of conscience and empathy — in other words, a disconnection from all that enables true faith, true relationship with God. A psychopath seeks status, not faith, when he or she chooses to blow up buildings. It’s entirely a question of status addiction. Can we say this status addiction is true of “all Muslims”? Well, OF COURSE NOT. This would be the same as saying that every person who lives in Boston must be a status-addicted psychopath simply because he or she happens to live in Boston. It isn’t right or fair to make such a claim.

A: Claims such as this have been fairly common over the course of history, though.

J: True. These claims fall under the umbrella of the HDM Myths that you posted about on Concinnate Christianity. (http://concinnatechristianity.blogspot.com/2010/11/it-takes-village-non-hdm-village-that.html ). Group myths of Hierarchy, Dualism, and Monism. Again, these are human myths, human choices, that have nothing to do with the faith of the soul. Challenge the myths and heal the soul, remembering always that the soul is not the aspect of the self that’s perpetuating these myths. It’s certain parts of the biological brain that have gone off the rails, so to speak, and now enjoy the addictive high of schadenfreude. For a person suffering from status addiction, there’s just nothing better than a good hit of mental revenge and religious hatred to get you through the day. It’s cheaper than buying whiskey and cigarettes.

A: That’s a pretty tough statement.

J: Addiction is a pretty tough reality. Addiction destroys lives. Better to be honest about its effects.

A: Because, as you often say, healing follows insight.

J: My hat’s off to the My Fellow American participants because they’re doing their best to help others in their community be their best selves. And they’re working together as a team to teach and share and communicate in relationship with each other. As an angel, I can’t ask for more than that.

Addendum, October 16, 2023: It’s been 12 years since I wrote this post with the soul who lived as Jesus.

The world has changed greatly during this time. One of the unfortunate changes has been an ideological shift towards monism within many educational institutions and humanitarian organizations in Western nations. This shift has taken society further away from the idea that people hold individual responsibility for their own choices. In place of the long-held Judeo-Christian value system built on free will, personal responsibility, and accountability to your own inner wisdom (what we call “conscience”), there has been a push to impose a value system based on “group banners” behind which individuals can hide.

No one can be his or her best self if “group banners” (especially religious “group banners”) are used as an excuse for hanging onto harmful traditions, hateful actions, or justification for revenge.

Mother Father God and your angels don’t care what your religious teachers say. What matters to God is how you choose to use your free will as a human being during your time on Planet Earth. If you decide it’s a great idea to hate other people on the basis of their religion, that’s not okay with God. The recent resurgence of anti-Semitism is therefore not okay with your own soul or your angels.

Anti-Semitism isn’t the only example of extreme hatred in today’s world, but right now it’s a cauldron of suffering, especially for those who are doing the hating.

It’s your job as a human being — as a soul in human form — to learn how to look past the “group banners” that breed hatred and divisiveness. Seek the best in others and stand your ground as a child of God. Treat each person you meet as an individual who is responsible for his or her own choices towards others and towards God. This probably means you’ll have to reject some of the destructive religious doctrines that are causing problems in the world today. But if that’s what you have to do so you can hear your own conscience, that’s what you have to do.

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Posted in conscience & morality, faith, free will, hatred, HDM Myths, Islam, Jesus Redux, monism, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, Soul, status addiction and tagged brain-soul connection, Divine Heart | Leave a Comment

04 Apr 2011

JR30: Foxes Have Holes, Canadians Have Gloves

A: I’d like to go back to some concepts we were discussing a few weeks ago about the soul (Saying 67 in the Gospel of Thomas). At that time, you stated that souls aren’t malleable. Yet you’ve also said that the soul is hardwired into human DNA, and elsewhere we’ve talked about the reality of neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to grow new brain cells. These three concepts seem to contradict each other. Can you explain?

J: It’s not that hard, really. I’m going to use the analogy of a hand in a glove.

A: Okay.

J: The core aspect of a person that’s eternal — the soul — can be likened to “the hand” in our analogy. Once you reach adolescence, your hand reaches its adult size and stops growing. It’s yours for life. Everything about your hand is shaped by your DNA –the size, shape, flexibility, skin pigmentation, fingernail growth, and, of course, your unique set of fingerprints. (For those born without hands, the same principle would apply, though obviously the analogy would pertain to a different portion of the biological body). The characteristics of the hand are not malleable. You don’t have a small-sized hand one day and an extra-large hand the next day. You don’t have a pianist’s hands one day and a mechanic’s hands the next. Even the fine details, such as your fingerprints, don’t change. You have the hand your DNA says you’re supposed to have, and that’s it. You can’t change the overall form or function. The form and function of your hand are pretty much “carved in stone.”

A: Except if you can afford plastic surgery.

J: That’s a surgical intervention intended to override your DNA. For the purposes of our example, we’ll stick to a more basic example — a person who lives in Canada and needs to wear a glove in the winter because it’s cold.

A: Hey, count me in. I carry my gloves in my coat pocket from October till April. Just in case it suddenly gets cold.

“Jesus said: Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay down his head and rest” (Gospel of Thomas 86). February Snow, photo credit JAT 2015.

J: The soul is like the hand of the hardy adult Canadian in our analogy. Its overall form and function are fixed. And there’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, it’s very helpful. Can you imagine how confusing life would be if your hand were very small on Monday and very large on Tuesday? How could you get anything done or decide what tools you need? How could you make long term plans? How could you decide on a career, a hobby, or a hands-on pursuit? You’d be in a constant state of anxiety because of the lack of certainty. It’s good to be flexible and creative, but you can only afford to be flexible and creative if some things in life are certain. Like the size of your hand.

A: And the shape of your soul.

J: Exactly. The shape of your soul is fixed. Knowing this can give you great courage, great strength. Knowing who you are as a soul gives you the courage to say “yes” to the things you ought to be doing and “no” to the things you ought not to be doing. It helps you avoid the years of pain and frustration you feel when you’re in the wrong job or the wrong location or the wrong relationship. The job you have may be a perfectly wonderful job from a logical point of view, but if it’s not the right job for you as a soul, you’ll get stressed out, and then you’ll get sick, angry, depressed. If you believe you are a soul, and if you believe your soul has a unique blueprint, you have a terrific foundation of certainty and constancy to build your life on.

A: And nobody can take it away from you.

J: They can’t take away your core self, your core blueprint, your soul. These belong solely to you. What they can take away, however, is the biological functioning of the parts of your brain linked to your human physiology. What they can take away is the glove that protects your soul during your human lifetime.

A: Explain how the glove works.

J: In our analogy of the hand in the glove, the glove represents the parts of your human biology that keep your temporary 3D human body functioning properly. But, like the glove that prevents warm-blooded fingers from freezing in minus 30 degree weather, the glove is essential to the health of the hand it protects. The glove isn’t the same substance, if you will, as the hand, but it protects the hand and is absolutely indispensable. After the glove has been worn for a while, it starts to mould itself to the unique shape of the hand it protects. Eventually you can recognize it in a pile of similar gloves because it has a unique combination of bend marks and stains and the like. It takes on the characteristics of its owner’s hand because it’s malleable.

A: You’re suggesting, then, that some of the circuitry in the brain and central nervous system is “fixed” — not malleable — because it’s linked to the soul’s blueprint. The rest of the circuits — the parts that deal with human survival needs — are not fixed and are instead intended to be malleable. Have I got that straight?

J (nodding): The human brain isn’t a simple blob of jello where all the parts inside your skull behave exactly alike. The human brain isn’t even a single organ — it’s several semi-autonomous organs working together. At least that’s the theory. What happens in the case of major dysfunction is that one or more of the “essential services” in the brain goes off-line. Without input from these “essential services,” other sectors of the brain don’t do their own job as efficiently as possible. They may go into overdrive and try to make up for the loss of the other services by doing more work than they’re designed for. Some parts of the brain end up underactive, and other parts end up overactive. These realities are now visible on brain scans.

A: What’s the final result of these imbalances?

J: In most cases the final result is a person who’s standing outside in bitterly cold weather and wearing a glove that’s covered in holes — big, ragged holes that let the icy wind in and make you want to retract all your fingers into a ball in the end of your coat sleeve. It doesn’t work very well.

A: So the thing to do is to fix the glove. Mend the holes and put new insulation in.

J: Mending the holes is what neuroplasticity is all about. The “essential services” that have gone off-line in the brains of many of today’s adults can be gradually healed and restored. Eventually it becomes possible for them to hear what their own inner self has been saying all along. Eventually it becomes possible for them to hear what God has been saying, too.

A: This is a very helpful, hopeful message. It’s much easier to begin the journey of healing when you have faith that your inner self is worth the trouble. It’s also easier when you have a basic understanding of what it is you’re trying to do.

J: I can’t emphasize enough the connection between insight and healing. The simple experience of achieving insight is not only emotionally and spiritually transformative, but it lays the groundwork for your biological brain (your “glove”) to rewire itself in positive, healing, holistic ways. Healing follows insight. Therefore, if you’re a tyrant who wants to cripple the people around you so you can acquire fame, money, power, and sex, your most effective strategy is to prevent people from acquiring their own unique healing insights. People can’t oppose you and overthrow you if they’re busy dealing with all the holes you’ve put in their heads.

A: Holes caused by HDM strategies (It Takes A Village – A Non-HDM Village, That Is).

J: Yes. Status-based strategies. Plus choices like slavery. Intentional withholding of food and resources to drive up prices, increase poverty, increase fear, and reduce political opposition. Subjugation of women. Refusal to educate children — either boys or girls or both. Burning of books. Controlling access to information. Lack of judicial transparency. Claims of religious infallibility. These are the strategies of tyrants.

A: What you’ve just described reminds me a lot of Hitler and his SS goons.

J: Actually, as I was talking, I was thinking of the religious tyrants of my day. The ones who were oppressing the regular people. Some things haven’t changed much in the last 2,000 years.

Addendum February 6, 2018: A February 3, 2018 Globe and Mail investigative piece called “Cracks in the Code” by Carolyn Abraham highlights how little we currently know about the relationship between our own DNA and our own biological realities. It’s not the simple cause-and-effect “Lego” model we’ve taken for granted. Instead, as a recent study from Canada’s Personal Genome Project shows, each individual has a surprising range of unique DNA quirks, puzzles, and mysteries. In my view, these DNA puzzles point to wider questions about consciousness, soul, and quantum biology.

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Posted in ethical mysticism, Favourite Posts, HDM Myths, healing, insight, Jesus Redux, psychopathy, Soul, soul blueprint, theodicy, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged brain-soul connection, science & faith | Leave a Comment

09 Feb 2011

JR8: Mystical Bloodlines, Mystical Castes

J: I’d like to start out today’s discussion by emphasizing a very important point. I want to emphasize that it’s wrong to make sweeping generalizations about any particular religion or religious tradition. Just as it’s wrong to “hate” somebody on their basis of their religion, it’s just as wrong to “love” somebody on the basis of their religion. Religious beliefs form a framework for people, a place to start on the journey of faith. But in the end, the only thing that matters as far as God is concerned is what choices you make as an individual. No religion has all the answers. No religion is even asking all the right questions. So when I come out swinging against a revered figure from the past such as John the Baptist, I’m not trying to attack huge groups of people. I have specific complaints about the choices made 2,000 years ago by John the Baptist while he was incarnated as a human being. I also have specific complaints about specific choices made by a number of individuals who were close to John at the time. However . . . and this is a big however . . . the choices made by John the Baptist 2,000 years ago have nothing to do with the choices open to individual people today. There is no “loss of honour” for readers today because of choices that were made by somebody else centuries ago. No real “loss of honour,” anyway. If individuals today believe I’m undermining their own personal sense of honour by exposing the reality — the harsh and painful truth — about ancient religious teachings, then they’ve got bigger problems than they realize.

A: Yes, but a lot of people still believe very deeply in ancient ideas such as the mystical power of bloodline. For these individuals, there’s such a thing as honour in the blood. Honour carried from generation to generation through the bloodline. Power carried from generation to generation. Divine rights carried from generation to generation. It’s one of the underpinnings of their modern day lives. So they’ll take enormous offense at what you’re saying. Gargantuan offense.

J: I’m sorry to have to say this, but a conviction in the innate mystical power of bloodlines is a fantasy superstition that belongs only in novels and films. God does not favour any one clan or family group over another. It should be clear to everyone by now what happens in the wider world when particular clans, tribes, or nations give themselves the label of “Chosen by God.” Nothing good comes of it. Nothing.

A: Yet it’s a myth-dream that’s found in most cultures and most places in the world. Not to mention most major world religions. Why is this myth-dream so universal?

J: It goes again to the issue we’ve been discussing — major mental illness.

A: Ooooh. I can hear the gasps already.

J: Well, I won’t apologize for saying what needs to be said. Individuals will have to deal with it. It’s the reality. It’s time the blunt reality was brought into the open. Other forms of violence and abuse have been brought forward, brought into the open in recent decades. It’s painful and awkward at first, but it’s only when people openly discuss their suffering that change begins.

A: As you’ve said many times to me, healing follows insight. Healing follows self-honesty and public transparency.

J: Abusers will keep their secrets for as long as they can. They won’t volunteer to tell people their dark secrets. Even when they’re caught, they typically deny they did anything wrong. Other people have to step forward, point the light of truth at the abusers, collect evidence of their wrongdoing, and demonstrate their guilt through a public, transparent, non-corrupt legal system. It’s the only way to change a society’s perception of what’s moral and what’s immoral.

A: Can you give some examples?

J: Sure. Not so long ago, it was considered acceptable by many North Americans to treat women as inferior “possessions” of men. It was considered acceptable to turn a blind eye to incest and child sexual abuse and child pornography. It was considered acceptable to dump vast quantities of highly toxic pollutants into the water, air, and earth.

A: These things are still going on.

J: Yes. But these choices are no longer considered acceptable by the majority of North Americans. There’s been a cultural shift. The harmful actions of the abusers — the narcissists and psychopaths — are no longer being condoned by wider public opinion. There are legal and social implications for the abusers now. The legal and social implications didn’t use to exist. They only exist today because a lot of decent people got on board with the idea that these particular choices — the choice to abuse women, the choice to abuse children, the choice to abuse the environment — are wrong. Immoral. Not acceptable in a compassionate community.

A: It’s a work in progress.

J: Yes. It’s astounding and beautiful and amazing because it shows the truth. It shows that if you boldly and honestly expose the reality of abuse, a lot of people will recognize the wrongness of the abusers’ choices. They’ll feel it deep in their bones.

A: Deep in their souls.

J: The soul is consciousness with a conscience. The soul knows the difference between right and wrong, between moral choices and immoral choices. The soul is not stupid. Everybody has a soul, and everybody comes “prewired,” so to speak, with a “right and wrong” package in their DNA. It’s why mentally mature, emotionally mature people instinctively recoil from certain actions, certain choices. They just feel in their gut that it’s wrong.

A: Except for the people with psychopathy. The psychopaths have lost access to the “right and wrong” package. They know it exists, because they can see it operating in the world around them, but they don’t care. They don’t recoil from horror and abuse the way other people do. Brain scans confirm that certain parts of their brains are underactive, other parts are overactive.

J: As I said, it’s a major mental illness.

A: One that isn’t in the DSM-IV, the bible of psychiatry.

J: Psychopathy is a touchy, touchy topic. It should come as no surprise that a lot of “successful” people in politics, business, religion, and entertainment have little regard for the nuances of “right and wrong.”

A: That’s a polite way of saying that many successful people are psychopaths.

“Jesus said: There was a rich man who had a great deal of money. He said, ‘I shall invest my money so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouses with produce, that I may lack nothing.’ These were the things he was thinking in his head, but that very night he died. Whoever has ears should hear” (Gospel of Thomas 63). Even psychopaths have a personal code of morality — a set of internal laws to live by — despite their lack of conscience. Competitiveness, dominance, perfectionism, obsessiveness, chosenness, and eradication of weakness are among the key markers of moral success for a psychopath. Needless to say, a psychopath has no use for traits such as love, tolerance, forgiveness, ambiguity, or individuation, despite what he or she may say out loud. Shown here is the entrance to the Chapel of John the Baptist, Westminster Abbey, England. Notice all the sharp, spiky, metal forks on the door — all the better to stab your heart as you try to open the door to relationship with God. Photo credit JAT 2023.

J: Again, no surprise. But these people have tremendous power, tremendous resources. It’s risky to piss off a psychopath. They think nothing of getting revenge. In fact, revenge is a favourite pastime. Even worse, psychopaths lose their ability to feel empathy for others, but at the same time, they show an eerily heightened grip on logic and a creepy ability to spot other people’s vulnerabilities. It’s scary how manipulative they can be in a purely cold, hard, logical way.

A: Almost as if they’re compensating for the loss of empathy and emotion by putting extra biological resources into their logic circuitry.

J: That’s exactly what psychopathy is. They’re trying to find a way to cope with life. They’re trying to find a workable system. They have no capacity for love, forgiveness, or trust. They’re so empty inside that they’re always looking for ways to fill the void. It’s a literal void, not just a metaphorical void. They can’t access certain functions of their brains. They can’t access the emotional circuitry they were born with. So they actually do feel empty, as if something’s constantly missing. They’re so narcissistic, however, that they believe everybody else on the planet feels as empty as they do. They think other people are faking it when they talk about love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust. In the world of the psychopath, love — mature, respectful love — is pure fantasy. It can’t be real. A psychopath feels nothing but contempt for the ideals of love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust.

A: A contempt that’s notably present in the orthodox doctrines of the Western Christian church.

J: True. But Christianity isn’t the only faith tradition that’s riddled with contempt for these compassionate ideals. I was dealing with the same contempt 2,000 years ago in Palestine. Lots of people were. Women, children, slaves, foreigners — all these people had to deal with the fallout of a religious tradition that had steadily erased all the empathy from the earlier spiritual traditions —

A: Like the Covenant Code in Exodus.

J: Like the all too brief Covenant Code. Bit by bit they replaced the Covenant Code’s early focus on human dignity with mystical authority for a few select men and their families. What scholars today call Second Temple Judaism bears so little resemblance to the Rabbinic Judaism practised today that I hesitate to even call the ancient religion “Judaism.” It was a bizarre caste system, really. It placed incalculable power in the hands of the High Priests and the Levites, who happily abused the “lesser tribes” of Israel — the lower Jewish castes. Meanwhile, the priests derived all their power, authority, and wealth from the “sacred books” they themselves wrote. A bit of a conflict of interest, don’t you think?

A: Yeah. I notice that after a while they decreed there could be no more prophecy. No more troublesome prophets standing up on soapboxes and speaking the truth.

J: The priests were always willing to endorse new prophetic voices off the record as long as those new voices reinforced the idea among the general population that Jews were the chosen people and Jerusalem’s priests were “the best of the best.”

A: Hence they could tolerate the Essenes, who required obedience to the caste system, but they couldn’t tolerate you, because you rejected the caste system in its entirety. And said so publicly.

J: The idea that Jews had allowed themselves to become enslaved to the priests may have entered my teachings more than once.

A: Yeah, I’ll bet.

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Posted in conscience & morality, empathy, Essenes, faith, HDM Myths, healing, intent, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, John the Baptist, occult themes, psychopathy, religion and mental Illness, slavery, Soul, status addiction and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

27 Nov 2010

CC45: Who Is the Snake in Genesis?

I make no apologies to anyone for trying to put the Book of Genesis in its proper historical context.

The Book of Genesis is one short piece of human writing, written for a specific purpose almost 2,300 years ago, and it’s not reasonable, fair, or honest to place so much authority on this book. To insist that Genesis is the inspired word of God is to show a profound lack of trust and faith in God. If you want to continue to proclaim that Genesis’s truth is more important to you than all the other evidence available to your mind, senses, and common sense, then please go ahead. But don’t tell me in the same breath that you believe with your whole heart in God. Because you don’t.

It’s not acceptable for people in the 21st century to read Genesis as if it were written yesterday by well-meaning modern theologians. It wasn’t. Genesis has to be understood in an ancient context — a context that no longer exists in the modern Western world. It wasn’t written for a postmodern world that believes in Newtonian science and human rights legislation. It was written for a world that believed at its core in occult magic and slavery.

Genesis was not written for Rabbinic Judaism or Christianity. Neither Rabbinic Judaism nor Christianity existed until the second half of the 1st century BCE. By that time, Genesis had been making the religious rounds for over 300 years. It was a very old text by the time both Jewish rabbis and early Christian preachers began to radically alter the way in which people were allowed to relate to God.

What was so different about early Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity in comparison to other religions of the time?

No Temple.

Judaism had to radically re-envision itself after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Christians, too, were supposed to pay more attention to their spiritual commitments and less attention to imperial temples. Neither 1st century religious group would have been recognizable to the people who wrote Genesis.

I don’t give a hoot that the people who wrote Genesis may have been Jewish or may have spoken Hebrew. They weren’t Jewish in the way that Judaism is practised today, any more than Alexander the Great’s armies were Macedonian in the way that Macedonians understand themselves today. It’s ridiculous to try to put 2,300 year old writings under the umbrella of political correctness. These writings were used in their early years for the express purpose of perpetuating HDM myths. For this reason, they need to be brought into the light of critical scholarship and examined honestly for what they actually say, instead of what we want them to say.

Among biblical scholars, there seems to be an almost fanatical self-imposed blindness when it comes to talking about the snake/serpent in Chapter 3 of Genesis (the snake that beguiles Eve). Many scholars will tell you that the snake shouldn’t be read as a metaphor for Satan/the Devil, and I agree with them. In place of the snake-as-devil reading, the preferred explanation these days is that the story about the snake describes the “broken relationship” between humanity and God, a brokenness which is in turn the cause for our suffering as human beings.

I’m all for the big moment of psychotherapeutic interpretation, when, after many months of quiet listening, the therapist suddenly drops a major insight onto the unsuspecting heart of the suffering patient. But, you know, I’m not getting the sense that the authors of Genesis really cared that much about your suffering.

And usually the transformative interpretation comes at the end, not at the beginning. At the beginning, nobody’s listening. It’s only after a patient has heard him/herself talking for a while that he/she is ready to hear what the therapist has to say. (Reality TV shows, while not always ethical or kind, have at least shown us time and again that insight follows relationship, not the other way around.)

There’s a much simpler and more obvious reading for the snake/serpent in Genesis, one that relates directly to the historical context of the Alexandrian authors.

The snake is Hellenism. Pure and simple.

Based on the evidence of Genesis, it seems that the Jewish scholars who lived in Alexandria, Egypt (a Hellenistic hot spot) were furious about the corrosive influence of Hellenistic religion and philosophy on their own traditions and beliefs, so they decided to fight back. They decided to give their faith community some ammunition to strengthen them in the great cultural war that Alexander the Great had unleashed on Egypt (and on many other places). This is a perfectly understandable motive. When outsiders push aggressively at you, you push back. Sometimes you push back with iron weapons. And sometimes you push back with words.

Gruppo del laocoonte, 04 by I, Sailko. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - httpcommons.wikimedia.orgwikiFileGruppo_del_laocoonte,_04.JPG#mediaFileGruppo_del_laocoonte,_

The Laocoon Group is a famous ancient marble excavated in Rome and now displayed in the Vatican. Laocoon was a Trojan priest who, according to myth, was killed, along with his sons, by serpents sent by a Greek god. (The identity of the Greek god, along with other details, varies from version to version of the myth.) Photo credit I. Sailko. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

In the early 3rd century BCE, nobody would have needed an explanation as to the snake’s identity. If I were to say to you today, “the Eagle did it,” you’re probably going to think “American eagle” (or maybe Roman legions, if you’re a real history buff). Same thing with the snake in the ancient world. The snake meant Greek ideas — Greek myths and Greek magic — which had had a HUGE impact on people’s thinking all around the Mediterranean, and not always for the better.

Biblical scholars profess to be puzzled about the great void in the canonical Hebrew scriptures around Alexander the Great and his conquest of Syria-Palestine. They see many accurate, verifiable references to other known historical events, historical persons, and military campaigns (e.g. the Assyrian conquest, the Babylonian conquest, and the return of Jewish exiles to Jerusalem). But there’s nothing — not a thing — in the canon about those Hellenistic bastards in the late 4th century.

Of course, Alexander’s successors created empires. And emperors never look sympathetically on explicit criticism, do they? In any dangerous religio-political climate (as Alexandria would have been in 275 BCE), writers of polemic have to tread carefully for their own protection and the protection of their communities.

So you disguise your polemic in metaphors. You never mention specific pharaohs (in this case, Ptolemaic emperors) by name. You identify your enemies through metaphor (the wily Greek snake who entraps vulnerable Jews). And you pretend to set your claims in the far distant past (the Patriarchal Age) so nobody can accuse you of current sedition.

And you conclude your story in Egypt. Not in Judah or Israel, but in Egypt. And the hero of your story — Joseph — is technically a slave, but he’s a slave with so much power and prestige that he has the ear of the (unnamed) Pharaoh. And God favours Joseph and his family, even though they all have to travel to . . . Egypt. And the hero and his kin inherit the fruits of God’s first covenant with Abraham.* And lo and behold! the first covenant says that Abraham’s descendants are promised all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates River — not coincidentally the choicest parts of Alexander’s empire!

Genesis is focussed on Egypt because it was written for Diaspora Jews who lived in Egypt.

What’s the big deal about that? It makes perfect sense in its own context. Let’s just accept that and move on.

* Gen. 15:1-21; there’s also a second covenant between God and Abraham in Gen. 17:1-27.

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Posted in A.N.E. Wisdom literature, Bible, Book of Genesis, Concinnate Christianity, Creationism, HDM Myths, Jerusalem Temple, relationship with God and tagged Wisdom literature | Leave a Comment

12 Nov 2010

CC41: It Takes a Village — A Non-HDM Village, That Is

What does HDM mean? It’s short for Hierarchy-Dualism-Monism (hence the need for a simpler moniker that people can actually remember and pronounce). But I’ll come back to that in a minute.

2017 marks the 150th anniversary of Canada’s founding as a nation. I found this Canadian maple leaf, a “mosaic” created from waxy leaf begonias, at one of Toronto’s soul-healing public gardens. It reminds me of what Canada is all about. Photo credit JAT 2017.

First I want to say thank you to the people of my village — Canada. I want to say how grateful I am to the people here. I’m totally aware that I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being a practising ethical mystic if I didn’t live in a community of people who just blow me away with their compassion, common sense, and high ethical standards.

It’s been common for the mystics of history to thank God for the blessings of their journey, and sometimes there’s also been praise for specific religious mentors or spiritual teachers who have guided the initiate along the way.

But I think it’s bigger than that. A mystic doesn’t sprout up from nowhere. I think it’s important to look at the whole context of a person’s upbringing before you can understand his or her spiritual context. If each person is, metaphorically speaking, a plant growing within a much larger garden, you need to know what kind of garden that person grew up in. Not just the immediate family environment (although that’s very important, of course), but the wider community environment. You need to know about the village which raised the child. What lessons did the village teach the child as he or she was growing up?

The village I grew up in — Canada, and more specifically the province of Ontario — was a place where people didn’t always agree, where political arguments were fought on major issues, where the painful lessons of recent history were still being processed and incorporated into both the law books and the daily lives of Canadians (lessons that stemmed from two World Wars and the Great Depression). The tension between French Canadian and English Canadian interests created several political and cultural firestorms as I was growing up. More recently, First Nations interests have reminded us that we all have to try harder to be a more inclusive, respectful society.

But we’ve got a few things right here. We have a pretty workable balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community, the responsibilities of the individual and the responsibilities of the community. We make mistakes, to be sure, but we’re open to the idea that we’ve made mistakes, and we’re open to the idea that mistakes can be fixed. So together we try to fix them.

We have publicly funded education and publicly funded health care that’s accessible to most Canadians. (I’m not going to say “accessible to all Canadians” because the truth is that some people are slipping through the cracks. But slow progress is being made.)

As a woman, I can attest to the fact that I’ve had the kind of opportunities that few women have had throughout the course of history or culture. Like many Canadian women, I’ve had two major blessings: the blessing of choice and the blessing of safety. Because my village was saying it was okay for me to choose, I was able to choose my own life path — my own education, my own husband, my own family size, my own career. Because my village was saying it was NOT okay for me, as a woman, to be abused, I was able to feel safe (most of the time) as I walked (literally and figuratively) down the streets of my community.

I didn’t create these blessings for myself. My village (including my family of origin) created the environment that allowed these blessings to flourish for me and for others. My role, as an individual, is to appreciate these blessings, to give back to others what I myself have received, and to teach those who follow (i.e. the younger generation) how to live with compassion, common sense, and high ethical standards.

Only after I began to explore philosophy — a necessary part of being a true mystic — did I come to understand that Canada is one of a small number of countries in the world whose culture is not bound together by one of the HDM myths that have plagued civilization since the get-go.

You can have a reasonable, balanced dialogue with a typical Canadian on just about any inflammatory topic such as homosexuality, refugee rights, gay marriage, gun registration, and access to health care, and you won’t come away from the discussion in fear of your life (not usually, anyway). You don’t have to worry that a religious or military death squad will show up in the middle of the night and take you away. (Unfortunately, advocates for social justice in other parts of the world still face these profoundly inhumane threats on an ongoing basis, as a perusal of any Amnesty International newsletter will quickly reveal.)

There are several reasons why Canada is a safer place, on the whole, in comparison to many other countries. One important reason is that most Canadians don’t get up each day and volunteer to put their brains through a meat grinder.

Yes, a meat grinder. HDM myths act like a meat grinder on your biological brain. You put a perfectly good holistically balanced brain/body/heart/soul into one end of the grinder, and out comes status-addicted mincemeat at the other end.

Ooo, yummy.

Sure, this kind of damage doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years, years of being told that you and your village are “better” than other people and other villages, and have therefore been chosen by God to save everybody else (i.e. Hierarchy). Or years of being told you and your village are “good/right,” whereas all other people and all other villages are “evil/wrong” (i.e. Dualism). Or years of being told that there’s actually only one village in the entire world, and all people are required to belong to it (i.e. Monism). These myths are abusive — spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically abusive. Eventually, they also become physically abusive.

Where’s my proof?

Here’s my proof.

In the early to mid-20th century, a group of Germans got it into their heads that they (“Aryans”) were “better” than other people and other villages, and they also got into their heads that they were God’s chosen people who deserved to rule. This myth of Hierarchy led to the European Holocaust.

In 1994, a group of Hutus in Rwanda got it into their heads that Hutus were “good/right” and Tutsis, along with peaceful Hutus, were “evil/wrong” people who deserved to die. This myth of Dualism led to the Rwandan Genocide.

In the 1970’s, a group of Cambodians in the Khmer Rouge Communist Party got it into their heads that it was okay to execute, starve, and more or less enslave anyone who was unsympathetic to the new ideals of “radical equality.” This myth of Monism led to the Cambodian Holocaust.

These examples are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Unfortunately, our history books contain all too many examples of mass suffering and oppression created by human leaders whose brains were/are totally addicted to the status that comes from these myths. It explains why these leaders seem to us to be psychopaths. They are psychopaths. They’re psychopaths because they’ve stopped listening to their own inner wisdom — their own soul — and instead have started listening to the “voice” of status addiction.

For status addicts, the very idea of balance in a political system is anathema.

In contrast, there’s no hierarchy to be “proven” in a social democracy where people willingly pay taxes (within reason, of course) to cover the cost of roads, schools, and hospitals. There’s no dualism to be “justified” in a social democracy that embraces a multi-party system of government held to account through transparency, checks and balances, ethics commissioners, and law courts. There’s no room for monism to even be considered in a social democracy that builds its laws and conventions on that sturdiest of all foundations: human rights legislation that respects and values the differences among people of different ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

It’s true that within Canada there are some smaller HDM villages, some places and some groups and even some religious communities that have fallen prey to the HDM myths. But, as a whole, we seem to want to work together as a team to build a non-hierarchical, non-dualistic, non-monistic society. And that’s a good thing.

See you at Tim’s!

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Posted in Concinnate Christianity, dualism, ethical mysticism, HDM Myths, My Spiral Path, mysticism, psychopathy, status addiction and tagged The Peace Sequence | Leave a Comment

10 Nov 2010

CC40: How My Experience as a Chemist Has Influenced My Mysticism

Theology at its best is a language — a language that helps individuals understand their relationship with God while not contradicting or denying one of God’s other important languages: science.

It’s important for God’s children to have access to the language of uplifting theology. This is because not all of God’s children can easily understand or relate to the language of science. This is okay with God. In fact, it’s more than okay. God’s children (one of whom would be you) are not all the same. God’s children are all different from each other, although we share some traits in common, such as the ability to love and forgive.

Your soul wasn’t created by God the Mother and God the Father with a batch of dirt and a cookie cutter (Genesis 2:7 notwithstanding). In all of Creation (and it’s a pretty darned big Creation!), there’s no other soul quite like you. There’s no other soul who thinks exactly the way you think, no other soul who expresses love exactly the way you express love. You’re one of a kind.

This means you “get” some languages better than you get other languages.

Maybe you totally get music, which means you feel the rhythms and harmonies deep in your bones without anyone ever really teaching you how to do it. You just “get” it so deeply that your whole life is transformed by it, each and every day.

Maybe you totally get poetry. That’s a language, too. It’s not the same as prose. Somehow it triggers different feelings and different responses in you than prose. You read a few verses of exquisite poetry and BAM — powerful insights descend upon your soul and you’re forever changed.

Now don’t laugh, but I react to chemistry the way many people react to music and poetry. It’s not that I don’t like music or poetry, it’s just that, well, I really, really “get” the language of chemistry.

“Tremble, O Earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water” (Psalm 114: 7-8). Photo credit JAT 2017.

If you’ve studied a lot of chemistry, you know that chemists don’t think in quite the same way as physicists, or biologists, or computer scientists, or mathematicians. Physicists get excited about field theory. Biologists get excited about energy transfer in living organisms and ecosystems. Computer scientists can think in binary code (an amazing skill!). And mathematicians live and breathe for the wonder of tautologies (showing how two sides of an equation are actually equal).

But chemists spend most of their time dealing with bonding. Molecular bonding. They want to know what holds atoms together into molecules. They want to understand the relationships between the constituent parts of both atoms and molecules. They spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to coax one little ion or electron from one spot to a different spot so it can do a different job. A chemist’s stock in trade is the probability wave functions of electrons, those tiny little negatively charged particles that are so much smaller than an atomic “nucleus” and are so damned fussy about where they’re willing to be located at any one time. Yet where would our material world be without them?

Even though physicists now estimate that “ordinary matter” (that is, atoms and molecules) accounts for no more than 4-5% of all known energy in the known universe (they call this ordinary matter “baryonic matter”), baryonic matter has a lot to tell us about the nature of God. And this baryonic matter is what chemists really “get.”

A number of physicists these days are pulling out all the stops to try to find a unified theory of nature. (Hence the construction of the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider). But, you know, for my part, as a chemist and as a mystic, I’m wary of anyone in any field who starts to look for a simple unified theory about anything. This smacks of monism, the longstanding religious belief that when you get to the very heart of Creation, there exists only a singular, undifferentiated, divine “oneness.” Plato’s middle writings, such as Phaedrus (247c), speak of this colourless, shapeless, all-inclusive oneness, and many neo-Platonic Christian mystics have followed suit in the monism department.

Needless to say, I’m not a monistic or apophatic mystic.

Me, I think it’s okay for us to listen to what God is saying to us through the language of chemistry. Even though baryonic matter (including the ordinary atoms and molecules that make up Planet Earth’s waters, lands, and atmosphere, plus all life on Planet Earth) represents only 4-5% of the universe’s energy, it’s the only part of Creation we can directly access as human beings, and it’s the only part of Creation that God seems to think we need while we’re living here as angels-in-temporary-human-form, so I figure it’s worth paying attention to!

And as I said above, chemistry is all about bonding.

It’s all about the relationship and balance between the tiny negatively charged particles we call electrons and the much larger positively charged particles we call protons. It’s all about the relationship and balance between certain probability wave functions and certain forces such as gravity, etc.. (I’m simplifying here, and am purposely skipping the whole subatomic particle thing, as it would needlessly complicate the discussion at this point).

When you think about a molecule such as sodium chloride (table salt), you probably think about it as salt. Me, I think of God the Father’s negatively charged electrons dancing a beautiful electron orbital dance of harmony, balance, intentional cooperation, and divine love with God the Mother to help her unite her much larger sodium ions with her equally large chloride ions in a very specific and useful scientific way that helps them together, as God, create the necessary biological building blocks used by the many forms of individual life that have lived here at one time or another over the past 3.85 billions years or so.

There you have it — my one-sentence rebuke of Creationism.

In my opinion, Creationism is an example of the language of theology at its worst.

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Posted in apophatic mysticism, Concinnate Christianity, Creationism, ethical mysticism, HDM Myths, monism, Mother and Father God, Mother God, My Spiral Path, oneness, Plato, Soul and tagged science & faith | Leave a Comment

07 Oct 2010

CC37: More on Harpur’s "Pagan Christ"

I’m still feeling grumpy about Tom Harpur’s suggestions for Christians who want to find “the only way ahead,” so I’m going to talk some more about that.

Early on in my writings on this blog, I stated — in bold letters, no less — that I am NOT a Gnostic (March 6, 2010: Some Reference Books I Read & Recommend). Even though I’m a practising mystic, and even though I believe in a number of things that can’t be seen by the human eye (so sue me — even radio waves can’t be seen by the human eye), this doesn’t make me a Gnostic. It’s only sloppy thinkers who haven’t done their homework on Gnosticisms would insist on calling me a Gnostic. (Note here that I’ve used the plural form of Gnosticism because careful researchers know there’s no such thing as one single historical form of Gnosticism any more than there’s one single historical form of Christianity or one single historical form of Judaism.)

According to Gnostics of all traditions, this is what you look like: old, ugly, stained, and walled off eternally from God unless you accept the cult teachings that will grant you “escape.” Naturally, for the price of your human obedience, worship, and financial contributions, Gnostics will be happy to sell you the secret knowledge that blasts open the door to ascendance. Photo credit JAT 2021.

In order for a person to be included under the umbrella term of Gnosticism, he or she has to hold certain beliefs about the nature of humanity’s relationship with God. Central to all Gnosticisms is the idea that the soul is a tiny piece of God’s essence that is trying to find its way back to God. Immortal souls end up in mortal bodies, but this isn’t really a good thing, according to Gnostics, because our physical bodies drag the soul down into a “prison” of matter. The spiritual task for Gnostics is to recognize the spark of God/Christ/Divine that exists within, and to set about freeing that spark by raising their consciousness to a higher level. The goal is to seek “wisdom” and hidden knowledge (gnosis in Greek). This knowledge leads to transcendence.

If this sounds a lot like Plato’s teachings about the soul’s journey, it’s because Plato’s teachings and later Gnostic teachings have a lot in common. Most orthodox Western Christian scholars don’t want to admit it, but these teachings also strongly influenced the apostle Paul. The famous passage about life after death in Chapter 15 of First Corinthians is a fascinating blend of Jewish apocalyptic thought (future resurrection) and Platonic thought (incorruptibility of the divine): “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” (Cue Handel’s Messiah.)

Tom Harpur is quite up-front about the fact that he admires Gnostic thinking. On page 175 of The Pagan Christ, he says, “What’s really important is that Paul’s spiritual view of Christ (his Christology) and Gnostic Christianity held the early Christian movement up to a truly high standard of intellectual and philosophical excellence.”

Bear in mind that Harpur himself doesn’t believe there ever was an actual man named Jesus Christ who lived in1st century CE Palestine. He believes the gospel stories about Jesus should be read typologically, not literally. He believes the story of Jesus is pure symbol. An important symbol, but a symbol nonetheless. A myth, not a fact.

In fact, Harpur believes that all Scripture should only be read symbolically, not literally or historically. For Harpur, “the enigma of the Bible has been largely solved. Dark passages, cryptic narratives or events — all have been shot through with a new, though long-lost, light because of this awareness that the key to all Scripture is to be found in the doctrine of Incarnation (page 181).”*

And what is the long-lost light that Harpur sees in this symbolic reading of Scripture? Why, it’s the ancient wisdom of the Egyptian mystery cults!

Here’s where I have a really big problem with Harpur’s thesis. He recommends without reservation that Christianity of the third millennium reclaim “the wisdom expounded by the Egyptians, the Orphics, the Pythagoreans and Plato, as well as by St. Paul, the Gnostics, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and a host of others . . . (page 191).” (Can’t argue with the historical links that existed among these groups, although I would have added Manicheans and Albigensians.) He thinks the choice to reclaim this long-lost light will arm us “with the moral and intellectual courage to live our lives to the fullest for the advancement of all . . . (page 193).”

Me, I think such a course of action will demolish whatever moral and intellectual courage Christians have.

Why do I think this? I think this because I’ve lived through the devastating effects of ancient mystery teachings on the human brain, and although I’ve fully recovered from the effects of my Big Fat Idiot Stage, I’m alarmed when I see reputable scholars using their positions of authority to urge dangerous spiritual practices on vulnerable, less well educated people.

It’s irresponsible, and there’s no excuse for it.

Harpur is advocating a return to what is indisputably a cult psychology based on status addiction. He’s kidding himself if he thinks the leaders of these ancient cults were nice people who truly found divine wisdom and willingly shared it with all people. Pythagoras (of whom Harpur seems fond) founded a sectarian cult with strict rules where only a small group of chosen disciples were initiated into the secret knowledge and rituals. (That’s status addiction!) Hellenistic mystery cults such as the Orphic mysteries and the Eleusinian mysteries engaged in bizarre, ritualistic, occult practices that most people would find abhorrent today. Addiction issues and sexual misconduct were rampant in these cults. Later, especially in the Eastern Roman Empire, Christian monks, nuns, contemplatives, and mystics separated themselves from regular communities and engaged in self-harming ascetic practices so they could “imitate Christ” and be “closer to God.” (Again, status addiction.) Needless to say, addiction issues, sexual misconduct, and other forms of abuse continued to take place in monastic communities and continued to be blamed on evil forces such as demons, incubi, and the devil.

Is this what Harpur wants? Because this is what he’s going to get if he naively places these ancient mystery cults on a pedestal. Where he sees a “long-lost light” in these ancient teachings, I see only a “darkness of abuse” we’re well rid of.

As for Harpur’s claim that he wants to help bring science and religion closer together and “highlight Nature’s guiding role” in a renewed Christian faith, I just want to choke. There is no hard science in his book, but there are lots of superficial cliches and lots of references to the spiritual symbols seen in Nature. When Harpur says, “I never see the moon without being reminded of its reflecting the solar glory and its monthly telling of the story of our incarnation and ultimate resurrection (page 188),” I gotta say that don’t impress me much. (Cue the Shania Twain song.)

There’s tons of light and wonder and goodness and love in the natural world — the scientific world — that God the Mother and God the Father have created for us. But we won’t find it by looking backwards to the mystery cult teachings of people who believed in a status-ridden journey of spiritual ascent, and we won’t find it by pretending that all Scripture is “good” if only we understood how to read it symbolically! Christianity has been there and done that. It doesn’t work.

You don’t have to choose between mystery and science. Jesus understood this, as did Job before him. The back of the moon wasn’t visible until the space program revealed it. But seeing the moon through the eyes of science hasn’t lessened the sense of wonder and awe we feel when her silvery beauty gleams. Photo credit JAT 2021.

The only way forward for the Church, as I see it, is for us to come at spirituality from a whole new angle. We have to let go of “traditional teachings” and “infallible doctrines” that don’t line up with new findings in neuroscience, quantum physics, quantum biology, astronomy, and so on. Other fields of endeavour have had to let go of cherished beliefs that eventually proved false. Why should Christianity be any different?

Does it make sense to you that God would make special rules for the Church that hold us to a LOWER standard of scholarship than the standard observed by secular researchers in fields such as teaching, environmental science, or psychiatry?

Maybe it’s our unwarranted sense of entitlement — not the devil — that’s the source of our ongoing problems in the Church.

I think I’ll sign off now and go read Discover magazine’s latest special issue on The Brain. Although I don’t always agree with the scientific conclusions I find there, there’s plenty of good food for thought, and I’m grateful for that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

* In his glossary, Harpur defines “incarnation” as “the God within each of us — the ‘Light which lighteth every person coming into the world.'”

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Church of today, Concinnate Christianity, Gnosticism, HDM Myths, orthodox teachings about the soul, Paul, Plato, spiritual ascent, status addiction and tagged ethical mysticism, religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

31 Mar 2010

CC6: Why I’m Hard On Scholars Who Study Mystics

One thing you’re bound to notice as you read my posts is that I’m very hard on mystics.

I’m also very hard on scholars and academicians who write about mystics.

Let me put it this way: in one of my recent theology classes, a senior professor recommended that we read Evelyn Underhill’s book Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness if we wanted to understand more about the nature of Christian mysticism. The problem I have with this book is twofold: (1) Evelyn Underhill was not a practising mystic herself, and was writing from an academic perspective, and (2) Evelyn Underhill first published her book in 1911. That’s one hundred years ago, folks. I can’t imagine in all honesty that I would be urged to study a 100 year old textbook in any other field. (Can you imagine what that would be like in a field like chemistry?) Yet this book is still in print, and is still available on the bookshelves of regular bookstores. (I bought a spanking new softcover copy at an Anglican bookstore in 2009). This kind of stubborn denial in the world of theology makes me want to metaphorically pull my hair out by its little grey roots.

For the sake of scholarly balance, a much more recent book that is well researched is The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, edited by Bernard McGinn (New York: Modern Library-Random House, 2006).

McGinn’s book is a collection of short pieces written by well-known and lesser-known Christian mystics over the past two millennia. He provides a short introduction to each mystic, but he allows the reader to hear the mystics speak in their own words. His approach is in sharp contrast to Underhill’s approach. Underhill, in my view, does not show an understanding of her own limits, and seems to believe she is within her rights to make factual claims about the characteristics and interior experiences of Christian mystics.

Thank you kindly, Ms. Underhill, but some of the mystical experiences you describe in your book sound to me an awful lot like various forms of serious mental illness, and I wouldn’t be recommending those pursuits to anybody who cares about their mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional health.

Of course, I understand that Underhill was writing her book at a time when research in the fields of psychiatry and psychology was still young, and advanced investigations in neurophysiology and neuroplasticity hadn’t yet been contemplated. I get that. What I don’t get is the church’s refusal to revise its theological understanding of mysticism in light of new neuro-psychiatric research. What I don’t get is the desire to shield the church from the realities of science, especially in the tricky areas of prophecy and mysticism. The Christian church was founded on prophecy (revelation) and mysticism. There would be no church without the claims made by early prophets and mystics. You’d think the church would desperately want to know how to use modern scientific advances to help them better understand what makes prophets and mystics tick.

Mystics who take themselves too seriously will be reminded by God to be more humble and more aware of their personal limitations. Mystics are no more important to God than any other human beings.

But, of course, if the church took the bold step of researching its closetful of prophets and mystics, some of its traditional heroes might not look so good anymore. And then the church would have to start rethinking some of its doctrinal positions.

You know, stuff like . . . oh, Original Sin. Adam and Eve and the Fall. The Devil. Judgment Day. All that kind of paranoid, obsessive-compulsive, DSM-IV-TR Axis I and II stuff. The kind of thinking that responds really well to a properly managed treatment course with olanzapine.*

Yeah, well, call me a cynic, but when you’ve had five years of experience working in a lay capacity in the field of psychiatry, it’s pretty hard not to think in psychiatric terms when you read some of the things that Christian mystics have written over the centuries.

As a practising mystic, I would never say that mystical experiences don’t exist or can’t exist. I would never say that all reported mystical experiences are the result of mental illness. I would never say that all reported mystical experiences are pure fabrication, either. But some reported experiences are caused by mental illness, and some reported experiences are pure fabrication.

The trick is to be able to sort out the genuine mystics from both the tragically mentally ill and the enthusiastic fakers. We need science on our side to do this.

That’s why I would like to see an introductory course on neuroscience as a requirement in the theological curriculum.

* olanzapine is the generic name for an atypical antipsychotic medication that is particularly useful in the treatment of schizophrenia and psychotic depression.

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Posted in Concinnate Christianity, ethical mysticism, HDM Myths, My Spiral Path, mystic, mysticism, prophecy, prophets, religion and mental Illness and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the category “HDM Myths”