In the comments to a recent post, Rev Max wrote:
The purpose of organized religion is not to provide people with an experience of the sacred, its to protect them from experiencing the sacred
This seems like a natural conclusion which a lot of people come to who end up investigating spirituality outside of the confines of organized religion. Organized religion, to the independent seeker, seems like something which restricts and prevents rather than opens and enlightens. But what’s true for the goose may not always be true for the gander.
Recent experiences have made me really re-evaluate the utility of angry and/or accusatory finger-pointing when it comes to organized religion. A reader named “prunes” posted a comment that really hits the nail on the head for me:
Analogously to how words and concrete concepts are formed from the trans-formal prior substance, ‘religions’ are the outward form of the eternal impulse at their core. The error comes from mistaking the form for the substance, whence ‘bible literalists’.
That is, I recently directly experienced these types of underlying “impulses” being described by “prunes”. I saw the structures which caused words as their after-effects. If you want to experience them for yourself, I’m not totally sure how to get you to - or to get myself to experience them again for that matter. But a day after my experience, I was driving and some jazz with hard saxophone riffs came on. It provided me with a nice intellectual illustration of this concept.
The purpose of jazz, as far as I can tell, is to tap into these impulses directly. The word “jazz” actually has an etymological link to “jizz” or “jism” - and just like in ejaculation, the underlying life force is being tapped into and released in a moment of pure ecstasy. We could correlate this to what “prunes” is referring to as being at the core or source behind organized religion as well.
The part that gets confusing intellectually though is that just because jazz seems to be a more raw and direct connection to these creative energetic impulses which underlie reality, it by no means has an exclusive or even unique connection. It seems that all things have this connection. Or, in our analogy, all music - from the most structured classical music to a show tune to a rip-roaring rock number.
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13 Comments
Synchronicity is weird:
http://burningtaper.blogspot.com/2006/...ion-is-defense-against-religious.html
And
“Freud suggested that the primary response of human beings to the trauma of self-conciousness was the experience of hysteria. An emotional thermostat designed to control that hysteria had to be created; survival required it. The creation of the various theistic religious forms was a major component - indeed THE major component-of that thermostat.” -John Shelby Spong, A new Christianity for a New World
My views on this topic are mostly influenced by Georges Bataille’s theories of religion which I heartily recommend:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s281136.htm
For example, this Christian lady had a genuine experience of the sacred and it terrified her. But no matter. Some brethren were close at hand to take her back into the fold and remind her that if its not in the bible, it must be demonic:
TESTIMONY: KUNDALINI AWAKENING Received Through TORONTO EXPERIENCE A testimony of the torment and fear experienced through this “blessing” followed by the Lord’s deliverance.
Here’s another site along the same lines - there are literally HUNDREDS of these on the net:
YOGA: KUNDALINI (SERPENT POWER); UNION WITH DEMONIC ENTITIES
Oh yeah I remember you showing me that George Bataille stuff and I love it. I think it’s brilliant. I just have had some experiences lately that have shifted my thinking in other directions. That’s all!
Hmm… might be I’m not understanding your point?
I’m all for things being part one big beautiful harmony, but… its hard to think of different perspectives as keys on the same keyboard or notes in the same song when the a sharps literally cry out “don’t listen to the b flats! the b flats are a demonic deception of satan in the last days! Songs with b flat are UNBIBLICAL” etc…
AM I completely misunderstanding your analogy here?
On a visceral level I feel that authoritarian literalism is something I will resist to my last breath, it may be thats just a personal thing I am unable to let go of and so that may be distorting my “read” on your musings
Rev, I think you are understandably confusing the individual notes for the song as a whole. I’ll comment over on my own strand of the interweb, but I think it all comes down to ‘different strokes for different folks’…
All things have the potential to tap into this unique connection, but not all things can actually carry it out. Using the jazz analogy for a second: John Coltrane taps into it; Kenny G does not. Kenny G is just as popular (if not more) than Coltrane, and I’m sure some people really really like Kenny G… but he lacks ’soul’, whereas Coltrane’s music is oozing with soul.
Who decides what is soulful? It’s a matter of taste, yes, but at the same time have you ever seen Kenny G’s fans? Not exactly the type of people who want to experience something risky and intense. Coltrane fans, on the other hand, are VERY intense, and seek out something that helps them tap into the kind of expereince they crave.
Some may argue that Kenny G does tap into something, which I agree with… but it’s not the same “something” as Trane or Miles or Bird or even George Benson. Whatever it is, it makes Kenny G lots of money– but you can’t call it soul. He’s nowehre near that reservoir. Maybe one day Kenny G will tap into it, but what would it take? A near-death experience? A religious experience? Enlightenment? Illumination? A lobotomy? Head trauma? Sagging album sales?
Yeah I was thinking of Kenny G when I wrote this as well, but it took another direction. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but I think Kenny G does draw from that same well. That is, there is only one well to draw from - but it’s a matter of how well you draw from it!
My main proof of this is that I experienced these structural-impulses, this well, even in a movie as completely and utterly retarded as the Santa Clause II with Tim Allen - which proves to me that it is all pervasive and nothing is created without it.
Maybe a way of classifying different expressions of it then has to do with how much distance or how much translation from the original source occurs during it. The point of “real” (non-Kenny G) jazz is that you get out of the way of yourself and the music plays through you. But the counter-intuitive and “unfair” part is that even if you don’t do that, the music still plays through you. There’s no other way to do things - at least based on what I perceived at the time…
for me, the sacred has something to do with numinous experiences, synchronicities, dreams, other non-normal perceptions and the narratives we use to give these kinds of experiences meaning.
“mainstream religion” provides symbols, dogma, archetypical experience, and a whole system of pre-fabricated narratives…meaning that the adherent never has to seek personal sacred experience himself.
and sure, it seems likely that, say, Catholics are just as connected to the Source as nutty gnostics, shamans and mages.
but i don’t think the difference between personal religious experience and organized religion is like the difference between jazz and say, classical. to me a more apt comparison would be between someone making, hearing, or dancing to music of any kind and someone just reading the ancient sheet music that was recorded from one concert 600 generations ago.
sure, both are related to sacred experience, but there seems to be a significant degree of difference. organized religion rests on faith in someone else’s gnosis.
i like when Jung talks about this some in “Psychology and Religion”:
organized religion provides a pre-packaged set of symbols that people can use in place of direct experience of the sacred. it satiates our apparent need for sacred experience, while also enforcing conformity, morality, and obedience to cultural elites. one needn’t seek or listen when the The Truth is readily available from priests and holy books. those aspects of religion do seem to hinder personal discovery and experience of the sacred.
sure, it draws from the same Source as direct experience. but it’s 99% form and 1% core. organized religion obsessively teaches and enforces all those formal dogmas and systems while mostly ignoring the core. sure, the Tao flows through Catholics as much as through Gnostics and Shamans and such. but while adherents of organized religions agonize over the specifics of form, the best practicioners of alternative systems embrace whichever forms invoke the experience of the core.
in his excellent book, The Philosophy of Magic, Arthur Versluis makes the claim that “magic” and “religion” both stem from the same source, but that the former is personal, while the latter is communal - and that both are important approaches to spirituality. each probably has its benefits.
I know intellectually it seems like that, but experientially it really does not. Same thing goes for the John Coltrane/Kenny G conversation earlier. It offends our cultural sensibilities to suggest that both are 100%, and it sounds like it is coming from some kind of intellectualized egalitarian “can’t we all just be friends?” type of place, but that’s really not the reference point that I am using to support it here. Direct experience of it is.
Which creates an interesting dilemma itself: my direct experience can (and probably should) be different from someone else’s. What happens when my direct experience recedes into memory or repetitive dogma? It gives me a more personal understanding of how spiritual traditions morph over time - let alone if they spread to other people.
the distinction that i’m making here is between a spiritual system that is conducive to producing a direct experience of the sacred vs. a system that is not. it seems to me your argument is essentially that you have experienced “structures behind the symbols”, which lends evidence that any religion is “just as sacred” as any other. i won’t argue against this, because it seems that there is truth in it. but by this line of thought, *every* system partakes of the sacred, and it becomes meaningless to talk about anything being sacred or not.
in the context of the experiences of adherents to organized religion vs alternatives, i think the sacred should be discussed as a distinction from the profane. while i am on board with many aspects of the All Is One philosophy, it seems to me that taking only that viewpoint leads to not being able to discuss anything: if everything is everything else, there is no distinction to be made at all. to be able to talk about experience, one must consider the All Is One angle but also apparent distinction and differentiation.
i’m not arguing that the symbols used in organized religions are any less potent, or less connected with the “archetypes” (for lack of a better term) than others. i’m not even arguing against your experience of the “sub-symbolic structures” and what it means for the nature of reality. i’m just saying that from my personal experience, organized religion (for me, Lutheranism) didn’t seem to do very much at all to enable me to undergo what i would consider direct awareness of the sacred. whereas certain drugs, dreams, and nutty occultish practices most certainly have seemed to do the trick. in my experience, organized religion does a lot of talking about the sacred, but doesn’t help me to experience it in a way that distinguishes it from ordinary profane existence. it’s like the difference between reading that PKD quote and truly *perceiving* what it’s talking about, as you seem to have done, at least for a while.
maybe everything is really connected and “sacred”. but the difference between organized religion and more “gnostic” systems is not in their relationships to the underlying structure of the language of the world. the difference, to me, is in what experiences those two approaches to spirituality produce in their practicioners.
in all this, i guess a lot depends on what your definition of sacred is. what’s yours?
BTW: did any other of the people you were smokin with during your experience have report any weirdness?
I’m not trying to be contrarian here, but it’s becoming less important of a distinction for me.
Right, that’s pretty much exactly my point!
A philosophy implies that it is an intellectual conclusion, when I am speaking from direct experience.
My being able to discuss this at great length proves that is not the case.
Totally, and it’s the same way for me. But my experience with those things allows me to see that the organized religion approach will take you there just the same.
I’m not sure I understand the importance of making that distinction.
I don’t know that I have or need one.
Not of any of the people I spoke to about it. But I didn’t go around announcing what happened to me either. As open and friendly as these people were, I wasn’t feeling inclined to start preaching about it at the time, you know? It was just a party. It would have made people (including me) feel weird.