13 Reader Responses

1. scott rassbach Says:
   August 2nd, 2006 at 3:34 pm

   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

2. Rev Max Says:
   August 2nd, 2006 at 3:56 pm

   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

   David Rutledge: Bataille’s take on Christianity wasn’t what you’d call orthodox. He wrote that “Christian feeling is opposed to the spirit of transgression”, which he meant not just in a moral sense, but also in the sense that Christianity denied the power of its own sacred, transgressive moments. Bataille was troubled by the fact that there’s no place in the Divine realm for Satan, and moments of what Bataille called Divine evil - the suicide of God, the king dying the death of a slave, the eroticism of Christ’s passion, the holy cannibalism of the Eucharist - all, for Bataille, had been subsumed in symbolism - and this, he said, made Christianity “the least religious” of all religions.

   Daniel Smith: Christianity - Nietzsche made this point as well - is a bit of an exception in the history of religions, insofar as it tended to denigrate the very types of experiences I think he wanted to rejuvenate for us in the modern world. Because Christianity of all the religions tended to repress them or at least select against them - it certainly denigrates the body, it circumscribes sexuality in a very limited manner, and in that sense it’s an exception rather than a rule in the history of religions.

   There are several examples he gives of certain religions where say a tribal leader will die; during the time that he’s decomposing, essentially the social world is inverted, and so the kind of sexual relations you wouldn’t normally have, you do; the kind of cruelty and violence and murder you wouldn’t normally undertake is somehow sort of allowed, and the world is turned upside down and topsy-turvy for a moment, where all social roles are reversed, the taboos that are normally strictly in place are transgressed. Because the ordering principle, the tribal leader, the king or however you want to describe it, is dead and you’re in this sort of in-between transition phase that upsets all that.

   And in a certain sense you could say that on the one hand, there was a certain aspect of that in Christianity, this idea that you go to the mass if you’re a Catholic and you’re eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood, this incorporation early on of some of these what you might call pagan elements, or elements certainly of previous religions, that nonetheless I think Bataille would say as time went on, became less and less important or were selected against more and more as Christianity developed. I think it had the same ambiguous relationship to mysticism. The mystics were obviously people with a very strong spirituality, a strong sense of their relationship to God, almost this sexual union with God, and so the church couldn’t deny the power of their spirituality, but yet it had a very very hard time knowing how to describe that, or how to accept it.

   So I think that the relationship of Christianity to these limit experiences and these states of excess is complicated, it’s plus and minus. They’re there, but Christianity as a whole tends to select against them, whereas other religions give them a very strong and powerful place.

3. Rev Max Says:
   August 2nd, 2006 at 4:23 pm

   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

4. Tim Boucher Says:
   August 2nd, 2006 at 4:44 pm

   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!

5. Rev Max Says:
   August 2nd, 2006 at 6:13 pm

   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

6. sketchmonkey Says:
   August 3rd, 2006 at 12:36 pm

   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’…

7. James Says:
   August 3rd, 2006 at 12:52 pm

   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?

8. Tim Boucher Says:
   August 3rd, 2006 at 1:27 pm

   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…

9. Dale Says:
   August 3rd, 2006 at 4:29 pm

   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”:

   What is usually and generally called “religion” is to such an amazing degree a substitute that I ask myself seriously whether this kind of “religion,” which I prefer to call a creed, has not an important function in human society. The substitution has the obvious purpose of replacing immediate experience by a choice of suitable symbols invested in a solidly organized dogma and ritual. The Catholic church maintains them by her indisputable authority, the Protestant church (if that term is still applicable) by insistence upon faith and evangelical message. As long as those two principles work, people are effectively defended and shielded against immediate religious experience. Even if something of the sort should happen to them, they can refer to the church, for it would know whether the experience came from God or from the devil, whether it was to be accepted or to be rejected.

   –C.G. Jung, Psychology and Religion

10. Dale Says:
    August 3rd, 2006 at 9:27 pm

    What is usually and generally called “religion” is to such an amazing degree a substitute that I ask myself seriously whether this kind of “religion,” which I prefer to call a creed, has not an important function in human society. The substitution has the obvious purpose of replacing immediate experience by a choice of suitable symbols invested in a solidly organized dogma and ritual. The Catholic church maintains them by her indisputable authority, the Protestant church (if that term is still applicable) by insistence upon faith and evangelical message. As long as those two principles work, people are effectively defended and shielded against immediate religious experience. Even if something of the sort should happen to them, they can refer to the church, for it would know whether the experience came from God or from the devil, whether it was to be accepted or to be rejected.

    –C.G. Jung, 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.

    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’.

    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.

11. Tim Boucher Says:
    August 3rd, 2006 at 10:15 pm

    sure, it draws from the same Source as direct experience. but it’s 99% form and 1% core.

    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.

12. Dale Says:
    August 4th, 2006 at 12:11 pm

    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?

13. Tim Boucher Says:
    August 4th, 2006 at 2:28 pm

    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.

    I’m not trying to be contrarian here, but it’s becoming less important of a distinction for me.

    but by this line of thought, *every* system partakes of the sacred, and it becomes meaningless to talk about anything being sacred or not.

    Right, that’s pretty much exactly my point!

    while i am on board with many aspects of the All Is One philosophy,

    A philosophy implies that it is an intellectual conclusion, when I am speaking from direct experience.

    it seems to me that taking only that viewpoint leads to not being able to discuss anything

    My being able to discuss this at great length proves that is not the case.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    I’m not sure I understand the importance of making that distinction.

    in all this, i guess a lot depends on what your definition of sacred is. what’s yours?

    I don’t know that I have or need one.

    did any other of the people you were smokin with during your experience have report any weirdness?

    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.