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In the Beginning Was Ford
In the beginning was Ford, and Ford was with God and Ford was God…
Imagine yourself in the future.
Let’s say 100 years. No, let’s make it two or three hundred just to have it be that much more distant and alien from our lives now.
By this point, the capitalist nationalist industrialist system has morphed and collapsed more times than anybody can remember. Environmental and other cataclysms have sacked the Earth and forever changed everything that we think of today as common place.
We don’t need to get too much more specific than that, except maybe to add that concepts such as “time” and “history” have been all but forgotten about. The common person (ie, you) knows little or nothing about what came before, about the great achievements and abominations which the Industrial Age birthed. In fact, most people were all too happy to bury these things once and for all as it was generally believed these things lead to the destruction described above which rocked humanity to its very foundation.
Imagine one day then, that you find yourself in a meadow on a mountain slope. You are digging for medicinal roots for your family, when all of a sudden, the sharpened stick which you’re using to help you dig strikes something which is most certainly not a root. It appears to be some kind of large rock. You tap it though, and it sounds hollow. You hurriedly dig it out, and pick it up in your hands to examine it. Without meaning to though, it slips out of your hands and falls to the ground, shattering. Suddenly, within this strange object you find what appears to be a thick stack of leaves, with strange markings and symbols on it.
Scared of what you have found, but also excited, you run home and offer your finding to the village elders and ask them what it is, what the symbols mean. They immediately take it from you and tell you it is great evil, and that you must be cleansed for having found it. You become ashamed but the curiousity still remains.
What you have found is a car owner’s manual which someone long ago squirreled away inside an earthenware jar for whatever reason. Except you don’t know what a car is. You don’t know what a book is. You don’t know what writing is and you don’t know anything about the history of what came before your own life, beyond the myths and stories you heard growing up. But none of them seem to account for anything you saw today.
Imagine it. Imagine seeing something like this with that sort of blank slate in your mind:
You would be absolutely boggled as to what it was, what it all meant. But you might find it strangely fascinating and beautiful. I offer this elaborate tale as an analogy to expand our understanding of what the Bible is. For I am becoming more convinced all the time that the Bible is nothing short of an esoteric owner’s manual for the operation of the human soul. I don’t believe it is completely unique in that respect though - as many other types of manuals exist for this as well. You could think of the other sacred texts out there perhaps as owner’s manuals put out by other car companies. But they still all point to the same underlying thing.
Except the only problem is, most of us don’t even know what a “car” is any more today. And by car, I mean human soul. We may have heard myths and stories about this great device and we may even wistfully believe it might be real, but for the most part, very few of us have any real practical hands-on knowledge or experience with the subject. And yet even though we don’t remember the “car” we do somewhere inside dimly remember the power that it gave us - the sense of freedom that its safe and proper use afforded us within our lives. And we long to have that back.
But when we try to read the manual for it, all we see are obscure confusing diagrams. Words and symbols we simply don’t understand and can’t because we’ve never actually seen the “car” itself. And so we spin elaborate interpretations of what it all means. Or we run to the village elders and ask them for help. They scold us and tell us we can’t understand it without them, make us ashamed for having found it, and then supplant their own spurious interpretations for our own. And we go away confused and angry and still curious.
- In medias res
- In the Beginning was Microsoft Word
- The Time Travel High Five
- Handstands
- Simply Irresistable
- Prev: No More Cell Phones
- Next: Voices In Our Heads
December 4th, 2006 at 11:25 am
yep.
December 4th, 2006 at 11:28 am
Excellent post, Tim.
This closely parallels some of the ideas put forward by Jacob Needleman in Lost Christianity, where he posits an “intermediate Christianity” which is concerned with the formation of the soul.
He makes the point that the commandments of Christ are impossible to fulfill, and were given in the context of a culture that understood that the formation of the soul had to precede real Christianity.
December 4th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Gurdjieff also taught that we don’t even have a soul until we do the work to form or nurture one.
December 4th, 2006 at 11:42 am
That sounds about right to me too. Less of a hassle than a car because you don’t have to buy parts for your soul.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
The genius, poet, prophet, artist or madman– in short, the visionary –would not be boggled by a diagram describing technology a century in advance. They would understand it perfectly, but they would not be able to express it in the same terms that we today possess.
December 4th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Wow that sounds really interesting!
December 5th, 2006 at 12:23 am
LOST CHRISTIANITY by Jacob Needleman, New York: Bantam Books, 1982 (previously published by Doubleday, 1980), 224 pages, $3.50 pbk.
In the face of the fragmentation of life and of widespread disillusionment with activism, spirituality and inwardness have gained the renewed interest of Western thinkers both within and outside of the Christian Church. It is within this context that Needleman’s book is to be understood, a work that reflects the author’s personal rediscovery of the “lost Christianity.” Needleman’s search was triggered by a chance meeting with a Christian monk, Father Sylvan, whose unpublished writings form the basis of the book’s thesis and are extensively quoted. Much space is devoted to the narrative recounting the author’s ensuing experiences with other contemporary contemplative thinkers and his discovery of the writings of the contemplative tradition.
Needleman’s thesis is
… that it is precisely this intermediate, or conscious, Christianity that is being sought by the numerous Christians turning now toward Eastern teachings or responding to the challenge of the new religions by delving into the Western contemplative forms and texts that have survived over the centuries (P. 140).
As to what this “intermediate Christianity,” which is the “lost Christianity,” entails is disclosed slowly in the second half of the book. According to the author, the pull exerted by contemplation on Christians today is not that of the desire for an experience of God, but rather that of the discovery of one’s personal existence, a depth of life that must precede the practice of life, with which it is often confused (pp. 113-115).
The lost “intermediate” is that which is between God and the animal world, that which makes humanity unique. Yet this uniqueness does not lie in mind, emotion, or the social self, nor in the “soul” as a fixed entity, as is commonly assumed. In fact Christianity’s adoption of the notion that man’s soul “exists in finished form within human nature” was a disaster (p. 171). Rather, the soul is developed by “the power of gathered attention:”
“Lost Christianity” is the lost or forgotten power of man to extract the pure energy of the soul from the experiences that make up his life. This possibility is distinct only in the most vivid or painful moments of our ordinary lives, but it can be discovered in all experiences if one knows how to seek it. Certain powerful experiences-such as the encounter with death or deep disappointment-are accompanied by the sensation of presence; an attention appears that is simultaneously open to a higher, freer mind (”Spirit”) and to all the perceptions, sensations and emotions that constitute our ordinary self. one feels both separate and engaged in a new and entirely extraordinary way. One experiences I Am.” This is the soul (in inception).
As such, the soul as an idea is a powerful symbol with the result that the search for “lost Christianity” becomes the attempt “to bring back Christianity as a guide to the search for ourselves” (p. 184).
In the Conclusion, Needleman applies his findings to the area of activism. Christianity is the religion of love, he maintains. The outworking of love toward one’s neighbor consists neither in mysticism and spirituality nor in “social action and therapeutic caring,” but rather in the attempt “to nurture the growth, in my neighbor, of the soul.” This begins with a genuine, inner seeing of suffering that goes beyond mere emotional reaction to injustice, for even emotion belongs to the outer aspect of one’s life. The lost element that must be regained is the force within oneself that can attend to both outer and inner movements (creation and return) of human nature and “can then guide the arising of this force within my neighbor in a manner suited to his understanding” (p. 217).
Needleman’s book is of significance for two related emphases: the soul must be understood as a process, not as a fixed entity; any return to mysticism, contemplation, or spirituality, while important, is insufficient. Many readers, however, will wish that more space had been given to the development of the author’s theses, rather than to his journey toward their discovery.
Revieewed by Stanley J. Grenz, North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
December 5th, 2006 at 12:25 am
from Gurdjieff, on forming the magnetic center:
“The results of the influences whose source lies outside life collect together within him, he remembers them together, feels them together. They begin to form within him a certain whole. He does not give a clear account to himself as to what, how, and why, or if he does give an account to himself, then he explains it wrongly. But the point is not in this, .but in the fact that the results of these influences collect together within him and after a certain time they form within him a kind of magnetic center, which begins to attract to itself kindred influences and in this manner it grows. If the magnetic center receives sufficient nourishment, and if there is no strong resistance on the part of the other sides of a man’s personality which are the result of influences created in life, the magnetic center begins to influence a man’s orientation, obliging him to turn round and even to move in a certain direction. When the magnetic center attains sufficient force and development, a man already understands the idea of the way and he begins to look for the way. The search for the way may take many years and may lead to nothing. This depends upon conditions, upon circumstances, upon the power of the magnetic center, upon the power and the direction of inner tendencies which are not concerned with this search and which may divert a man at the very moment when the possibility of finding the way appears.”
December 5th, 2006 at 12:41 am
This makes me wonder if perhaps when Descartes announced “I think therefore I am,” perhaps he was uttering an alchemical formula - one in which the active process of thinking, of deep contemplation causes one to exist
December 5th, 2006 at 12:52 am
contemplation or attention–what the Fathers called “nepsis” (see the Philokalia)
December 5th, 2006 at 12:55 am
from Becoming Fire
December 5th, 2006 at 4:02 am
Whats that part where Jesus talks about how the Son of Man comes like a thief in the night and you must stay up and be watchful at all times? Theres also the Garden where he goes to pray and then comes back and admonishes the Apostles for not being able to stay up with him in his our of need. Good article, by the way
December 6th, 2006 at 12:55 am
The Hesychast Fathers quote both of these passages ((Matthew 24:42-44 and Matthew 26:38) in referring to nepsis (watchfulness).
The Gurdjieff method also begins with watchfulness/observation–and Gurdjieff claimed to be teaching “esoteric Christianity”:
And he taught that people in their current state were unable to be Christians, because they had not acquired the ability to “be,” which sounds to me like it could be connected to your idea of not recognizing the soul. See:
December 6th, 2006 at 12:59 am
and
December 6th, 2006 at 1:16 am
Wow! Those are really excellent quotes. Thanks for them! Where did they come from?
December 6th, 2006 at 1:18 am
So too when Jesus talks about “the Dead” does he mean those who are asleep, I think. He says in that one passage “let the dead bury the dead” meaning, “let those people living as though they are dead tend to the person who is physically dead”
Which of course points to the greatest misinterpretation of all of Christianity: that the resurrection of your soul happens while you are still alive: a point which early Church fathers such as Origen I believe knew and taught but which was later branded heresy.
December 6th, 2006 at 3:52 am
both quotes are from Gurdjieff
you can find a great selection at
http://www.bardic-press.com/thomas/fourthway.htm
“Therefore it is said:
Awake O sleeper,
and arise from
the dead
and the Christos will shine on you”
-Ephesians 5:14
December 6th, 2006 at 3:54 am
December 6th, 2006 at 5:01 am
Ah, good old Gospel of Phillip. I knew I knew that quote from someplace.