From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 20:34:47 GMT
Sam and y'all:
DMB says:
This conversation is about the relationship between Western religious
tradition and the mystical experience, no? I'm afraid we might be talking
past each other and want to make sure were on the same page with respect to
topic. The following comments made me wonder about that....
Sam said:
As always, it's difficult to work out whether your extended answer counts as
a 'yes' or a 'no' or a 'mu'. You claim that 'contemporary forms.. frown on
mysticism' which I think is a largely unsupportable claim. Contemporary
forms of what? If you said Protestantism you'd have a case - not a total
case, but a reasonable one. But if your point is 'contemporary forms of
Christianity' then you're simply wrong. Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and -
yes - Anglicanism all take mysticism deeply seriously. But they have a
different understanding of mysticism to you, of course!
DMB says:
I don't deny that mainstream Catholicism and Orthodoxy have a certain
reverence for the sages and saints, but the rituals and forms of worship are
not designed to induce a mystical experience. There is no fire or peyote,
only candles and a sip of wine. This is what it has been reduced to. Not
necessarily a very powerful or transforming experience. Where this
traditions provide a slap on the wrist for the participant, the mystery
religions provided a sledgehammer to the head, so to speak. Its like the
difference between actual canabalism and the symbolic canabalism within
Christian rituals. Show me a preist who advocates the use of entheogenic
substances and I'll show you a preist who is about to be de-frocked. That's
what I mean when I say the Christain traditions tend to frown on mysticism,
which is putting it mildly.
Sam continued:
....................................................... And you talk about
the Pagan mystery religions with such confidence, as if we really know what
the people who built Stonehenge were up to! We've got some ideas, sure, but
sufficient certainty to justify your claims? I think not. In any case, I
couldn't give two monkeys about 'set and setting' - they were terms that you
introduced to justify your position against me, which I thought was daft
because you were actually reinforcing my point, as you continue to do. So
any chance of a straight answer - do you see 'traditions of understanding'
as important in understanding 'mystical experiences'?
DMB says:
I think I need you to be more specific about what you mean by "traditions of
understanding", but I'm trying to be strait. I guess I'm misunderstanding
your question. I thought my answer was a discussion of which traditions are
most conducive to mysticism and which are not. This is why I mention the
Indians and the ancients and compared them to today's Western churches. You
may not be aware of it, but the recent rediscovery of entheogenic substances
and the relatively new human sciences, especially psychology, has allowed us
to understand quite a lot about the ancient mystery religions. They peyote
ceremony described in Lila in a good window into these ancient rituals. A
cave in the Pecos region of the American southwest has an alter and peyote
fragments inside that date to 9,000 BCE. We now know what entheogenic
substance was used by the ancient Greek mystery religion practiced outside
of Athens, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It was a purple
fungus that grows on grain, which they'd learned to cultivate. We've even
been able to re-construct some of the ritual's content. (Very erotic.) Many
scholars now believe the legendary "Soma" is an entheogenic mushroom. In
Scotland, there is an artifical cave that displays the most remarkable
properties in its very architecture. The largest chamber, where the shamanic
rituals apparently took place, captured the wind in such a way that it
amplified the sounds by several factors. It was very, very loud, but in a
frequency inaudable to the human ear, but detectable to scientific
insturments. A person seated in the center of this chamber and exposed to
the rhythm of a drum is put into a trance without effort. The very
architechture of the place is desinged to transform consciousness. There are
other examples, but if Stonehenge is one of them its news to me. My point?
There is plenty of evidence about mystery religions and the various ways to
induce a mystical experience, and this is one religious function that
today's Western churches, as far as I know, do not engage in. If you think
they do, please school me.What
Sam said:
So the West has not developed a 'technology' of consciousness????? The mind
boggles. Have you ever actually examined what the Christian tradition says
about these things? Augustine for example? It's precisely this sort of
comment which makes me talk about the 'comfortable cliches' which I think
dominate your understanding - you've accepted a verdict on Christianity at
second hand, without actually looking at things for yourself. For if you
had, you would appreciate just how crass that sounds. Perhaps your
'midWestern Baptist' education in Christianity was a particularly bad one?
DMB says:
Ha! Yes. A midwestern baptist education in Christianity is, by definition, a
bad one. Fortunately, I've managed to move on. In fact, I began to move on
when I was about 12 or 13 years old. But the crass claim, that the West's
"technology of consciousness" is far less than in the East comes from a
Robert Thurman book I read a few years ago. I've heard similar ideas
expressed in different term, but Thurman was the one who's metaphor struck
me as the clearest. The idea is that the West has development a scientific
and materialistic technology sophisticated enough to split the atom or go to
the moon. By contrast, he says, Tibetan Buddhism has developed a technology
of consciousness that is equal in its achievement. We in the West have
directed our explorations outward, its about discovery and mastery of the
material world. In the East the explorations have been inward. They are as
advanced in the psychological and spiritual realms as we are in the material
and scientific realms. The Western human sciences are allowing us to start
catching up. Ken Wilber integrates Eastern traditions with Western
psychology, for example. We've only recent developed the vocabulary and
conceptual categories to understand what the East is really up to.
Sam said:
......................................................... What grounds do
you
have for saying "the vast majority of that [differences between the mystics
of different traditions] is attributable to the cultural differences of the
one describing their experience."? Obviously it's an axiom for you, but why?
In what way can you run together the Christian mystics with, say, Hindu
gurus? What evidence do you have for this?
Sam repeated the question:
I still want you to justify your claim that 'we can see past the outer
cultural garments and find the common traits'. I think that's a prior
assumption, and one, moreover, that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. So I want
to know _why_ you believe it to be so. I think it's a modern mythology that
kicked in after the Enlightenment. It's the same 'axiom' that I mentioned
above: the assertion that there is a common 'mystical experience' underlying
all religious expression. Why do you believe that?
DMB says:
Glad you asked. It gives me a chance to think about Orpheus. You've asked a
HUGE question and I can only hope to sketch an answer. Jospeh Campbell is
especially good at showing the inner meaning beyond the outer clutural
clothing. The ability to see this for myself is something I've worked at it
for years and have read a stack of books much taller than myself in
exploring it. Its not a belief. Its a claim that can be shown or
demonstrated. Orpheus and Christ, for example, are different on the surface,
but they preform many of the same heroic tasks. They both complete "the
hero's journey", as Campbell would put it. Not only do these two figures
resemble each other in an essential way, they both enact the mystical
experience by traveling beyond the ordinary world, beyond death and then
return. They both defy the religion of the status quo and are killed for it.
They both travel to the underworld to preform a rescue. (most Westerners are
unfamiliar with Christ's three days in hell, between his death and
resurrection, but i suspect you do.) They both return to the land of the
living and are seen by many. They both ascend to heaven. They are both sons
of gods. Yes, this Thracian prince musician poet was Christ at least a
thousand years before Jesus was the Christ. The same figure appears in both
Hellenic Paganism and in Semetic Judiaism. See what I mean by "sketch"? All
I can do is draw a few suggestive lines of comparison between the two. But I
sort of have to leave it up to you to see that they are comparable to each
other in the deepest and most essential ways and that the differences are
relatively superficial and unimportant. Orpheus was not crucified and did
not wear a crown of thorns, but that doesn't matter. They both saw the truth
and suffered for their cause. That's what's important and that's how they're
the same. All of this can be seen in books, can be expressed in words, can
be demonstrated through comparative mythology, and that would be quite
enough, but it also matches my own experience. When one finds intellectual
patterns that match one's own experience, that's a good thing, no? This is
perhaps why I seem so convinced that its true. I find it in books, lots of
different kinds of books, and in my own life.
I've become convinced that myths, archetypes and all that basically
represent the very structure of our minds or consciousness, and that
structure compells every person to embark on this spiritual journey. I think
this means that we're essentially transcendent beings, that we we're built
to achieve the mystical experience, and to realize our own divinity, to see
that we are all the son of god. Ironically perhaps, I think that coming to
this realization is what is means to be fully human. And I think this is
precisely what the mainstream Christian church DON'T help us with. (Or
you'll correct me) This ommission is their greatest sin. How's that for a
straight answer?
Thanks for you time.
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