Being Human: The Nature of the Journey

The nature of the journey

The religious journey is the pursuit of truth,

back to our source of being,

the original meaning,

that elusive end to which we never arrive,

yet by which

our paths are so greatly illuminated.

The greatest wonder of it all

is that we’ve never left the source to get back to it,

but we have deceived ourselves most artfully

We are religious animals. We have a deeply profound need to belong with “The Other.” It begins at conception when two genetic banks of information mingle (male and female), then develop into a colony of cells that continue to split off into other colonies of various form and function, yet all within the same mass, on the wall of the uterus of a mother. Other processes and time contribute to development, until a time when we are propelled through a narrow channel from the comfort of this small and secure place and out into a world of noise, cold, other beings, and apart from our source of dependence and nurturance. In our nubile state, we are still completely dependent on “The Other,” in this case our mother. We cannot feed nor protect our fragile fleshy bodies from the elements, nor move about in any fruitful way, in order to survive. Our instincts are to whelp for attention until we are attended to. Without “The Other” at this stage in our human development we would surely die. It is almost as if we’ve been taken from the womb prematurely. We were, before our conception, and the mingling of two genetic banks of information, without a sense, without a clue, and never separate from the whole of things. Our consciousness was that of the cosmos, if it has one. We were of a perpetual cosmic process.

What a mad trick, to be endowed with conscious mind that would eventually perceive itself as–not only separate from the whole–but a unique and reflective being unto itself. It is a trick, intentioned or not, for we are truly NOT independent from the whole. We’ve never left the ecosystem that produced us. We’ve merely transformed in shape and function. The paradox of human existence is this, that we are of one indistinguishable flow, though in a transient form of human existence for some duration of time, before expiring. The energy and matter that was an individual “me” is soon dissipated among the ecosystem once more to recombine with other cosmic elements into other forms and functions. Even in our most supreme state of human independence, we are dependent upon the air, water, plants and animals, other people and a desirable climate. We are compelled to belong with each other. Even the hermit in a cave cannot exist without having learned some skills from another or to use some tools and appliances that were manufactured by another.

Beyond our early development, we socialize with a larger group–from our primary care giver to a family, extending to a tribe or clan, to a community of friends and associates, to a city-state of interdependent organizations and structures, to a nation, and now to a world.

It is no wonder then, that early humans, perceived all of the activities of nature as being animated by “The Other” for our development dictated to us that we could not exist without “The Other.” At birth, we had lost our Cosmic identity, we had no sense of being part of the whole of things. The development of reflective thought occured within the context of our mutual dependence with each other. When the earth turned, presenting the illusion that the sun traveled across the sky, day after day after day, it was perceived not only as moving, but as being moved by an anthropomorphized being, a super human, a god.

All immediately intangible events were explained through an anthropomorphic projection of our own childhood experience– perhaps a providing parent, a mentoring friend, an anonymous and/or alien specter ,or a suspicious or harmful enemy. Our minds are full of archetypes of legend and lore. Then, as today, organized religion was married to the State, through which the distribution of goods and services were controlled by an elite and powerful few, controlling the masses through their religious dogmas, implying a work ethic that would benefit the elite and powerful through the toil of the masses, and whipping up a combination of nationalism and religious duty to compel men into cannon fodder to war for the extension of the empire and the extermination of competing states and religions. In some cases, the religion WAS the state, as in the long and bloody reign of many a Catholic pope.

In other cases, the State was all, as in China under the bloody dictatorship of Mao, where a grotesque distortion of communism was misused to slaughter millions in the name of Mao. Communism is an ideology in which a community benefits from the work of each other in an egalitarian government in which all are equal, without a hierarchy of social classes.. In “communist” China, there was no equality. Those who controlled the State controlled the people. There was a ruling class, a lot of propaganda, and a peasant class. Those who demonstrated allegience to the State rose in power within the misnamed Communist Party. It was, in truth, an elitist party. Nothing communal about it. The Cultural Revolution under Mao, which led to the slaughter of millions and the destruction of surrounding societies as in Tibet, ended with Mao’s death. The elitist dictatorial government structure remained. The so-called “Communist” Party is still the party of power, but capitalism has exploded in China, which is now becoming the most lucrative economic power in the world. It is the major manufacturer and exporter of goods in the world.. The Chinese religious legends and lore have been altered to satisfy the State, but many traditional archetypes persist. In other countries, legends and lore of old are infusing with products of a technological entertainment and communications revolution.

Today’s legends and lore are an abstract compilation of marketing ads, films, video games, books, and ancient religious texts. The traditional archetypes have been morphed into manipulative advertising and propaganda by corporations and governments to persuade the common citizens of earth’s lands to buy their products and services, labor in their factories, and act as cannon fodder in their warring disputes over corporate control of energy sources and natural resources. In this sense, the manipulation of the masses has not changed, but the means of delivering propaganda and manipulative ads has become one of the leading industries of the empire. It has become a sophisticated and highly professional field of business and government.

It is my mission to help people fend off the propaganda, the intertwining manipulations of religion and politics, the distorted and persuasive advertising, by learning to be good researchers. My goal is to educate people to dissieminate fact from fiction, to find the truth among the spinning rhetoric of politicians and their corporate news affiliates, to follow the money trails to see who benefits from a war, a bending of environmental law that harms citizens, the exploitation of dwindling fossil fuels, and more.

To this end, I advocate three guiding elements–reason, human compassion, and desire for peace. For tools, I recommend a computer and an Internet access service, your mind, and the ability to suspend your preconceived notions about the way you believe the world of governments, religion and corporations function in the world.

I recommend the Scientific Method which begins any study without assumptions. One begins with observation, which leads to a question. The question is then presented as a hypothesis. The Scientific Method is applied to keep us honest. We seek not to PROVE our hypthesis, but to prove its opposite–the NULL hypothesis. Thus, reason and skepticism guide to consider NOT how our assumptions may be correct, but to analyze the variable elements that can confound what our assumptions are, or may imply.

I understand the faith that so many devote to their religions, vehicles of moral truths transmitted through ritual and tradition, some for millennia. Religion is, more often than not, the central focal point of a culture, of that culture’s families, and therefore of an individual’s sense of belonging. The irrational attachment with which one adheres to these important social belief systems is what we call faith. Faith, without reason, can only lead to group-think, ostracization and/or denouncement of those outside of the faith, and–in the extreme case–war. Within an irrational religious faith lie the seeds of prejudice, intolerance, bigotry, discrimination and persecution of others. An irrational faith carries with it a sense of arrogant self-righteousness that condemns the rich diversity of humanity that exists outside of itself. A healthy faith is based on reason, adapts to the facts of the universe in which it arises, and reconciles its tenets to reality. An unhealthy faith will deny the reality of the natural world, will be intolerant of other cosmic possibilities and those who believe in them, and become a dangerous threat to the family of Man. One need only to read a scholarly book of human history to see the calamity that irrational and bigoted faith has had upon human civilizations.

It is for this reason, that I left organized religion so many years ago, that my mind would not be consumed by a singular irrational explanation of our human existence within the Cosmos, that it could explore ideas, philosophies, facts and fictions, untethered by the preconceived notions of dogma, doctrine, or creed.

A single word can be packed with a multitude of preconceived notions. Example? “God”. To some a fatherly, white bearded heavenly creator, who made humankind in his image out of loneliness, and observes and intercedes upon his creation from some heavenly throne. Does one dare ask how, within an eternal realm of existence , this being can separate out a moment in which to suddenly feel lonely? To others, a faceless spirit moving through the Cosmos as a constant creative force. To others, a supernatural entity that can take on a human form by which to redeem the creatures it created that had chosen to exist in ways not tolerable to this entity. To still others, an animating force in each and every form of this physical universe. And, yet to others, a concept projected from a human mind to explain the events of natural phenomena. Thing move. Things happen. Some ONE has to be moving them and making them happen. Lastly, to others (such as myself) a projected irrational fantasy-being of one’s self, to provide comfort and security in the face of fear, anguish and the absence of reasonable explanation. Human belief in gods diminishes according to the level of one’s education, utility of reason, understanding of science, and intellectual development.

http://www.objectivethought.com/atheism/iqstats.html

To be a “truth walker” one is compelled to leave a standing position.

Amen.

MH

What McCain Missed About John Hagee

John Hagee, popular fundamentalist Christian minister, known for professing outrageous things in the public arena, was finally chastised by a political candidate, but not for the many odd things he announces in modern day, but comments he made over a decade ago. I’ve tuned Hagee in on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBS) for the shear entertainmnet value. It is laughable to me that anyone could profess the prophetic writings of an ancient religious book after living in a society that makes available so many scholarly works on the myths, legends, history and theologies of these sixty-six books (sans the Apocrychas), politically decided upon by the hashing out of various Christian factions nearly two millennia past at the canonical councils. And we can thank the imperial march of Roman troops into so many lands, upsetting so many cultures and various other religions, for the spread of Christendom, not to mention the centuries of bloody Christian Crusades and torturous inquisitions throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and on into the desecration of the native peoples of the “New World.”

Nonetheless, a majority of American profess their beliefs in this book–the Jewish books of the Old Testament with a New Testament addendum–augmentations, distortions, manipulations and additions by authors professing a faith in a resurrected Messiah.  Paul, of which much of the New Testament is comprised of his letters to various congregations, makes no mention of the earthly man, Jesus, only to a netherworld demigod called Jesus Christ.  Paul visited Jerusalem on several occasions, but never makes mention of it being the place where his son-god spent his last earthly days.  In fact, Paul makes no mention of a Jesus in Jerusalem at all, nor of his many works and teachings.  Curious, but very, very true.  Yet, I would be surprised if many professed believers in the New Testament writings would even acknowledge this fact.

According to research by Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason— sixty-two percent of these “ believers” do not know the names of the four gospels of the New Testament nor that Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament, much less the mysterious omissions of any reference to an earthly man named Jesus by the Apostle Paul. As a biblical researcher and reader of scholarly critical analyses of these ancient texts, I am always struck with wonder how people could so readily profess a belief in that about which they know so little. But, Fox News also also attracts a wide number of believing news viewers even after more than a decade of selling lies, deceits and misinterpretations of fact, so I shouldn’t be too awe-struck by the prevalence of ignorance in people who rely upon unreliable resources for their information.

The books of Ezekiel and Daniel of the Old Testament and the Revelation of John which closes out the New Testament make so many obvious references to the astrological zodiacal wheel of symbols and meanings that it is laughable that anyone would include these books as part of their “ infallible Word of God.” But, then Genesis’s two creation stories are confused and confounded in the minds of many, the plurality of gods of Genesis 5, whose “sons of the gods intermarried with the daughters of men” is dismissed by many “believers” as a mystery not to be understood. Their offspring, the Nephilum, were the “giants and heroes of old.” The similarities of Samson to other heroic figures such as Hercules brings to mind Joseph Campbell’s great works on religious mythologies, especially the book, The Hero of a Thousand Faces.” The Noahic flood myth is so nearly the same story from Babylonia written twelve hundred years before it that it is unconscionable that biblical readers who learn this haven’t seen the lack of historical validity to their books of faith. Not to mention the myth of King Sargon I of Babylonia who, as an infant, was placed in a basket of reeds and pitch and set afloat down the river to save him from slaughter, and he was rescued by a handmaiden and rose to be the leader of a great nation. Moses anyone?

Yet, John Hagee, and many like him, can stand up before a massive throng of thousands of people and profess to know the meanings of what he interprets to be predictions for the world drawn from this collection of arcane, disjointed, historically confused concoctions of infused mythologies, theologies and meanings. A majority of American believe that the end of the world is near. Forty percent, or more, believe in a notion called the “Rapture,” in which it is believed that Jesus will return and many people will simply disappear from the earth to be “taken up into the sky” (to another planet? Another dimension? The “believers” are vague on just where their heaven is, because—I guess—their professed god is not a very clear provider of meanings and directions). Hagee aligns himself with the Zionists of Israel, believing that Jerusalem will be the centerpiece of a great war, led by Jesus, against the evildoers of the earth, in the final battles of Armageddon. And he will point, in great geographical detail , to places on a map of the Middle East and reference them to obscure and ahistorical phrases of biblical passages.

Thus, the United States, populated by a majority of people who believe in these nonsensical things, deserves a George W. Bush as their president, the least mentally capable and most intellectually challenged president in the history of the United States. Susan Jacoby got it right. This IS the age of American Unreason. I call it the New American Dark Age, and if there is light at the end of the tunnel, it is very, very dim at this writing. Superstitious religious theology mingled and mired with nationalistic jingoism prevails over science and reason. Unchallenged public political statements become the social dogma of the masses while the money trails and corporate capitalist lusts for power point to a whole different set of facts behind the geopolitics of the world than what the masses believe. The Constitution of the United States is readily shredded through the passage of right-stripping legislation, unread by the congressional representatives who pass them into law. Torture is now a policy of the American government, as well as abducting people into renditions and prisons, without the right of habeas corpus, dure process of law, right to an attorney, or even being charged with a crime.

John McCain denounces Hagee for his discriminatory and bigoted remarks, but doesn’t question any of the thousands of ridiculous statements about history, morality and world events made by Hagee over the past several years. The American Dark Age continues.

Amen. MH Pathfinder

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him

It’s a quote from ninth-century Zen Master, Lin Chi, a warning to rely only upon the self and not to trust external forces as “authority figures” who wish to dictate one’s life or even simply to imply a certain way that one must be, and Lin Chi would warn not even to rely upon his words I just cited, but to reflect upon one’s own self as one’s guide. Alexander Pope wrote, “Know then thyself. Presume not god to scan. The proper study of mankind is Man.” The only guru one can trust to control one’s life is the guru within, the self. Let no external force have absolute power over ME, even this author who is recommending such advice, or even me who is quoting him. This is in extreme contradiction to the religious paths that so many follow, surrendering their lives to the interpretations of holy books, rendered holy by scribes, priests and self-proclaimed religious leaders throughout history. Or, surrendering to supposed gods, figments of shared imaginations that catapult an ideal vision of human behavior up into the fanciful skies and netherlands of heavenly aspirations, unfounded and unproven by one’s own experience or tests of reason and logic.

This is not to imply anarchy or chaos as preferable means of governing human affairs. I suspect, and believe, that if we were to search within our selves, sans the sea of preconceived notions of multimedial messages that have been teeming into our minds since infancy, we would find a very humanistic self that would seek to create a social network of mutual reliance, because it would benefit the self, as well as other selves, toward a peaceful and mutual means of human cohabitation and prosperity. Not to appear as a naive fool here, I understand that a mutually human social consciousness has to be practiced and honed, learned and tested in a child’s life to have meaning. This seems quite paradoxical to the theme of this essay which seeks to diminish the influence of external authorities and gurus, teachers and sages, and to put forward the value of the self as the primary teacher and guide to one’s life directions. Yet, the choice to adopt an external force as a teacher, if even for a temporary time, can be a choice of one’s self, the result of a reflective process through which the mirror of one’s mind yields an image that one sees as needing an external influence.

And, what is a self? Does one’s self end at the perimeter of one’s skin? Or, is the human self even those ideas and things shared with others, outside of one’s body and mind? I have conversations with dead people, many of whom are my favorite authors whose books I have read long after they have expired, and whose words I allow to bounce among the other ideas in my mind, and I will argue points for and against, be awestruck by novel ideas and synergistic alliances between an author’s ideas and my own present experience. These people are dead, yet their human selves have been transmitted into written texts that communicate with us centuries, millennia after the physical person has expired and rotted away. This metaphysical process takes place through the written word, through film, through music, through architecture and visual arts, through dance, and long beyond the life of a person who created any one of them.

Who is the Buddha? Can he even be identified specifically outside the realm of the self, as we each walk down our paths of life, to killl him? If we kill the Buddha, do we kill part of our self? And…of course…what is a self? Is even a hermit, alone in a cave, a solitary self, if he or she is using the products of other minds on which to sleep, with which to prepare food, and with which to sustain other aspects of their “solitary” lives? At the other extreme, are the social constructs of authoritarianism that discourage individual thought and freedom to choose.

The constructs of American legal and governmental systems mimick the authoritarian constructs of institutional religion. Government chambers are oft designed to loft the executives into higher chairs than their organizational subordinates. Court rooms loft judges into higher chairs as if their authority was the supreme over all in the room. The pulpits and lecterns of many a Catholic and Protestant church are raised to lift the priests and ministers to higher positions than their congregations, as if they are supreme mediums between congregations and gods.

These physical constructs of religious and governmental authority combine to create an illusion of executive and priestly authority over the citizens of a nation-state, and thus relax an individual citizen’s sense of personal responsibility and power over his or her own life and directions. Citizens become pliable human clay to be manipulated and molded into uses that suit the executives of governments, religions and corporations without the central concern of a person’s being and well-being, or their ecological context of existence.

This is a supreme folly, but I am no authority either. I merely ask the reader to consider these thoughts, reflect upon them, and wonder how they fit with your own balance or imbalance of external and internal messaging and personal power. I would hope that a very deep reflection on these issues and ideas would be made on the days and hours before one casts a vote for a particular political candidate and/or votes to adopt or reject a specific bill, initiative or resolution.

So Be It.

Amen.

The Pathfinder