The Serpent's Wisdom

In conversation with lady_babalon this morning, she was surprised to hear that, while i consider myself a godless atheist, i do not renounce my experience of communion with the goddess, the meaning of my dream of the green man, or many of my other mystical or esoteric experiences.

This is not an inconsistent position, and i'll explain why.

The trajectory of religion throughout human history is to co-opt and misappropriate peoples' mystical experiences, to essentially steal and mislabel them and claim them in support of various power agendas. We learn early on that mystical experiences are "encounters with the divine," and are taught to correlate our various experiences with the concepts that other people, and institutions, have about the divine, and further, with the political and social ramifications connected to those beliefs.

One who has a mystical experience is told to tie this experience to a massive edifice of ideology, and offer it in support to the authoritarian institutions which speak in religious terms.

Consequently, i don't know what the word "god" means. I don't know what "divine" means. Yes, i know the dictionary definitions, but i don't know what the words really mean. We don't know what god is made of, or what clearly distinguishes god from the rest of the universe. What makes god stand out against the rest of existence? I don't even begin to know what god is supposed to be.

So all i know about god is what people say about god. And almost all of these comments are driven by some sort of personal, political, or institutional agenda. The word is nothing but a psychological pressure point, a button which institutions press to make us bend to their will.

I don't believe in or have faith in gods, divinities, deities or spirits -- by which i mean, i don't give any weight to what other people say religiously. (ETA: well, let me temper that. I react to other peoples' description of their experiences and frequently see parallels to my own experiences therein. What i discount are proclamations of doctrine or over-arching interpretations.)

In rejecting what other people say about "god", i am not going to also reject my experiences. My experiences are all i have. The mystical experiences i have had were profound and transformed my life. But i do not offer them up for institutional or ideological sacrifice.

Unfortunately, the only vocabulary i have to describe these experiences is a religious vocabulary, which makes them all too easy for other people to co-opt and speak about, as if they knew what was going on in my head or in my part of the world.

Once upon a time, i was a conservative Christian. I turned away from this during my early teens, when i began to realize that certain of my beliefs simply could not be reconciled with logic, science, reality, and my personal experience.

During my years as a non-Christian, as i explored many different approaches to spirituality i never stopped feeling like a spiritual refugee, and so when i learned about Gnostic and liberal Christianity i began to think maybe i had found a way to come home, spiritually speaking.

Liberal theology is rooted in an approach to scripture at odds with the fundamentalist belief that the Bible is literally true, infallible, and designed as a timeless guide to life, belief, and morality. It has nothing to do with liberal politics, though many liberal Christians are also liberal politically.

Finally, a kind of Christianity i could sink my teeth into!

But after years of exploration in the realm of liberal theology, i find i still cannot reconcile Christianity, this time with economics, ethics, philosophy, justice, and again my personal experience.

Christianity is based on the idea that humans are separated from God in some profound way. The conservative Christians talk about "original sin" and "sin nature" which passes from father to offspring. In the Calvinist formulation, people are inherently "totally depraved," utterly incapable of embracing good and worthy by default of eternal damnation.

The problem with this belief is that it is damagingly divisive. Someone who is "lost in sin" is too easy to see as less than fully human, less than fully capable, worthy of pity or rejection. It is too easy to justify to oneself participating in the mistreatment of people who are called by one's leaders less than fully human; and history bears out the problems this has allowed.

Liberal Christians understand how divisive this belief has been and rejects its overt forms. But most of the liberal theology i've encountered does not, in the end, truly reject it -- because they still rely on Christ for some sort of salvation.

Spong, for example, proposed we understand humanity as "incomplete," still a work in progress. Other liberal theologians describe us as in need of healing from without, in need of divine guidance or leadership.

In the past, i looked to the idea of soteria as "healing" or self-improvement in the hopes of understanding Christian doctrine in a non-divisive way. This approach can only work if and only if healing is seen as voluntary, as something we seek if we recognize a need for change in ourselves. It should never be seen as something which all of us must undertake -- because then it becomes, in turn, an "us vs. them," a question of "who is seeking healing and who isn't?"

But the idea of Christ as an envoy from God, or a reflection within humankind of the divine presence, makes it impossible to think of healing as something voluntary -- because Christ, as the perfect human, the ideal to which we are to aspire, is a yardstick by which we will always come up short.

The fundamentalists see Christ as God in human form. Liberal theologians are likely to see Christ as a metaphor for human potential, or the divine presence in an understandable form; or they see Jesus as an extraordinary person, someone of immense charisma who moved socio-political mountains and taught people a lot about tolerance and love and co-operation.

I was striken then very hard by the observation of Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza that perhaps the proper way to view the early Christian movement is not one that starts and ends with Jesus, a single extraordinary individual, a man who saves us all by leading the way to a bright new world, but as a broad and diverse social movement to which many people contributed with their bravery and their witness. In this view, Jesus is simply a person who became, for a time, the movement's chief galvanizer and spokesperson.

To take a galvanizing figure and make him a figure of worship or emulation and to make him the central focus of theological inquiry takes the emphasis from where it must be (justice and compassion). The idea of Christ is therefore misappropriation; it diverts inquiry from the hard questions of justice and ethics and spins us in a whirlpool of philosophical auto-eroticism. (ETA: Alright, i know that's harsh. But immersion in a quasi-Marxian-inspired point of view has made it difficult for me to see anything that does not immediately contribute to justice as a potential contributor to the status quo, by taking our energy away from the important areas of focus. I've always been accused of being too serious for my own good.)

Is there any way to preserve the idea of Christ and maintain a focus on justice and compassion? I eagerly sought one. The best i could come up with is the idea that Christ is something which those who follow the Christian path are called upon to become or to embody when we they confronted with a person in need or an ethical dilemma.

But if that's the way it works, then phrasing it in terms of "Christ" or "savior" is distraction -- or worse, because the loaded cultural values of these terms means that phrasing discourse about acting justly or compassionately in this way makes us forever in danger of being diverted away from ethics and onto the distraction of Christology. It's safer just to say, "We have to be just and compassionate with one another," than to bring a religious term into it that risks diversion.

This leads to another concern i had, which is that once you apply a word to something for ease of description, people take the word and run with it as a label, and use it in a normative way to distinguish between one thing and another. Similarly, any kind of organization formed by people of one generation to solve the problems they face becomes a rigidified edifice which tends to cause problems in future generations.

In other words, anything resembling "systematic" theology or philosophy -- the attempt to coalesce one's worldview into a concise set of concepts -- puts us in danger of creating fodder for the perpetuation or justification of injustice.

That's a damn drastic thing to say, i know: but i've expounded several times in recent months on why i have concluded that there is no way any ideology can be "the answer" to human ills. This is a thunderous insight that continues to reverberate throughout my brain and shake down wall after wall. It's a threatening idea to anyone who has a pet ideology, and i even sometimes find myself resisting it. But if there is anything that has been shown to be true by the witness of human experience, it is this.

A few weeks ago i finished reading Raising the Stones by Sheri S. Tepper. This novel examines an interesting question, first posed about halfway through: what would be the effect on religion if we had a God who actually worked?

She means of course outside of cosmology, because of course either God has created/is creating the whole universe, or not. The question concerns the direct and clear involvement of God in our individual lives.

I wonder what people point to as evidence, to them, that God has been involved in their lives?

In my case, there have been hints of a presence which i've felt in moments of stillness. But i don't know whether this presence is God, or my own self reflected back at me, some kind of cosmic mind, or an illusion created by my brain responding in its limited way to qualia it doesn't know how to handle otherwise.

But from a certain practical perspective, my conceptual interpretations don't matter. It doesn't matter if the presence is God, or my self, or the cosmos, or a neurochemical chimera, because i react to it the same way regardless. What matters is that i feel the presence there and it affects me, it calms me and makes me feel connected to something larger than myself.

More "direct" evidence of God, gods, deities, divinities, spirits, fairies, ancestors, poltergeists? There's been none in my experience. People's experiences vary widely in this regard, though, and it does not disturb nor hearten me to hear of more concrete sorts of experiences with the numinous.

So here's part of what i think happens. The following is, of course, just a theory. But tell me if it resonates with you.

I have come to suspect that people who latch very strongly onto dogma and doctrine and scripture do so because they don't otherwise have a strong link to the divine. That is, the only glimpse they've had of any sort of divine presence is the glimpse they get by way of doctrine and scripture. I can't say this for certain, but it is something that i have come to suspect in many cases.

(Of course there must be exceptions; frankly i find it puzzling that i ever have to say that a general statement has exceptions, but i daren't leave out that disclaimer!)

But what i have found is that people with a sense of connection to the divine seem to find a way to see eye-to-eye, even if they disagree about many of the particulars. It's like they can sense and acknowledge this connection in one another, and they grok that talk about doctrine or scripture is just that -- it is talk about concepts, and does not usually "cut deeply" to the connection each has with the divine.

Suppose God was a part of our lives just as plainly and clearly -- and doubtlessly -- as our friends or coworkers or classmates. Suppose God heard our requests and perceived our needs and acted on them. Then there wouldn't be room for doubt the way there is now.

In that case, sacrifices and rituals and other observances or obeisance would be nothing more than a kindness; it wouldn't be sacred in the way we think of it, because it would not be "set aside;" if we were following a request or a demand from God it would be the same as if we did so for a friend or supervisor.

Moreover, we wouldn't pour over scripture and engage in endless niggling debate about doctrinal details, because God would be right there to answer the question. Any debating we did would not seem like "theology" or "philosophy," it would be imminently practical.

Could the social edifice and prominence of religious institution survive? I do not think it could... in a recognizable form at least. A good chunk of religious practice is an unending attempt to stave off bad things from happening, under the assumption that bad things happen because gods get angry and punish us. If God was right there with us to give us clear input on what to do and what not to do, there would be no need to speculate on what God finds morally objectionable. If bad things happened, we would know whether or not it came from God.

People who perceive some sort of connection to the divine tend to take religious edifices, and people who piously rely on religion, less seriously than they should. I think this is part of why the piously religious are occasionally able to grab power, especially in societies where large segments of the population are psychologically damaged by cannibalistic oppression and are spiritually stunted.

I am the High Supreme Poobah Popette Lama of the Church of Disbelief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and if you believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist then you belong to my religion!

The Most-Assuredly-Not-A-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster-Deity hath spoken, yea, listen to his/her/its commandments:

1. Thou shalt not believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, nor that any Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe.

2. All adherents to the first commandment are forthwith required to tithe 10% of his or her income to the Church of Disbelief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I your non-pasta-divinity hath spoken.

I may have added a commandment or two of my own. But, er, anyways, welcome, all believers in this new religion!

Grinchy remark sends kids home in tears (thanks to joffeman for the link)

Kids in tears after learning that Santa isn't real. Well, kids are going to find out somehow, you can't hide it forever: Santa Claus does not come down the chimney (most houses don't seem to have those these days anyways) and leave presents for good boys and girls. The only way in which Santa exists is in the fuzzy "liberal clausology" way: a spark of the disembodied invisible spirit of Santa lives in each of us.

Yet we construct this myth, encourage children to love Santa Claus, and defend the myth ruthlessly, knowing that it will end in eventual disappointment. Why?

I've known more than one person who's discovery of the truth about Santa Claus planted the seeds for a later religious crisis. Your parents construct an elaborate fiction, and claim to be doing it to "preserve your innocence."

Maybe therein lies the problem: the "innocence of childhood," which is a bubble of reality we attempt to construct in which the world is full of happy rainbows and love and where hamburgers grow on plants and chicken nuggets are happy to be eaten. (And it's worth bringing up commercialism as at least an aside here, because commercialism drives much of this nowadays: after all, our modern image of Santa was shaped in large part by a series of paintings commissioned by the Coca-Cola Company.)

Maybe we do this because we are ashamed of the mess we've made of the world which they are going to be left with. Or maybe the reason is more sinister: it's a tactic to marginalize children's voices and "other" them. What we hide about the way the world works from children makes them vulnerable and easier to victimize. Adults tend not to believe what children say because they are innocent (and whose fault is that?) We teach children about "stranger danger" but not about the dangers in their own home. And when we do learn about the brutal abuse some children have endured we (as a society) seem to mourn the absence of a bubble of imaginary innocence in her or his life more than the brutality itself: another way in which "the innocence of childhood" is used to silence children.

The nine year old in our house believes in Santa. He learned about Santa at school, from other children, and from advertising; it was not a fiction his mother encouraged. It puts us in a really awkward position. Sooner or later he's going to start asking about this Jesus guy too, what do we tell him then? As non-Christians we do not have the option of shielding him from opinions in society at large with which we disagree. Maybe we'll tell him a spark of the disembodied invisible spirit of Jesus lives in each of us, too, right next door to Santa Claus.

Is there a relationship between God, mind, and matter?

1. I have often speculated that the divine presence is made of potential -- the potential for events to exist, the potential for growth and individuality within each of us, the potential end-product of evolution on earth, and so on. Before an event can happen, there must first be the potential for it.

Potential is described in physics as a form of energy. This is to preserve the canonical law of energy conservation. When a rock rolls down a hill, for example, or when voltage is established after a circuit connects to ground, the parlance of physics describes the kinetic or electric energy that is used as converted potential energy. Otherwise, it would look as though energy were being created from nothing at all.

A more poetic way to put this would be to suggest that the divine presence creates by providing the potential for something to happen, after which perhaps something happens.

Matter, too, is a form of energy, as shown in the theory of relativity.

2. Looking at this from another angle: quanta are described as being simultaneously "particle" and "wave."

The "particle" aspect of a quantum is the quantum expressed as matter, with position and velocity and sometimes mass.

The "wave" aspect is a continuous probability distribution, giving the likelihood that the quantum's material aspect will occupy a certain position at a certain time.

In other words, the medium through which the quantum wave undulates is potential. If so, then reality can be seen as a kind of dance between hyle and God, where God exists as the potential for a piece of matter to be in a certain place at a certain time.

In the past I have asked how we can know when we are looking at "God" versus "matter." (Assuming, of course, that there is any meaningful kind of distinction to be made there. If the pantheists are right, then looking for a distinction between God and matter is a fool's errand.) Precisely how does God, if she exists, affect the cosmos? And precisely what is God's nature?

3. From this, I want to explore the idea that there is an explication factor at work in the universe that causes things to unfold out of implicate wholeness, that takes bits of the unbroken wholeness and causes or enables these bits to transitorily take local form. Suppose that without this explication factor, the universe would simply remain folded up; events would not take place, things would not exist, there would be no "here" or "there", no "then" and "now". The natural state of the cosmos without it would then be unbroken and completely interconnected wholeness. In the presence of the explication factor, however, distinction forms between points in space and time; no two masses are able to occupy the same point.

This is the role given to perception or observation by quantum physics. The act of observing or measuring a quanta or quantum event makes it unfold in a "definite" way. Some part of the quantum wave "blossoms" into an actual particle; the rest vanishes (once a particle is explicated in one spot, there is no chance of it existing anywhere else).

The explication factor makes possible all distinction and all unknowing. Even in the face of quantum interconnectedness, it is possible for "things" to act as if they are unconnected from one another. Explicated reality is local, bound by the limitations of relativity.

4. In concert with explication, there appears to be a factor at work in the universe that causes explicated forms to seek ever more efficient ways to be and to do. The new science of self-organization explores the way in which matter in the universe "knows" how to organize itself into complex forms, in an ongoing quest for greater efficiency.

So what we see in explicate forms of the universe a self-consistency within the limitations of relativity. As new solutions to the problems of efficiency are discovered, they are shared with other explicate forms nearby, rippling out at the speed of light; and so the universe is like a mass of soap bubbles jostling one another, dissolving and reconstituting as energy follows the path of least resistence.

5. Now the question of mind. Mind would appear to be a combination of the two factors just described; and therefore mind determines the way in which matter explicates or blossoms forth from the field of potential. Mind causes the quantum wave to collapse when we make experimental measurements. Mind decides which course of action a person will take out of the options open to her.

If so, mind would be more primal and more fundamental than what we experience as "thought." Thought in the human brain is a linguistic and semiotic stream incorporating memory, accumulated problem solving strategies, instinct, emotion, and so on. Human thought can be seen as one localized solution to the problem of efficiency in explication; even so, it is subject to its own foibles and limitations.

The problem of "free will" might have a solution here. Free will, if it exists, is a faculty that initiates a chain of causation while being itself, to some varying degree, uncaused. That varying degree may be affected by the faculty of thought; memes provide new avenues for action that wouldn't exist otherwise -- they are efficient, hence their success. Memes might also at times co-opt free will by being less efficient than they could be, while still being more efficient than their absence.

Free will could be seen as an initiator of explication -- and thus only a particular manifestation of the explication factor.

For a couple of weeks I've been wanting to post about my spiritual thoughts and inclinations, since they have evolved.

I recently described my views as closest to atheistic and I suppose that's basically correct. That is, there is no room in my views (if there ever really was) for a distinct being that possesses volition and intelligence and which guides the cosmos. However, there is a presence that I have felt in moments of stillness which I call for lack of a better word divine.

One of my inquiries regards the "substance" out of which the divine presence could be composed. To put that in more specific terms, what is it precisely that meaningfully distinguishes divine presence from mundane presence? The answer I keep coming back to is perception, which is why I continue to self-identify as "gnostic" (gnosis = perception). The presence of divinity is distinguished primarily by the (subjective or perhaps intersubjective) perception thereof.

In short, divine presence is distinguished against the background of the cosmos solely via human consciousness, and, as best we can determine, nothing else. That means that God is, in terms of the manifest cosmos at least, made of nothing, but it is a meaningful nothingness. I've arrived at this answer before, with allusions to the Kabbalistic idea of ein sof. (It's also possible that "Allah" translates to "the no," or distinct nothingness.)

A description of the divine which I read once in challenging_god (offered I think by lasa) describes the divine as "creating by withdrawing." This corresponds closely to my observation that the divine presence operates by providing the potential whereby things occur. IOW, God creates a void of potential, into which nature/the cosmos "flows." The Tao is compared to the "watercourse way," and water runs downhill because potential exists whenever water can flow. The idea of the watercourse way, notably, suggests not the presence of a being with will that directly acts, but a harmonious sort of interbeing whereby nature provides for itself, summarized in the translation: "the Tao is that which never acts, yet leaves nothing undone."

Consider for example recent inquiries into the processes whereby things in the cosmos evolve and become more complex. Cellular automata and replicators, information theory and chaos and bifurcation points and catastrophe theory. It all points to a simple and harmonious self-consistency in the cosmos -- a kind of self-reflective morphic resonance. What causes complexity to develop is the opening of a niche or the existence of a system in a state of heightened dis-equilibrium. Either way we have the creation of what can be conceptualized as a void that will soon be filled.

Another concept that can be thrown in the mix here is the "holomovement," David Bohm's depiction of the cosmos as a mostly folded-up (or implicate) unbroken whole. Consciousness is tied in with the unfolding of the implicate order -- and the enfolded aspect of reality can be thought of as the potential for unfolding. The idea of the holomovement describes a cosmos made entirely of movement and of process, and in which every relevated thing is interconnected with every other relevated thing. From the perspective of any particular object, that object can be seen to be a hologram of the entire cosmos.

While I can see parallels in the Tao Te Ching and even the Upanishads to this idea of the cosmos as holomovement, I've found a very clear depiction thereof in Neil Douglas-Klotz's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. I'll try to find a way to present that in a coherent way.

Now, I hold all this in one part of my mind while another repeats the disclaimer that any conception I hold of god is only a limited eidolon (image or shadow) thereof.

"Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12

I have commented on this passage before, but it is extremely important to the Gnostic Christian tradition. Also, I note, my views on this passage have matured somewhat.

The Epistle to the Ephesians is generally believed now to have been written not by Paul but at some point between 100 and 130 CE; I believe that this and several other passages in Ephesians demonstrate that it was redacted by a Gnostic (if not actually written by one).

The forces of worldly oppression were called archons (rulers), which word was actually used in the passage above. In the Gnostic mythology, humans are shown as struggling against malevolent ruling powers from whose realm Christ seeks to liberate us; but to me this is but one minor facet of what this passage truly represents.

Earlier forms of Gnosticism, like the Jewish prophetic and Christian traditions from which it was born, were concerned with the welfare of the lower classes. Its later variations, like Christianity, were clearly more concerned with the pursuits of people with more comfortable lifestyles. So when examining the later forms of Gnosticism, it is hard sometimes to see the extent to which it was truly a movement of political, religious, and economic radicalism.

Caricaturing the Lord honored in the Temple in Jerusalem was an indication of extreme disenfranchisement. This caricature was later to be seized upon by thinkers whose motivation was possibly anti-Semitic (such as Marcion) so it is extremely important to discern the motivation behind a given Gnostic text. Some of them were indeed anti-Semitic; others were a direct product of the highly various Jewish community of late antiquity.

In the minds of the early Gnostics, the agents of fate, the archons, were in collusion with the ruling elite. It is not a mistake that they referred to these agents as "the rulers." The struggle to end political, religious, and economic oppression was the same struggle as the mystical struggle against the agents of fate, who determine the course of our lives and who assert that we have no choice but to go along with the master plan.

Similarly, to speak out against injustice was to spit in the eye of fate.

The Gnostics saw the Serpent as the spirit of wisdom who liberated them from the false garden established by the archons to keep us trapped, which we might compare to the tapestry of illusion woven by Mara, or to the Matrix, both illusions designed to keep us ensnared and distracted and so deprive us of living up to our full potential.

They equated this with the message of Jesus, one who had spoken out against their oppression at the hands of the wealthy, the priestly class, and the Roman regime. The resurrection of Jesus by the Father (whether it was literal or metaphorical) signified that the Father so strongly approved of Jesus' program that he rejected the actions of fate and even the ultimate fate of death.

To rise up in this way is to say to fate, I reject the injustice that you have set in my path. The cosmos does not have to be ordered this way, because the Root of All sent instructors to show us the way!

I have often spoken of God, or the Root of All, as akin to a potential field. Potential is that whereby events happen; during an event, potential energy is transferred into kinetic, thermal, electromagnetic, or other forms of energy. I think of the cosmos as working in the same fashion -- the divine creating the potential that allows all things to exist or happen. If the divine is potential, then surely it is good and right that each of us should attempt to fulfill our potential to the utmost.

Economic or political or religious oppression keeps us from living up to our fullest potential.

Yesterday yahvah took me to task for "defining God."

In a sense he's right, and I've always felt that it is best to try to avoid defining God. I regard my speculations in that regard as an indulgent pleasure and try to keep them in perspective. At the same time, though, it's impossible to resist the temptation to spend some time analyzing the concept and at least determining to some extent what one means when one uses the word.

After all, what use, one might ask, is there in a word that does not have a clear meaning?

The usefulness of words, actually, comes from the fact that they have built-in vagueness. They are indicative or meaningful enough to allow discourse, but they are imprecise enough that they can be applied to more than one thing at a time.

So... my 'definition' of God is "not quite a definition," but an expression of my experience. It is, though, ultimately just a crafted thing that points, I hope, at the ineffable.