Answering Pilate's Question

Pilate’s famous question came in an unfortunate context. He has been reviled ever since, but his question is actually a good one. What Pilate really said is that it’s very difficult to define what that word means—especially when it is used in an abstract way, thus without the addition of the word “about.” The simple answer, my dear Pilate, is that truth is experience. But experience, while it cannot be denied, is something other than “a conceptual formulation of something experienced.” That second formulation—the expressed, reported truth—is a secondary product. It may fully satisfy the person who had the experience, but the only way to judge whether or not the “translation” is accurate is by having had the same experience. Pilate’s question therefore suggests that while truth has an unambiguous personal standing, its public or shared standing is fraught with ambiguity. It depends on experience, not merely on intelligence sufficient to parse the words in a conceptual formulation.

We can tease this apart further by supplying the appropriate context. Technically truth is an agreement between a statement and the experience on which it rests. If the experience is anchored in the visible, tangible, physical, the outcome is a fact; it can be checked and confirmed. If the experience is inner, the outcome is a truth; but truth is beyond confirmation. God may have told you that, but how do I know? Thus our own reaction to a reported truth is of necessity intuitive.

What we see here is the unbridgeable chasm that exists between different realms of reality. If truth were as forcibly compelling as fact is, there would, in effect, be no such thing as free will. But there is freedom in the spiritual dimension, necessity in the physical. The endless battles over scriptures would cease if revelation were viewed correctly as messages directed to souls. Revelation used as social engineering or as secular legislation is revelation abused. But one of the truths about this world is that if revelation reaches this region, it will be abused. Sooner or later.

The Dark Filter of Tradition

Through a glass darkly? That glass is sometimes very dark. The sacred writings of an age invariably reflect the powerful biases that then prevail and render those biases in a context suggesting that they carry divine approval. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, which has no female figure of the deity, it is possible to encounter such things as the following:

Simon Peter said to him, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.”

Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This comes from the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi find in Egypt.  It contains purported sayings of Jesus, and this is one; indeed it is the last one in the document. I am showing the Lambdin translation, from the Coptic. It is conformant to all other translations, including a linear word-for-word rendering. The meaning is clearly what is stated above. The document dates to the period 130-250 AD.

I found this interesting because I’d chanced across it on the same day I’d listened to a television broadcast; there was no link between those two activities. The broadcast carried a conference session where assembled leaders discussed religious rights under current public policy. One strong thrust of the presentations was bemoaning the government’s support of feminist advocacy. The problem, of course, for organized religions, is that dark filter of tradition. There was evidently a time when men reflexively viewed women as in some way less than human. This same view is also echoed in some Shi’ite religious writings. Alas.

My view of revelation (developed elsewhere here) is that it comes from “above” but, after it ends up on paper, it carries an interpretation that echoes its own times. I reached this view by noting that, in successive revelations, the then prevailing culture always leaves “its Mark.”

Fortunately for those participating in the conference I viewed, such gospels as Thomas’ and many other writings, were scrubbed from the canon, beginning with St. Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria (died 373). Can you imagine the attendees’ problems if such verses as the above had to be defended as the word of God?

How “It” Talks to Us

Having waxed eloquent about deuterocanonical or apocryphal books of the Bible yesterday, occasioned by a quote, let me today present the full context of that quote and show how It, the dimension beyond, but not further specified, communicates with us. I take the quote from Owen Chadwick’s book, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 257-258. Chadwick, as I’ve already mentioned yesterday, is an Anglican Priest. He was born in 1916. Here is the quote:

On 31 October 1941 at breakfast time, more than fifty people were burnt to death in a factory fire in Yorkshire, and a few were killed when they jumped from the top storey down to the pavement. That was a long day. I spent all of it seeing burnt skin and the relatives of corpses, the most miserable and most exhausting day of my life. When at last I got home after 11 p.m., dog-tired and empty and wretched, I opened a Bible and found, reluctantly, the lesson for the day. And the words leapt out from the page as though they were illuminated, and swept over the being like a metamorphosis, with relief and refreshment:

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God; and no torment shall touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their going from us to be utter destruction… Like gold in the fire he put them to the test — and found them acceptable like burnt offering upon the altar.

The quote in the quote is from The Book of Wisdom, 3:1-6—and what the Book of Wisdom is was the subject of yesterday’s post.

In a secular age, we are surrounded by mysteries. And, indeed, we’re always thus surrounded, never mind the label not quite firmly sticking to the times. But it is an indicator of our era that we speak of such experiences as meaningful coincidences, serendipities, and such—rather than as revelations or as communications from beyond. When we experience this sort of thing ourselves, it’s always quite another matter—even when the circumstances are not as powerful, dramatic, and meaningful as what happened to Professor Chadwick.

My own views of revelation as a whole, as a reality, as a doctrine, are built upon these up-close-and-personal experiences of humanity. This particular case is doubly enlightening in that for a large portion of Christianity the Book of Wisdom is not considered to be canonical, thus is not viewed as inspired. It was written at a time when a Greek version of the Old Testament was already partly available, because Wisdom quotes from it. Biblical scholars believe that the writer was a Jewish sage living in very secular Alexandria and wrote towards the middle of the first century BC. The book reveals Platonic influence, thus the presence of a real distinction between the body and the soul. “For a perishable body presses down the soul, and this tent of clay weighs down the teeming mind.” Wisdom 9:15. This view becomes accepted in Christianity as it develops.

Revelation, it seems to me, is continuing, personal, and comes from all of humanity—as It communicates something of Its reality to this dimension. A Jewish sage living in Alexandria in the midst of the hellenistic decline, an Anglican priest in World War II tending to burn victims, a Greek sage writing dialogues in the fourth century BC. Official revelation is but a sampling, and multiple canons exist. In some the Book of Wisdom is excluded; in others the Tao Te Ching is included. But what really matters ultimately is that It communicates…

The Uncomfortable Neutral Stance

Is there a neutral way to approach what are invariably viewed as religious experiences? The answer isn’t obvious. Let me be precise to bring that out. Let me take the case of a person, let me call him A, who hears or reads about other people who claim to have had such experiences. Those reporting may say that God, an angel, or some other sacred figure has addressed them, that they’ve received a revelation, or simply that they’ve had experiences of a transcendental state. Now if A is an unbeliever, he will reject the truth of such reports outright—except to acknowledge the presence of some disarrangement in the claimant’s brain. If A belongs to a well-defined faith system, but the claimant mentions figures from another faith, and especially makes references to some doctrinal aspects of the same, A is likely to dismiss the revelation because it doesn’t fit his structure of belief; he may even think the revelation came from the devil. A Muslim will be dubious if the center of the revelation is the Virgin Mary; a Christian will be dubious if the central role is played by Mohamed’s daughter Fatima.

A neutral stance would seem to require that A must credit the possibility of a transcendental reality, indeed one in which actual persons exist—and also view all religions as essentially equivalent, thus as having equivalent claims. Neither believers nor unbelievers will grant a neutral A much standing. For the unbeliever A is too soft, too gullible. For the orthodox believer, A is “lukewarm,” uncommitted, wishy-washy, and probably some kind of muddle-headed pantheist.

This is a real issue. At the core of every religion is a narrative, a conceptualization, an historical context, indeed a logic that makes it unique, and making any two of them equivalent invariably renders both in some ways or to some extent false. The neutral stance, which happens to be mine (alas!) relies on human fallibility as the legitimate explanation of the claimed equivalence.

All human experience is filtered through the imperfect lens of our consciousness; this is as true of ordinary as of extraordinary matters. At the very root of transcendental experiences—thus the initial core experience of the founder of a religion or a major movement—a human mind encounters something totally unprecedented and undeniable. This must be explained in some way, and the person must use his or her existing knowledge, not least cultural heritage, to make sense of it. And that’s at the root. All religions then develop further, always taking centuries, and the intellectual formulation crystallizes long, long after the revelatory event. By the time a religion has a full complement of orthodox doctrines, many, many people have made their contributions to it and incorporated their fallibilities as well. It remains to note that the source of such developments, whatever it is that the original claimant underwent, carries an enormous force of benevolence within it. If it did not, the religion could not take hold and acquire its millions of followers.

An authentic neutral stance does not deny the reality of the high but sees in the interpretation of the experience of it the equally undeniable fallibility of man.

Notes on Atheism

There are different ways in which people can couch their disbelief in the religious doctrines of the Hebraic family of religions. People can hold, as I do, that all humans are able to perceive a higher dimension; I usually call this the transcendental order; therefore I view claims of special divine revelation, channeled through individuals or larger aggregates (a chosen people), as an interpretation of personal experiences. Inevitably those who claim the revelation also claim to be pronouncing God’s will—not merely for themselves but others. This I view as “the problem of revelation.” You can find a series of posts on this subject here by clicking the term revelation under Categories. I view it as a problem because, inevitably, this sort of doctrine becomes oppressive when it gains sufficient power. To doubt the claims of those who would speak in the name of God is disbelief, but only from the viewpoint of the believer in the doctrine; disbelief of this kind isn’t necessarily atheism.

Another form of disbelief arises from sincere inability to perceive a transcendental order behind nature, world, and cosmos. This group divides into agnostics and atheists. Agnostics claim they just don’t know, one way or the other; but they leave either possibility open. Agnostics don’t actively push their views. Atheists are convinced that their inability to see the transcendental arises from the fact of its absence; they divide into ordinary atheists and into the militant kind. The latter act as missionaries of their system of faith; in this they are indistinguishable from others who proselytize for other systems that also lack all positive proof, thus proof that can be publicly demonstrated without need for subjective “faith.”

Early in my wanderings I’ve noted that atheism is a peculiarly western phenomenon. It is the Hebraic tradition that introduced the concept of revelation; its acceptance requires “faith”—thus assent in the absence of proof. It is in the philosophical schools of this tradition that proofs for the existence of God have flourished—and have also spawned their atheistic opponents. I’m unaware of any similar clustering of thought in the East. Why isn’t there an analogous movement in China, for instance, centered on showing that the Tao or Heaven do not exist? Here it might be worth mentioning that “Heaven,” in the Chinese conceptualization, is an unanalyzed but well-understood reference to an overweening transcendent sovereignty. We see this in the context, for instance, of a phrase like “the mandate of Heaven.” That such a saying is not merely a cynical equivalent to saying that “what happens happens” is shown by the fact that in Chinese classical literature Heaven’s mandate is withdrawn when the virtue of the ruler flags. Heaven is thus conceived of having a moral aspect. Similarly I note the conspicuous absence of analytical approaches in the writings about the Tao (“the Way”); the Tao Te Ching might be called a classical text on negative theology, thus the idea that anything you say about the Ultimate is wrong-headed even before you utter the words.

The only way I can explain this difference between the East and the West is by noting that, in the West, we have separated from the unanalyzable Ultimate a willful ruling spirit, a spirit that specifically directs humans, as such, to behave in certain ways. I could put this another way and say that we have projected into the unanalyzable Ultimate our own dogmatic dicta; we’ve divinized our own sense of the right; next we proceed to derive our own views, once more, but this time from on High, now as the all-powerful voice of God. And because it is from such a source, we claim for it much more than merely our conviction that right is right. No. It is more than that. The East has avoided this innovation and thus still holds a more reverential view of the divine. Atheism, therefore, at least certain sincere and serious forms of it, might therefore be viewed as a corrective.

Revelation and Art, Persuasion and Ideology

Last in a series on Revelation and Scripture.

My presentation on this subject might be summed up in this way: Revelation and real art are closely linked phenomena, closely enough linked so that one might say that they are different words for the same basic experience. The big qualifiers here are, One, that “real art” is difficult to define sharply and itself requires an awakened heart. I’ve discussed this subject in two earlier postings here and here. Two, revelation is equally difficult to separate from moral harangue, legalistic suasion, advocacy and admonition, and other forms of discourse the aim of which is to shape other people’s behavior. I do not hesitate at all to view true revelation as Divine Inspiration. But scriptures are filled with much more mundane writings (harangue, suasion, etc.) which I find difficult to associate with the divine and easily identify with the human.

Thus I would put Revelation and Art to one side and Persuasion (to use a single word for the human part) to the other. Now I would propose that recorded persuasions, once they have been integrated into a society’s collective memory, are gradually transformed into Ideology. And an ideology is always an attempt to shape and control behavior—but with sanctions added for disobedience.

In the first post in this series, I noted that the objections to revelation include two general arguments. One is that the social results of religion (thus of revelation) are wars, persecutions, pogroms, etc. The other is that they present contradictory views of God or of God’s will. And I suggested that the critics’ attacks can be answered satisfactorily. If we accept the division of the phenomenon as I have done—into a presentation of the higher reality as art or as the story of religious experience on the one and into persuasion and ideology on the other hand—the critics’ attacks can be seen correctly. They are directed at those results which arise from ideology. Human beings will always resist coercion. When the religious experience has been transformed into an ideology and thus has assumed a coercive form, it will be resisted. Conflicts will arise, and these, ultimately, will result in mayhem. This will explain why religious phenomena often have bad results. Let’s next turn to contradictory views of God.

These views also arise from the hardening of revelation into ideology. I am a staunch adherent to negative theology, namely the assertion that the Divine is unknowably transcendent. At the same time, as an individual, I too have a picture, as it were, of the cosmic arrangement; it’s only human to make things understandable to oneself. Forcibly to impose my picture on others, however, would be to act against my strongest intuitions—which is that I do feel something but I do not know it as hard fact. I claim the right to see things as I do—and grant that same right to others. People must form their own pictures in their own ways. All claims, therefore, of infallible knowledge arise from the human side of the equation—not from Divine Inspiration. Claims that one view is right and all others are wrong arise from a desire to impose control—thus, again, to shape behavior, loyalty, adherence, and conformity. Granted. Social life benefits from consensus and unity of purpose. But to obtain that illegitimately also introduces in seed conflicts that will later blossom into wars, persecutions, pogroms, etc.

I will conclude this with the splendid analogy I have from Arnold Toynbee, the historian. He suggested that the creative leader resembles the Pied Piper who draws others to himself by the music that he plays. That music, which people willingly follow because it is beautiful and moves their hearts—that is what I call revelation. Toynbee then suggests another kind of leadership, that of the drill sergeant. The drill sergeant’s harsh commands, his power to make you drop and give him ten (push-ups, that is)—that is what I call ideology.

These two modes of communication are, alas, hopelessly entwined in each other in the human experience of religion—also of art. Sorting them, paradoxically, requires that you hear enough of the music, and respond to it enough, so that you can make the necessary distinctions and obey the sergeant when the ordinary circumstances make that rationally sensible. Those who cannot hear this music must also be cut plenty of slack. They are the materialistic critics who simply don’t have an ear for music. Therefore they declare all revelation as pure nonsense and balderdash. But knowing why they cannot hear, those who can must give them time.

Am I a Heretic?

Sixth in a series on Revelation and Scripture.

Many religious people who read the last posting and understand its argument, may well say, somewhat impatiently, “Yes, yes—but then it isn’t real.” For them revelation is only meaningful if it is the word of God, taken more or less literally. My view of revelation is therefore seen as heretical. It pretends to be sympathetic to religion but denies it by removing its very force. The word itself, heresy, comes from the Latin meaning “school of thought, philosophical sect.” The Latin came from the Greek for “taking” or “choosing.” That very word was applied to the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Christians in the New Testament (according to the Online Etymology Dictionary accessible here), but the word is translated as “sect” in English versions of the Bible. Heresy therefore is the belief of those who do not hew to the prevailing dogma. But let’s look at the distinction here between revelation and dogma.

Dogma is determined by organized bodies, such as councils of bishops. These bodies take their de facto authority from the population of believers who appointed or elected them; the councils are a social creation and some distance removed from the experience of inspiration. Councils make law. Their rulings have an arbitrary character: Thou shalt. It is by means of dogmatic rulings that revelations, already written down, turn into scriptures. By the time that happens, an extensive consensus has already developed that the writings are holy and carry truth. They are then given additional force by an authoritative body. This is the process whereby the very mysterious experiences of individuals are transformed into writing and then, stamped by social structures, into the word of God. This phenomenon is present in one tradition only, the Western forms of religion, all based on the Judaic revelations that first touched Moses. The peculiar character of inerrancy does not attach to other scriptures produced in other parts of the world; those are not held to be literally God’s word, but they carry the authority of consensus.

When revelation turns into dogma, the inspiration that reaches humanity is on its way to being materialized, reified. Such at least is my view. The content of revelation therefore carries two kinds of authority. It carries an inherent force, that which it actually says. The words may speak to me personally. I may respond to them because my own intuition tells me that truth has reached me. In other words, at some low level, I too am sharing in the revelation. The other authority is that of an official stamp of approval. The church affirms it. In this latter case, however, I have no choice but to accept the revelation, whether I resonate with it or not. As a member of a church community, I am under sanctions if I withhold my total consent.

Revelation, once it has been socialized in this way—especially when it has become dogma—is very far removed from the situation in which it entered this world from the world next door. The problems of religious conflict arise in this process of socialization—the supercharging of an inspiration with legal implications and sanctions. Let me offer an illustration.

Many poetic works of humanity contain inspiration of high potency, but let’s just select one author, Shakespeare, widely quoted by thousands upon thousands of people to convey truth to one another. Shakespeare’s writings have never become dogma. His quotes are presented on a “take it or leave it” basis by speakers and writers. Those who have ears will hear the message. No religious wars have ever been fought, no population harmed by the sword because someone denied the truth of some Shakespearean story or fragment.

My own take on revelation, therefore, is indeed heretical in the context of dogma. But I am a heretic in two ways. On the one hand I view the religious interpretation of revelation as arbitrary law-making in a realm where personal judgment must remain sovereign. On the other I assign genuine truth and transcendental value to revelation and thus become a heretic to the dogma of materialism. The socialization of revelation, however, does have a value. It causes the high inspirations of the past, initially shared by many—because these inspirations affected many people—to be preserved, printed, and distributed widely and over centuries. Thus socialization, including dogma, acts as a channel by means of which revelation reaches me. But here I am reminded of a Sufi saying: “The channel doesn’t drink.” No, indeed. Only people can drink, and each one on his or her own; and you can lead the horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink.

A Chosen People

Fifth in a series on Revelation and Scripture.

My own grasp of revelation—as I’ve already laid it out—is that some people are able to have contact with a higher realm and receive inspiration which they personally feel as unusual, from a higher dimension, and filled with energy. This makes the inspiration notable, indeed a singular experience. It will be interpreted as authoritative. Now I want to go beyond that. It also seems to me that the inspiration conveys a value—but that that value is not specifically spelled out. Rather, it is a feeling of exaltation, a meaning but without sharp detail. Therefore it needs a certain kind of reduction to the conceptual level. It will require interpretation, particularly if it is to be conveyed to others. The interpretation is by the recipient—but it will be filtered through that person’s consciousness, knowledge, concerns, and circumstances. By way of example, I want to look at the concept of a chosen people as laid out in the Old Testament, most explicitly in Exodus and then in Deuteronomy.

The recipient is Moses, and the initial instance is the prophet’s mystical experience of a burning bush in which an “angel of the Lord” (initially) appears; but in the same passage this angel is the referred to as “the Lord.” Here the Lord refers to “my people,” meaning the Jews, and speaks of leading these people from Egypt to “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Later, after the great tribulations of the Exodus, on Mount Sinai, Moses hears God say to him:

Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. [Exodus 19:5-6]

We encounter the word “chosen” in Deuteronomy, used my Moses in addressing the people of Israel. The passage is:

For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth. [Deuteronomy 14:2]

Now I will stipulate that Moses had a mystical experience—possibly two, one by the burning bush and another on Mount Sinai. The question I would raise is this: Was the inspiration that reached him as specific as the scriptures record it or was it, rather, an authoritative feeling of value which energized a man who was, already, deeply concerned with the state of suffering of his people? The inspiration he received ultimately led to his rise to the leadership of his folk. But was that portion of his revelation by which the Ultimate Being selected one tribe as its people, as its peculiar treasure, as those chosen to be a people “unto himself” and “above all the nations”—was that content specifically in the inspiration? Or was that an interpretation?

To doubt that Moses had an experience is to suggest that he was a thoroughly cynical and ambitious would-be leader who invented an experience in order to influence others. That suggestion I reject for multiple reasons. For one, I doubt that such a man would have achieved what Moses did in fact achieve. At the same time, I have serious doubts imagining that the Ultimate Being would choose a people in the manner here depicted. I would also doubt that God intervenes in his creation in the manner in which Moses revelation would have it.

This, of course, is also the demarcation line between the believer and the unbeliever. If there are only these two possibilities, I am an unbeliever. But I think there is a third way, and I choose to understand the facts before us in another way. It is that we have access to guidance from a higher realm, but that guidance reaches us in such a form that we ourselves must interpret its meaning, in detail, based on what we know and understand. Therefore it is possible to value revelation at one level and to critique it on another: namely on the level of interpretation. Exactly the same rules apply, it seems to me, to the lowest forms of inspiration, such as intuitions. These also carry a feeling of authority, but it is always sensible to test them rationally. Conversely, our reasonings should also have the nod of intuition.

The World Next Door

Fourth in a series on Revelation and Scripture.

To derive a fully formed subtle world—inhabited by discarnate spirits yet—just by talking about artistic inspiration—and that in order to justify revelation—must seem extraordinarily presumptuous to many. But cut me some slack. Conventional ways of thought are narrow. My projection (but let me say that it isn’t my invention) is derived from the experience of consciousness. And it’s no more outlandish than other projections. Another, equally weird, is to presume that matter can organize itself by accident into living and reproducing species for no reason whatsoever—and that, when the sun goes into nova, all of them will disappear, sight unseen, with no one to remember or to know. Religious systems that project a hierarchy of beings represent just one attempt by humans to understand the world; the evolutionary theory is another. In religious systems the starting point is the personal experience, of being, thus of consciousness. In the evolutionary, the starting point is matter. I’m with Disraeli on the side of the angels—another way of saying that consciousness is prior to matter; without it we wouldn’t even have the concept of matter. Consciousness gives us a sense of meaning. Looking at our life on earth, we see no permanent personal meaning for ourselves. Not surprisingly, we project it beyond our current existence—thus into the world next door.

The point I want to make today is that revelation is always based on a cosmological account. All religions project at least one other world, and if one then it is always higher than this one. They assert that we have either descended or have fallen into this one. And the substance of their teaching is to guide us in our re-ascent. Materialism considers this a delusion and justifies it by saying that hope is more adaptive than despair. Religion will therefore wither away only after the mass of humanity has reached a secure and high standard of living. Troubles multiply? People flock back to church. Adaptive behavior. But it isn’t as simple as that. Some won’t be quite so easily bribed into sleep by panem et circenses. Meaning, dammit! Give me meaning.

Religions offer meaning—and they base themselves on revelation. And those who produce the revelations claim to have obtained them from on high, thus from the world next door. Now here I would like to make a distinction. It is between precise and specific kinds of revelation and the symbolical essences these revelations carry. A precise revelation is that of the fall of humanity by disobedience of a divine command taking place in a specific Garden where the forbidden fruit of the Knowledge Tree of Good and Evil was consumed. Another is the Song of the Pearl, concerning the son of a king sent from the “East” to “Egypt” to obtain a precious pearl guarded by a devouring serpent. I’ve written about that myth here. Yet another is the myth of Mazdaism; it suggests that we are volunteers, descended from heaven, to fight on the side of Light against the uprising revolt of Darkness. Here we have one story of a fall and two of a descent. In all of these stories the central figure of the drama is assisted in its struggles to regain the height by messages (read revelation) provided from the highest point directly by intermediate agents or ministers.

The essence here may be rendered by saying that (1) there are at least two distinct worlds; (2) the lower of the two is inferior to the higher; (3) we are in the lower, engaged in conflicts, for good and sufficient reasons; (4) the aim is to ascend again after some job is accomplished; and (5) those of us engaged in this task get help and guidance from above.

The first and constituting element of this essence is that a world next door really does exist. Without it there is no story at all, no project, no accomplishment, no meaning. But now let us suppose that the real message is the essence—and all of its renderings and elaborations are to be assigned to us, to the people of this world. That is my working premise. What the inspiration from on high really carries to us is this essence. We then formulated it into stories, elaborate it, apply to ordinary life, reify it, in a way—and as we begin to do that, that is when all of the problems of religion begin.

Inspiration - Concluded

Third in a series on Revelation and Scripture

What I managed to say yesterday is simply that inspiration comes from “the beyond,” and in trying to explain it, I’ve produced a model of sorts. How to picture this model? I picture it as two dimensions that interpenetrated each other. One is physical; the other I simply call mental but could also call spiritual. I call the mental “higher.” Furthermore I claim that we are in bodies (rather than that we are bodies)—and that the body’s processes interfere with an unobstructed vision of the “higher realm.” What else did I assert? That our entire soul life—the workings of our minds, understanding, consciousness, and willing—draw their energy or sustenance from this hypothetical higher region or dimension. Our bodies draw their sustenance from the physical world. This is not the traditional description we encounter in religious doctrines. In those doctrines, at least as popularly understood, higher and lower do not interpenetrate. They are distinct locations. The higher (heavens, purgatories) are above us; the hells are below. Dante’s Divine Comedy places them this way. The philosophical structure undergirding western traditional views pictures a hierarchically arranged reality in which entities range from pure matter to pure spirit; to be human is to occupy an intermediate position, a matter-spirit fusion. In this view to be embodied entities is our rightful and permanent condition. We shall always be embodied, even after death—when, after the End Times, we assume our resurrection bodies.

The traditional view, largely based on the Aristotelian concept of substance (form-matter duality) in which neither form nor matter are permanent, has been modified to recognize an immortal, indestructible soul. And this soul alone—not the entire spiritual dimension—interpenetrates the body. In post-Aristotelian religious thought, embodiment is still held to be the natural state of human souls, but physical bodies decay and resurrection bodies are divinely created later. The model I proposed yesterday differs from this one in suggesting that the entire soul-dimension interpenetrates the entire physical dimension, not merely the soul the body. But that, as humans, held in tight unity with bodies (the whys of that we need to discuss too, by-and-bye), the bodily functionalities filter out most of the “higher” dimension so that we don’t ordinarily see it or perceive its presence all about us sharply.

(Here, finding that I used the word “higher,” in quotes, yet again, I would insert a clarifying note. I use that word to indicate a realm of higher subtlety, not necessarily or invariable a better, a morally elevated realm. In my mode of thought, the spiritual dimension also includes hell.)

Now, still in an attempt to make my conception more vivid, let me note that as souls we depend on the soul-dimension as our natural habitat. We live and breathe it, as it were—we live in it spiritually (our bodily life comes from matter) and we breathe its rarefied airs (thus we use its energies). Thus I propose that we are constantly inspired: waking, sleeping, working, playing, etc. But we are unaware of this. What we call inspirations are episodes of unusually intense contact with that dimension when, for some reason or another—exposure to works of arts, an inner striving, a crisis requiring extreme physical exertion, or circumstances when our filtering mechanisms weaken—we are suddenly exposed to stronger manifestations of a dimension in which we naturally live at least the human part of our mixed human-animal life. Our need for sleep may be evidence for this model. In waking states we are more isolated from our native dimension because our bodies more actively filter out that dimension so that we shall pay closer attention to the needs of physical survival. We must restore our spiritual balance at regular intervals by shutting down the noisy machinery. Not surprisingly, many inspirations come in the night.

This much will suffice to make a case for inspiration—and for particularly strong and unusual manifestations of it. But what about the notion that inspiration of the religious kind comes to us from agents, not from environments: from God, angels, saints, and other transcendental figures who act as messengers of God. This is the religious claim. I will get into that subject in the next post in this series. For the moment I will sketch an outline.

The broad framework might be stated as follows. If the soul-dimension is a real world, if we are destined to enter it after we die, that “place” may be conceived of as a genuine realm complete with all of the features of a “world” as we conceive this: thus a composite of environments analogous to those we know in this life as well as other persons, agents, like ourselves. All those elements interpenetrate this dimension, but we don’t see it. If we can enter that dimension now and then while still alive, it makes sense to assume that, from time to time, we may have actual contacts and communications with other being there who, like us, are selves and agents. I’ll say more about this in the next post.

Inspiration

Second in a series on Revelation and Scripture

Let me continue on this subject and, specifically, look at “inspiration.” As I’ve noted in the first of this series in the last post, revelations are said to be inspired. The first task then would seem to be to examine if inspiration has real standing in human experience. I think it does. And I’ll offer a theory of it.

But let me start with a working definition. A good point of departure is to look at ordinary inspiration as the word is used in the arts and in discovery, not least in science. This word, as usually used, refers to insights. They are almost always sudden and spontaneous; the artist disclaims being their source, thus as having “thought them up”; her or she will, however, acknowledge that a certain preparation came ahead of the inspiration, not least a readiness to receive, a listening attitude. We find many examples of this experience in the creative professions: every artist will agree. Inspirations also have an energetic character. They wake us up, delight us, they amaze us. Recognizing them as integral parts of experience, that experience, always, is a clear and immediate intuition that now we “have something,” also that that something didn’t come from us.

This said, opinion the splits. Some will argue that inspirations do not, repeat not, come from any outside source; to the contrary, they are the end result of subconscious brain activity. This view is legitimate enough, but if brain activity is viewed as purely naturalistic—thus if combined with a denial of mind as a separate reality—it forces the conclusion that many of our most astonishingly creative insights are the consequence of random chemistry. We’re forced to a decision here because we don’t really understand these processes mechanically—if they are purely brain-based. To assign them to the subconscious amounts to substituting one word, easily associated with brain activity (a word like reflex, which also is), for another word, inspiration, which hypothesizes some kind of higher mental realm. In our direct experience inspirations have a creative aura that puts them in the mental realm; they are exceedingly complex on examination and always surprising; they don’t resemble unconscious outcomes, like reflexes, which are adaptive rather than creative.

A decision is needed. Hence what follows is addressed to people who feel spontaneously drawn to the view that mental operations have an immaterial grounding. Those to whom the materialistic explanation sounds innately more reasonable won’t see any merits in the hypotheses I’m about to offer—despite the fact that what I propose also adequately explains their leanings.

My own theory of inspiration might be put this way. Our selves, our souls, belong into another and higher region. Even in these bodies, our mental operations are therefore grounded in another region or dimension. We don’t draw on its energies much, certainly not in our mundane activities, but when we are engaged in creative ventures, our use of higher energies increases and the filtering processes that keep it more or less inaccessible and certainly invisible get in the way of our creative endeavors. The listening stance that we assume when we’re trying to produce arts, understand difficult problems, understand the physical world beyond the kinds of actions we have in common with chipmunks, in creating arts of all kinds—in words, sounds, or visions—that attitude of listening is testimony of our effort, somehow, to reach a dimension native to us although we’re unaware of it except as motions of our will. Here I would stress two things. One is that active involvement in a problem often interferes with its solution, especially when we hit a snag. Inspirations often arise precisely because we turn aside from the problems, release them from active consideration, when we let our minds wander, or sleep, or engage in relaxation. While we thus remove some of the interference, some element of our mind or self is able to contact a more energetic realm, our native dimension. There the elements of the problem are resorted, new linkages form, and visions that don’t reach us in waking states appear. The solution, more or less complete—but by no means fully worked out—then suddenly presents itself in time. The Aha! moment follows. Sometimes we remember participating in this process while we are asleep but dreaming.

This theory fits experience rather well. It explains why inspiration sometimes reaches us suddenly and, at other times, flows like a river. In the first case it was blocked, had to be allowed to cumulate; in the other our personal openness to a higher energetic streaming was greater and therefore every note was perfect and every stroke of the brush brought delight.

I note that these entries require more space than I like to devote to a single blog entry. Therefore, to go on, I’ll need another day.

Revelation and Scripture: The Problem

None of us approaches reality without at least having heard traditional answers to the basic questions. These certainly include the one: Why are we here at all? That question may be put in very basic terms: Why do we exist? Another and potentially more answerable form of it might be: Why are we here on earth?

The traditional western answer is that we are creatures willed to exist by God, a being of infinite power, knowledge, and perfection whose deeper motivations we cannot ever hope to plumb. If we seek the roots of this assertion, we encounter scriptures, literally writings; they assert the answer in mythological forms. Being scriptures, people had to have produced them. To lift these writings to a level above mere storytelling, the tradition calls scriptures inspired writings. The meaning of that word, inspiration, suggests a transmission of meanings from a being or beings at some higher level than the human; the meanings were perceived by some one or several people gifted in some way. They formulated what they perceived; later the substance was written own.

I use both being and beings because, in the case of the Muslim tradition the Angel Gabriel was the conduit of the teachings of Mohammed; and in the Bible angels also play a role as messengers of God. This suggests a hierarchy of higher beings culminating in the Most High who, at various times, most notably addressing Moses from the burning bush, manifested directly and named itself I AM. The western tradition, therefore, may be summed up as holding that a hierarchy of being exists. Its peak is Ultimate Being. The meaning of our existences flows from that peak. And the details are the revelation of that meaning as recorded in the scriptures. Which of the many holy books properly or legitimately belong to the category of scripture is, to some extent, a consensus that has developed over time. It has also changed over time and may well change again.

Now the question I pose today is this one: Is it legitimate simply to dismiss all this as nonsense? The argument for doing so might run as follows: Scriptures are just writings by people, and higher inspiration is simply a claim. The claim may be innocent or calculating. Innocent claims may come from sincere but deluded people who think themselves in communication with God or with angels; they really believe it, but lacking any third party confirmation (good journalistic practice, that) the claims carry no special authority. To the countering argument that sometimes such figures perform miracles, the skeptic answers that miracles are mostly due to natural causes—especially healings; and that proofs of such miracles—when available, which is rarely—are always ambiguous. The second tack, namely that the claimants are calculating, needs no detailed presentation: such people are seeking power and influence and are merely engaging in one form of persuasion that works well on the gullible. Dismissal of revelation is then followed by two more general arguments.

One is the assertion that the results of such teachings in social life produce at least as much evil as good: religious wars, persecutions, pogroms, inquisitions, the arbitrary suppression of scientific discovery, the exploitation of the poor to enrich a priestly class, the oppression of women, the maintenance of authoritarian government, etc., etc. The crowning objection is that scriptures present contradictory images of God or of God’s will, reflect the social consensus of their time (e.g., as regards the status of women) and that different religious traditions have contrasting doctrines. Mazdaism is dualistic, for example; Judaism and Islam are monotheistic; and Christianity produced a Trinitarian deity.

Is there possibly a third way of seeing all this? I think there is. Neither the dogmatic nor the materialistic stance here seems to me to capture the essence of what is going on. I think that revelation is real enough if properly defined and understood; scriptures, similarly, are genuine enough and carry truth—but not if rigidly interpreted and dogmatically enforced. If both—revelation and scripture—are viewed from a higher perspective than is usually the case, their origins and merits gradually emerge. And the skeptics’ attack can be answered point by point, not least the two general dismissals based on bad results and contradictory teachings. But to carry out this task will require at least one and perhaps more posts. Stay tuned.

Motivation

I’ve noted long ago—when I first began pondering such matters—that thinking about the origin of life inevitably leads to speculation about cosmological origins. You find yourself going in that direction every time because, I think, the logic in the question posed, and in the facts under examination, force you to take that path. You realize that life is a transcending phenomenon—and at least one of its exemplars is an agent—ourselves. And since we did not make ourselves, seeking a transcendental origin for a transcending phenomenon leads to very basic cosmological questions.

The motivation for the search itself is the love of wisdom, the root meaning of philosophy. If you feel it you’ll certainly also know it. The activity is of its essence contemplative and justified by itself. The genuine lover strives to attain the beloved and has no other motive. The suitor of the princess who doesn’t actually care for the princess but cares only to impress the king—he is a sham. I emphasize this point for a reason.

My discussions of cosmologies—or religious faith systems, for that matter—take place in a philosophical context and are thus part of my search for truth. The last thing I have in mind is to persuade anyone of anything. I’m simply living a part of my life in contemplation. I’ve benefitted a great deal from others’ thought, hence I share mine too. My understanding of agency is that it’s sovereign. Thus every human being is free to make up his or her mind. As the German song has it: Die Gedanken sind frei.* It seems obvious to me that compelled faith—or faith based on ignorance—cannot be real. Thus it seems to me that sincere philosophical discussion will strengthen genuine faith and only weaken unexamined forms of it—which is a service.

The problem I’m addressing has two aspects, one low, one high. Let’s take the high one first. Many faith systems base themselves on revelation, a phenomenon that can be viewed philosophically but cannot be reached by philosophy. By this I mean that philosophy can neither prove nor disprove that God speaks directly to humanity. I have my own understanding of revelation, but that is what it is, an understanding. I believe it to be true, but I cannot prove it. In my view revelation reaches all of humanity in multiple forms; several orthodoxies would deny this. In matters of faith, individual sovereignties may indeed clash. And such clashes cannot be resolved at the level of faith. But they can be discussed philosophically in a generous spirit. And that’s the spirit I try to cultivate in myself.

The low aspect is that faith systems can and often do manifest a tribal character; the best people in these systems always deplore this. Some people, however, out of ignorance, mostly, treat their beliefs as ideologies and view any discussion of them, if outside the “inside” consensus, as an attack. Similarly, they treat those in agreement with their formulations as part of the tribe. But the discussion may not be an attack at all; it may be an appreciation; and the person sympathetic to the faith system may not be a true believer.

This long comment, at this place, seems appropriate. I noted that yesterday’s posting, with its prominent use of the word “Hindu” in the title, caused several partisan websites to broadcast my posting to constituencies. And in each of the two sites (Blogger and WordPress) with the identical content, readership surged to all-time highs. Alas. Time to say the above. High time. In the future I expect to draw fire (or praise) from those who dogmatically deny (or affirm) reincarnation, those who view Gnosticism as a heresy (or truth), and yet others who quarrel with (or adhere to) Catholicism or Islam. Du calm, as my daughter in France might say. This is just philosophy. It follows the Beloved wherever She may wander.
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*Thoughts are free.