Egodeath Yahoo Group – Digest 30: 2003-03-22

It truely is something that haunts, excites, bewilders and astonishes
me everytime i think back to that fateful day i was ‘cursed’ with a
DMT encounter.

I often wonder if it will ever find me with the same impact again.

I am really divided intellectually on what I experienced, reading
into shamanism and sorcery, then into Tibetan Buddhism, there is a
slight confliction in my views. Maybe in the end the Dzogchen
Buddhists are closest to understanding what happens, essentially
saying that all projections are from the ground luminosity, and
represent the power of it. if noticed as your own projection,
realisation is attained. I feel bewildered currently, although not
disturbed from it. It’s just that certain knowing that there was an
energy in front of me, independent from me, yet only appearing to me
when I closed my eyes and sought to go deeper.

So many questions, how many Dzogchen Buddists throughout history have
experienced first hand smoked DMT crystals, what would they say then?

The seemingly logical yet not often thought or talked about view that
life forces are everywhere, even in non-material realms that overlap
this one seem closer to the truth than ever now. Dzogchen Buddhism
views all experience but the ground luminosity as Samsara, from my
knowledge of it so far…. this view on the illusionary nature of
reality for me is so damn harder for me to accept at the moment than
the thought and feeling that there are independant, intelligent life
forces out there feeding off emotional energies that humans produce.

go here to see my artwork on the subject
http://www.erowid.org/culture/art/artists_e/art_essig_roger.shtml
A lot more questioning and alienation to go through till I’m
satisfied with this.

Roger Essig,
http://www.rogeressig.tk
Glimpse-of-Eternity

>>why the Parisee called Magdalene is a sinner? She was thief or burglar? …

Yes, she maybe was a harlot for some reasons. Anyway, I think she was a harlot
before meeting Christ as did another Sophia’s reincarnations at every age,
Helen, Cleopatra, etc.

The Historical Mary: Revealing the Pagan Identity of the Virgin Mother
Michael Jordan, Feb. 2003
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1569753342

A major theme in the Jewish bible is the popularity of cultic prostitution.
Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary should be considered as a cultic
prostitute, or considered in light of cultic prostitution. The book _The
Historical Mary_ proposes that the name “Mary” connotes cultic prostitution.
Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus includes five women who weren’t monotheistic but
who instead acted like cultic prostitutes, which were used to engender divine
kings.

I’m especially interested in understanding what the veneration of Mary during
the Middle Ages was really all about. This book covers that, and first
establishes a base of cultic prostitution in the ancient Near Eastern
religions and the Jewish religion. Apparently there are three intermingled
ways of reading “virgin”:

1. In ancient and later times, themes around the “virgin” idea had
mystic/mythic meaning, in which religious mythic figures represent aspects of
the psyche, particularly reflecting the experiences and the insights of the
intense mystic altered state. I haven’t determined yet whether the book
discusses mythic figures as personifications of the phenomena of the psyche
encountered during intense mystic altered-state experiencing.

2. By the principle of “as above, so below” — as in the mythic/mystic realm,
so shall we literally act out — actual sex was integrated into cultic
practice, both in ancient Near East religions and in medieval esoteric
practice (that is, European religion other than that of the official Church).

3. In opposition to the mystic altered state meaning, and in opposition to the
cultic sex practice that largely reflected the mystic altered state meaning,
the official Church sought to create a competing, different reading of the
“virgin mother of God” concept, one that was suitable for strategically
co-opting and obscuring the mystic and cultic systems’ reading of “virgin” and
“Mary” themes.


This book doesn’t integrate the cultic sex practices with a developed theory
of entheogen use, but does mention possible “drug” use, and mentions the trial
by drinking “dust and water”, which Dan Merkur in “Mystery of Manna” has shown
probably meant trial by ergot. Entheogen theory holds that “under the tree”,
a main theme of fertility cults, means, first of all, the Amanita mushroom,
which grows under the exactly the species of trees used in the fertility
cults.

John Allegro was severely punished for writing a book that combined several
radical proposals together: Jesus didn’t exist, some early Christians were
into cultic sex, and some early Christians used entheogens. It is fully
understandable that few authors are eager to cover more than one controversial
aspect of Christian origins, with Allegro swinging by the neck in the
background. The inquisition doesn’t kill authors literally these days, but it
effectively kills authors as far as their viability as respected scholars.

People should expect that if the actual history of Christianity is profoundly
different than the professional Church historians claim, it is likely to be
different in more than just one or two ways: radically different in many ways,
ways that all come back together to form a system of religion that is wholly
alien from the picture painted by the official Church.

Single-issue would-be “radical” historical revisionism is titilating but
single issue revisionism, by itself, is no threat to the official picture.
Only when all ten, say, of the radical revisions are reassembled, does the
seriously threatening coherent alternative telling of history fall into place.

The book essentially confirms my still unformed hypothesis that the Virgin
Mary somehow “is” Mary Magdalene. It proposes that the intended number of
Marys is seven. I hold that all the Marys, all the Jesus/Joshuas, and all the
Simons/Peters are *essentially* myth, and are functionally entirely
independent of any historical figures that may have been similar.

Like nearly all published books, this book is absurd in assuming the Bible
characters existed — “we know that Peter was in Rome…”. However, it is
redeemed in that it mentions “evidence that Jesus existed”, thus admitting
that we can’t simply take it for granted that Jesus existed.


Related:
The sacred mushroom and the cross; a study of the nature and origins of
Christianity within the fertility cults of the ancient Near East
John Allegro
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340128755

Book lists:
Philosophy of Mother of God:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/20S7TV13O9SLD
Mary “John” Magdalene, The Beloved Disciple:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/CV3ZTFHJV6TP

>>does Gnostic Christianity believe that one must be a Gnostic Christian to

survive the Final Judgement?

Some Gnostic groups did. Mystically, by definition, survivors of the Final
Judgement are Gnostic elect. Surviving the wrath of God and knowing and
experiencing God’s omnipotence against the lower self amount to two metaphors
for the same thing.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth
experience

Fascinating thread on a Mycology Usenet Group:

“From The Oregonian, Jan. 22, 2003, p A16 (SCIENCE)

Ants engage in evolutionary war
An OSU scientist studies the “Fungal Tree of life” as part of a
larger
project looking at the relationships of all life-forms

By RICHARD L. HILL, The Oregonian
An extraordinary three-way arms race is being waged down on the ant
farm.
Researchers, including an Oregon State University scientist, have
discovered that fungus-growing ants have co-evolved with the fungi
they cultivate for food and with a parasite that can infect the
fungi.
The scientists found that the ants and fungi are perpetually evolving
new ways to control parasitic fungal “weeds,” which in turn are
continually developing new ways to infect the ants’ fungus gardens.
The ants have been successfully fungus farming for the past 50
million years, according to the scientists, who report their findings
in the current issue of the journal Science.
“These ants have a very organized social system,” said Joseph W.
Spatafora, an OSU associate professor of botany and plant pathology
who participated in the study.
Attine ants, which include leaf-cutter ants, haul plant material to
their nest to feed and grow the fungus Lepiotaceae, a family of
mushrooms. When the hungry fungi are nourished, they produce
nutrient-rich structures that are eaten by the ants.
But like all farmers, the ants face a “weed” that attacks their
crops. In this case, the culprit is the microfungal parasite
Escovopis, which can reduce or destroy a fungal garden or ant colony.
The ants defend the fungus garden, weeding out infected fungi and
taking out the parasite’s spores. The ants also have in their defense
arsenal a bacterium that they cultivate on the outside of their
bodies. The bacteria produce an antibiotic that suppresses the growth
of the parasite. “We suspect that it’s going to turn out that this
antibiotic use also goes back to the beginning of ant agriculture,”
said Ted B. Schultz, a study participant who is an entomologist with
the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.
Other researchers involved in the project, led by Cameron R. Currie
at the University of Kansas, are from the University of Toronto, the
University of Texas at Austin and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
They studied DNA sequences from the ants, garden fungi and the
parasitic fungal weeds to see how the co-evolutionary system evolved.
The collaboration is the result of a new series of research
initiatives by the National Science Foundation called “Assembling the
Tree of Life.” The project is aimed at producing a better
understanding of the evolutionary relationships by all the major
groups of life on Earth.
Spatafora, who has a $2.64 million grant from the foundation, is
leading a team of five laboratories at four institutions on
assembling
the “Fungal Tree of Life.” Scientists will study 1,500 species and
analyze DNA in one of the most comprehensive studies of fungi ever
conducted.

COMMENT BY POSTER: Many ant species cultivate Lepiotaceae, which
includes such common fungi as Macrolepiota rachoides. It’s
fascinating
to find an abandoned thatcher ant colony under Douglas-fir here in
the
PNW with large 8-12 inch diameter M. rachoides fruiting in abundance
from the pile of Douglas fir needles and twigs. Thatcher ants are so
industrious in this endeavor that they largely denude large areas of
ground from any spend needles, which can reduce the danger of fire
rapidly spreading in these areas. Unfortunately, the piles of needles
sometimes reaches over 4 feet, and in non-thinned tree stands can act
as a stepping stone for fire to enter the tree canopy.

Termites in Africa have a similar relationship to fungi called
Termitomyces.

Daniel B. Wheeler
http://www.oregonwhitetruffles.com

Interesting.
I always enjoy your posts Daniel.

*****

anf all this time I had no idea that it was Lepiota It sorta makes
sence now that I look at the evidence of what the ants harvest and
wat
lepiota eats .

****

An excellent post, which makes me think that the Myrmidons (“Ants”)
under
Axilles in the Iliad were mushroom cultivators, particularly since
Axilles
was the son of Peleus (pileus).

Would you have any links to the said researchers.

—
o8TY
“Daniel B. Wheeler” <dwheeler@…> wrote in message
news:6dafee1b.0301232345.7727108f@……

> From The Oregonian, Jan. 22, 2003, p A16 (SCIENCE)
>
> Ants engage in evolutionary war
> An OSU scientist studies the “Fungal Tree of life” as part of a

larger

> project looking at the relationships of all life-forms
>
> By RICHARD L. HILL, The Oregonian
> An extraordinary three-way arms race is being waged down on the ant
> farm.
> Researchers, including an Oregon State University scientist, have
> discovered that fungus-growing ants have co-evolved with the fungi
> they cultivate for food and with a parasite that can infect the

fungi.

> The scientists found that the ants and fungi are perpetually

evolving

> new ways to control parasitic fungal “weeds,” which in turn are
> continually developing new ways to infect the ants’ fungus gardens.
> The ants have been successfully fungus farming for the past 50
> million years, according to the scientists, who report their

findings

> in the current issue of the journal Science.
> “These ants have a very organized social system,” said Joseph W.
> Spatafora, an OSU associate professor of botany and plant pathology
> who participated in the study.
> Attine ants, which include leaf-cutter ants, haul plant material to
> their nest to feed and grow the fungus Lepiotaceae, a family of
> mushrooms. When the hungry fungi are nourished, they produce

“o8TY” <o8ty@…> wrote in message
news:<3e7c414e_1@…>…

> An excellent post, which makes me think that the Myrmidons

(“Ants”) under

> Axilles in the Iliad were mushroom cultivators, particularly since

Axilles

> was the son of Peleus (pileus).

Hmm. That does sound like more than just coincidence.

>
> Would you have any links to the said researchers.

No. But Joey Spatafora, one of the principals in the investigation,
is
at Oregon State University who has spoken at a few North American
Truffling Society meetings that I’ve attended.

I’m sure he has a webpage associated with the university, and you
should be able to email him directly.

Daniel B. Wheeler
http://www.oregonwhitetruffles.com


Daniel B. Wheeler” <dwheeler@…> wrote in message
news:6dafee1b.0303221227.763953c5@……

> “o8TY” <o8ty@…> wrote in message

news:<3e7c414e_1@…>…

> > An excellent post, which makes me think that the Myrmidons

(“Ants”)
under

> > Axilles in the Iliad were mushroom cultivators, particularly

since
Axilles

> > was the son of Peleus (pileus).
>
> Hmm. That does sound like more than just coincidence.
> >

It gets less coincidental when one considers that Pavsanias reported
Mukenai, the home of Agamemnon in the Iliad, to have been named
after a
mushroom, while Ovid in his Metamorphoses tells of an ancient myth
from
nearby Corinth (Ephyra) that “mortals were created from fungi,
nourished by
the rain”.

Also the thunderbolt of Zeus was called “keraunion” by the Greeks,
which was
also the name they gave to a particular kind of truffle.

> > Would you have any links to the said researchers.
>
> No. But Joey Spatafora, one of the principals in the

investigation, is

> at Oregon State University who has spoken at a few North American
> Truffling Society meetings that I’ve attended.
>
> I’m sure he has a webpage associated with the university, and you
> should be able to email him directly.
>
> Daniel B. Wheeler

There is a bad theory of religion implicit in the typical historical-founder
assumption.

When someone affirms that “the historical Buddha existed” or “the historical
Jesus existed”, what is actually being asserted? An entire questionable
theory is implicitly asserted about where religions come from, how religions
work, what religions are about, how religions propagate, how they are
concentrated in certain influential individuals who then transform and focus
and re-propagate the religion.

It is true that select, particular individuals do serve to focus and define
religions. Consider the theorist Ken Wilber, for example. He is an actual
person who has worked hard to clarify and make viable the perennial
philosophy. The perennial philosophy is an essentially religious
philosophy — a theory about what occurs as the psyche develops to a fully
developed state and what the ultimate relationship is between the individual
and world or transcendent cosmos.

Does Christianity “come from” a single man, Jesus? What role does the
“historical Jesus” scenario assign to the postulated single man, Jesus?
Conversely, what role do the historical-Jesus deniers assign to, say, the
twenty most Jesus-like actual individuals? It is more subtle than even I
thought to distinguish between the historical Jesus theory and the
no-historical-Jesus theory.

It turns out that both scenarios are actually quite intricate and potentially
are highly qualified, to the point of actually overlapping. The historical
Jesus theory potentially has a surprisingly wide range of different scenarios,
and the no-historical-Jesus theory also potentially has a surprisingly wide
range, not a narrow range, of different scenarios.

I am coming to respect more fully the conclusion of some researchers in the
Jesus Mysteries discussion group, that the theory-categories of “historical
Jesus” and “no historical Jesus” are totally useless and contribute nothing
but harmful confusion. Everything hinges on what a researcher *means* by
“historical Jesus” or “no historical Jesus”.

We can only debate these scenarios if we establish an absolutely clear
definition of what we mean by those two labels, and I am finding that there is
a disarmingly wide range of discussion and debate involved in defining those
two labels. It is very difficult to form a good definition of what the
“historical Jesus” scenario essentially amounts to. It is very difficult to
form a good definition of what the “no-historical-Jesus” scenario essentially
amounts to.

Both scenarios potentially cover a vast range of different scenarios. There
is certainly not a single definitive historical Jesus scenario, nor a single
definitive no-historical-Jesus scenario. Both labels are totally meaningless
without an extended, subtle, and debatable definition. Yes, it is possible to
define an Exhibit A and an Exhibit B, to represent a reference point for the
prototypical historical-Jesus and no-historical-Jesus scenario.


The prototypical historical-Jesus scenario holds that there was only one man
who fit most of the important parts of the New Testament version of history.
Christianity is importantly dependent on that man, and unthinkable without
him; Christianity doesn’t make sense as religion or history without him.

The prototypical no-historical-Jesus scenario holds that there was only one
man who fit most of the important parts of the New Testament version of
history. Christianity is not dependent on any one man, and makes more sense
(as religion and history) without the complicating postulate of such a man.


According to “no-historical-founder” theories of the development of religions,
certain individuals do play an important role in some important but limited
sense. Here is where it immediately becomes very complicated, subtle, and
intractible. The development, origin, and spread of a religion does
importantly depend on the actions of some select, distinctive individuals.

Conventional thinking assumes Paul to have existed as such an individual; on
more solid ground, we should use Constantine as an example. The development
of Christianity is largely focused in the actual man, Constantine, as well as
Luther, for example. Is the development of Christianity largely focused in a
single man, who we may label “Jesus”, or in five or twenty more or less
Jesus-like men, such as rebel leaders (would-be military messiahs) or
spiritual teachers or hierophants?

We need a new theoretic construct such as “degree of dependent focus”. The
prototypical historical Jesus or historical Buddha theory implicitly asserts a
very high degree of dependent focus: the development and spread of the
religion is very importantly and significantly focused in just a single man
whose life and role was like that portrayed for the central founder-figure in
the scriptures.

In contrast, the prototypical no-historical-founder theory implicitly asserts
a very *low* degree of dependent focus: the development and spread of the
religion is *not* very importantly and significantly focused in just a single
man whose life and role was like that portrayed for the central founder-figure
in the scriptures. A problem I have found in surveying all possible
permutations of historical-founder and no-historical-founder scenarios is the
possibility of gradual degrees of shading from one scenario to its opposite.

The origin of Christianity could involve anywhere from one to an innumerable
number of actual Jesus-like men, with the role of a Jesus-like man ranging
anywhere from fitting all of the traditional story elements to only a single
story element, with any number of Jesus-like men fitting any number of the
Jesus story elements. We have an n-dimensional potential space of scenarios.

How helpful is it, really, to frame the search for true history in the
simplistic and inarticulate terms of “historical Jesus” versus
“no-historical-Jesus”? Many scholars now have unearthed some pathetic actual
man who fits a fraction of the Jesus story requirements, and absurdly, have
proudly pronounced that they have found at last “the genuine historical
Jesus”.

Readers then read the work and have to choose whether or not they feel this
scenario’s man qualifies as “the genuine historical Jesus”. When ten other
such books are considered, we see how utterly useless and purely confusing the
whole concept of “the historical Jesus” is.

It is profitable to discuss the merits of particular scenarios, but framing
the range of scenarios in terms of “historical Jesus” has proven problematic
and vague beyond redemption — however, it has led to finding that there is an
embarrassing overabundance of partially Jesus-like men, with no one single
Jesus-like man towering over the rest. Thus I see no alternative to
ultimately ending up with the construct, “degree of dependent focus”.

The problem with the prototypical historical Jesus theory is that it asserts a
very high degree of dependent focus that starkly contradicts the available
evidence, which indicates actually a *low* degree of dependent focus. Instead
of debating in terms of “historical Jesus” vs. “no historical Jesus”, it would
be far more useful and relevant to debate “high degree of dependent focus” vs.
“low degree of dependent focus”.

We can thus usefully and precisely characterize scholars who assert a
“historical Jesus” even though each scholar picks a different man, with a
different combination of classic Jesus attributes: those scholars really do
have something definite and distinctive in common: they all are characterized
by asserting a very high degree of dependent focus on a single central
Jesus-like man for the development and formation of the Christian religion.

Similarly, you can usefully and precisely characterize scholars who assert “no
historical Jesus” — what they actually all have in common, across their
highly divergent scenarios, is that they all are characterized by asserting a
very *low* degree of dependent focus on a single central Jesus-like man for
the development and formation of the Christian religion.

This construct of “high vs. low degree of dependent focus” concisely and
elegantly encapsulates, expresses, and implies everything that I have written
about the problem of the plethora of genuine historical Jesuses and about the
Jesus figure being “essentially and really” a *composite* drawn from a
deliberately extreme and all-encompassing *multitude* of actual men and
mythical figures.

That construct really hits the essence of the difference in thinking style
between the typical historical-Jesus asserters and the typical no-HJ
asserters, overcoming the difficult blurring fact that both camps admit the
existence of multiple (more or less numerous) actual Jesus-like men who were
more or less important. We need a sliding scale and a relevant polar axis.

The most powerful, relevant, useful, and general way of sorting out the
scholars is in terms of what degree they propose Christianity was dependent on
and focused in a single Jesus-like man. Thus in the end the most useful way
to define what we mean by “HJ vs. no-HJ”, or “historical Buddha vs.
no-historical-Buddha”, is in terms of degree of dependent focus.

What is the most essential implication someone makes when they say “there was
a historical Jesus” or “there was no historical Jesus”? How can we usefully
get to the essence of what kind of history that person is asserting? By
understanding the alternatives to be a high versus low degree of dependent
focus.

This reframing of the debate is highly useful even though it still leaves us
with a subtle debate about what it means for the formation of Christianity to
have been highly dependent on and focused in a single Jesus-like man.

I consider myth, correctly understood, to be the same thing as the highest
aspect of religion — this is what I mean by “myth-religion”: it is really,
most meaningfully and profoundly, allegory/metaphor for the intense mystic
altered state such as is triggered by sacred consumption of entheogens. The
elements of this view can all be wrapped up into the construct
“myth-religion-mysticism”.

The official, dominant, low theory of religion holds that religions have a
very high degree of dependent focus on a single historical central founder
figure to whom is attributed the origin of the religion; the religion is based
on the figure and comes from the figure; he is “the central founder figure”
upon whom the religion focuses and to whom the start of the religion is
attributed.

The religion is focused on him as founder; he is a personification of all that
the religion stands for. I here mean to shut out the Paul figure, who is
portrayed as a pillar of the Church, who propagated the religion, but Paul is
not the central figure upon whom the Christian religion is mainly focused.
The Christian is supposed to be somewhat Paul-like, but more importantly
Jesus-like.

The conventional view of Buddhism fits this definition too: while allowing for
previous and later Buddha-type historical men, Buddha is held to be a single
outstanding man upon whom Buddhism is highly dependent and on whom Buddhism is
highly focused. The theory of religious origins I dub “low” is that a
religion proceeds from its central founder figure.

The Christian religion came from Jesus; it is based on the life, teachings,
and actions of the man Jesus. Such a theory of where religion comes from and
what it’s about applies to the theory that the Isis and Osiris religion is
“based on” an actual historical Osiris; according to this way of thinking, for
the origin of the ancient Egyptian religion, there is a high degree of
dependent focus on the life and actions of the man Osiris.

The historical Jesus theory or historical Buddhism theory is not just
incorrect about facts of history; it is a bad theory of where myth-religion
comes from and what myth-religion is really about. Myth-religion in essence
has nothing to do with historical founding-figures, even when it is styled as
emphatically literal. Buddhism and Christianity have often been
hyper-literalized.

Religion really does have some literal elements; for example, the ancients
deliberately modelled actual politics and religion on myth-religion-mysticism,
and they deliberately formed mythic allegory in terms of actual politics and
religion. So yes, actual politics and religion *do* “match” the mythic
histories, but what is the nature of this “match”?

For example, I propose that not only was Christian myth-religion allegorically
based on actual crucifixion, but, in the spirit of ancient thinking,
crucifixion as a form of punishment was also deliberately based on mythic
allegory. The ancient mind deliberately strove to make myth and reality
closely match and comment upon each other, but this is not to be confused with
a “match” in the sense of the mythic history being historically factual.

Their myth and history were *mystically* the same, but not *literally* the
same. This is true for many near eastern religions, or religio-political
regimes, but particularly true in Jewish religion, which took the deliberate
conflation of national history and mythic allegory to as far an extreme as in
any religion. It is not a one-way arrow — that would be against the ancient
way of thinking.

It was a two-way arrow between mythic-mystic allegory and literal politics and
history: as above, so below. How should we think politically and
historically? Look to mystic-myth (archetypes encountered in the entheogenic
intense mystic altered state) for the answer. How should we think mythically,
mystically, and allegorically, in religion? Look to the realm of politics and
history for the answer.

The domains of mystic myth and actual history and politics were used to inform
and guide and justify each other. This interaction of two domains is the only
possible way to fully account for both the literal historical style and
elements in, say, Revelation, as well as the mystic-mythic allegory-domain.
Literalism, or perhaps quasi-literalism, is essential and basic in the Jewish
scriptures, but so is mystic-mythic thinking.

Certainly both domains are present, but we take literalism much too literally
and need a better understanding of how these two domains work together and
interpenetrate even while remaining distinct. Yes, the Jewish scriptures are
full of literalism, in several senses, but they are not simply literalism —
more like a quasi-literalistic way of writing, reporting on quasi-literalistic
practices — a subtle but all-important difference from plain and simple
literalist writing about literalist practice.

The Jewish writings are an integrated historical-styled and mystical-styled
mode of writing about a integrated historical-styled and mystical-styled
religion — full of literalism, and yet, not literalist, just
literalist-styled. Same with Christianity: it was largely created as a
literalist styled religion; that was perhaps the main contribution from the
Jewish religion, that hyper-literalist yet still just ironically *quasi-*
literalist mode of writing and practice.

Christianity was the offspring formed by fusing many god-man Hellenistic
elements with the quasi-literalist styling of Jewish religion. Yes, many Jews
and Christians were literalists, but many of the most important were not.

Even our category of “literalism versus mythic allegory” may be a poor fit
with that character of ancient thinking, which operated more in the mythic
realm because it was highly informed by the entheogenic intense mystic altered
state.

Literalism was used as a style of religion, and surely most people were sober
and rational and could hardly deny the concrete reality they had to constantly
deal with, but compared to moderns with our various combinations of modern
mundane reality and absurd supernaturalism, the ancients instead drew from the
realms of a mundane world that was considered in light of mystic-state
allegory, and from mystic-state allegory that was based on the mundane world.

The ancients saw the world in terms of two mirrors that reflected each other:
the sociopolitical world and the mystic-state allegory realm. Moderns instead
view the world by an unrelated pair of frames: the mundane, lacking any input
from the mystic allegory realm, and the free-floating magical-supernatural
realm, without a feel for mystic-experiencing allegory.

When modern supernaturalists say that Jesus existed, they are combining
non-mystical supernaturalist thinking which the ancient mystic mythmakers
didn’t use, together with an isolated mundane view of the world which the
ancients didn’t use. Our modern categories of thought don’t fit with the
ancient categories of thought, because our mundane world isn’t informed by
mythic mystic-state allegory understood as such.

For those who assert a low degree of dependent focus of a religion on the
historical existence of its central founder figure, there can be in principle
no evidence that is simple evidence for the existence of the founding figure,
because evidence for the existence of a man who is like the founder figure is
not evidence for a high degree of dependence on that particular man.

Thus people who assert a low or high degree of dependent focus hold two
different models of how religions rise and spread, and these two models handle
historical evidence in two different ways.

To assert a low degree of dependence of a religion on a historical central
founder is to assert that religions rise and spread based on the lives and
actions of many people whose lives are somewhat like the idealized central
founder figure, with no one man being exclusively important as the central,
towering person — and therefore, any evidence that may be found, literary or
archaological, for a man who is like the founder figure, will be interpreted
as merely evidence for one among many men whose lives are like that of the
idealized central founder figure.

A key question for debaters to consider is, what sort of evidence can cause a
scholar to change their adherence from one framework of interpretation to the
other? In this case, we must ask what sort of evidence can cause a scholar
who asserts a low degree of dependence of Christianity on a single historical
man to change their mind and assert a high degree of dependence?

What would compel me to say “I change my mind: this new discovery is strong
evidence that Christianity was, it turns out, highly dependent on a single,
central, Jesus-like man”? It would have to be evidence not only that a man
existed who fit the Jesus life story elements, but that *only a single* man
fit the story so well; evidence that one man fit the story much better than
anyone else and that the formation of Christianity is importantly dependent on
this single man and only on this single man.

What would compel a historical-Jesus asserter to say “I change my mind: this
new discovery is strong evidence that Christianity wasn’t, it turns out,
highly dependent on a single, central, Jesus-like man”? It would have to be
evidence that no one man existed who fit the Jesus life story elements far
more than any other man. It would have to be evidence that the formation of
Christianity was *not* importantly dependent on any single man.

The evidence from the no-HJ books, and even from the conventional HJ-asserting
scholars, adds up to just such a demonstration: it is clear by now that the
formation of Christianity was not importantly dependent on a single man who
was Jesus-like and who was far more Jesus-like than any other man. Scholars
now have found a hundred good reasons why Christianity started, but many of
the reasons and scenarios don’t depend on the existence of just one lone man
with a uniquely Jesus-like life.

The current evidence supports the hypothesis of a *low* degreee of dependent
focus of Christian origins on a single man, not a *high* degree of focal
dependence. Yes, the *claim* of originating from a single man has often been
a powerful advantage for some Christian officials, and we could say that the
success of Christianity sometimes depended on the *claim* of originating from
a single historical central founder-figure.

But an important dependence on the *claim* of literal historicity is quite
different than important dependence on the *actuality* of literal historicity.
Some weak thinkers have said that “Christianity wasn’t a Hellenistic
mystery-religion, because Hellenistic mystery-religions don’t literalize their
mythic founder-figures.”

That’s true, but considering the Jewish religion as being an unusually
literalist-styled, historical/political-styled myth-religion, we can now
recognize Christianity as a powerful fusion of the Hellenistic godman
mystery-religion with the Jewish literalist-styled,
historical/political-styled myth-religion. Christianity took the godman and
initiation themes and techniques of Hellenistic religion and added the
quasi-literalist, historical/political-styled techniques and themes from
Jewish religion.

Christianity was a new Hellenistic mystery-religion that *did* literalize its
mythic founder-figures — that literalization, that breaking the rule against
literalization, was precisely what gave this Jewish-Hellenistic hybrid a
competitive advantage over the purely mythic-styled Hellenistic religions.

According to the Church officials, Christianity was superior to Hellenistic
religion because Christianity had *literally as well as*
mythically/mystically, what the Hellenistic religions had *only*
mythically/mystically. Christianity won because it was based on a literal
godman — but to clarify, it won because it was based on the *claim of* being
founded by and founded on a literal godman.

In actuality, Jewish religion provided various combinations of literal and
allegorical messiahs; in this sense, there really was a historical
God-ordained Jesus or twenty of them. We must also remember the similarity of
the emperor cult, divine kings, apotheosis of heroes, and the battle between
King Pentheus and the godman Dionysus — all providing various combinations of
themes about kings, godmen, saviors, historical individuals, and mythic
figures.

The figure of Jesus was designed to strategically fuse all of these into a
single figure who wrapped up into one all the value of historical men such as
Alexander and Caesars, with all the value of the dying-and-rising mythic
godmen, with all the value of the quasi-historical Jewish priest and prophets
and the actual Jewish would-be messiahs. The problem was how to fabricate a
figure even more potent than Caesar, even more potent and universal than the
calculated and synthetic figure of Sarapis.

It was a no-holds-barred utimate battle of extreme competitive
hyper-apotheosis, practically an arms race to create the ultimate nuclear
weapon of cosmic hyper-transcendent divinity combined with all the most
venerated attributes of all historical figures — *many* historical figures
and Jesus-like men and Alexander-like men and heroic warriors, wrapped up into
one figure, who was later only threatened, I surmise, by the counter-venerated
eternal cosmic goddess figure of Mary, Mother of God and Queen of Heaven.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth
experience

>Another AMG album review that might hit you closer to home would be the

[insultingly low] 2 [of 5]

>stars allotted to Rush’s Fly By Night, Caress of Steel and Grace
>Under Pressure. I’m currently working on an album review site that
>has some sort of perspective related to the music itself,
>disregarding everything but that, the music. It’s hard work,
>though, dismissing all experiences and approaching each review with
>just the single album in mind.
>
>-greg

When I wrote the previous posting, I was thinking of Caress of Steel, which
certainly deserves 5 stars and is one of the most important, profound, and
inspired albums by this mystic-state philosophy band. The highly acclaimed
follow-up album 2112 rests directly on the foundation of Caress of Steel. The
album ratings I’ve seen have given me a hypothesis that the actual best album
is usually the one prior to the highest-rated album.

I tend to like a band best before the critics do — before the band becomes
popular and hits it big. I imagine this trajectory: a band puts out a
mediocre, uninspired album or two. Then the band discovers LSD, and there are
a couple uninspired allusions to LSD phenomena. Then the band experiences ego
death and discovers the tradition of double-entendre allusion in High Classic
Rock lyrics, and puts out an album that is far more informed by the full range
of entheogenic phenomena.

On the next album, the technique of double-entendre is becoming routine, and
the thematic material of mystic-state phenomena alluded to is no longer really
growing; it’s not an area of major discovery — like pattern-finding in
myth-religion after cracking the code and “all knowledge has been revealed”,
the rate of noveltry drops off after a year and a half.

The classic Acid Rock lyrical techniques decline over the next few albums, and
finally remain in further albums purely out of respect. This is why I have
smelled the most intense, fresh, worthwhile studies being in the first few
albums a band puts out after discovering LSD — such as Rush during the late
1970s and early 1980s, but not the late 1980s and 1990s, which has the
material but as a routinized echo of the original inspirational explosion.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth
experience

>Secondly, Buddhism avoid making statements such as “this exists” or
>this “doesn’t exist.” as in the 34 negations above. This is the
>Middle Way. In generaL, high Buddhism, would then say, “there is
>neither “free will,” nor is there “no-free-will,” a understanding
>that needs to be bridged first before one can apply your thoery in a
>technically correct way. Ths Middle Way principle is not a
>compromise. In this sense, adapting various theories to this
>principle becomes techncially difficult and one must understand the
>high Buddhsit understanding of general and specific.”
>
>To further clarify this, here is a short passage of Chih-I (tien-
>t’ai the Great) from the Moho Chi Kuan (contemplation and and
>observation):
>
>states:
>
>”It is easy for a sticky hand to adhere, and hard to awaken from deep
>dreaming. Some people seal up a text and restrict its sense,
>declaring their own personal understanding of it to be right. They
>vie with others to seize tiles and pebbles, thinking they are
>baubles of lapis luzuli. Even the most familiar things and explicit
>statements they fail to understand; how could they not but err when
>it comes to the abstruse principle and hidden teaching? This is why
>it is necessary to discuss “the returning to the purport.”
>
>dc

This sounds like my strong focus on “networks of word meanings” and the phrase
“in what sense does X exist?” More useful than asking whether the historical
Jesus existed or not, it’s better to ask “in what exact sense did Jesus
historically exist?” Instead of vaguely asking “Our our choices free, or not
free?”, we must ask “In what exact sense are our choices free?” Instead of
asking “Does ego exist, or not?”, the only way to make progress in
understanding is to ask rather, “In what sense does ego exist, and it what
sense does ego not exist? That is, what exactly is the nature of ego?”

— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com

Early in this discussion group I posted an analysis of Bohemian Rhapsody —
very heavy ego-death/acid mysticism allusions. I consider Queen one of the
groups that has a full grasp of the entheogen rock religion, but prefers to
write isolated songs focusing on that subject.

Rush, as a philosophy group ought, chooses to allude to the subject more
consistently or relentlessly throughout their albums, particularly their
classic-era albums Caress of Steel through Grace Under Pressure (mid-1970s to
mid-1980s).

Black Sabbath treated LSD religion as a substantial but not emphasized portion
of their drug-alluding Heavy Rock scope — Ozzy’s first two solo albums,
however, emphasized LSD, according to my interpretation. I have heard that
LSD was used routinely by many bands as part of lyric writing; I suspect that
was a trick of the trade, used for albums such as one by the Cars.

There is a distribution of acid-mysticism allusions at the level of a band, an
album, a song, or a verse — at any level there may be a high density of
allusions. One technique is to insert a verse dense with allusions into a
song that otherwise is innocent of such allusions. Metallica’s For Whom the
Bell Tolls, Cheap Trick’s Way of the World. This verse is a key suggesting
reading the remaining lyrics in their mystical sense, though the other lyrics
are not themselves filled with dense allusions.

That is like a mundane-state, ordinary song about flying in airplanes, with
the middle verse switching to overtly double-coded meaning such as “a trip so
high, visions before my eye”, which would then switch the meaning of the other
lyrics too. This is the theory or principle of remote cueing. Suppose only
half of the verses in Caress of Steel are, considered in isolation, clearly
entheogenic, and the other verses are no more entheogenic than any straight
lyrics would randomly happen to be.

Yet considered as a whole, the entire album and all its lyrics would demand to
be interpreted entheogenically, even the average verses, due to the presence
in the package of the strongly entheogenic verses. This formula makes great
sense, more so than proposing, say, an entire album with just one verse meant
to be heard in its entheogenic sense, because if the listener is in a 12-hour
altered-state session, the mind will be in the encoding/decoding state for all
of the verses, not just for one song.

Album-oriented rock started as trip soundtrack rock. Single-oriented acid
rock was impractical, because LSD lasts 12 hours, while a pop-sike single
lasts only 3-1/2 minutes.

>Nirvana=This has a number of meanings, depending on how it is meant
>in either low or high Buddhism. The literal term, actually
>means “death,” or “extinction,” and referred to a goal of early
>buddhism, to free oneself from the cycle of birth and death, which
>was already the goal of the hindus……but in high mahayana
>(Saddharma Pundarika) it was revealed that the teaching
>of “Nirvana,” was actually a “Secret and Skillful Means of the
>Buddha.” I already quoted the applicable passages in previous posts
>and I told the story of the “Transient Castle,” where the analogy of
>a leader of travelers conjures up a Castle to inspire the travelers
>to keep going to the goal and later it is discovered that the Castle
>was an illusion and then the real goal is revealed. This is a
>fundamental principle of high Mahayana. Another Buddhist term
>is “The Expedient means of Nirvana” means the “Expedient means of
>Death,” wherein not only are expedients used by wise buddhas to
>teach the law, but even nature itself, provides an “secret”
>expedient means.

This reminds me of an animated ad showing a man floating back and forth in
sitting meditation 9 inches above the ground. It that how I picture
enlightenment? Not at all, but perhaps it is comparable to how I felt when I
made sense of the construct of “kingdom of God” in terms of no-free-will, Nov.
14, 2001, enabling me to finally form a systematic interpretation of
Christianity that fit with my since-1988 core model of block-universe
determinism.

I had episodically experienced the return of the messiah and entering the
kingdom of God before, even connecting it with the no-free-will concept (this
was part of the “grand forking path” insight), but didn’t yet secure a
complete, systematic interpretation.

Upon finally attaining a complete, systematic interpretation, for a few days I
was in heaven, in nirvana, not in the sense of being in a mystic altered state
while comprehending the metaphors, but rather, just being in the normal state
of consciousness but having a scientific/theoretic breakthrough experience by
reflecting on the experiences and insights of the mystic altered state and
reflecting upon how mystic-state metaphor works as a clever systematic
meaning-puzzle.

In this sense, my full ascension into heaven didn’t occur in the mystic
altered state, but was heavily informed by the insights of the mystic altered
state, including insights about networks of word-meanings.

The promise of entering a castle-like heaven, as in the book of Revelation,
can be an expedient means. Attaining a transformed, higher-coherence
worldmodel is like attaining a castle, entering a kind of blissful nirvana,
ascending to heaven in the company of the saints. The castle could be
considered real, as a certain kind of castle.

Alan Watts is too much of a poet without explaining himself explicitly: in the
book The Way of Zen, he likes saying enlightenment is nothing to be gained,
but while true in a certain sense, I maintain that enlightenment is something
to be gained by the mind: a higher, more coherent worldmodel in addition to
the mind’s previous worldmodel.

I completely reject the notion that expedient means is an option that works
better than explicit explanation of the principles of enlightenment. The most
expedient means are entheogens, combined with teaching rational explicit
systematic principles, combined with teaching how mystic/mythic/religious
metaphor works as a poetic encoding/decoding system.

— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com

Demons are drawn so as to emphasize their animal aspects. A demon is
essentially portrayed as an intelligent being that is like an animal in
essence and is like a degraded mode of a human. A demon is a lower,
animalized person. Animals, like humans under the ego delusion, take free
will and self-moving agency for granted – it’s how things appear in nature.

Children learn the egoic worldmodel first, naturally — this makes sense. It
is a simple and useful way of thinking and mode of perceiving and experiencing
the world and oneself. However, what makes humans greater than animals is
intelligence, and intelligence contains divine potential in that it can
blossom into the transcendent worldmodel. Humans, unlike animals, have
religion.

The human during their childish, animalistic period before initiation has a
degraded form of religion, but this too transforms into transcendent religion
when intelligence blossoms into transcendent knowledge, in which the animal
way of viewing the world is transcended both in experience and in systematic
conceptual thinking.

The altered-state experience is shared by animals and occurs before
intellectual enlightenment or “regeneration”; the altered state raises
questions and tensions and cognitive dissonances that are eventually reasoned
through, during the transformation from the egoic to the transcendent
worldmodel.

The egoic mode of thinking is a child-animal mode. Both the child and the
animal as symbols are variable. A child can represent foolish ignorant ego,
or the next generation of the mind after ego has been transcended. The goat
is a symbol of egoic freewill assumption, while the sheep is a symbol of
transcendent no-free-will thinking. To portray the egoic way of thinking,
animalesque demons work better than showing children.

Of the commonly known animals, the best animal to portray egoic delusion is
the willful goat, which is why the leader of the deluded people is a goat-man,
the devil, the Prince of Pride. The donkey is usually a more respectful
mockery of egoic thinking, because it faithfully carries the higher mind to
the point of enlightenment, like Balaam’s faithful ass who successfully brings
the seer Balaam to the angel of death (ego-death enlightenment) and then
halts, rebuking Balaam’s criticism. “The Balaam’s eyes were opened… I will
speak only the words that God puts in my mouth.”

— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com

I recall there are 3 turnings of the wheel of the law, like 3 ways of
conceiving merit, such as the egoic conception of merit and system of merit,
the intermediate scheme of merit, and the transcendent conception of merit.

>Other most important factors and terms of high Mahayana Buddhism,
>which is applicable to a entheogenic theory, for later explanation:
>
>1. Three Bodies of the Buddha
>2. Ichinen Sanzen
>3. General and Specific Transmission
>4. Three Great Secret Laws
>
>But this will have to wait for another day.
>
>dc

>Of course the Bible record is true and trustworthy. Therefore anything else

must be considered rebellious speculation and highly disrespectful at that.

>Regards, J. S.
> (God’s eternal Love)
> Matthew 11:6

The Bible record is true and trustworthy when read in a certain way, with
certain meanings taken literally and other meanings interpreted allegorically.
Holding to anything other than the Bible’s correct meaning is rebellious and
disrespectful speculation. It is sinful to wrongly divide the scriptures,
misreading the Bible according to one’s own interpretation rather than that
given by the Holy Spirit and the tradition of the true Church.

— In Christ,
Michael

The idolatrous, arbitrary, and self-fabricated religion that is invented by
literalist, self-labelled “Christians”

>Of course the Bible record is true and trustworthy. Therefore anything else

must be considered rebellious speculation and highly disrespectful at that.


The Bible record is true and trustworthy when read in a certain way, with
certain meanings taken literally and other meanings interpreted allegorically.
Holding to anything other than the Bible’s correct meaning is rebellious and
disrespectful speculation. It is sinful to wrongly divide the scriptures,
misreading the Bible according to one’s own interpretation rather than that
given by the Holy Spirit and the tradition of the true Church.

Christians who make an idolatrous religion of literalism don’t even believe
their own, hypocritical words, their declarations of pure literalist belief.
They *pretend* to be a believer in the Bible, and claim to read all the
historical aspects in a pure and faithfully literal way. This illusion can
only be sustained by avoiding engaging with the text and by staying in the
realm of vagueness — such a religion is a religion of fearful vagueness and
fog, despite its effort at committing to concretistic thinking.

It is a way of approaching scripture that is accepts some vague imagined “pure
literalist” reading and attributes that reading to the surrounding crowds and
imagined authority figures, but the fact that such a stance is incapable of
debating specific points regarding the historical versus metaphorical aspects
of scripture indicates such religionists are full of self-doubt and unable to
debate rationally.

Self-labelled “Christians” who preach the gospel of
salvation-through-pure-literalism are only capable of making empty, vague
faith statements, which amount to nothing and communicate nothing.

The supposedly pure literalists preach a Gospel of meaningless adherence to
some supposedly concrete, but actually wispy and unspecified literalism — do
they even *know* what they believe, and why? They claim to believe in a
gospel of literalism, but are they able to be more specific than that, or
would that strain the content of their weak-on-content “faith” past the
breaking point? “I believe… in blind acceptance of literalist orthodoxy.”

It would be better to believe in the truth about the savior, whatever that
truth actually is, without building one’s house of faith on a sandy foundation
of vague, unspecified “pure, faithful” literalism.

Christianity based on a refusal to consider the possible anti-literalist
meaning of the history aspects of scripture is a religion of
responsibility-evading literalist assumption, a hastily fabricated
preconception pulled out of one’s own mind, that is no Christian faith at all,
but just an arbitrary fabrication of one’s own version of what one labels
“Christian faith”.

Contentless, unspecified, committed literalism is idolatry, worshipping a
savior made with one’s own hands. That false, man-made Gospel is filled with
groundless a-priori assumptions about what the right way is to read the holy
scriptures. These false and content-averse Christians pull the assumption out
of thin air that literalism is the righteous way to read the history aspects
of the scriptures.

They think they are safely with the crowd they can trust in. On the contrary,
many claim to follow Jesus but are not recognized by him as his elect sheep.
How can they be sure that a literalist reading of the history aspects of the
scriptures is wise instead of foolish? Their blind, arbitrary, overly
self-trusting assumption of literalism, pulled out of thin air by their own
sinful preconception about what the scriptures ought to be about, is a
rebellious speculation.

Christians who place their salvation on a foundation of supposedly pure
literalism should call into question their prideful assumptions and consider
that they may be completely mistaken. Who are these investigation-fearing
beginner Christians, that they presume to judge what is a respectful reading
of holy writ, and what is not? The humble followers of Christ should worship
the truth however it is found in the canonical scriptures.

Those who are quick to worship the idol of a historical literalist
interpretation of the scriptures fancy that they “respect” the scriptures by
reducing them down to their own sinful, idolatrous, hazy and unspecified
literalist revision of them, and then shy away from admitting that they are
sitting in judgement over the scriptures, picking and choosing which passages
to read as literal history and which to read as allegorical.

Those self-labelled “Christians” who imagine and assume that they can be pure
by uncritical adoption of a consistent literalist reading of the history
aspects of scripture ought to come clean and admit that we are all burdened
with the responsibility for interpreting the historical aspects of the
scriptures; there is no escape, not even by trying to deceive oneself and
pretending not to interpret.

The unspecified “purely literal” interpretation of the history aspects of
scripture is still one’s own personal interpretation; there is no escape. You
will be cast into the fire or admitted into heaven based on whether you read
the scriptures with your eyes opened by the Holy Spirit or with your eyes
clouded by the animal thinking of the deceiving demons. Salvation depends on
our stance toward the scriptures.

Is a “pure, literalist, respectful” stance toward the scriptures righteous, or
is it an incoherent abomination — how can we know, without the regeneration
provided by the Holy Spirit? Is a pure, literalist stance toward the
scriptures even possible at all, or a monstrous self-contradiction that is
the worst insult possible toward the divine Word? Is it actually good to
erect a religion of commitment to a pure literalist interpretation of the
scriptures?

If so, how can we do so, when the literalist readings contradict each other,
and when scripture so often warns us to carefully interpret it? On what
grounds can we base our religion on the *assumption* that a literalist reading
is the surest foundation?

How can anyone know that the most “respectful” reading of scripture is some
“pure”, extreme literalism — when such “purity” remains vague and
unspecified, through an evasive cop-out? Do the self-proclaimed “purely
faithful literalist” interpreters of scripture really believe their invented
fantasy that the crowd of authorities around them confidently asserts a
literalist reading of the history aspects of the canonical scriptures?

They cannot fool themselves convincingly, and so project their doubt onto
other people around them, harboring pride in the “purity” of their “faith”,
while seeing doubt all around them — their own secret doubt about their own
arbitrary, idolatrous assumption that a “pure” literalist interpretation is
possible and holy.

The self-proclaimed “pure” worshippers of literalism enjoy the righteous mood
of their own invented religion of “pure, faithful” literalism, even though it
feels shallow and spiritually unfulfilling and ultimately disappointing. But
pure and perfect literalism is impossible as well as unsatisfying, and is only
viable as long as one refrains from serious engagement with the text, seeking
to rightly divide the scriptures.

“Pure” historical literalist reading of the scriptures an imaginary position
imagined by the shallow lifestyle-only Christians. When one actually
investigates the scriptures and critically thinks about the history aspect in
them, “pure” historical literalism disintegrates into a meaningless position
that isn’t held by any theologians or Christian scholars.

It’s a shallow, willful delusion to think that one can rest confidently in a
religion of “principled faithful literalism”, a religion not of Jesus Christ
and the Holy Spirit but instead a religion of historical literalism which
insults the word of God by reducing it to a mundane history book.

“I doubt my faith. How can I know I’m among God’s elect? I know — instead
of being faithful about God, instead I will be faithful to a perfect and pure
literalist reading of the history aspects of the holy scriptures.” Is
Christianity essentially a religion of reporting literal history? On what
grounds can one assume such an interpretation? And what does religion really
have to do with history reporting?

Can Christian faith and a righteous stance toward scripture be conceived as
belief in a purely literalist reading of Christian scripture as history? Can
one even coherently read Christian scripture as literalist history, or does an
attempt at this form of faith immediately collapse when prodded and examined
critically? Isn’t the historical literalism reading of the scriptures exactly
what Paul disparages as childish things that the adult needs to put away, mere
beginner’s Christianity?

Christianity today has been degraded to imbecilic historical literalism
combined with irrational emotionalism and magical superstition — there is no
salvation in that way of reading the scriptures, or perhaps refusing to read
the scriptures. In that stance is no regeneration, no wisdom, just the
religion of fools, founded on sand. Many say they follow Jesus, but he does
not know them; they are of the devil, the prince of pride, the self-willed
goat-man.

Literalists try to let other people tell them what the righteous way is of
reading the Bible. They are apprehensive of what they call “speculation”, yet
they speculate and arbitrarily assume that their soul is saved by following
the *interpretation* given to them by the crowds who are walking through the
wide and apparently easy gate. They deny that they are speculating and
pulling assumptions about the scriptures out of thin air.

What do *they* know about reading and interpreting the Bible? Have they ever
even *heard* of mysticism? Do they know what allegory is? Does their
Christian bookstore sell Christian-styled self-help books for devils in Sunday
dress, or books that contain the wisdom of the saints and the saved, the true
sheep of Jesus?

Did it occur to the worshippers of dogmatic literalism that there are many
ways of reading “the Bible record” and that how one reads scripture is a
choice that the sinner must make in fear and trembling?

The literalist strive to commit their souls to a literalist faith and demonize
the critical mind. They must work hard to avoid allowing into consciousness
the realization that few or no Christian scholars and theologians assert that
every historical aspect in the “Bible record” is true. It takes a will of
iron to avoid admitting to oneself that the entire problem is a matter of
*which* Bible records are true.

How do the vague and evasive, supposedly “pure and consistent” literalists
propose that we determine which Bible records are literally historically true,
and which aren’t? On what foundation do they assert that we have to choose
one or the other: that one must accept some vague “the Bible record is true”
belief (whatever that is supposed to mean) or else, as the only other possible
option, be “disrespectful”?

Is their invented form of religion so delicate, their faith so weak and
phantasmal, that they insist that the scriptures must not be interpreted, but
only literally believed as vulgar and mundane historical records — despite
what the scriptures themselves say about requiring interpretation?

Why should one assume that critical reading of the “Bible record” is
inherently disrespectful? The mystics have greater respect for the Bible than
anyone. To not read critically and interpretively is truly disrespecting the
scriptures, and dishonoring them by reading them in accordance to how the
mind-averse crowds decide, in mob-like fashion.


The true gospel is a metaphorical expression of the following core philosophy,
which accords with much of Reformed dogmatics.

The most common-sense plausible model of the world and of transcendent
knowledge is that all religion is essentially mythic, not literalist, and that
the main purpose, origin, and nature of myth is to allegorically and
metaphorically express the transcendent insights and experiences of the
intense mystic altered state. The mystic state is the state of loose
cognition enabling revising mental-construct matrixes.

The main, ultimate experience and insight of the loose-cognition state is the
experience (sense, feeling) of no-free-will and no-separate-self, combined
with an easy and natural mental perception of a worldmodel that is plainly
coherent, involving re-conceiving time as frozen, with all of the mind’s
future thoughts already preexisting in a single fixed track.

This mental perception of this worldmodel is natural, coherent, plausible, and
plain to see; once constructed by the exploring mind, that mental worldmodel
would require more mental work to doubt than to accept.

The transcendent move of the mind also involves not only seeing that
worldmodel, but also requires an unfamiliar act of *deliberately* choosing to
believe or pretend to believe, what the mind no longer can easily believe,
that the ego is in control of its future thoughts and wields the power of free
will, as a sovereign, prime-mover control-agent.

The irony of transcendent rationality is that after overthrowing the delusion
of individual free will and separate self, for purely practical reasons, the
mind must now, God-like, deliberately pretend and retain and embrace what you
use to uncritically take for granted but can no longer rationally accept:
conceiving of a worldmodel built around the notion of self-controlling,
free-willing egoic agency.

The mind must learn to do consciously and insincerely what it previously did
naturally in its former animal/child state: engage a worldmodel based around
the separate-self, open-future assumption.

A hundred aspects of this model intensely contradict today’s accustomed ways
of thinking and regarding models as “plausible”. But this model and
explanation is remarkably unassailable, and when researched, turns out to have
massive evidential and traditional support from many philosophers,
theologians, and mystics, and scholars. The very *heart* of myth and religion
is the mystic altered state and no-free-will, and emphatically *not*
literalist religion.

By far the most sober and common-sense plausible model of transcendent mystic
insight is that religion is firmly centered around intense mystic
altered-state experiencing, firmly centered around no-free-will as experience
and irresistibly coherent and natural worldmodel, and not at all centered
around literalist thinking, hazy spiritualism, and mundane ethics.

This theory is dirt-simple, easy to express, easy to experience and mentally
perceive in the state of loose cognition, and we ought to have very good
reason before rejecting its plausibility in favor of the alternative, which is
no religion at all (mundane ethics), or complete haze and fog (New Age-style
vague spirituality and tranquil meditationism), or vulgar magic-thinking and
supernatural superstition (literalist religion).


— In Christ,
Michael

>This system of concepts extends beyond concepts very effectively by
>proposing an experiential method that is extremely potent and
>reliable: using entheogens to produce a state of loose cognition, so
>that the mind can consider the concepts at the same time as
>experiencing the mystic state of sensing and perception. Only in
>that sense do I agree that rationality is somehow insufficient to
>the task of “communicating” religious insight.
>
>I can agree that the fullest religious insight requires both
>experiencing *and* intellectually comprehending phenomena such as
>the sense of no-free-will or no-separate-self.
>
>Let the plant teacher teach experientially at the same time as the
>human teacher teaches the intellectual principles and concepts. What
>we have to date is only half a teaching team: some people are taught
>by the plant teacher but have no good human teacher; others are
>taught by a human teacher but have no plant teacher. Both teachers
>are needed, in conjunction

_________

dc wrote:

>The percentage of people who could be convinced by theory, is a very
>tiny percentage. The primary problem is the illegality of
>entheogens. Thus I believe that the primary focus should be using
>all information available from all sources, to prove the basic truth
>that enthogen use is religious in nature and the laws prohibiting
>their religious use violates the constitutional principle
>of “Freedom of Religion.” This needs to be the primary focus of any
>attempt to enlighten others to the amazing function of entheogens.

My primary focus is to combine selected parts of today’s leading-edge theories
about philosophy, religion, and entheogenis into a coherent and ergonomic
theory of transcendent knowledge. I won’t waste any time reinventing the
wheel trying to convince the skeptics that entheogens are effective, or
proving that they are present in classic religion.

My entire effort is focused on effectively designing a framework that enables
combining what the other theorists have already argued regarding ideas such as
no-free-will, entheogens in classic religion, and the non-literalist nature of
religion. Whenever possible, I try to do only the work of combining other
theorists’ work, not reinventing it or convincing skeptics.

My strategy is to convince by making available a framework that enables the
ideas to cohere on their own. Other researchers have already shown the
viability of tenseless time, classic religious use of entheogens, and other
uncommon knowledge. My work is entirely a matter of taking these leading-edge
fields for granted and instead, just showing how it is possible to fit them
together by selecting an appropriate framework.

Never focus on convincing and persuading; only quietly demonstrate the
possibility of a coherent framework. Forget people and affecting their
thinking; instead, focus on the framework itself. That’s the spirit that
leads pure theory. I only want to let people know that it is possible to
easily fit these ideas together coherently by using this framework.

As a wholly distinct concern, I advocate or at least support drug policy
reform. This distinction is like theology versus mission-work, or private
faith versus good social works. This is the darkest hour for drug policy
reform, and the new day may well be upon us at any time. There are reasons to
hope. It is understandable, the thought of giving up hope.

The world is beyond hope, deluged by evil on all sides. But somehow, there is
still hope; things could get worse but things could get better. There must be
some viable game plan toward a better, truer world. Even David Icke has the
audacity and gumption to hope, and he reminds people that despite “the
system”, when you add up the potential of each individual person to shape the
world and work together, that adds up to a great deal of potential that should
be able to improve things.

Theoretically, it is possible for people to change the way things are, and
people should keep that individual and collective responsbility and potential
in mind.

The task is certainly not to inform the committed prohibitionist leaders that
entheogens are benign or constitutionally legit — how can we teach them what
they already know? The misguided reformers spend their ammunition fighting on
that false battlefront. Reformers ought to follow the money instead —
prohibition is entirely a matter of paychecks for the professional predatory
prohibitionists.

No one who matters actually believes that entheogens are bad and warrant
prohibition — instead, it’s all nothing but ploy and paycheck strategy,
prohibition purely for profit on the part of the false saviors. The flaw of
the reformers is playing the game straight, when it’s actually a completely
fake game, total extreme propaganda, taxpayer-supported.

Now the game is largely a television PR game, with the prohibitionists putting
forth distorted views that they know amount to self-serving lies upon lies,
and the reformers putting forth slightly less distorted views, when all the
while, a deadly house-of-mirrors battle and system of evil is going on
involving predatory prohibitionists and the profitable illegal markets that
they cooperate with — it’s very twisted, which you wouldn’t know from viewing
the reformers’ feeble ads that portray the prohibitionists as merely
misinformed fellas that really mean well.

The prohibitionists are the most evil, lying, self-serving criminals
imaginable — real monsters, yet the reformers pretend that they are just
mistaken. It’s hard to admit how evil this world is. If entheogens were
decriminalized, would the ego delusion collapse overnight? Prohibition serves
to protect the ego delusion.

You are a theorist, and NOT an initiate. I’ve read enough of your Christian
bull shit, and am fed up with it. If you knew anything about the goat man,
the formula of shin ayin peh, I O PAN ! , You would not have spouted such
ignorance as that in this post.

Panoptes


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In Mahayana the 3 turnings became known as the Three Time Periods
which according to various traditions, using literal thinking, were
the first 500 or 1000 years the second 500 or 1000 years and the
third 500 or 1000 years, interpreted as years after the death of the
Historical Buddha. Here is a complex passage written by Sun Lotus:

“Question: You have mentioned above that the teaching, practice and
proof are not all present in each of the three periods of the
Former, Middle and Latter Days of the Law. If so, how do you explain
the Great Teacher Miao-lo’s statement, “The beginning of the Latter
Day of the Law will not be without inconspicuous benefit, for it is
the time when the great teaching will be propagated”?

Answer: The essence of this passage is that those who obtained
benefit during the Former and Middle Days of the Law
received “conspicuous” benefit, because the relationship they formed
with the Lotus Sutra during the lifetime of the Buddha had finally
matured. On the other hand, those born today in the Latter Day of
the Law receive the seed of Buddhahood for the first time, and their
benefit is therefore inconspicuous. The teaching, practice and proof
of this age differ greatly from those of Hinayana, provisional
Mahayana, the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings or the theoretical teaching
of the Lotus Sutra. There is no one now who can gain benefits like
those of the Former and Middle Days of the Law. According to Miao-
lo’s interpretation, the benefits in the Latter Day are
inconspicuous, and people can therefore neither perceive nor
understand them.

Question: Is there any sutra passage which says that inconspicuous
benefits are limited to the Latter Day of the Law?

Answer: A passage from the Yakuo chapter in the seventh volume of
the Lotus Sutra reads: “This sutra is beneficial medicine for the
illnesses of all mankind. If one is ill and can hear of this sutra,
his illness will vanish immediately, and he will find perpetual
youth and eternal life.” The Great Teacher Miao-lo says: “To regard
the last five-hundred-year period after the Buddha’s passing as the
time when no one can attain benefit is a superficial viewpoint. The
beginning of the Latter Day of the Law will not be without
inconspicuous benefit, for it is the time when the great teaching
will be propagated. The last five-hundred-year period corresponds to
that time.”

Question: The passages you have quoted indicate that the propagation
of the Lotus Sutra is limited to the first five hundred years of the
Latter Day of the Law. Yet the provisional Mahayana sutras say that
their practices will still be appropriate throughout the ten
thousand years of the Latter Day of the Law. How do you reply to
this?

Answer: Miao-lo states in the above-mentioned commentary that such
an interpretation of the last five-hundred-year period
is “superficial.” From a more profound viewpoint, the Lotus Sutra
will spread throughout the ten thousand years of the Latter Day. The
Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai comments on the previously quoted passage
from the Yakuo chapter, stating: “It is not only the people who live
during the lifetime of the Buddha who obtain great benefits. In the
fifth five hundred years, the Mystic Way shall spread and benefit
mankind far into the future.” Does this annotation suggest anything
other than the ten thousand years of the Latter Day of the Law? The
Fumbetsu Kudoku chapter in the sixth volume of the Lotus Sutra
refers to “one who is able to uphold this sutra in the evil age of
the Latter Day of the Law.” Also the Anrakugyo chapter reads, “In
the Latter Day of the Law, one who desires to teach this sutra…”
These quotations refer to the ten thousand years of the Latter Day
of Law. All the Buddha’s teachings other than the Lotus Sutra are
covered by his declaration: “In these more than forty years, I have
not yet revealed the truth.” Moreover, there are some cases where
the sutras have been revised according to the understanding of those
who compiled them and therefore cannot be trusted.

The scholars of the various sects remain oblivious to the fact that
the Buddha sowed the seed of enlightenment when he expounded the
Lotus Sutra in the past. How foolish they are! Quite unaware of the
distant past of sanzen-jintengo and of gohyaku-jintengo, they
abandon the mystic teaching which is pure and perfect, and sink
again into the sea of the sufferings of birth and death. It is
pitiful beyond description that, though born in a land where the
people’s capacity to receive the perfect teaching is fully mature,
they vainly fall back into the great citadel of the hell of
incessant suffering. They are no different from a person who arrives
at the bejeweled K’un-lun Mountains only to return to his
impoverished country without a single gem, or one who enters a
forest of sandalwood trees, yet goes back to the barren rubble of
his own land without ever plucking the champaka’s blossom. The third
volume of the Lotus Sutra reads, “It is as if one came from a
famished land and suddenly encountered a great king’s feast.” And
the sixth volume reads, “This, my land, remains safe and
unharmed,… My pure land is indestructible.”

In your letter you mentioned a difficult question put to you, as to
the assertion that people are able to achieve enlightenment through
their practice of the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings. In reply, you
should quote the third volume of the Nirvana Sutra which reads, “Men
of devout faith! Study and practice [until you learn that the three
treasures are one and eternal].” Further, quote the third volume of
the Guketsu which comments on this passage where it states, “Only
those who have heard the Mahayana teachings in the remote past [are
able to attain enlightenment through the practice of the Hinayana
teachings],” and, “Those who achieved Buddhahood through the
practice of the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings were able to do so only
because of their initial practice in the remote past.” You should
make clear that the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings provide no benefit of
enlightenment whatsoever. Then explain that the same principle holds
true in the time of propagation following the Buddha’s death. All
who obtained the proof of enlightenment in the Former and Middle
Days of the Law were able to do so solely because of the
relationship they had formed with the Lotus Sutra during the
Buddha’s lifetime.

Should your opponents repeatedly insist that the pre-Lotus Sutra
teachings provide a path to enlightenment, cite to them the Buddha’s
own declaration in the Muryogi Sutra: “In these more than forty
years, I have not yet revealed the truth.” Common mortals like
ourselves at the initial stage of practice can expect to attain
Buddhahood by relying on the teachings of the Buddha. The words of
the various teachers are in themselves of no use at all. The Buddha
gave strict counsel against following them with his statement in the
Nirvana Sutra, “Rely on the Law and not upon persons.” Remind your
opponents of this and repeatedly cite the passage, “I have not yet
revealed the truth,” to refute their arguments. However, do not
carelessly cite such passages [of the Lotus Sutra] as “Honestly
discarding the provisional teachings, [I will expound only the
supreme Way]” or “The World-Honored One has long expounded his
doctrines [and now must reveal the truth].” Rather, keep these
teachings deep in your heart.”


Above the mention of two vast periods of time “Sanzen Jintengo” (the
amount of time passed if you turned to dust 3000 major world systems
each grain of dust represents a “Kalpa.” and Gohyaku Jintengo, is
much longer. They are both periods of time that transcend
historical time and I will go over these when I deal with Ichinen
Sanzen, as well as “time without beginning,” called Kuon Ganjo.
These three periods are referred to within the Saddharma Pundarika
Sutra. These times are far vaster then the age if the universe as
science knows it.

dc





I recall there are 3 turnings of the wheel of the law, like 3 ways of
conceiving merit, such as the egoic conception of merit and system
of merit,
the intermediate scheme of merit, and the transcendent conception of
merit.

>Other most important factors and terms of high Mahayana Buddhism,
>which is applicable to a entheogenic theory, for later explanation:
>
>1. Three Bodies of the Buddha
>2. Ichinen Sanzen
>3. General and Specific Transmission
>4. Three Great Secret Laws
>
>But this will have to wait for another day.
>
>dc

>>>>>>>”In what sense does ego exist, and it what

sense does ego not exist? That is, what exactly is the nature of
ego?”<<<<<<<<<

Yes that is close to the meaning of neither-nor….But I think it is
important to understand that this also speciically refers to a
entheogenic state of the middle way.

dc

>>>>>>No one who matters actually believes that entheogens are bad

and warrant
prohibition — instead, it’s all nothing but ploy and paycheck
strategy,
prohibition purely for profit on the part of the false saviors. The
flaw of
the reformers is playing the game straight, when it’s actually a
completely
fake game, total extreme propaganda, taxpayer-supported.

Now the game is largely a television PR game, with the
prohibitionists putting
forth distorted views that they know amount to self-serving lies
upon lies,
and the reformers putting forth slightly less distorted views, when
all the
while, a deadly house-of-mirrors battle and system of evil is going
on
involving predatory prohibitionists and the profitable illegal
markets that
they cooperate with — it’s very twisted, which you wouldn’t know
from viewing
the reformers’ feeble ads that portray the prohibitionists as merely
misinformed fellas that really mean well.

The prohibitionists are the most evil, lying, self-serving criminals
imaginable — real monsters, yet the reformers pretend that they are
just
mistaken. It’s hard to admit how evil this world is. If entheogens
were
decriminalized, would the ego delusion collapse overnight?
Prohibition serves
to protect the ego delusion.>>>>>>>

Of course I agree that what you say is true, I also believe that in
this primitive world, the very nature of the constitution of the
United States—(although not yet living up to itself yet) provides
a way to make all of this legal and just as other issues in this
society have challenged the status quo on consitutional grounds, on
made headway. Although the history of the drug wars go back to the
beginning of history, this does not mean it is always doomed to
repeat itself.

No the errors in the mind would not collapse over night, but legal
religious use and scientific study, would certainly be a major steop
in the right direction…

One thing about the ideal of the law, is that it can mutate, if a
good enough proof is presented, then the law, which by its own
nature, is supposed to be objective and beyond preconceived bias.

dc

>>>>>>You are a theorist, and NOT an initiate. I’ve read enough of

your Christian bull shit, and am fed up with it. If you knew
anything about the goat man, the formula of shin ayin peh, I O
PAN ! , You would not have spouted such
ignorance as that in this post.

Panoptes>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It is interesting the choice of words here. “Bullshit,” and “fed up
with it.” Refers to the Horney Goatman who will eat anything until
he is full. His mad passion to rape the nymph lead to his blowing
his pipes when she turned into a group of reeds.

And of course learning ones Ayins, Pehs, and Shins, is helpful.

Actually the vedic, egyptian, greek and roman stories of the gods
became hopelessly mixed up and deranged by Crowley and the origins
of these myths as celestial objects inthe sky and how they were
imprinted as myths in the non-conscious became lost.

The Constellation of Makara the Goat-headed-dragon is ridden by
Vishnu and of course this really refers to the movements of Venus or
Kama Deva, the god of love, in the constellation of Capricorn and
then the appearance of Pluto as the Shapeshifting Kama meeting the
Sea nymph or….Typhon the reptilian monster, causing Pan to turn
into a goat.

This is the muddy thinking of ancient stargazers, getting really
wasted and being severely repulsed and attracted in the extremes of
of god-devil intercourse.

dc

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, panoptes69@a… wrote:
> You are a theorist, and NOT an initiate. I’ve read enough of your
Christian
> bull shit, and am fed up with it. If you knew anything about the
goat man,
> the formula of shin ayin peh, I O PAN ! , You would not have
spouted such
> ignorance as that in this post.
>
> Panoptes
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>>>>>>>Album-oriented rock started as trip soundtrack rock. Single-

oriented acid rock was impractical, because LSD lasts 12 hours,
while a pop-sike single lasts only 3-1/2 minutes.>>>>>>>>>>>

Ever listen to “Le Voyage,” by Pierre Henry? Or Mayazumi’s “Nirvana
Symphony.” Never have I heard better ego loss soundtracks then
these.

If you are unfamiliar with these, I recommend them highly. In Le
Voyage , (1962-Musique Concrete) there is a distinct moment when the
ego is destroyed, but listening to it in normal consciousness it
sounds like at that moment, a bowling ball being flushed down a
toilet, into a really deep sewer. Nirvana Symphony has to be the
most transcendent piece ever written is takes one through the
scariest trials of DNA cybernetics and then brings one into a state
of oceanic consciousness.

Both of these are on LP and CD and are hard to find…unless one
knows someone who has them, or one is really determined to find them
on ebay.

it is interesting how lyrics and pure sound/music, serve a related
but different function during the entheogenic experience.

dc














— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Michael Hoffman” <mhoffman@e…>
wrote:

> Early in this discussion group I posted an analysis of Bohemian

Rhapsody —

> very heavy ego-death/acid mysticism allusions. I consider Queen

one of the

> groups that has a full grasp of the entheogen rock religion, but

prefers to

> write isolated songs focusing on that subject.
>
> Rush, as a philosophy group ought, chooses to allude to the

subject more

> consistently or relentlessly throughout their albums, particularly

their

> classic-era albums Caress of Steel through Grace Under Pressure

(mid-1970s to

> mid-1980s).
>
> Black Sabbath treated LSD religion as a substantial but not

emphasized portion

> of their drug-alluding Heavy Rock scope — Ozzy’s first two solo

albums,

> however, emphasized LSD, according to my interpretation. I have

heard that

> LSD was used routinely by many bands as part of lyric writing; I

suspect that

> was a trick of the trade, used for albums such as one by the Cars.
>
> There is a distribution of acid-mysticism allusions at the level

of a band, an

> album, a song, or a verse — at any level there may be a high

density of

> allusions. One technique is to insert a verse dense with

allusions into a

> song that otherwise is innocent of such allusions. Metallica’s

For Whom the

> Bell Tolls, Cheap Trick’s Way of the World. This verse is a key

suggesting

> reading the remaining lyrics in their mystical sense, though the

other lyrics

> are not themselves filled with dense allusions.
>
> That is like a mundane-state, ordinary song about flying in

airplanes, with

> the middle verse switching to overtly double-coded meaning such

as “a trip so

> high, visions before my eye”, which would then switch the meaning

of the other

> lyrics too. This is the theory or principle of remote cueing.

Suppose only

> half of the verses in Caress of Steel are, considered in

isolation, clearly

> entheogenic, and the other verses are no more entheogenic than any

straight

> lyrics would randomly happen to be.
>
> Yet considered as a whole, the entire album and all its lyrics

would demand to

> be interpreted entheogenically, even the average verses, due to

the presence

> in the package of the strongly entheogenic verses. This formula

makes great

> sense, more so than proposing, say, an entire album with just one

verse meant

> to be heard in its entheogenic sense, because if the listener is

in a 12-hour

> altered-state session, the mind will be in the encoding/decoding

state for all

> of the verses, not just for one song.
>
> Album-oriented rock started as trip soundtrack rock. Single-

oriented acid

> rock was impractical, because LSD lasts 12 hours, while a pop-sike

single

> lasts only 3-1/2 minutes.

>>>>> I completely reject the notion that expedient means is an

option that works
better than explicit explanation of the principles of enlightenment.
The most
expedient means are entheogens, combined with teaching rational
explicit
systematic principles, combined with teaching how
mystic/mythic/religious
metaphor works as a poetic encoding/decoding system.>>>>>

The Saddharma Pundarika is very explicit that the use of expedients
is used when peop;e lose their seeking mind. recptivity is
important. If a person isn;t receptive, then they need a severe
disruptive force, befoe they become receptive, otherwise an
expedient is used to inspire or motivate them. Without receptivity
no one will listen, no matter how great the discourse. At the same
time, the Sutra also refutes the use of expedient means at a time
when the times are such that it is too late to use an expedient…at
that time the teaching is taught directly.

If being direct doesn;t work, then the person is still subject to
Nature’s expedient—-DEATH itself. The Expedient of Death (Upaya
Nirvana) (Jap. Himyo Hobemn gen Nehan) occurs anturally. At the
moments approaching death, of in the case of a entheogenic
experience, suddenly a person aspires “to see the Buddha.” There
formerly unreceptive mind sufdenly becomes receptive. At that time,
when they are told the law directly, they at first, may hate it and
slander it—yet that same hate and slander forms the connection to
it. (called the Poison Drum effect)….this was told in analogy in
a story that a person kicked the Buddha and the person fell
into “hell,” except for the foot.

An excellent passage by Sun Lotus about refuting the expedient
means, which will really help you understand the high Mahayana
meaning:


“However, the Buddha’s teachings are various, perhaps because
people’s minds also differ greatly. In any event, Shakyamuni taught
for no more than fifty years. Among the teachings he expounded
during the first forty years and more, we find the Kegon Sutra,
which says, “The mind, the Buddha and all living beings – these
three things are without distinction”; the Agon sutras, which set
forth the principles of suffering, emptiness, impermanence and
egolessness; the Daijuku Sutra, which asserts the interpenetration
of the defiled aspect and the pure aspect; the Daibon Hannya Sutra,
which teaches mutual identification and non-duality; and the
Muryoju, Kammuryoju and Amida sutras, which emphasize rebirth in the
Land of Perfect Bliss. All these teachings were doubtless expounded
in order to save all living beings in the Former, Middle and Latter
Days of the Law.

Nevertheless, for some reason of his own, the Buddha declared in the
Muryogi Sutra, “[Expounding the Law in various ways,] I made use of
the power of expedient means. But in these more than forty years, I
have not yet revealed the truth.” Like a parent who has second
thoughts about the transfer deed he has written out earlier, he
looked back with regret upon all the sutras he had expounded during
the past forty years and more, including those which taught rebirth
in the Land of Perfect Bliss, and declared [that no matter how
earnestly one may practice them,] “…in the end one will never
attain supreme enlightenment, even after the lapse of countless,
limitless, inconceivable asogi kalpas.” He reiterated this in the
Hoben chapter of the Lotus Sutra, saying, “Honestly discarding the
provisional teachings, I will expound only the supreme Way.”
By “discarding the provisional teachings,” he meant that one should
discard the Nembutsu and other teachings preached during the period
of those forty-some years.”

Cool?

dc












— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Michael Hoffman” <mhoffman@e…>
wrote:

> >Nirvana=This has a number of meanings, depending on how it is

meant

> >in either low or high Buddhism. The literal term, actually
> >means “death,” or “extinction,” and referred to a goal of early
> >buddhism, to free oneself from the cycle of birth and death, which
> >was already the goal of the hindus……but in high mahayana
> >(Saddharma Pundarika) it was revealed that the teaching
> >of “Nirvana,” was actually a “Secret and Skillful Means of the
> >Buddha.” I already quoted the applicable passages in previous

posts

> >and I told the story of the “Transient Castle,” where the analogy

of

> >a leader of travelers conjures up a Castle to inspire the

travelers

> >to keep going to the goal and later it is discovered that the

Castle

> >was an illusion and then the real goal is revealed. This is a
> >fundamental principle of high Mahayana. Another Buddhist term
> >is “The Expedient means of Nirvana” means the “Expedient means of
> >Death,” wherein not only are expedients used by wise buddhas to
> >teach the law, but even nature itself, provides an “secret”
> >expedient means.
>
>
> This reminds me of an animated ad showing a man floating back and

forth in

> sitting meditation 9 inches above the ground. It that how I

picture

> enlightenment? Not at all, but perhaps it is comparable to how I

felt when I

> made sense of the construct of “kingdom of God” in terms of no-

free-will, Nov.

> 14, 2001, enabling me to finally form a systematic interpretation

of

> Christianity that fit with my since-1988 core model of block-

universe

> determinism.
>
> I had episodically experienced the return of the messiah and

entering the

> kingdom of God before, even connecting it with the no-free-will

concept (this

> was part of the “grand forking path” insight), but didn’t yet

secure a

> complete, systematic interpretation.
>
> Upon finally attaining a complete, systematic interpretation, for

a few days I

> was in heaven, in nirvana, not in the sense of being in a mystic

altered state

> while comprehending the metaphors, but rather, just being in the

normal state

> of consciousness but having a scientific/theoretic breakthrough

experience by

> reflecting on the experiences and insights of the mystic altered

state and

> reflecting upon how mystic-state metaphor works as a clever

systematic

> meaning-puzzle.
>
> In this sense, my full ascension into heaven didn’t occur in the

mystic

> altered state, but was heavily informed by the insights of the

mystic altered

> state, including insights about networks of word-meanings.
>
> The promise of entering a castle-like heaven, as in the book of

Revelation,

> can be an expedient means. Attaining a transformed, higher-

coherence

> worldmodel is like attaining a castle, entering a kind of blissful

nirvana,

> ascending to heaven in the company of the saints. The castle

could be

> considered real, as a certain kind of castle.
>
> Alan Watts is too much of a poet without explaining himself

explicitly: in the

> book The Way of Zen, he likes saying enlightenment is nothing to

be gained,

> but while true in a certain sense, I maintain that enlightenment

is something

> to be gained by the mind: a higher, more coherent worldmodel in

addition to

> the mind’s previous worldmodel.
>
> I completely reject the notion that expedient means is an option

that works

> better than explicit explanation of the principles of

enlightenment. The most

> expedient means are entheogens, combined with teaching rational

explicit

> systematic principles, combined with teaching how

mystic/mythic/religious

> metaphor works as a poetic encoding/decoding system.
>
> — Michael Hoffman
> Egodeath.com

Since I’m mainly interested in the musical side of things, I’ve done
quite a bit of listening into the psychedelic genre. Personally, I
really like Tangerine Dream’s “Phaedra” and other albums by them.
The later stuff is less engaging and easily forgettable (such as the
soundtracks like “Oasis”), but earlier Tangerine Dream stuff (the 3
keyboard assault w/o percussion) is the most aural and psychedelic of
their eras.

-greg

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “rialcnis2000” <rialcnis2000@y…>
wrote:

> >>>>>>>Album-oriented rock started as trip soundtrack rock. Single-
> oriented acid rock was impractical, because LSD lasts 12 hours,
> while a pop-sike single lasts only 3-1/2 minutes.>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> Ever listen to “Le Voyage,” by Pierre Henry? Or Mayazumi’s “Nirvana
> Symphony.” Never have I heard better ego loss soundtracks then
> these.
>
> If you are unfamiliar with these, I recommend them highly. In Le
> Voyage , (1962-Musique Concrete) there is a distinct moment when

the

> ego is destroyed, but listening to it in normal consciousness it
> sounds like at that moment, a bowling ball being flushed down a
> toilet, into a really deep sewer. Nirvana Symphony has to be the
> most transcendent piece ever written is takes one through the
> scariest trials of DNA cybernetics and then brings one into a state
> of oceanic consciousness.
>
> Both of these are on LP and CD and are hard to find…unless one
> knows someone who has them, or one is really determined to find

them

> on ebay.
>
> it is interesting how lyrics and pure sound/music, serve a related
> but different function during the entheogenic experience.
>
> dc
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> — In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Michael Hoffman” <mhoffman@e…>
> wrote:
> > Early in this discussion group I posted an analysis of Bohemian
> Rhapsody —
> > very heavy ego-death/acid mysticism allusions. I consider Queen
> one of the
> > groups that has a full grasp of the entheogen rock religion, but
> prefers to
> > write isolated songs focusing on that subject.
> >
> > Rush, as a philosophy group ought, chooses to allude to the
> subject more
> > consistently or relentlessly throughout their albums,

particularly

> their
> > classic-era albums Caress of Steel through Grace Under Pressure
> (mid-1970s to
> > mid-1980s).
> >
> > Black Sabbath treated LSD religion as a substantial but not
> emphasized portion
> > of their drug-alluding Heavy Rock scope — Ozzy’s first two solo
> albums,
> > however, emphasized LSD, according to my interpretation. I have
> heard that
> > LSD was used routinely by many bands as part of lyric writing; I
> suspect that
> > was a trick of the trade, used for albums such as one by the Cars.
> >
> > There is a distribution of acid-mysticism allusions at the level
> of a band, an
> > album, a song, or a verse — at any level there may be a high
> density of
> > allusions. One technique is to insert a verse dense with
> allusions into a
> > song that otherwise is innocent of such allusions. Metallica’s
> For Whom the
> > Bell Tolls, Cheap Trick’s Way of the World. This verse is a key
> suggesting
> > reading the remaining lyrics in their mystical sense, though the
> other lyrics
> > are not themselves filled with dense allusions.
> >
> > That is like a mundane-state, ordinary song about flying in
> airplanes, with
> > the middle verse switching to overtly double-coded meaning such
> as “a trip so
> > high, visions before my eye”, which would then switch the meaning
> of the other
> > lyrics too. This is the theory or principle of remote cueing.
> Suppose only
> > half of the verses in Caress of Steel are, considered in
> isolation, clearly
> > entheogenic, and the other verses are no more entheogenic than

any

> straight
> > lyrics would randomly happen to be.
> >
> > Yet considered as a whole, the entire album and all its lyrics
> would demand to
> > be interpreted entheogenically, even the average verses, due to
> the presence
> > in the package of the strongly entheogenic verses. This formula
> makes great
> > sense, more so than proposing, say, an entire album with just one
> verse meant
> > to be heard in its entheogenic sense, because if the listener is
> in a 12-hour
> > altered-state session, the mind will be in the encoding/decoding
> state for all
> > of the verses, not just for one song.
> >
> > Album-oriented rock started as trip soundtrack rock. Single-
> oriented acid
> > rock was impractical, because LSD lasts 12 hours, while a pop-

sike

> single
> > lasts only 3-1/2 minutes.

Since I’m mainly interested in the musical side of things, I’ve done
quite a bit of listening into the psychedelic genre. Personally, I
really like Tangerine Dream’s “Phaedra” and other albums by them.
The later stuff is less engaging and easily forgettable (such as the
soundtracks like “Oasis”), but earlier Tangerine Dream stuff (the 3
keyboard assault w/o percussion) is the most aural and psychedelic
of
their eras.

-greg<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<


The beginnings of modern “Space music,” and it’s roots in older
music is a pretty obscure and interesting. Tangarine dream was one
of the first to be doing this consistently in the pop genre.
Michael Stearns first album, “Ancient Leaves” was a breakthrough
album, a favorite of mine.

In 1969 after the Yardbirds broke up in 1968, Keith Relf and Jim
McCarty founded the “classical-rock” “Renaissance,” and only did 2
albums before they allowed others to take over for them. At the end
of the firast album is a short segment of organic, ethereal sounds
that was a true Breakthrough, harkening back to the ancient sounds
of bells and Shakuhachi, like wind blowing through a hollowed tree
stump, a ghostly effect that conjured up the feeling of death (death
of ego). Later Electronic space music tended to lack the organic
sounds. The gutiar bowing done by Jimmy Page with the Yardbird’s
original “Dazed and Confused” and then Led Zeppelin’s version, also
had that organic, analog sound, “Ancient Leaves,” also, although
electronic, also had an organic sound. The organic quality seems to
triggers certain feelings of unconscious natural processes, that tap
into primordial events. Tangerine dream, in the early albums also
tapped into this at times.

The Musique Concrete of Pierre Henry, especially Le Voyage, using
only analog sounds seems to be the sound of sentient and insentient
processes, gasping for the last breath, until everything is
dissolved in the void. Much of this work was done using balloons
being deflated like shreiking whoopie cushions, in mutiple tracks.
Producing the effect of irrevocable dissolution of body and
consciousness, giving way to electronic, but still organic sounds,
with a random quality of the touchdown into the state of limbo and
then into a rebirth into a womb. Le Voyage, was intended as a aural
version of the Tibetan book of the Dead. Other works work by Henry
was Le Livre des Morts Egyptien, based on the Egyptian Book of the
Dead, and L’Apocalypse de Jean are among my favorites. His work is
very different from that of Stockhausen and Cage, which seems to
come from an entirely different place steering away from the organic
quality, into a more normal consciousness mode of thought.

Wendy Carlos in 1972, did a very organic piece called “Sonic
Seasonings,” and also has done a number of other things with a very
organic sound.

In the entheogenic experience the sound of death and the sound of
angelic choirs, have a distinct effect on the listener. The former
is of ego death the latter a rebirth.

Lyrics in psychedelic rock seem to key into the hypersuggestible
state and the meaning of the words tends to work by association and
in that state, where words have power to open various doors.

Latter “avante garde” music, Tangerine dream, Jean Michel-Jarre,
Vangelis, Mike Oldfield, Philip Glass and others in latter works
seemed to focus on movie soundtracks, melodies and more commercial
uses of electronic music. Heavy Metal descended from the austere
Yardbirds, who built their true reputation, not around their few
albums, but around their profound, very organic, live performances,
based in what Jeff Beck had called “perversions of sound.” Heavy
Metal/Psychedelic rock then went into many directions, some
commercial and some not, but with encoded psychedelic lyrics,
written on LSD. What I saw was that people tended to imprint the
music they heard in their first experiences with entheogens and
often they were unable to see the sequences of musical history in
the psychedelic genre.

Every so often I delve into the biographies of Stravinski, convinced
he must have expanded his consciousness….I have always wondered
how Stravinsky, composed the Rite of Spring in 1913…….it changed
everything in music. Later he became friends with Aldous Huxley,
but I have not found any connection to entheogenic use in
Stravinsky’s life in that early period, alhtough I find it hard to
believe he was naturally that brilliant.

dc

*******
Here is a good little essay from the web on Musique concrete and
Pierre Henry:


Pierre Henry: Beyond Schaeffer
John Donohue SP ’99

When musique concrete is mentioned the first name that comes to mind
is Pierre Schaeffer. He coined this term to describe a new form of
music which he developed that was based on the acoustical
manipulation of recorded sounds. Schaeffer was not a musician,
though, he was a telecommunications engineer1 who lived through Nazi
occupation of France. His revolt from the German atonal contemporary
music led him to this new territory. Unfortunately, most of his
music was not of a caliber to convince classical snobs of the
validity of using found sounds instead of instruments.

Much of Schaeffer’s successful work was in collaboration with
another French composer, who unlike Schaeffer was a classically
trained musician. This artist was Pierre Henry. The two worked
together on one of Schaeffer’s most successful works Symphonie pour
un Homme Seul. Pierre Henry became one of the leading figures in
music concrete after this and soon surpassed Schaeffer. Instead of
confining himself to a narrow field of development and
experimentation Henry expanded his musical endeavors in many
directions.

Pierre Henry was born in 1927 in Paris. He was unhealthy as a child
and did not attend school but instead had private tutors. Of his
musical beginning Henry says, “I had started my career as a
percussionist quite early, beating on anything around me; furniture,
the tables, the drums. I arrived at the moment of creating a noise,
and went on to create something entirely new.2″ By 1944 he was
studying at the Paris Conservatory and taking lessons from very
important musical figures in the twentieth century. His piano and
percussion teacher was Passeronne, and his theory and composition
lessons were with Olivier Messiaen and Nadia Boulanger.

In 1949 Pierre Henry won a commission to compose the music for a
television documentary “Seeing the Invisible.”His earlier work had
been traditional instrumental music. Later that year he began work
with Schaeffer on the Symphonie pour un Homme Seul. This consists of
ten movements which are meant to invoke the sounds a man hears
walking alone at night.3 All of the sounds are created by the human
body. Most or all of Henry’s music is programmatic and his titles
are the key to understanding the theme of each piece. In 1951 he
joined the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrete which was based
in Schaeffer’s state funded studio Radiodiffusion Francaise. This
year Henry and Schaeffer collaborated on another major piece,
Orpheus. This was an opera for voices and musique concrete. This
piece wasn’t performed in its entirety until 1953 in the
Donaueschingen Festival in Germany.4 In good tradition this debut
was met with public outrage.

By 1952 Henry was the director of the Groupe de Recherche de Musique
Concrete and he remained in that position until 1958. Pierre Henry
was also a film afficionado and in 1952 he wrote the score to
Astrologie which was the first commercial film in France to have an
electro- acoustic score. This was a first move towards later
audio/visual compositions that Henry wrote. In 1952 he also wrote
Antiphonie which was a contrast between two sound groups.

Pierre Henry became more interested in techniques outside of the
strict musique concrete that Schaeffer theorized, and in 1958 he
broke away from the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrete and
established his own studio, the Studio Apsome. This was the first
private electronic music studio in France.5 He wanted to incorporate
synthesized sounds with other musical techniques that had been
developed. One key aspect of the career of Pierre Henry is
hybridization of ideas and technology. His compositions of 1959,
Entity, Coexistence, and Investigations used elements of synthesized
sounds along with the found sounds of musique concrete.6

The early 1960’s were an interesting time in Henry’s career. He did
a project with a rock group, Spooky Tooth, although he didn’t like
the heavy bass and reverb laden vocals.7 In 1962 he wrote a major
piece, Le Voyage, which was entirely synthesized. In 1963 Variations
for a Door and a Sigh were composed using found sounds in variation
to create a seventeenth century French suite. The next year Henry
made some popular success with his recording Jerks Electronique
which sold over 150,000 copies.8

In the later sixties Henry wrote some religious works including the
Messe de Liverpool in 1967-68. He also composed a piece based on the
book of revelations L’Apocalypse de Jean. Both of these recordings
have narration which remains intelligible over the intricacies of
his electroacoustic composition. In 1971 he wrote a large scale
audio/visual work which depicted brain waves as electronic sounds
and images. This was Mise en Musiaue du Corticolart. He has also
written other audio/visual works like L’Homme a la Camera which is
based on a film of the same name. In 1973 Henry wrote La Dixome (the
tenth) which is based on excerpts from Beethoven’s nine symphonies
which are manipulated into a tenth.

Many of Pierre Henry’s compositions have been choreographed for
ballet by Maurice Bejart. These include Astrologie, Variations for a
Door and a Sigh, Le Voyage, Mass for Today, and Symphonie pour un
Homme Seul. Henry actually toured globally with Bejart’s dancers as
their sound technician.9

One common theme of Henry’s work is death in a literary sense. Le
Voyage is based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, while Le Livre des
Morts Egyptien is based on the Egyptian book of the dead. He also
wrote L’Apocalypse de Jean which describes the apocalypse. Formally
his pieces are not anarchistic although their electronic nature may
make it seem that way. Several pieces are based on classical forms
like Symphonie pour un Homme Seul and Variations for a Door and a
Sigh. Henry says, “one of course has to compose with a direction, a
lucid idea. One has to have in mind a certain construction, a
form.10″ Since traditional devices like harmony and melody are
obscured one thing that is left is rhythm. “There is always a beat
in my music. The beat is what I find more interesting than something
asymmetrical. Everything has to be natural for me.11″

Henry has very distinct views on technology. When he began work on
electronic music the only medium was disque souple, or soft disk.
This was very difficult to work with and precarious because it was
easily damaged and couldn’t overcome generational loss. Next came
magnetic tape which was the most important medium for musique
concrete. Now with the widespread use of digital technology things
have changed again. Of digital Henry says:

“There are many things we can do with digital sound such as
uncovering the original sound. All sounds become original sounds,
the sound of the beginning. That’s interesting but there is a
betrayal in the sense that digital sound is not as good as
analogical sound. It has less strength, less impact, less presence.
Therefore it’s necessary to mix analog, that is, old equipment with
new equipment. We can’t get rid of old equipment. We still need to
have the future connected to the past.12″

Again Henry is talking of the need for a hybrid between two schools
of thought. Henry adds,

“I have always struggled to have the sounds retain their
transparency. Now I have conquered these problems, thanks to digital
techniques. It is possible to make a perfect copy, but I am worried
about the machines doing the work that I should be doing. . . The
computer works instead of you . . . I think that we now live in a
dangerous age because the composer should certainly not work with a
tap, that he can open or close.13″

The dedicated work of electronic music composers has led to more
widespread use of electronic techniques in everyday life. However
this mass commercialization has done nothing to elevate the art form
or endeavors of its predecessors. Henry sees this music
as, “absolutely disgraceful on the radio, at the cinema, in adverts.
And I see that at the moment there is one sound. Not sounds. One
single sound, everywhere, It’s a sound that has been
standardized.14″

The career of Pierre Henry has gone from humourous pieces to
contemplative works on ponderous subjects. He went from being a
frail child to an avant garde composer to a rock star and back
again. It was his musical sensibility, intricacy, and openness to
new techniques that made him a much greater composer than his
predecessor Schaeffer. And it was his ability to write for film, or
recording, or live performance, or opera, or ballet which truly set
him apart from other composers for electroacoustic music.



———————————————————————
———–


Bibliography:


Ernst, David. Musique Concrete. Boston, Massachusetts, Crescendo
Publishing Company, 1972.

Kostka, Stefan. Twentieth-Century Music, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle
Tiver,
New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1999.

Russcol, Herbert. The Liberation of Sound: An Introduction to
Electronic Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall,
1972.

Smolders, Ios. “Interview with Pierre Henry.” Vital. 1995.
Online. htt

p://www.hyperreal.org/intersection/zines/intervs.henry.html
(4/19/99).

Stolba, Marie. The Development of Western Music: A History.
Boston,
Massachusetts, McGraw-Hill, 1998.

Online. http://www.furious

.com/perfect/pierrehenry.html (4/19/99)

Online. http//ar

ts.ucsc.edu/EMS/music/music/landmarks/henry.html (4/19/99)







— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “rialcnis2000” <rialcnis2000@y…>
wrote:

> >>>>>>>Album-oriented rock started as trip soundtrack rock. Single-
> oriented acid rock was impractical, because LSD lasts 12 hours,
> while a pop-sike single lasts only 3-1/2 minutes.>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> Ever listen to “Le Voyage,” by Pierre Henry? Or

Mayazumi’s “Nirvana

> Symphony.” Never have I heard better ego loss soundtracks then
> these.
>
> If you are unfamiliar with these, I recommend them highly. In Le
> Voyage , (1962-Musique Concrete) there is a distinct moment when

the

> ego is destroyed, but listening to it in normal consciousness it
> sounds like at that moment, a bowling ball being flushed down a
> toilet, into a really deep sewer. Nirvana Symphony has to be the
> most transcendent piece ever written is takes one through the
> scariest trials of DNA cybernetics and then brings one into a

state

> of oceanic consciousness.
>
> Both of these are on LP and CD and are hard to find…unless one
> knows someone who has them, or one is really determined to find

them

> on ebay.
>
> it is interesting how lyrics and pure sound/music, serve a related
> but different function during the entheogenic experience.
>
> dc
>
>

>Nevertheless, for some reason of his own, the Buddha declared in the
>Muryogi Sutra, “[Expounding the Law in various ways,] I made use of
>the power of expedient means. But in these more than forty years, I
>have not yet revealed the truth.” Like a parent who has second
>thoughts about the transfer deed he has written out earlier, he
>looked back with regret upon all the sutras he had expounded during
>the past forty years and more, including those which taught rebirth
>in the Land of Perfect Bliss, and declared [that no matter how
>earnestly one may practice them,] “…in the end one will never
>attain supreme enlightenment, even after the lapse of countless,
>limitless, inconceivable asogi kalpas.” He reiterated this in the
>Hoben chapter of the Lotus Sutra, saying, “Honestly discarding the
>provisional teachings, I will expound only the supreme Way.”
>By “discarding the provisional teachings,” he meant that one should
>discard the Nembutsu and other teachings preached during the period
>of those forty-some years.”

Honestly discarding the provisional teachings, I expound only the supreme Way,
which includes teaching the ultimate meaning of the provisional teachings.

>The goat also figures in the formula of shin ayin peh, I O PAN, somewhat

differently from the way the goat-man is used as an anthropomorphization of
the freewill assumption in Christian metaphor.


One should be cautious about too literally carrying over metaphor-matrixes
from one metaphor-system to another. It violates the rules of play in
mythic-mystic-metaphor. Each system of metaphor needs to be considered on its
own terms. All high myth is ultimately equivalent, but any one symbol, such
as the goat, is joined to other symbols in a unique matrix of connections
within each system.

In official Christian myth-religion, there is one God, who transcends the
cosmos and created the cosmos. In Gnostic religion, there are two gods — the
perfectly good god, who transcends the cosmos, and the evil or deluded god,
creator of the cosmos. So, is the “God” mytheme positive or negative? It
depends on the context, on which system of metaphor.

We can say “in mythic mystic-state metaphor, the goat symbol represents
individual will”, but that’s just a fair first-order assessment. When
considering the goat in different religions, the statement must be qualified
and there can be exceptions.

Sometimes functionally equivalent mythemes in two different systems are
essentially the same, but look, at first glance, quite different: for example,
Catholic “purgatory” is functionally equivalent to Buddhist “rebirth”: both of
these symbols represent the gradual nature of the transformation from the
egoic mental worldmodel to the transcendent worldmodel during a series of
intense mystic altered-state sessions.

It’s natural to contrast and compare goats and sheep — they are very similar
as domesticated livestock. There is a certain equivalence in sacrificing a
sheep or goat; they both represent “something about the nature of the human
‘organ’ of will”. In Satanism, the goat-oriented pentagram is an affirmation
of free will or the potency of will.

Goats love mushrooms and will fight for them — see the recent book:

Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter
Consciousness
Giorgio Samorini
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819863


Greek Tragedy is “goat-song”. Tragedy and comedy were combined, altogether
commenting on the pathos of the freewill delusion. Tragedy lamented the
non-sovereignty of the ego; comedy mocked and laughed at it. Part of the
festivities was to try to balance on a goatskin filled with wine (possibly
mixed wine, that is, psychoactive wine).

Studying what the goat meant to the ancient Greeks would surely reveal a great
deal about Hellenistic myth-religion. Dionysus and goats are found each
other. I posted before my reading of the series of mythic initiation frescoes
in an Italian villa. Pan, panic, and ego-death are closely related.

Mythic elements always are variable, because mythic-mode cognition
transcendently operates on mythic-mystic symbols. However, the mode or
ultimately implied framework; the logical mechanics, remain the same.

There is no direct correlation of all aspects of the Pan and Devil figures,
but both figures, in their respective mythic systems, are closely keyed into
transcendent insight into the illusory and conventional nature of the
freewill/separate-self delusion — keyed in, one way or another, just as the
serpent is an extremely variable figure, highly liable to invert. The most
highly charged symbols are the most liable to invert from representing truth
and error.

The serpent is a highly flexible figure because it can be low — underground,
as a cthonic, netherword symbol standing for death and ego-death, and can also
be high, like the serpent raised up.

Poison and healing medicine, associated with venom, were held to be related.
The term “potion” and the mytheme of “poisoned mixed wine” follow this logic,
as do the dangerous scopalimine entheogens or deliriants, which are almost as
likely to cause bodily death as mystic death and rebirth — it can make you
“youthful again” (reborn after mystic death”, or can kill you (see the Greek
myth of Hekate tricking the king’s daughter into boiling to death instead of
rejuvenating the king).

— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com

In addition to double-entendres in lyrical words, and altered-state musical
sounds, there are hybrids, such as double-speak mumbling or double-tracked
vocals singing two different but similar sounding words together.

One of the most inventive and brilliant sonic allusions to LSD ever is the
uneven heartbeat (heart palpitations) at the end of the space-trip song Cygnus
X-1. This sound is a total givaway communicating the presence of LSD, but
only to those who are real veterans who have made a serious and sustained
study of the subject.

What about this — would you call it lyric, or music? In the song “Flying
High Again”, Ozzy sings “Never heard a thing I said”, then ping-ponged is the
pseudo-delayed “said” echoed twice, but it’s actually the word “dead”: “Never
heard a thing I said (dead, dead).” The song “Chemistry” by Rush uses
strategic mumbled words often.

Probably the deservedly most famous sonic allusion to LSD-triggered ego death
is the orchestral build-up, twice, at the end of the Beatles’ album Sgt.
Pepper, in the song A Day in the Life, which perfectly captures the
orgasm-like timing of the ego-death realization buildup.

The end of Cygnus X-1 is Rush’s exact equivalent to the build-up in Day in the
Life, so that we could say Cygnus X-1 is Rush’s “A Day in the Life”.


— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com

I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard “Cygnus X-1” compared
to “A Day In the Life”. Fabulous. Much thanks.

-greg

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Michael Hoffman” <mhoffman@e…>
wrote:

> In addition to double-entendres in lyrical words, and altered-

state musical

> sounds, there are hybrids, such as double-speak mumbling or double-

tracked

> vocals singing two different but similar sounding words together.
>
> One of the most inventive and brilliant sonic allusions to LSD

ever is the

> uneven heartbeat (heart palpitations) at the end of the space-trip

song Cygnus

> X-1. This sound is a total givaway communicating the presence of

LSD, but

> only to those who are real veterans who have made a serious and

sustained

> study of the subject.
>
> What about this — would you call it lyric, or music? In the

song “Flying

> High Again”, Ozzy sings “Never heard a thing I said”, then ping-

ponged is the

> pseudo-delayed “said” echoed twice, but it’s actually the

word “dead”: “Never

> heard a thing I said (dead, dead).” The song “Chemistry” by Rush

uses

> strategic mumbled words often.
>
> Probably the deservedly most famous sonic allusion to LSD-

triggered ego death

> is the orchestral build-up, twice, at the end of the Beatles’

album Sgt.

> Pepper, in the song A Day in the Life, which perfectly captures the
> orgasm-like timing of the ego-death realization buildup.
>
> The end of Cygnus X-1 is Rush’s exact equivalent to the build-up

in Day in the

> Life, so that we could say Cygnus X-1 is Rush’s “A Day in the

Life”.

>
>
> — Michael Hoffman
> Egodeath.com

>>Seminar with Dale Allison, author of _Jesus: Millennial Prophet_ begins

Monday, March 24th.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/12924
This scholarly discussion will be based around articles about Mr. Historical
Jesus’ interpretation of Jewish apocalyptic, including:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/hell.pdf
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/IdeologyandApocalyptic.pdf

The links are case-sensitive. Correction:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/HELL.PDF

Jesus, king of the puppets in God’s secretly arrived millenarian kingdom,
which is in fact as near as tonight’s sacred meal


I’m trying to formulate this as a question for Dale Allison, though I as yet
have no question, merely a more successful explanation of the apocalyptic mode
of conceptualization. I don’t assume I have anything to learn from Allison,
but any engagement has already proven helpful for clarifying. What should I
ask him: “Why, specifically and in detail, don’t you abandon your view and
adopt my superior view instead?”


Chapter drafts about Mr. Historical Jesus’ interpretation of Jewish
apocalyptic:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/HELL.PDF (case-sensitive)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/IdeologyandApocalyptic.pdf

In Ideology and Apocalyptic, Allison quotes his passage from the book
Apocalyptic Jesus:

“… a Jesus who proclaimed the nearness of the end in the first century must
have been a real human being. This is no small point. Docetism may have been
condemned long ago as a heresy, but it has never gone away. Much of the
popular Christianity I have known seems to think that Jesus was at least three
fourths divinity, no more than one quarter human being. If we go back to the
ancient church, it wasn’t much better. The theologians who confessed Jesus’
true humanity balked at the implications. . . . Here is one point at which the
Fathers failed us.”

In Ideology and Apocalyptic, Allison writes:
“… Jesus’ eschatological convictions belong to mythology, even though such a
thought is foreign to the way in which own mind looked at the last things. He
surely construed his eschatological expectations pretty much as most
pre-moderns have construed Genesis 1-3, that is, more or less literally.108
[108: See Allison, Jesus of Nazareth, pp. 152-69.] But just as the
mythological character of Genesis does not bar us from interpreting and even
appropriating the text, so too is it with the old eschatological expectations.
In fact, I take much of biblical eschatology to be akin to Platonism; both are
mythological ways of directing us beyond this world, a larger reality about
which we cannot speak literally because it transcends our mundane minds, which
have after all evolved in order to interact with the material world around
us.109 [109: See further George Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross-roads
(London/New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1913). I find myself in essential
agreement. This in turn means that, in the end, I am close to where Dodd was,
the big difference being that I regard my interpretation as my interpretation,
not that of Jesus.] I would also assert that “the idea embodied in the
Eschatology of Jesus–the embodiment belonging to its own day–is that of the
ultimate triumph of God.”110 [110: Jackson, Eschatology, p. 350.]


In saying “I regard my interpretation as my interpretation, not that of
Jesus”, Allison asserts that the Historical Jesus was a mistaken and deluded
man who foolishly interpreted the apocalypse idea literally and taught that he
was the messiah of that literal apocalypse, while Allison himself holds a
sane, wise, and sober interpretation of the apocalypse idea as having its real
meaning in the realm of Platonism.

For Allison, what the apocalypse idea is really all about is a Platonism-type
philosophical concept that God will ultimately triumph, not that the
apocalypse will occur soon and is near in time.

I contrast, I present this truly sane, wise, and sober interpretation: Jesus
is an entirely mythic representation of the specific metaphysical experience
and conceptual realization which Hellenistic mystery-religion initiates and
Jewish mystics underwent subsequent to ingesting the sacred food and mixed
wine of the ritual meals that were standard and ubiquitous in the Hellenistic
world.

All the ideas swirling around the notion of “apocalyptic change of cosmic
rulership” make perfect sense and do not involve any confusion and
mistakenness on the part of Jesus, or rather, on the part of the skilled and
crafty mystic mythmakers who constructed the symbolic two-state,
meaning-flipping figure of Jesus so cleverly. The confusion is entirely on
the part of the uninitiated scholars. Dale Allison is the teacher who has a
mistaken interpretation of the idea of apocalypse.

Mr. Historical Jesus was completely correct: the end of time is as near as an
uninitiated, unregenerated follower’s last supper before taking up the cross
and thereby entering tonight into the secret kingdom of God, of which Jesus is
king — king of the metaphysical puppets, king of the enlightened, king of
“the Jews”, the elect who were predestined to realize in the mystic altered
state that there is no free will and no egoic moral agent to be the impure
carrier of moral sin and guilt.

All myth-religion of the Hellenistic era is ultimately and essentially
variations on these same themes. These type of ideas were standard in that
era; Christianity in its best form is a two-state play of signifiers that may
be more sophisticated and brilliant than even ancient Greek
tragedy/myth/religion and Jewish myth-religion.

This same tragi-comic two-state meaning-shifting was present in Greek and
Jewish religion, and from what I have seen, Christianity brought together the
cleverest of the Jewish and Hellenistic systems of meaning-flipping.

There was a certain boring similarity among the various Hellenistic
mystery-religions; they were too obviously equivalent, while the Jews were
admired for contributing a distinctive version that was mechanically
equivalent but stood apart in that it utterly reveled in the two-state
flipping, which required hyper-literalizing the surface, lower level of the
mythic symbol-system as pseudo-history.

Jewish religion was essentially a form of Hellenistic mystery-religion that
was entirely and determinedly translated into quasi-literal history while
retaining the consciousness that it was essentially an equivalent two-phase
meaning-flipping system pivoting around the ritual consumption of special food
and drink.

It’s as though there were 15 new mystery-religions including the most
synthetic of all, Sarapis, and bored heirophantic mystics sat around dreaming
up a new twist on the core engine, and translated the system into
pseudo-history. Instead of “the uninitiated and the initiated”, this would
become two nations, such as “the Jews and the Israelites”, “the Jews and the
Gentiles”, “the Jews and the Greeks”, and so on.

Of course the symbolic integrity of using contrasting nations to represent the
uninitatied and the initiated is challenged by the proposal that some Gentiles
may be saved — but these kind of “flaws” in the system were cleverly
integrated into the system. Dale Allison fails to recognize the humor present
when the scriptures pretend to “struggle” with these “problems” such as the
“problem” that Jesus’ prophecy of the end — taken literally — was obviously
false.

To the mystic-myth craftsmen, there are no serious problems, since the whole
system is just an artificial meaning-puzzle.

Similarly, there is a comical parody of intellectual struggle when the Paul
character “struggles” to nail down the specifics about when the living will
ascend into the kingdom of God, versus when the already bodily dead will
ascend — these subtle problems are intended to be ludicrous and comical,
mocking and making light of the absurdity that results when this synthetic
hyper-historicized version of the core mystery-religion is taken at its word
by the uninitiated.


Dale Allison holds that:
o Jesus and the other New Testament figures existed.

o Jesus believed and taught that there would be a literal apocalyptic
transformation of the world and its rulership, and it would happen soon.

o Jesus was mistaken that an apocalyptic transformation would happen soon; he
thought that a certain kind of intense and sudden political transformation of
the world would happen, but that kind of transformation didn’t happen.

o The OT and NT were written as serious history mixed with serious
supernatural religion.


I hold that:
o All the figures in the New Testament are purely and essentially mythic,
metaphorical, allegorical figures, with incidental exceptions such as the
Roman rulers.

o The Jesus figure was crafted as a focal point representing various aspects
of what the mystic-state initiate experiences in the standard Jewish mystic
initiation-feasts and Hellenistic mystery-religions centered around eating
sacred food and drinking mixed wine.

o The OT and NT were written as ironic tragi-comedy phrased as a clever
puzzle designed to flip between two matrixes of meaning, based on systematic
double-entendre as was used in Greek Attic tragedy.

o The Jesus figure was successfully crafted to support both meaning-matrixes,
so that the words attributed to him could be taken two ways: a literal
political apocalypse, or a mystic-experiencing apocalypse based on a
thoroughgoing specific transformation of the initiate’s mental worldmodel from
the specific egoic mental worldmodel to the specific transcendent mental
worldmodel regarding space, time, self, and control.

The designers of this apocalyptic Jesus figure were in full command of their
craft, and meant to craft and succeeded at crafting a figure that preached
literal apocalypse in an ambiguous way designed to flip between a distinct
coherent literalist meaning and a distinct coherent allegorical meaning.

The allegorical meaning was not vague or ethereal or subtle, but rather,
totally specific, consistent, and conceptually tangible: all the concepts or
elements such as “judgement”, “kingdom of God”, “evil”, “good”, “perdition”,
“death”, and “life” form a metaphor-system coherently describing the
transformation during the intense mystic altered state from the ego-delusion
centered mental worldmodel, based on the goat-like freewill assumption, to the
transcendent-centered mental worldmodel, based on the sheep-like experience
and realization of no-free-will.

For example, in the lower, pre-initiation meaning-matrix, freewill moral
agency is assumed, so “sin”, “good”, and “evil” are taken to mean a certain
axis that throughout assumes the freewill worldmodel. In the higher
meaning-matrix which the initiates have, no-free-will is taken as axiomatic,
so “sin”, “good”, and “evil” are redefined in concert. Being free of sin
means being free from the freewill moral agency delusion, good means believing
there is no free will, and evil means the worldmodel based on the freewill
assumption.

In the kingdom of God, we’re slaves or puppets of God, controlled by some
invisible “father” who/that is utterly hidden and transcendent. Because the
initiated mind considers everyone to be a puppet, all egoic guilt assumption
is taken away. In a particular, specifiable sense, deluded people are guilty
of assuming guilt-culpability, guilty of assuming they have free-will primary
sovereign control.

The crucifixion is purely a metaphor for how the mind during initiation puts
an end to the delusion of personal sovereign control over the mind’s own
thoughts. The expression represented in Jesus’ face is the expression of the
knowledge that there is no free will.

King Pentheus wrongly assumes he is a greater sovereign than Dionysus, but he
ends up suspended from the world-tree like a puppet dangling at the mercy of
the puppeteer. So is Jesus, as symbol of transcendent knowledge about
no-free-will, allegorized as the king of the puppets of God — king of the
ego-transcendent minds — the king of the Jews, where “Jew” here means
“initiate” or “mind that has experienced the sense of no-free-will and
conceptually grasped the principle of no-free-will”.

Peter cries out to Mary Magdalene: surely Jesus didn’t assert no-free-will; no
moral system could be based on that! Jesus did teach a still-workable ethics
for the “Jews”, who have renounced and crucified their freewill worldmodel:
how hard can it be? Love God, love your neighbor.


The “death/life” polarity is designed by the writers to flip from meaning
literal bodily death versus literal continuation of life, to meaning the
uniniated person’s liability to undergo mystic death and rebirth when
eventually initiated. The mind that has undergone mystic death has
permanently died that type of death and won’t die that death any more; their
life (transcendent mental model) is no longer subject to that death.

A classic effect in the intense mystic altered state is the sense of time
stoppage, the loss of the sense of free will, the loss of the sense of
separate-self, and the loss of the sense of self-control. The end of time
*is* near, as soon as the nearest meal of sacred food and mixed wine. The
last supper is the last meal the initiation candidates will ever eat while
living within the egoic mental worldmodel.

Their next meal, as Jesus’ next cup of mixed wine, will be in the kingdom of
God. The sacred meal shifts the center of control-attribution in the mind
from the ego to the transcendent, from the Ground of Being that is the cosmos,
or a compassionate transcendent controller thereof.

This is a plain, specific, sane, meaningful explanation, in contrast to the
vague “mythical misunderstanding” Dale Allison attributes to the Jesus who he
totally misreads as a literal, serious-thinking historical figure.

I am particularly interested in more detail about Allison’s belief that his
seminary students’ very popular “Docetism” is “a lie” and “misinformed”. His
insight-hungry seminary students, dead-serious inquirers, are reading Earl
Doherty’s book The Jesus Puzzle hidden underneath their course textbooks, and
he misunderstands this as “Docetism”, which would have an appearance of Jesus
literally moving about and making utterances just like the holographic doctor
in the Star Trek television series.

Conventional thinking might be startled by the view I’ve pulled together, but
what’s really crazy and incoherent is the historical Jesus scholars.

The entire “historical Jesus” mode of thinking inherently locks one into a
stance toward the scriptures that falls right into the trap that the
scriptures were designed to be, as a clever meaning-flipping system like Greek
tragedy, where the meaning pivots on reconnecting all the elements during the
intense mystic altered state precipitated by the world-shattering oral
teaching that occurred during the sacred meals of the Jews, the mystery
religions, the symposium philosophy parties, and the agape meals of the
earliest Christians.

To understand the Hellenistic religions, you have to think like the
Hellenists. How did the Hellenists think? Hellenists thought in terms of
2-stage meaning flipping, no-free-will, cosmic determinism, and the
distinction between the initiates, who have understanding, and the
uninitiated, who don’t have understanding.


The key to successful interpretation is the spirit of tragicomic irony; to
read the seriousness of the scriptures seriously is to fall into the trap
which the scriptures were designed to set. Without comic irony, the
scriptures remain read in the low mode of the uninitiated: serious
supernaturalism.

However, equally necessary is understanding that eating the divine flesh
causes the experience of no-free-will and loosens the mind’s cognitive
associations to enable the mental worldmodel to transform from a system based
on the animalistic freewill assumption to a system based on the no-free-will
axiom.

This is why the Eucharist is the absolute center of the liturgy and the
central pivot-point leading to Jesus’ crucifixion, when while eating and
drinking at the last supper, Jesus commissions Judas to betray him. That this
perfectly coherent and elegant explanation seems crazy exactly indicates how
truly crazy the scholarly world has become under the darkness of uninspired
literalist interpretation.

Contra Allison, Mr. Historical Jesus was not confused, or crazy, or incorrect,
and despite his nonexistence, could teach Allison a thing or three about the
Platonistic experience of apocalyptic. Repent, for the day of judgment is
indeed very near, and could even happen on this very night.


So what do you think — is my question ready to post to the Allison Seminar?

— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com


Seminar with Dale Allison:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allison-Seminar
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/12924


Related books:

The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate
Dale C. Allison, Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Stephen J. Patterson,
Robert J. Miller
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0944344895

Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet
Dale Allison
Jan. 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800631447

Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium
Bart Ehrman
Sep. 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019512474X

Book list: kingdom of God, apocalypse, Revelation, eschatology
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/7BYCVM3BJX05/103-
0184603-8834266


University lecture course about Historical Jesus as apocalyptic prophet by
Bart Ehman
http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/643.asp – “Why do the
earliest sources at our disposal, including the Gospel of Mark, portray Jesus
as a Jewish apocalypticist, one who anticipated that God was soon going to
intervene in the course of history to overthrow the forces of evil and
establish his good Kingdom here on earth? How close is this portrayal to life?
Did Jesus proclaim a coming Kingdom? How are his references to the coming of
the “Son of Man” to be understood in light of the best historical analysis and
evidence we can muster? … how do Jesus’ ethical teachings, his own
activities, and the events of his final days fit into this analysis? Why did
Jesus go to Jerusalem at Passover, and what did he plan to do once he got
there? What was the situation he found? What were the intentions of those he
met there, including the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, the Temple
hierarchy, and the other Jewish authorities?” Lectures include Jesus and
Roman Rule, Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet, The Apocalyptic Teachings of Jesus,
Other Teachings of Jesus in their Apocalyptic Context, The Deeds of Jesus in
their Apocalyptic Context, The Prophet of the New Millennium.

>This is why the Eucharist is the absolute center of the liturgy and

the

>central pivot-point leading to Jesus’ crucifixion, when while eating

and

>drinking at the last supper, Jesus commissions Judas to betray him.

So what is the higher meaning of this? Jesus as the Cosmic Ruler
(master of puppets) commands Judas to betray him?

Also, the lower meaning does not make sense. Why should
Jesus elect someone to be betrayed??? Why does he want to be betrayed
at all? This is strange because
usually both interpretations should make sense. Here,
the lower just doesn’t make sense.


regs,
merker

>>This is why the Eucharist is the absolute center of the liturgy and the

central pivot-point leading to Jesus’ crucifixion, when while eating and
drinking at the last supper, Jesus commissions Judas to betray him.

>So what is the higher meaning of this? Jesus as the Cosmic Ruler (master of

puppets) commands Judas to betray him?

>
>Also, the lower meaning does not make sense. Why should Jesus elect someone

to be betrayed??? Why does he want to be betrayed at all? This is strange
because usually both interpretations should make sense. Here, the lower just
doesn’t make sense.

>
>regs,
>merker

There is a certain sort of coherence to low-level Christian thinking, though
it is fraught with problems — more problems than the relatively consistent
high-level interpretation. The lower mind is accustomed to fudging the gaps,
and there is always recourse to “It’s a mystery that is beyond the
comprehension of the sin-clouded mind.”

In high myth-religion, all the characters are aspects of the initiate’s
psyche. Judas, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Virgin Mary, King Saul, King David,
Absolom, Balaam, Beloved Disciple, Lazarus, the Rich Man, the leper, the blind
man, the devil, the demons, Peter, the woman at the well, Jesse, Jacob, Adam,
Eve, the serpent — all are aspects of the initiate’s psyche.

So the question is, what aspect of the psyche does Judas represent? Judas
represents the egoic mind’s interesting, innate and ultimately divine
potential for self-betrayal. Judas is the self-betraying potential of egoic,
personal self-control. The mind in the experienced mystic state learns how to
pit self-control system against itself catastrophically, so that the mind
discovers how it can make its self-control contradict and cancel-out its own
logic and power.

Here the mind splits into a transcendent aspect, in some sense a “higher
controller”, and a lower aspect, which is mundane, ordinary self-control. The
latter is “Judas”, the former is “Jesus”. Each initiate must commission their
own inner Judas-nature to betray the actual logical flaws of personal
self-control, for the mind to kill the delusion of the egoic personal center
of control.

Mystic-state dynamics are very logical, but the allegory layer over them is
always a leaky abstraction. Egoic thinking is also a leaky abstraction: it
normally works well enough, but it works imperfectly, and when the mind
carefully studies why the egoic self-control logic works imperfectly, this can
lead to enlightenment.

Higher rationality is perfect in some way, but the mythic allegorization
layer, at least in the Christian system, is imperfect even when fully
understood as a model of transcendent insight and initiation dynamics. The
Christian system is designed as a two-layer meaning-flipping system, so it is
that much more interesting and tricky to make both the higher interpretation
and the lower interpretation watertight.

What does the Judas character mean in the lower meaning-mode? It’s clear,
everyone knows, that when Peter has the Beloved Disciple ask Jesus “who will
betray you?”, Jesus answers, “The one to whom I give bread.” Jesus gives
bread to Judas and actively tells Judas, “Go do what you are going to do; do
your thing; do what you exist to do; carry out your designed role; be what you
are; manifest your nature.”

This is not misunderstood; it’s clear that Jesus tells Judas to betray him.
There is no debate about that among the low-level Christians. The only
question for them is, *why* would Jesus do that? The low answer is that Jesus
accepted the will of God, no matter what, and knew that this betrayal is part
of God’s plan because God had determined since forever that this crucifixion
would happen as God’s way of saving sinners.

It was God’s will that Judas do his thing, and God’s will that Jesus indicate
full acceptance of Judas’ action and its consequence by actively commanding
Judas to do what God had willed to happen, what God had willed Judas to do as
part of the plan. Even when bad things happen to the Jews, everything is part
of God’s plan. Low-level Christian thinking is used to this way of thinking
and accepts what coherence it has.

Low religion isn’t totally incoherent; it’s coherent overall, in practice, as
a practical mode of mental operation. Egoic thinking is inherently based on
sand, a weak foundation of confusion. It is a house that holds together under
mundane conditions, but not under the storm of loose cognition.

The child’s thinking is workable and useful for the conditions encountered by
the child, but fails when encountering broader conditions such as the
loose-cognition state. The standard religious death and rebirth metaphor is
based on this inherent failure-potential. The mental worldmodel jumps from a
less-coherent version to a more-coherent version.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth
experience

My overall interpretive framework is settled, the period of revolutionary
science in this field is over, and now I’m in the period of normal science,
which amounts to filling in the holes within this framework. I can describe
the sorts of interpretations that have a large degree of fit. Some puzzle
pieces have to be shaken around for a couple years to fine-tune the fit.

There’s a certain point where the puzzle starts coming together routinely and
I’m into that phase, with much work remaining, including turning the puzzle
pieces several ways to find the best fit. Some ideas, I’m certain of — such
as goat = freewill, sheep = no-free-will. Others, like “vicarious atonement”
(God had such compassion on sinners that he gave his son as a sacrifice), I
have the right kind of interpretation but am still evaluating what is the most
cogent way of putting it.

The Christian 2-state meaning-system really is an assorted collection of
separate metaphor domains:
o “Redeem” is a metaphor based on wartime exchange of prisoner-slaves and
slave-trade conventions.
o The millennial messiah idea is based on revolutionary war leader figures.
o Sheep vs. goat is based on domesticated livestock.
o Astrotheology is also a transcendent symbolic system integrated into the
Christian system as the 12 disciples.
o Son of man, reborn, sacrifice of one’s firstborn son, hating your family,
becoming God’s son, this generation — all are metaphors from the “family” and
“generational” metaphor-space.

A given Christian mythic element can participate in several ways in each of
these allegory domains, so it really comes down to artistic, literary, or high
poetic judgment to decide which points to highlight, just as the three
synoptic Gospels all choose substantially different metaphors to emphasize.
In the end, the Christian mythic symbol-system is gluttonous, a catholic and
universal black hole of meaning into which everyone attempted to connect every
possible transcendent metaphor system.

No wonder it ends up being such a confusing, but also such a delightfully
crackable, meaning-puzzle. It’s got the skilled mystic-state allegorists
working as hard to unravel the many threads of meaning, as were required to
weave together all those threads borrowed from all the metaphor systems
everyone could think of, like a huge collective project that took place over
some centuries. Thus it is inherently debatable what the “main
metaphor-system” of Christianity is.

Luther Martin characterizes all mystery religion ultimately being about an
attempt to account for and relate to cosmic determinism — that’s like my
non-metaphorical, non-poetic core theory of transcendent knowledge.

When we understand the Christian coagulation of hundreds of disparate
transcendent symbol systems, combining many systems from Jewish religion,
Hellenistic religion, and philosophy, Christian symbolism is like a grab-bag
of all Hellenistic thinking and metaphor-systems all jumbled together. There
was much debate and contention in which alignment of allegory-domains would
win out.

The result in the canon was a viable compromise. Even then, there are
multiple canons even among the top sects: the Protestant canon excludes the
Apocrypha, which is perhaps why the Protestants are so innocent of thinking
spiritually.

The best example of how it’s hard to say exactly what the “Christian”
metaphor-system comprises, as a set of allegory-elements, is the Mary
Magdalene as Beloved Disciple and the one who Jesus pairs up with the Virgin
Mary from the cross: is this Mary Magdalene tradition “important”, is it
really a part of the Christian symbol-system, or not? It depends on which
sect you talk to, which group of religionists you talk to.

I would treat Mary Magdalene the same as the Apocrypha are treated:
semi-canonical; not absolutely essential. There are positively essential
meanings, optional meanings, and anti-essential meanings, such as the
crucified and resurrected king theme (essential), the Mary “John” Magdalene
theme (partly In, partly Out with respect to the canon), and the
beyond-the-pale two-gods theme which isn’t in the canon.

In addition, there are secret themes such as the entheogenic nature of all the
meals in the canon. The Christian system is completely unidentifiable if we
consider the cross and resurrection optional — you have no theory of
Christian mythic meaning if your theory omits the “crucified and resurrected
king” theme. In contrast, a theory of Christian myth can be quite complete
without accounting for the largely heretical Mary Magdalene theme which is
only half-reflected in the canon.

In contrast to the book “Jesus and the Goddess”, my strategy is the principle
that the best theory should focus first of all on the narrowest canon: making
full rational sense out of the Protestant canonical system of myth as it is
scoped in the conservative Protestant churches and books.

Then, if you can succeed at turning Protestant myth into a profound system of
initiation and enlightenment, expand the theory to cover the broader Christian
myth-system, including the Apocrypha, the full Mary “John” Magdalene
tradition, and Gnostic systems — or, “the Gnostic system”, again arriving at
the problem of narrow vs. broad, and single vs. multiple, varieties of a
myth-system.


These considerations apply to interpreting “the Islamic myth-system” and “the
Buddhist myth-system” as well: given the tremendous variations within each
religion, with multiple competing systems of lower-level and higher-level
symbol-systems, it’s questionable whether one can talk about “determining the
meaning of the Buddhist system of allegory”, since there is no single,
determinately bounded system.

We can’t solve the problem of what a myth-system means if we can’t even agree
what mythic elements are to be included in the scope of the meaning-system to
decode. If we agree that Mr. Historical Buddha taught demons, karma, rebirth,
deities, nirvana, and so on, then we think these mythic items must be covered
by a rational decoding in terms of the core theory of transcendent knowledge.

If we fancy that Mr. Buddha only taught clear, rational, direct things — only
including karma, for example — then we only expect a rational decoding of
“Buddhism” to talk about that set of mythic elements.


If I simply say that I have cracked the puzzle of “the Christian mythic
system”, what mythic elements will people assume I have explained? A great
example is, will they assume that I have a decoding of veneration of the
saints, or purgatory? Or would those be considered peripheral to “the
Christian mythic system”?

The best, most practical approach seems to be some sort of multi-layered
approach, distinguishing between explaining “the core Christian mythic system”
vs. “the overall, broad Christian mythic system” which would include the Mary
“John” Magdalene system (partly canonical) and the Apocryphal (canonical for
some leading sects but not others), and purgatory (not canonical for any sect,
but a major, established part of the leading sect’s tradition).

A theory explaining “the Christian mythic system” is poor if it can’t explain
the narrowest system — the Protestant mythic system, which knows nothing of
the Mary “John” Magdalene mythic theme — or the most popular though
extra-canonical system: the Catholic traditional mythic system, including
purgatory.

If you tell a Protestant that you have an explanation of the Christian mythic
system, they will assume you are strictly talking about the crucified and
resurrected king, but it won’t occur to them that you would explain purgatory
or Mary “John” Magdalene. Similarly, if you tell a Catholic that you have an
explanation of the Catholic or Christian mythic system, they will assume that
you are prepared to explain the mystic-state metaphysical meaning of
purgatory, and possibly the Apocrypha.

In the book “Jesus and the Goddess”, Freke and Gandy make a strategic mistake
of implying that the only way to make profound rational sense of Christianity
is by completely violating the scope of the canon, as though only by dragging
in the full Mary “Beloved Disciple” Magdalene tradition and the entire
“two-gods” tradition can Christianity serve as a profound, fully enlightening
system.

In fact, the Protestant tradition and canon, in which Mary Magdalene is not an
essential or active component, has been proven to be a complete, sufficient
system of conveying a 2-state meaning-flipping dynamic, expressing the switch
from egoic to transcendent thinking. When I first made the connection between
helplessness, no-free-will, danger, and the meaning of the Cross as a
willingly self-cancelled pseudo-sovereign, this revelation had nothing to do
with Mary “Beloved Disciple” Magdalene.

The Christian mythic system was always designed to be a universal, catholic
collection of the elements of all the religions known to the Roman empire —
this necessarily means that in practice, some of the areas of this giant
myth-combination ended up being more central, and other areas non-central, and
other areas ended up being considered important only for some sects (purgatory
in the Catholic version, two-gods in the Gnostic version).

The Protestant version of the Christian mythic system considers itself to be
uniquely founded on the core idea of salvation through faith alone, a faith
completely given as a gift to the utter sinner by God’s action alone.

We also ideally would need variations of the “explanation of the Christian
mythic system” for different varieties of Protestantism, such as Protestant
scholasticism (such as Reformed dogmatics theology) vs. late 20th-Century
evangelical Christianity: they technically have the same scope of mythic
elements, but there is a very different emphasis and character of approach to
those elements.

So the one who would explain “Christian” myth has some work to do just to
define *which varieties* of the *family* of Christian mythic versions will be
covered.

My inclination and poetic judgment as a theorist is that the first order of
business should be explaining what is common to all the leading sects — this
must mean explaining the Protestant system according not only to the
Protestant canon but also as heavily filtered through the Protestant
*tradition* which has surely entrenched itself despite all the efforts to
apply the principle of “scripture only, *not* adding extra-canonical Church
tradition”.

It’s debatable whether this means the ultra-purified Reformed dogmatics
theology, which may or may not be representative of de-facto, actual, lived
Protestantism. In short, the theorist of Christianity should define “typical,
common-core Christianity” which would surely include the crucified and
resurrected king, but not purgatory or Mary “Beloved Disciple” Magdalene.

There may be some good reason why I have addressed solving this scope of
common-core Christianity and was somewhat shaped by the denomination Church of
Christ. That denomination is an ideal reference point; it is definitive of
common-core Christianity in so many ways. It strives very hard to strictly
adhere to the elements of liturgy and practice as recorded in the New
Testament.

Their effort is highly distorted by not reading Greek and not understanding
the cultural context and not understanding the initiation aspects of mystery
religion, but that is standard for modern common-core Christianity. This
denomination was created to try to be as non-divisive as possible —
eliminating swearing to “man-made confessional statements” such as the
Westminster Confession — while trying to strip down the liturgy until it has
nothing but (their version of) what’s in the New Testament.

In that sense, this denomination is as ideal as can be found to represent the
minimum common core of the Christian mythic system. It’s a “conservative”
denomination in that it’s literalist, retaining a generally literalist belief
in heaven, hell, sin, judgement, and vicarious atonement.

Now you might say that “typical Christianity” is fuzzed-out, foggy and hazy,
mere mundane ethics that has essentially cast aside the Christian mythic
system, lacking a supernaturalist conception of the myth as well as an intense
mystic-state conception of the myth.

Is washed-out liberal Christianity a participant in the “common core”
Christian myth? To the degree that washed-out liberal Christianity (rejecting
low myth, ignorant of truly high myth) retains the Christian myth-system at
all, that brand of Christianity continues to participate in what I propose to
call the “common core Christian mythic system”. Even if such Christianity
foolishly rejects the idea of Jesus’ resurrection, it still is fully aware
that the resurrection was always considered to be the most essential thing.

Same with sects that so misunderstand the Eucharist that they have more or
less abandoned even going through the empty motions — I believe the Salvation
Army omits the Eucharist.

If a theory of Christian myth needs to be most widely relevant across all
Christian sects by a strategy of first decoding the “common core” Christian
myth, a perfect quick way of defining the scope of “common core” Christian
myth is to point to the myth-system that is held by the Church of Christ
denomination, which can be characterized by the keywords “minimalist”,
“conservative”, “literalist”, “scripture focused”, and “not hyperdogmatic like
pure Calvinism/confessional creeds”.

They are dogmatic and literalist, but don’t press the theological points to
the max; they are not “Protestant scholastics” and don’t make purity of
theology their foundation of salvation — the latter is not “common core
Christian myth”, but an eccentricity that is pretty much unique to one
denomination.

I’m not concerned here with defining the most true or coherent Christianity,
but rather, the most universally representative version of Christianity in
practice, with the greatest number of mythic elements that are shared by the
greatest number of sects. Imagine transparent sheets showing the spread of
mythic elements held by each sect, then overlay them — what is the
overlapping area? The crucified and resurrected king, and a narrow set of
other elements.

Sects like Church of Christ would fall entirely into that common overlapping
area. The Church of Christ sect, which claims to reject denominationalism
entirely, is extremely representative of what mythemes all Christian sects
share in common, probably because this sect tries as hard as possible to stay
within the worship style that is recorded in the scriptures, trying not to add
anything from Church tradition.

For example, icons are not mentioned in the New Testament, nor instrumental
music, not baptism of infants, so these aren’t present. But the Eucharist is
mentioned, and singing is mentioned, so these are prominently figured.
Actually this sect does even less – just a subset of things mentioned in the
New Testament.

Since the range of liturgical practice in this sect is so restricted to a
conservative subset of what’s in the New Testament, this sect’s restricted set
of Christian mythic motifs is an excellent definition of the scope of the
“common core Christian mythic system” and thus defines one extreme that the
theory of Christian myth must successfully decode.

At the other extreme would be the Catholic system, and beyond that, the most
complete theory would need to explain heretical and Gnostic Christian systems
as Freke and Gandy have begun to cover so well.

My criticism of Freke and Gandy is just like of Ken Wilber: because they scale
their explanation of “the Christian myth” only to the broadest and most
encompassing scale, their core theory falls short of breaking through in a way
that would explain the real meaning of Jesus that sweeps across all versions
of Christianity. They’ve done a fair job of explaining Gnostic Christianity,
but not an effective job of explaining the meaning of Jesus as he sits within
the common core Christian myth.

They have explained some religion, but not the Christian myth-religion as it
actually exists in all the mainstream sects. What I seek to do is to explain
the Christian myth-religion as it actually exists in all the mainstream sects,
which means, excluding a focus of Mary “Beloved Disciple” Magdalene.

*After* that common-core mythic system is decoded, then all variants such as
the Catholic and Gnostic variants, which are supersets of the common core, can
be much better and more profoundly explained. If a theory of the Christian
myth-religion covers the mythic system as held by the Church of Christ, which
is a certain minimalist variant, then the theory covers the core of all major
versions of the Christian mythic system.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth
experience

http://www.thedoormagazine.com

The Door, a religious satire magazine, March/April 2003, p. 40 has a half-page
article about Chris Bennett’s theory published in High Times magazine about
early Christian use of cannabis products, with a favorable quote from Carl
Ruck. The entheogen theory has been communicated by being publically
satirized.

I have asked the scholars to emphasize the use of multiple psychoactive plant
products — that point is too often hidden in footnotes. Bennett tends to
portray the Old and New Testaments as being informed *only* by cannabis, but
we should think in terms of “mixed wine” which could contain all known plants
in combination, including datura, ergot, Amanita, psilocybin, mandrake, opium,
alcohol, cannabis, and various other inebriants.

Instead of showing that one religion used one entheogen at one point in time
(the start), it’s time to show that all religions used all known entheogens at
all points in time. It’s only modern-era blindness and denseness that makes
us so grossly underestimate the extent of use of entheogens. Entheogen
scholars ended up selling themselves short, inadvertently ending up
communicating the assertion that entheogens generally were *not* used in
religion — the opposite of the intended message.


— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com

The following, is a writing by Sun Lotus (1273) It contains the
essense of High Mahayana Buddhism, as presented in 13th century
Japan. (Translated into literal english by Martin Bradley.

Enjoy.

dc



Title:

“The Thesis On The Instigator’s Fundamental Object Of Veneration For
Contemplating The Mind For The Fifth Five Hundred Year Period After
The Tathagata’s Passing Over To Nirvana



In the fifth fascicle of Universal Desistance from Troublesome
Worrying in Order to See Clearly, Whether you have three thousand
existential spaces or three thousand such qualities, the result is
the same, even if the way of going about it is different, it
says, `The one mind is endowed with ten dharma realms and since each
dharma realm is again endowed with the other ten, it becomes a
hundred dharma realms. Each realm is provided with thirty kinds of
existential space so we then have a hundred dharma realms furnished
with three thousand kinds of existential spaces. These three
thousand are contained in a single instant of thought. If there is
no mind then that is the end of it. But if there is even the tiniest
scrap of mind it is endowed with the three thousand.’ The text
continues until, `Because it becomes what is called the objective
realm of utterness and it is here where the meaning lies.’ Another
text says that each realm is endowed with the three kinds of
existential space.

A question is asked: does Profound Significance specify the
term `the one instant of thought containing three thousand
existential spaces’? The answer given is that Myoraku says, “It is
not specified.” The question is asked: does Textual Explanations
mention the term `the one instant of thought containing three
thousand existential spaces’? The answer is given: Myoraku says, “It
is not mentioned.” The question is asked: how does Myoraku explain
this? The answer is given: “Neither of the two texts have yet
mentioned the one instant of thought containing three thousand
existential spaces.” The question is asked: do the first, second,
third and fourth fascicles of Stopping in order to Contemplate
mention the term `the one instant of thought containing three
thousand existential spaces’? The answer is given: “Not at all”. The
question is asked: how can you prove this? The answer is given:
Myoraku states, “On coming to the exposition on how to correctly
contemplate the Dharmas in Stopping in order to Contemplate, he
particularly uses the three thousand as a guide.” Then there is a
query: in the second fascicle of Profound Significance it
says, `Again, each dharma realm contains the nine other dharma
realms; in those hundred dharma realms there are a thousand of the
such qualities.’ In the first fascicle of Textual Explanations it
says, `As each one of the senses and its object is endowed with the
ten dharma realms of which, again, each one is equipped with its own
ten respective realms; then in each one of these ten realms there
are ten such qualities, which makes it come to one thousand.’ In
Profound Significance of Kannon it says, `If the ten dharma realms
are mutually endowed, which makes them come to a hundred dharma
realms and then there are a thousand kinds of the such qualities of
nature and appearance darkly hidden in the mind, they may not be
before our eyes but the mind is fully endowed with them.’ The
question is asked: is the term `the one instant of thought
containing three thousand existential spaces’ mentioned in the first
four volumes of Stopping in order to Contemplate? The reply is:
Myoraku says, “It is not.” The question is asked: how does he
explain this? Answer: in the fifth fascicle of Broad Elucidation it
says, `If you aspire to correct contemplation the complete practice
has not yet been fully discussed, moreover there are twenty five
dharmas to work through which in practice give rise to
understanding. In all conscience they are to be endured as an
expedient means for correct observance. For this reason the first
six fascicles all may be counted as bringing about understanding.’
Also in the same book it says it is for this reason that when
Stopping in order to Contemplate comes to explain how one should
contemplate the dharmas correctly, the three thousand was
particularly used as a compass. This therefore is the final
superlative of the ultimate discourse. This is why Shoan, in the
middle of his introduction, affirms that it is Tendai’s discourse on
the gateway to the Dharma, which he himself practised in his
innermost, being. Indeed he had a reason for this and entreats those
who seek to read this work not to seek affinities elsewhere.

That wise person Tendai widely spread abroad the Dharma for thirty
years. In twenty-nine years he expounded all the implications of
Profound Significance and Textual Explanations, he also made clear
the five periods and eight teachings as well as the hundred realms
and the thousand such qualities. Not only did he refute the
fallacies of the previous five hundred years but also brought to
light that which had not yet been expounded by the Indian teachers
of dogma. The Universal Teacher Shoan said, “Even the Indian
Universal Discourse is not of his calibre so why should we go as far
as to trouble ourselves talking about the scholars of China? This is
not boastful arrogance, the nature of his Dharma is just as it is.”
What hopelessness it was that the latter scholars of Tendai let
those thieves, the founders of the Flower Garland [Kegon] and True
Word [Shingon] schools, steal and spirit away the weighty treasure
of the one instant of thought containing three thousand existential
spaces and then, ironically, they became fellow disciples of those
schools. The Universal Teacher Shoan already knew this when he
commented with grief, “Should this principle fall away the future
will be bleak indeed.”

The question is asked: what is the difference between the hundred
realms, the thousand such qualities and the one instant of thought
containing three thousand existential spaces? The given reply is
that the hundred realms and the thousand such qualities are limited
to the realm of sentient beings, whereas the one instant of thought
containing three thousand existential spaces comprises both the
sentient and the non-sentient. Not quite understanding, it is asked
if the ten such qualities extend to the non-sentient, then do you
mean to say that plants and trees are endowed with mind and are able
to become Buddhas like sentient beings? The given reply is that this
is a matter that is difficult to believe and difficult to
understand. With Tendai there are two things that are difficult to
believe and difficult to understand: one is the difficulty of
believing and understanding with regards to the gateway of the
teaching; the other is the difficulty of believing and understanding
with regard to the gateway to contemplation. The difficulty of
believing and understanding with regard to the gateway of the
teaching is that the Buddha preached in all the sutras of the former
teachings that people of the two vehicles and people of incorrigible
disbelief will not ever become Buddhas in the future and that the
Lord of the Teaching, Shakyamuni, became correctly awakened for the
first time during his historical lifetime, but when we come to both
the temporary and original gateways of the Dharma Flower Sutra both
these arguments are demolished. One Buddha with two contradictory
arguments like fire and water, can anyone believe him? This is what
is difficult to believe and difficult to understand as regards the
gateway of the teaching. What is difficult to believe and difficult
to understand concerning the gateway to contemplation is the hundred
realms, the thousand such qualities and the one instant of thought
containing three thousand existential spaces, as well as the two
dharmas of mind and materiality of the ten such qualities, in that
which is insentient. Nevertheless, the two kinds of image, both
those that are painted and those made of wood, have been permitted
in the canons within and outside the Buddha teaching as fundamental
objects of veneration. But what lies behind the significance of this
comes solely from the school of Tendai. If the cause and fruition of
mind and materiality were not placed upon plants and trees, it would
be of no advantage to reverently depend on wooden and painted images
as fundamental objects of veneration. Mistrustfully, it is asked in
which texts are the two dharmas of the cause and fruition of the ten
such qualities being in plants, trees, abode and terrain, to be
found? The answer is given that in the fifth fascicle of Stopping in
order to Contemplate it says, `The existential space of abode and
terrain is again endowed with the ten kinds of dharma [such
qualities]. Therefore an evil abode and terrain has its appearance,
nature, substance and strength.’ In the sixth fascicle of
Explanatory Notes it says, `Appearance only exits as materiality;
substance, strength, action and affinity take on the combined
significance of materiality and mind; cause and fruition only exist
as mind and requital only as materiality.’ In Discourse of the Vajra
Scapel it says, `Accordingly a blade of grass, a tree, a pebble or a
speck of dust, each one has the Buddha nature, the cause to bring
about its fruition as well as being endowed with the affinities and
consequential causes for becoming a Buddha.’

The question is asked: now having heard where these teachings come
from, what is the meaning of contemplating the mind? The given
answer is: contemplating the mind is the contemplation of our own
minds so that we may see the ten dharma realms, this is what is
called contemplating the mind. It is, for instance, as though we may
see the six organs of sense of other people but because we do not
see these six sense organs on our own faces we do not know they are
there, but, on being confronted with a clear mirror, we then see for
the first time that we too have these six organs. For instance, even
though all the sutras in various places refer to the six paths of
the unenlightened and the four holy tendencies, but by not looking
into the clear mirrors of either the Dharma Flower Sutra or
Universal Desistance from Troublesome Worrying in Order to See
Clearly, which was expounded by the Universal Teacher Tendai, we
cannot know about our being endowed with the ten realms, the
thousand such qualities and the one instant of thought containing
three thousand existential spaces.

The question is asked, in what text of the Dharma Flower Sutra is
the `one instant of thought containing three thousand existential
spaces’ to be found and how does Tendai explain this? The answer is
given in the first fascicle of the Dharma Flower Sutra in the
Chapter on Expedient Means it says, `By being a sentient being I
wish to open their Buddha knowing and perception.’ This is the nine
realms being endowed with the realm of the Buddha. In Chapter on the
Life Span it says, `It is a universally primordial distance since I
became a Buddha, my allotted life span comprises incalculable asogi
kalpas and dwells in eternity without coming to an end. All you good
men, even now the allotted life span of when I originally attained
to the practice of the bodhisattva path has yet to be exhausted, it
will be again twice that number.’ This sutric text is the Buddha
being endowed with the nine realms. In the Sutra it
says, `Daibadatta’ and the text continues until, `…the Tathagata
Tenno.’ This is the realm of hell being endowed with the realm of
the Buddha. In the Sutra it says, `The first was named Ramba’, the
text continues until, `Only those of you who ably hold onto and
protect the name of the Dharma Flower will have immeasurable
happiness.’ This is the realm of the hungry demons being endowed
with the ten realms. In the Sutra it says, `The Dragon King’s
daughter’, the text continues until, `…became universally and
correctly awakened.’ This is the realm of animality being endowed
with the ten realms. In the Sutra it says, `Baji the Ashura King’,
the text continues until, `…on hearing the one metrical hymn or the
one phrase they will attain to anuttara samyak sambodhi’ [the
universal and correct awakening]. This is the realm of the Ashuras
being endowed with the ten realms. In the Sutra it says, `Supposing
that people for the sake of the Buddha’, the text continues
until, `All of them have already attained to the Buddha Path.’ This
is the realm of humanity being endowed with the ten realms. In the
Sutra it says, `Daibon the Deva King’, the text continues
until, `Just like us will certainly attain to the Buddha harvest.’
This is the deva realm endowed with the ten realms. In the Sutra it
says, `Sharihotsu’, the text continues until, `Keko Tathagata.’

This is the realm of the hearers of the voice being endowed with the
ten realms. In the Sutra it says, `Those who seek to be awakened by
affinities, monks and nuns’, the text continues until, `by putting
your palms together with a mind of reverence and wishing to hear the
Path to complete fulfilment.’ This is the realm of those awakened by
affinities being endowed with the ten realms. In the Sutra it
says, `The countless numbers of Bodhisattvas who surge up from the
earth’ the text continues until, `the truly pure universal Dharma.’
This is the bodhisattva realm being endowed with the ten realms. In
the Sutra it says, `Sometimes I speak of my own person and sometimes
I talk about others’, which is to say that the Buddha realm is
endowed with the ten realms.

The question is asked: if on looking at the six organs of sense on
my own face or on somebody else, I cannot yet see the ten realms in
myself or in others, how can I believe in them? The answer is given:
it says in Chapter on the Teacher of the Dharma in the Dharma Flower
Sutra, `It is difficult to believe and difficult to understand.’ In
the Chapter on the Precious Stupa it says, `The six difficult and
nine easy acts.’ The Universal Teacher Tendai says, “Because both
the temporary and original gateways contradict the past sutras they
are difficult to believe and difficult to understand.” The Universal
Teacher Shoan says, “In view of this fact the Buddha makes it his
overriding concern; how could you take this to be easy to
understand?” The Universal Teacher Dengyo says, “The Dharma Flower
Sutra is by far the most difficult to believe and difficult to
understand because it is according to his own awakened mind. Those
who had the correct disposition of being in the world during the
Buddha’s lifetime, in addition to their deeply entrenched karmic
relationship with him, had the Lord of the Teaching Shakyamuni, the
Buddha Taho, all the Buddha emanations of the ten directions, the
countless numbers of Bodhisattvas who surged up from the earth as
well as Monju and Miroku to help goad them into understanding, yet
even then there were people who failed to believe. Five thousand
left their seats, devas and men were moved elsewhere. If it was like
this during the correct and formal phases of the Dharma, how is it
going to be at the beginning of its final phase? Were you to glibly
believe then it would not be the Correct Dharma.”

The question is asked: as regards the sutric texts and the
explanations of Tendai and Shoan there are no ensnaring doubts, only
what is being said is that fire is water and black is white,
supposing that even these are things that were said by the Buddha,
it is difficult to believe and accept them. Every now and then I
take a look at other people’s faces but they are only limited to the
realm of humanity and I cannot see any of the other realms, again it
is the same with my own face. How can I bring about a mind of faith?
Answer: if you look at other people’s faces from time to time,
sometimes there is joy, sometimes there is anger and sometimes
equanimity, other times there appears greed, at others they reveal
stupidity or even flattering deceit. Anger is hell, greed is the
hungry demon, stupidity is animality, flattering deceit is the
ashura, joy is the deva and equanimity the quality of mankind. In
the physical aspect of the faces of others the six paths of the
unenlightened are altogether present, whereas the four holy
tendencies by not being manifest and latent you do not see; but then
if you look carefully for details they become apparent.

The question is asked: even though my understanding about the six
paths of the unenlightened is not entirely clear, on the whole I
must agree that it seems to be that we are furnished with them; but
how is it that the four holy tendencies are not apparent at all? The
answer is given: previously you doubted the six paths of the
unenlightened within the realm of humanity, nevertheless you agreed
with me through my emphasising this point by putting forward
analogies; should it not be the same with the four holy tendencies?
In an endeavour to add some justification I will recapitulate a ten
thousandth part. The transitory nature of what we call our
existential space is right before our eyes, so how can you say that
the realm of the two vehicles does not exist in the realm of
humanity? A wicked man with no regrets can have love and affection
for his own wife and children; this is an aspect of the bodhisattva
realm. Only the Buddha realm is difficult to discern but by the fact
that we are endowed with the nine other realms you must emphatically
believe it and have no doubts or perplexities about it. In the text
of the Dharma Flower Sutra where it explains the realm of humanity
it says, `By being a sentient being I wish to open their own Buddha
knowing and perception.’ In the Nirvana Sutra it says, `Even though
the people who study the universal vehicle only have eyes of flesh,
when you put it into words they become the eyes of the Buddha.’ What
the Common Mortal, who is born in the final era, believes in the
Dharma Flower Sutra is that the realm of humanity is fully endowed
with that of the Buddha.

The question is asked: what the Buddha says about each of the ten
realms being mutually furnished with the same ten realms is
understandably clear, although naturally it is difficult for our
inferior minds to believe and accept that we are endowed with the
Dharma realm of the Buddha. Now, this time if I do not acquire faith
I shall become a person of incorrigible disbelief. I beg you to show
your universal loving kindness and make me believe so that I may be
saved from the hell of incessant suffering. The answer is given: if
you do not already believe after having seen and heard the sutric
text of the single universal matter of cause and affinity, then how
can anyone from Shakyamuni to the bodhisattvas of the four
dependences as well as we from the final era, whose reasoning is not
separate from the Buddha nature, save and protect you from
disbelief? By all means I will try to tell you; there were people
who could not be awakened through meeting the Buddha but on the part
of Anan and others they were able to attain to the Path. There exist
two opportunities: one is by seeing the Buddha and attaining to the
Path through the Dharma Flower, the second is without seeing the
Buddha and attaining to the Path through the Dharma Flower. Besides,
before the Buddha teaching many of the Taoist and Confucianists in
China as well as the Brahmans and followers of the four Vedas in
India were able, through these affinities, to come to the correct
view of life. Again, many, many bodhisattvas and common mortals who,
by listening to the sutras of the universal vehicle of the Flower
Garland [Kegon], Everywhere Equal [Hodo] and Wisdom [Hannya]
periods, came to be aware of their affinity with the seeds sown in
the primordial distance by the Buddha Daitsu. One might suppose they
were the people who were awakened on their own through the
scattering of blossoms and the falling of leaves or those who
attained to the Path outside the Buddha teaching. Then there are
those people who did not have the binding affinities with the seeds
sown in the past and become attached to the provisional teachings or
the lesser vehicle, even if they do find the Dharma Flower Sutra
they are unable to escape their vision of these provisional and
lesser teachings. But because they take their individual viewpoint
to be the correct meaning, they take the Dharma Flower Sutra to be
the same as the teachings of the lesser vehicle or the Flower
Garland Sutra or the Dainichi Sutra or even place it lower. All
these teachers are inferior to the wise and holy men of the
Confucian and Brahmanic doctrines. For the time being let us put
this aside. To formulate the mutual possession of the ten worlds is
fire in a stone or flowers within a tree and even though this is
hard to believe, these things do happen on meeting with the right
affinities and are quite credible. Nevertheless, dragon fire comes
out of water and dragon water is produced from fire, even though it
is not known why but because there is this manifest evidence, it
becomes believable. Already you believe that the realm of humanity
contains another eight realms, then why are you not able to include
the realm of the Buddha? Gyo and Shun as holy men were impartial to
all people, this is a part of the Buddha realm in that of humanity.
What the Bodhisattva Fukyo saw in mankind was the person of the
Buddha, Prince Sitta became the person of the Buddha out of the
realm of humanity, surely this manifest evidence should make you
believe.

The question is asked from here on keep this strictly to yourself:
Shakyamuni, Lord of the Teaching, was the Buddha who cut off the
three delusions and is lord of the abodes of all the existential
realms of the ten directions as well as being lord and prince of all
the bodhisattvas, people of the two vehicles, devas and mankind.
Whenever he went about there was Bonten on the left and Taishaku in
attendance on the right; monks, nuns. laymen and laywomen as well as
the eight kinds of man-like non-humans followed behind and the Vajra
holders led the way in front. Through the preaching of the Dharma
store of eighty thousand teachings he made all attain to
emancipation. How could a Buddha such as this dwell in the
individual minds of common mortals such as we? Again, if we are to
discuss the meaning of the former teachings and those of the
temporary gateway then the Lord of the Teaching Shakyamuni became
correctly awakened for the first time in his historical lifetime.
But when we look into his causal practices either he was Prince
Nose, the Bodhisattva Judo, King Shibi or Prince Satta. It was
during this period of either three asogi kalpas, a hundred kalpas or
for kalpas that are liable to exceed the grains of dust or for the
incalculable asogi kalpas or from the time when he first resolved to
attain to the bodhi mind or even three thousand kalpas of grains of
dust. He made offerings to seventy thousand, five thousand, six
thousand or seven thousand Buddhas and with the completion of the
practices of accumulated kalpas he has now become Lord of the
Teaching Shakyamuni. Do you mean to say that the individual minds of
all of us are endowed with the meritorious virtue of a bodhisattva
realm whose casual position is all those practices? If we discuss
the effective position then the Lord of the Teaching Shakyamuni is
the Buddha who became correctly awakened for the first time in his
historical life. Over a period of forty years he displayed and
revealed the ennobled bodies of the four teachings and through the
articulate expounding of the former teachings, the temporary gateway
and the Nirvana Sutra he was able to benefit all sentient beings.
When it comes to the periods of the Flower Garland Sutra Kegon and
the teachings of the three receptacles zokyo we have the Birushana
on the dais of the ten directions; in the Agon Sutras the Buddha cut
the knots of misleading views and thought through the thirty four
states of mind in order to attain to the Path; in the everywhere
equal teachings hodo and the wisdom teachings hannya we have
thousands of Buddhas and in the Dainichi and the Vajra Apex Sutras
Kongocho there are one thousand two hundred or so World Honoured
Ones. Then there are the ennobled bodies of the four terrains of the
Chapter of the Precious Stupa of the temporary gateway and in the
Nirvana Sutra the Buddha is seen as sixteen feet high or
alternatively he reveals himself in either his large or small
manifestations or even as Birushana and even as an embodiment that
is not different from the spaceless void. From the four kinds of
body up to his entering Nirvana at the age of eighty, he leaves his
relics behind for the effective benefit of the correct, formal and
final phases of the Dharma. If you are to have doubts about the
original gateway, Shakyamuni was a Buddha prior to five hundred
kalpas of grains of dust ago and it is likewise with his causal
position. Since then he has emanated his person into the existential
realms of the ten directions and in a lifetime of an articulate
exposition of holy teaching he taught and converted as many sentient
beings as there are grains of dust. If we compare those who were
converted through the original gateway to those who were converted
through the temporary, then it could be likened to a drop of water
in the great sea or a speck of dust to a huge mountain. One
bodhisattva of the original gateway confronted with Monju or Kannon
of the existential realms of the ten directions would not even
compare to that of Taishaku with a monkey. Apart from that are the
people of the two vehicles of the existential realms of the ten
directions who have destroyed delusion and witness the fruition,
Taishaku, the devas of the sun and moon, the Four Deva Kings, the
Four Wheel Turning Deva Kings down to the great flames of the hell
of incessant suffering, are all of them the ten realms of our
instant of thought or the three thousand in our own minds? Even
though this is what the Buddha preached I cannot believe it.

Then we take into consideration that all the sutras of the former
teachings are real facts and true words. The Flower Garland Sutra
says, `Being the final superlative it is free from empty delusion
and without contamination like the spaceless void.’ In the Sutra of
the Benevolent King it says, `When one has exhausted the source of
troublesome worries and terminated at the fundamental nature, there
remains the wisdom of utterness.’ In the Vajra Wisdom Sutra it
says, `There is nothing but immaculately pure goodness.’ In
Awakening of Faith by the Bodhisattva Memyo it says, `In the store
of the Tathagata there is only immaculately pure and meritorious
virtue.’ In Discourse on Cognition Only by the Bodhisattva Tenjin we
have `It is said, when the remaining tainted and inferior tainted
seeds appear in front of you during a samadhi like the Vajra, you
draw upon the chastely immaculate all round and clear original
cognition and since it has no dependent environment everything is
relinquished and cast off for ever.’ If you measure the former
teachings against the Dharma Flower Sutra the former sutras are
without number and the time it took to expound them is so much
longer, since the Buddha has two arguments you should stay with the
former teachings. Memyo was the eleventh successor to the Dharma
store whose advent was foretold by the Buddha. Tenjin was the
teacher of dogma of a thousand volumes and a universal scholar of
the four dependences. The Universal Teacher Tendai was an
inconsequential monk from an obscure border town who did not write a
single treatise, who could believe him? Further more I could even
discard the many former teachings and adhere to the one if there
were a passage in the Dharma Flower Sutra that was understandably
clear and on which one could at least depend. Which place in the
text of the Dharma Flower Sutra is the clear and understandable
textual proof of the mutual possession of the ten realms, the
thousand such qualities and the one instant of thought containing
three thousand existential spaces? Consequently in the Sutra we
have `He cut off the evil in all dharmas.’ Neither Tenjin’s
Discourse on the Dharma Flower nor Bodhisattva Kenne’s Discourse on
the Precious Nature have anything concerning the mutual possession
of the ten realms, not even the great Chinese teachers of dogma of
the southern and northern schools nor even among the later teachers
of the seven temples of Japan, have this concept. It is only Tendai
who has this biased view that was solely passed on in error by
Dengyo. Because this is what the Teacher of the State Shoryo
said, “It is the mistake of Tendai.” The Dharma Teacher Eon
said, “However when Tendai called the lesser vehicle the teaching of
the three receptacles he inadvertently got the names mixed up.”
Ryoko said, “It is only Tendai who has not yet fathomed the meaning
of the Flower Garland”. Tokuichi said, “Aren’t you ashamed Chi you
brat, whose disciple do you think you are with your tongue that is
less than three inches. You slander the teachings of the time that
were expounded with the tongue of the Buddha that covered his face.”
The Universal Master Kobo said, “The scholars of China wrangled with
each other in order to steal the ghee, each one naming it as that of
their own school.” The Dharma gateway of the one instant of thought
containing three thousand is a term that is lacking in the
provisional and the real teaching of the Buddha’s lifetime, none of
the masters of the four dependences refer to this concept and the
scholars of China and Japan do not advocate it. Then how should one
believe it?

Your criticism is indeed most harsh, however it is understandably
clear that what comes out of the sutric texts is the disparity
between the Dharma Flower and all the other sutras. What is not yet
revealed and that which has already been revealed, the demonstration
of the proof by the broad, long tongue of the Buddha, whether the
people of the two vehicles become Buddhas or not, or whether the
Buddha became awakened in his historical lifetime or if he was
awakened in infinity. With regard to the teachers of dogma, the
Universal Teacher Tendai says, “Tenjin and Ryuju inwardly knew the
truth but withheld it so as to properly conform to the times which
were then based upon the temporary doctrines, nevertheless the
teachers of men who followed were biased in their understanding and
the scholars in various ways held on to their personal views which
finally led to stone throwing and abuse. Each clung to his own
particular position and generally contravened the holy Path.” The
Universal Teacher Shoan said, “Even the Indian Universal Discourse
is not of his calibre, so why should we go as far as to trouble
ourselves talking about the scholars of China? This is not boastful
arrogance, the nature of the Dharma is just as it is.” Tenjin,
Ryuju, Memyo and Kinne had inwardly known the truth but withheld it
because the time had not yet arrived and it was right that they did
not propagate it. Among the teachers of men before Tendai some kept
such thinking to themselves whereas others knew nothing of it. But,
of those teachers who came later, some at first refuted this concept
but later compliantly committed themselves to it; others made no use
of it whatsoever. But you have to understand the sutric text; `he
cut off the evil in all dharmas.’ Here the Buddha is referring to a
sutric text that came before the Dharma Flower Sutra. On taking a
closer look at it, in this sutric text he is understandably and
clearly about to discuss the mutual possession of the ten realms
where he says, “By being a sentient being I wish to open their own
Buddha knowing and perception.” Tendai inspired by this sutric
phrase said, “If sentient beings had no Buddha knowing and
perception, then why would he want to discuss their opening? As
indeed you ought to know, sentient beings do have the knowing and
perception of the Buddha inherently.” The Universal Teacher Shoan
said, “If it were assumed that sentient beings did not have the
knowing and perception of the Buddha, then why would he be about to
open their awareness of it? If a poor woman did not have a treasure
store, then why would he not want to reveal it to her?”

But the points that are difficult to understand are these enormous
problems concerning the Lord of the Teaching Shakyamuni that we have
just been talking about. As these problems are an impediment to our
understanding of the Buddha, it says in the Sutra, `Of all the
sutras I have expounded, am expounding and will expound, this Dharma
Flower Sutra is the most difficult to believe and understand.’ We
next come to the six difficult and nine easy acts. The Universal
Teacher Tendai said, “Because the temporary and original gateways
contradict the past sutras they are difficult to believe and to
understand. It is a matter that is as hard as facing the tip of a
halberd.” The Universal Teacher Shoan said, “In view of this fact
that the Buddha makes it his overriding concern, how could you take
this to be easy to understand?” The Universal Teacher Dengyo
said, “This Dharma Flower Sutra is by far the most difficult to
believe and difficult to understand because it is according to the
Buddha’s own awakened mind.” From the one thousand eight hundred or
so years since the Buddha’s demise into Nirvana, throughout the
three countries there were only three people who were awakened to,
and perceived this correct Dharma; they were Shakyamuni of India,
the Universal Teacher Tendai of China and Dengyo of Japan, these
three are the holy men of the Buddhist scriptures. The question is
asked: what of Ryuju and Tenjin? The answer is given: these holy men
knew it but out of unselfishness they did not talk about it. Either
they expounded a portion of the temporary gateway but said nothing
of the original gateway or the contemplation of the mind. Perhaps
the propensity of the hearers was right but the time was not, or it
could be that neither their propensity nor the time was appropriate.
After Tendai and Dengyo many, many people understood it through
applying the wisdom of these two sages. Among these were Kasho of
the Three Treatises School Sanron and the hundred or so persons from
the three southern and seven northern schools of China, Hozo and
Shoryo of the Flower Garland School Kegon, Genzo Tripitaka and the
Universal Teacher Jien of the Appearance of the Dharma School Hosso,
Zenmui Tripitaka, Kongochi Tripitaka and Fuku Tripitaka of the True
Word School Shingon and Dosen of the Discipline School Risshu. At
first they were in opposition to the concept of the one instant of
thought containing three thousand existential spaces but later they
wholeheartedly and obediently committed themselves to this teaching.

Now, in order to restrain your harsh criticism, the Sutra of
Incalculable Significance says, `Let us imagine that the king of the
realm and his queen had just had a prince born to them and that he
is only one day, two days or seven days old or that he is one month,
two months or seven months old or one year, two years or seven years
old, even though he is not able to administer the affairs of state,
already he is honoured and respected by the ministers and the
people, the children of all the great sovereigns who are his
companions. The king and queen attentively and with great love show
him kindness and always talk to him gently. What is the reason for
this? It is because of his being a little child. Good men, those who
hold to this sutra are just like this child. The king of the realm
is all the Buddhas and this Sutra is the queen who in union gave
birth to the bodhisattva prince. Let us suppose that this
bodhisattva hears of this Sutra and then he reads and recites the
one phrase and the one metric hymn, then reads and recites all the
Sutra once, twice, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, ten
thousand times or shall we assume he reads it a billion times the
number of grains of sand in the Ganges or incalculable and
numberless times and yet even though he is unable to realise the
ultimate true principle,’ The text continues until, `…he will
already be held in esteem and honoured by all the monks, nuns,
laymen, laywomen, the eight categories of the man-like, non-human
beings and all the great bodhisattvas will keep him company.’ The
text continues until, `…he will always be protected and borne in
mind by all the Buddhas and they will earnestly shelter him with
their care and love, because he is a neophyte who is learning.’ In
the Fugen Sutra it says, `This Sutric Canon of the universal vehicle
is the treasure store of all the Buddhas and is the eyes of all the
Buddhas of the ten directions of the past, present and future,’ The
text continues until, `…and is the seed from whence all the
Tathagatas of the past, present and future come into being.’ The
text continues until, `…through your practise of the universal
vehicle your Buddha seeds will not expire.’ Also it says, `…this
everywhere equal sutra is the eyes of all the Buddhas, it is through
this cause that all the Buddhas attain to the five kinds of vision.
The three kinds of body of the Buddha come into being out of the
everywhere equal teaching, it is this token of proof mudra of the
universal Dharma that is substantiated in the sea of Nirvana, such
an ocean as this is able to engender the immaculately pure three
bodies of the Buddha; these three kinds of body are the fields of
happiness of mankind and the devas.’ Now we should think about the
lifetime of the Tathagata Shakyamuni, we have the exoteric and the
esoteric, the two teachings of the universal and the lesser as well
as the dependent sutras of all the schools such as the Flower
Garland Kegon and the True Words Shingon. Then taking all this into
further consideration, either the Buddha Birushana on the lotus
throne with the petals pointing in the ten directions, the cloud of
all the assembled Buddha Tathagatas gathered together from all over
the universe, the apparition of the thousand Buddhas whose
defilements are fused into nothingness of the Wisdom Sutra and the
one thousand two hundred honoured ones of the Dainichi and Vajra
Apex Sutras, albeit all these sutras articulately expound the causes
and fruition that are close at hand but do not reveal the cause and
fruition in infinity, even though the Buddha talks about prompt,
swift and sudden attainment; his realisation in the immeasurability
of the three or five thousand kalpas of grains of dust is missing
and all the indications as to the beginning and end of his
converting and guidance are visibly lacking. On the one hand the
Flower Garland Sutra or the Dainichi Sutra would, of the four
teachings, appear to be similar to the particular teaching bekkyo or
the all inclusive teaching enkyo but, on the other hand, if you
think it over they are comparable to the everywhere equal hodo or
the receptacle teachings zokyo without approaching comparison to
those of the particular or the all inclusive. As the fundamentally
existing three causes for Buddhahood are absent in these sutras,
then how should we determine what the Buddha seeds are? However, the
day when the translators of the new translations returned to China
they saw and heard about the one instant of thought containing three
thousand existential spaces of Tendai and added it to the sutras
that they had brought back with them or they pretended it was
because they had received and committed this teaching to memory in
India. Some of the scholars of Tendai were delighted that these
teachings were the same as their own school or they venerated the
doctrines that had come from far away and showed contempt for those
close at hand or they discarded the older teachings and embraced the
new as an outcome of wicked and stupid thinking. However it may be,
if the point to which we refer did not have the Buddha seed of the
one instant of thought containing three thousand existential spaces,
then sentient beings becoming Buddhas and both wooden and painted
images as fundamental objects of veneration would just be words
without substance.

I have not yet heard your perceptive understanding with regard to my
great difficulties concerning the one instant of thought containing
three thousand existential spaces. The answer is given: in the Sutra
of Incalculable Significance it says, `Even though you have not
attained to the six practices that ferry one beyond the sea of
mortality to the shore of Nirvana, the benefit of all six will
surely be in front of you.’ In the Dharma Flower Sutra it
says, `..wishing to hear the Path to complete fulfilment.’ In the
Nirvana Sutra it says, `…sat is the name for complete fulfilment.’
The Bodhisattva Ryuju says, “Sat is six.” In Annotations on the
Profound Significance of the Four Theses of the Universal Vehicle on
the Wisdom that is Unqualified and Unobtainable by being Dependent
on its own Relativity it says, `When sat is made clear it means six
and in the Dharma of India six has the implication of complete
fulfilment.’ In the commentary referred to as Auspicious Treasury it
says, `In translation sat becomes `complete fulfilment’.’ The
Universal Teacher Tendai said, “sat is a Sanskrit word which is
translated here as `wonderful’.” Were I to add any perceptive
explanation it would be sullying the original texts; in all events
the two dharmas of causal practices and culminating virtue of
Shakyamuni were completely fulfilled through the five ideograms for
Myoho renge kyo, the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Utterness of
the Dharma. Then, should we receive and commit to memory these five
ideograms we would naturally inherit the culminating virtue of those
causal practices. When the four great hearers of the voce
apprehended this they said, “We inadvertently acquired this peerless
cluster of jewels without even looking for them.” This is the realm
of the hearers of the voice in our own minds. `Equal to myself
without any difference whatsoever, just as that which I vowed in
ancient times has already been entirely fulfilled, all sentient
beings through their conversion will be led onto the Buddha Path.’
The utterly awakened Shakyamuni is our flesh and blood, then should
not his causal practices be the marrow of our bones? In the Chapter
on the Precious Stupa it says, `Those people who protect the Dharma
Flower Sutra are precisely those who make offerings to Taho and
myself.’ The text continues until, `Moreover they make offerings to
the radiant brightness that majestically sublimates all the
existential realms of all the Buddha emanations that are present.’
Shakyamuni, Taho and all the Buddhas of the ten directions are the
Buddha realm within us and by inheriting and following this footpath
we will receive and attain to their meritorious virtue. This is
illustrated by, `If you listen to this sutra for only a moment you
will realise the ultimate Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi, the universal
and correct awakening.’ In the Chapter on the Life Span it
says, `However, since I really became a Buddha it is an
incalculable, boundless, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred
thousand, nayuta kalpas ago.’ The Shakyamuni in our individual minds
is the archaic Buddha without a beginning who manifested his three
bodies prior to five hundred kalpas of grains of dust ago. In the
Sutra it says, `The allotted life span of when I originally attained
to the bodhisattva path has yet to be exhausted, it will be again
twice that number.’ This is the bodhisattva realm in our individual
minds. The countless numbers of Bodhisattvas who surged up from the
earth are the retinue of the Shakyamuni in our minds. Just as Taiko
and Tan the Duke of Shu were ministers of King Bu of Shu and later
were part of the court of the infant King Sei, or like the great
minister Takenouchi who was the supporting pillar of the Empress
Jingu and afterwards became a minister of the Crown Prince Nintoku.
Jogyo, Muhengyo Jyogyo and Anryugyo are the bodhisattvas of our
individual minds. The Universal Teacher Myoraku said, “Really you
should know that the body and its terrain is the one instant of
thought containing three thousand existential spaces because when
one attains to the Path this fundamental principle being
substantiated in the one body and its one instant of thought
ubiquitously permeates through the realms of the dharmas.”

During the fifty or so years which began at the site of attainment
to the Path of Nirvana and the existential realm of the Lotus Flower
Store of the Flower Garden Sutra Kegon until his demise in the Grove
of the Sala Trees, Shakyamuni taught that the Three Esoteric and
Majestically Sublime Terrains and the three transformations of
abodes and terrains are all manifestations of a transitory nature of
expedient means, of real requital, of silence and enlightenment and
the Terrains of Peaceful Nourishment, Immaculate Lapis Lazuli and
the Majestically Sublime as the coming into being, the duration, the
decline and the disappearance of the kalpas into nothingness. When
the Lord of the Teaching who was able to make manifest the various
emanations of the Buddha entered into Nirvana, all those Buddhas who
were his emanations passed into extinction and naturally it was also
the same with their respective terrains.

The world in which we live at present is the time of the Chapter on
the Life Span of the original gateway and is free from the three
calamities that come about with the collapse of a kalpa, it is an
immaculate terrain that dwells in eternity. In times gone by the
Buddha has never ceased to be, nor does he come into being in the
future and those who are converted by him are of the same substance.
This is the full endowment of the three thousand existential spaces
in the one instant of thought in our individual minds or the three
kinds of existential space. The reality of this had not yet been
discussed in the fourteen chapters of the temporary gateway because
even within the bounds of the Dharma Flower Sutra the propensity of
the hearers and the time had not yet matured.

The Buddha did not even entrust the five ideograms for Nam myoho
renge kyo [the consecration and founding of one’s life on the Sutra
of the Lotus Flower of the Utterness of the Dharma] to the two
Bodhisattvas Monju and Yakuo, let alone anyone else but he did
entrust it during his preaching of the eight vital chapters to the
countless numbers of Bodhisattvas who surged up from the earth at
his summons. As to the real appearance of that Fundamental Object of
Veneration, the original teacher is seated in the Precious Stupa in
the relativity above the world in which we live and on the left and
right of the Myoho renge kyo there is Shakyamuni Buddha and Taho
Buddha flanked by the four Bodhisattvas led by Jogyo. Monju, Miroku
and the others, being a part of the following of the four
Bodhisattvas, are placed on seats nearby, all the bodhisattvas great
and small from other regions who were converted by the temporary
teachings are placed upon the ground like the common populace
looking up to court officials and executives of state. All the
Buddhas of the ten directions are also on the ground so as to
express the idea of temporary Buddhas on temporary terrains. Such an
Object of Veneration did not exist during the first fifty years of
when the Buddha was in the world, its confines are only the final
eight years of the eight vital chapters. During the two thousand
years of the correct and formal phases of the Dharma the Shakyamuni
of the lesser vehicle had Kasho and Anan in attendance on either
side. The Shakyamuni of the provisional universal vehicle in the
Nirvana Sutra and the temporary gateway of the Dharma Flower Sutra
was flanked on either side by Monju and Fugen. Even though there
were sculptures and paintings of these Buddhas throughout the
correct and formal phase of the Dharma, the Buddha of the Chapter on
the Life Span had not yet been portrayed. Now we have entered the
final phase of the Dharma should we not begin to reveal the
representation of this Buddha?

A question is posed: in the course of the two thousand years of the
correct and formal phases of the Dharma the bodhisattvas of the four
dependences, as well as the teachers of men set up images and built
temples for the various other Buddhas and of the Shakyamuni of the
lesser vehicle, the provisional universal vehicle, the former
teachings and the temporary gateway, yet there is no instance of the
Fundamental Object of Veneration of the Chapter on the Life Span of
the original gateway and the four great Bodhisattvas being venerated
and honoured by the rulers and their ministers in either India,
China or Japan. I can gather most of what you say but because it has
never been heard by former generations my eyes and ears are taken
aback and my mind and thoughts bewildered. Please explain this once
more, I would like to hear it in detail.

The answer is given: the eight fascicles and twenty-eight chapters
of the Dharma Flower Sutra really begin with the four flavours and
end all the sutras of a lifetime with the Nirvana Sutra, when all
these are put together they amount to only one sutra. The period
that starts at the site of the attainment to the Path of silence and
extinction and ends at the Wisdom Sutras hannyakyo is the
introduction, the ten fascicles that make up the Sutra of
Incalculable Significance, the Dharma Flower Sutra and the Fugen
Sutra are the essential doctrine and the Nirvana Sutra is the
transmission.

Within the ten fascicles that make up the essential doctrine there
is also an introduction, an essential doctrine and a transmission.
The Sutra of Incalculable Significance and the Introductory Chapter
are the introduction. The fifteen and a half chapters from the
Chapter on Expedient Means to the nineteenth line of the metric hymn
in the Chapter on the Discrimination of the Meritorious Virtue is
the essential doctrine. The eleven and a half chapters and the one
fascicle from the four ways of believing for the present time of the
Chapter on the Discrimination of the Meritorious virtue to the Fugen
Sutra is the section to be circulated abroad.

Moreover within the ten fascicles of the Dharma Flower Sutra there
are again two sutras each one has its own introduction, essential
doctrine and a section to be circulated abroad. The Sutra of
Incalculable Significance and the Introductory Chapter of the Dharma
Flower Sutra are the introduction, the eight chapters from the
Chapter on Expedient Means to the Chapter on the Prophecies are the
essential doctrine and the five chapters from the Chapter on the
Teacher of the Dharma to the Chapter on the Practices of Peace and
Joy make up the section that is to be circulated abroad. When we
come to talk about the lord of these teachings then it was the
Buddha who, correctly awakened for the first time in his historical
lifetime whose correct Dharma was difficult to believe and difficult
to understand because it was expounded according to his own awakened
mind, was able to reach beyond the past, present and future through
expounding the previously non-existent but now existing hundred
realms and a thousand such qualities. If we look into the affinities
that bound this Buddha with his disciples in the past, then it was
when he was the sixteenth son of Daitsu that he sowed the seeds of
the Buddha fulfilment in their lives. On proceeding further it was
through the concomitant affinities of the four flavours of the
Flower Garden Sutra that brought about the awakening and perception
of the seed planted by Daitsu. This was not the fundamental
intention of the Buddha but only to clear away part of the poison.
Ordinary people and those of the two vehicles through their affinity
with the first four flavours were gradually able to approach the
Dharma Flower and discover the seeds that were sown and the
propensity to free themselves from the provisional and discover the
real. Moreover when the Buddha was in the world, the eight vital
chapters or the one phrase or the metric hymn that were heard for
the first time by men and devas became the seeds of their Buddhahood
which either ripened or became the seeds of harvest. Some were
liberated when they came to the Fugen and Nirvana Sutras, whereas
others during the correct, formal and final phases of the Dharma let
the lesser and provisional teachers become the affinity whereby they
were able to enter into the Dharma Flower Sutra in the same way as
the people of the first four flavours discovered the seeds during
the lifetime of the Buddha.

Again, the fourteen chapters of the original gateway have the
introduction, the essential doctrine and the section to be
circulated abroad of a single sutra. The first half of the Chapter
on Surging Up is the part that is the introduction, the half-chapter
before the Chapter on the Life Span and the half-chapter that
follows it is the essential doctrine, the remaining chapters are the
section that is to be circulated abroad. When we come to discuss the
lord of these teachings it is not the Shakyamuni who became
correctly awakened for the first time in his historical lifetime;
the Dharma gateways that he expounded contrast with the temporary
gateways as the earth is different from the sky. In addition to the
ten realms and the primordial distance he made the existential
spaces of abode and terrain apparent and almost gave the one instant
of thought containing three thousand existential spaces a covering
just as the stem encloses the pith of the bamboo. Furthermore the
temporary gateway as well as the three discourses of the first four
flavours, the sutra of the Incalculable Significance and the Nirvana
Sutra were all preached according to the minds of others and
therefore easy to believe and easy to understand but apart from
these three discourses the original gateway is difficult to believe
and difficult to understand because it is according to the awakened
mind of the Buddha.

In the original gateway there is also an introduction, an essential
doctrine and a section to be circulated abroad. From the Dharma
Flower Sutra of the Buddha Daitsu of the past to the Flower Garland
Sutra of the present time including the fourteen chapters of the
original gateway and the Nirvana Sutra as well as all the sutras of
the fifty or so years of a lifetimes teaching with all the sutras of
all the Buddhas of the past, present and future of the ten
directions which are as countless as the grains of dust, comprise
the introduction of the Chapter on the Life Span. Apart from the one
chapter and the two half-chapters the remainder can be referred to
as the teachings of the lesser vehicle, heretical teachings,
teachings that have not yet attained to the Path or teachings that
conceal the real aspect. If we are to discuss the natural
inclination of those who follow these teachings, then they are
heavily sullied with little virtue, immaturity and feel like
unwanted orphans or the birds and beasts who cannot appreciate the
love of their parents. Besides being the former teachings and the
all inclusive teachings of the temporary gateway those teachings do
not even possess the cause for becoming a Buddha let alone the
Dainichi Sutra and all those sutras of the lesser vehicle. Of even
less value are the teachings of the teachers of men and the teachers
of dogma of the seven schools of the Flower Garland Kegon and the
True Words Shingon. Putting it strongly, the spirit of these
teachings is no different from the teachings of the three
receptacles, the interrelated teachings or the particular teaching
and are certainly no better than the interrelated or receptacle
teachings. For instance, even though these Dharmas are said to be
extremely profound they have not yet discussed the sowing, ripening
and harvesting of the Buddha seed; instead they propose that the
body be reduced to ashes and that the mind and intellect be
annihilated as in the lesser vehicle, but there is no suggestion of
when the Buddha began and ended his teaching and guidance. The
simile would be, should such a person as a queen be made pregnant by
an animal seed the offspring would be even inferior to an
untouchable. For the time being we will put this aside.

On taking a first glance at eight chapters of the essential doctrine
of the fourteen chapters of the temporary gateway during the
lifetime of Shakyamuni, the people of the two vehicles are in the
forefront and the bodhisattvas and common mortals set to one side:
but on thinking it over a second time it is the common mortal who
comes to the fore during the correct, formal and final phases of the
Dharma. In these three periods of the correct, formal and final
phases of the Dharma it is the beginning of the final phase that
becomes the correct phase. The question is asked: what evidence have
you for this? The answer is given: in the Chapter on the Teacher of
the Dharma it says: `…nevertheless with this sutra at present the
Tathagata is much begrudged and envied, so how will it be after his
passing over to Nirvana?’ In the Chapter on the Precious Stupa it
says: `In order that the Dharma be protracted unendingly…’ the text
continues until, `…the Buddha emanations who are here must be aware
that this is his intention.’ You should look at the Chapter on
Exhorting to Hold and the Chapter on Peace and Joy. This is indeed
what the provisional gateway is about.

Now we come to consider the original gateway which was solely
destined for the people of the correct propensities of the beginning
of the final phase of the Dharma. That is to say if we first take a
look at the period then the seeds sown are those of the primordial
sowing which, nurtured by Daitsu and afterwards through the first
four flavours and the temporary gateway where they ripened, on
coming to the original gateway were brought to the attainment of
both the Overall Awakening and the Utter Awakening. On taking a
second look, the original gateway is quite unlike the temporary, the
introduction, the essential doctrine as well as the section to be
circulated abroad of the original gateway all refer to the beginning
of the final phase of the Dharma. The original gateway of when the
Buddha was in the world and that of the beginning of the final phase
of the Dharma are a pure circle, however the former is the Buddha
teaching of the harvest but this is the Buddha teaching of the
sowing. The former doctrine is the one chapter and the two half-
chapters but this is the teaching of the five ideograms of the theme
and title only.

The question is asked: what proof do you have for this? The answer
is given: in the Chapter on Surging Up it says, `At the time all the
bodhisattva great beings who had come from other abodes and terrains
and whose number exceeded eight times the grains of sand of the
Ganges stood up in the great assembly, put the palms of their hands
together and made obeisance. Then they said to the Buddha: “World
Honoured One, when after the passing of the Buddha into Nirvana we
are to be in the existential realm that has to be endured, if you
will allow us to guard and to hold onto, to read and to recite, to
copy out and make offerings to this sutric canon with zealous and
unfailing progress, then surely we will broadly expound it
throughout this terrain.” Then the Buddha said to the assembly of
bodhisattva great beings: “Desist! Good men, there is no need for
you to guard and hold to this sutra.” The sutric content of the
preceding five chapters that follow the Chapter on the Teacher of
the Dharma are as contradictory as fire and water. At the end of the
Chapter on the Precious Stupa it says, `With a great voice the
Buddha said to the monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen everywhere: is
there anyone who is able to broadly propagate the Sutra of the
Flower of the Utterness of the Dharma throughout the abode and
terrain that we live in?’ There is the instance of when the lord of
the teaching, being but one single Buddha, encouragingly raised this
question, the great bodhisattvas such as Yakuo, the devas Bonten and
Taishaku, the devas of the sun and moon and the Four Deva Kings took
this to be a matter of gravity, whereupon the Buddha Taho and the
Buddhas of the ten directions who, as invited guests, provoked their
conviction further. All the bodhisattvas on hearing this generous
collaboration all made the vow, `We will not begrudge our lives’,
this is because they wholeheartedly wished to comply with the
Buddha’s will. Nevertheless, within the space of an instant, he
contradicts himself by forbidding the crowd of bodhisattvas, whose
count exceeded eight times the number of grains of sand of the
Ganges, from propagating the Sutra. Going forwards and backwards
like this decidedly goes beyond ordinary understanding. The
Universal Teacher Tendai the Wise gave us to understand the six
explanations of three previous reasons as to why the Buddha
prohibited the great bodhisattvas from propagating the Sutra
throughout the world in which we live and three subsequent reasons
for his summoning the Bodhisattvas who surge up from the earth. What
is implied is that the great bodhisattvas who came from other
directions and those who were converted by the temporary teachings
were not qualified to have my substantiation of the Chapter on the
Life Span bestowed upon them. They were forbidden because of evil
propensities in the Dharma slandering abodes at the beginning of the
final era. Then he summoned the great bodhisattvas of the thousand
realms who surged up from the earth in order to confer upon the
sentient beings of the world of mankind the five ideograms for Myoho
renge kyo which are the essence of the Chapter on the Life Span.
Moreover the great assembly of bodhisattvas who were converted
through the temporary teachings were not the disciples of Shakyamuni
when he first resolved to attain to a mind of enlightenment. The
Universal Teacher Tendai said, “These are my disciples who are
destined to propagate my Dharma.” Myoraku said, “The sons who spread
abroad the Dharma of the father are a benefit to the world,” In
Supplementary Adjustments and Annotations of the Textual
Explanations it says that `…since this is the Dharma of the
primordial attainment it was entrusted to the people of that
attainment.’

In the Sutra it says that when the Bodhisattva Miroku wished to
clear his doubts he remarked, “Even though we believe that what the
Buddha says is correct, the words that he utters are never empty
delusions and his wisdom is completely pervasive and penetrating.
Nevertheless, after the Buddha’s passing over to Nirvana,
bodhisattvas who are newly resolved to attain to enlightenment may
not accept with faith that the Bodhisattvas who surged up from the
earth are the Buddha’s original disciples and that will give rise to
the cause and affinities of the sinful karma of negating the Dharma.
It is only natural World Honoured One that we ask you to explain so
as to take away our doubts so that all good men who in generations
yet to come will not be sceptical when they hear of this matter.”
The meaning of this is text that Miroku implored the Buddha to
expound the Dharma gateway of the life span for those who are to
come after his passing over to Nirvana.

It says in the Chapter on the Life Span, `Some lost their original
minds and others did not.’ The text continues until, `…those who did
not lose their minds saw that this medicine was good both in looks
and flavour, whereupon they took it and were completely cured and
relieved of their sickness.’ All the bodhisattvas, people of the two
vehicles and devas whose Buddha seeds were planted in the primordial
infinity were later nurtured through the binding affinities with
Daitsu and then through the four flavours and the temporary gateway
where they attained to the way when they heard the original gateway.
In the Sutra it says, `Those who had lost their minds were filled
with joy when they saw that their father had arrived and they
earnestly begged him to cure their sickness even though they had
been given the medicine but they dare not take it because the spirit
of the poison had penetrated deeply and, on account of having lost
their original minds, they found this attractive and tasty physic
unpalatable.’ The text continues until, `I really must contrive an
expedient means in order to make them take this medicine.’ The text
further continues until, `I will now place this good and estimable
medicine here and you must take it and make use of it without
worrying that it might not cure you. After giving these instructions
h<br/><br/>(Message over 64 KB, truncated)

>Cannabis, strong-drink mixtures, mandrake, and mushrooms all are included in

my book and article.

>–Chris Bennett

Some of the proof of this is shown below.
______________________

http://forbiddenfruitpublishing.com/sexdrugs/intro.html – excerpts:

Next only to sex, do drugs, as in psychoactive substances, play a pivotal role
in the development of religion, and the Bible is here no exception. The
importance of drugs in religion, like that of sexuality, is often overlooked
by researchers who have been imprinted with our Christian influenced societies
innate prejudice against these substances. Moreover, without personal
experience of the power of psychoactive plants, many researchers have failed
to perceive the pivotal role that such plants and preparations have played in
religious thought the world over. “All religions in which mysticism and
contact with the supernatural play an important part, attribute a sacred
character to an intoxicating drink or other intoxicant”(Danielou 1992). The
Biblical references to wine, which had become the blood of the savior by the
Christian period, clearly falls into this category. The use of wine in the
ancient world was “unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical
faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry
criticisms of the sober hour”(James 1929). Even more interestingly, as we
shall amply demonstrate on these pages, was the use of other intoxicants
amongst the Old Testament Israelites.

Despite the early marriage between shamanism and psycho-active plants that
inspired the development of whole religions, naturally occurring botanicals
like the psilocybin mushroom, Indian hemp, peyote cactus and similar
substances have been condemned as devil’s potions and drugs by most religious
groups of our modern era. Historically, this situation is an anomaly, not the
norm. Prior to the Common Era and throughout the ancient world these magical
plants had been seen as sacraments and constituted a very important part of
religious worship. In the 1930’s respected scholar W.E. Budge commented that,
“Many of the ancient herbalists knew that the juices of certain plants
possessed properties which produced extraordinary effects when introduced into
the human body, and that some might be used as aphrodisiacs, and others as
narcotics, and others as stimulants. And the magicians when they were
acquainted with them naturally used them in lotions and philters to produce
both good and evil effects”(Budge 1930). Some modern scholars have taken this
line of thought further, pointing out that the ancients considered these
substances to be the sacred food of the Gods, and a means of communicating
with the divine. (Schultes and Hoffman 1979; Mckenna 1992; Ott 1993, etc.).

Still other scholars suggest that humanities drive to alter their
consciousness is as innate as the drives to fulfill sexual needs and hunger.
… well-known health and drug researcher Dr. Andrew Weil commented, “There is
not a shred of hope from history or from cross-cultural studies to suggest
that human beings can live without psychoactive substances”. (A view that is
discussed more fully in Ronald K. Siegel’s Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of
Artificial Paradise.) [“Artificial”? Jonathan Ott has written a whole book
demonstrating how misleading and incorrect that way of thinking is; they are
the venerable, classic *natural* paradises. This perfectly demonstrates how
today’s entheogenists shoot themselves in the foot and are their own worst
enemies, inadvertantly entrenching further the dominant paradigm even as they
strive to challenge it. -mh]

Etymologist and religious historian John M. Allegro [you see him swinging by
the neck in the background, serving to quite effectively officially discredit
the entheogen theory of religion by his poor grasp of what entheogenic
mysticism is about and his dismissive, disparaging attitude toward the very
subject he considered to be a main advocate of -mh] pointed out that our
ancestors believed these plants were living gateways to other realms, and
thought of them as angels. … The ancients interpreted the experiences they
received from these plant-angels as divine revelations, in much the same way
that shamans have done around the world before recorded history, and are still
doing in South America, Africa, Asia and even North America today.

Although it is little known to most modern readers, marijuana and other
entheogens played a very important role in ancient Hebrew culture and
originally appeared throughout the books that make up the Bible’s Old
Testament. The Bible openly discusses the use of mandrake, which is
psychoactive, along with intoxication by wine and strong drink so the Hebrews
were more than familiar with altering their consciousness. What will be
surprising to most modern readers, is the frequent use of cannabis-sativa, by
both the Hebrew Priests and Kings. Indicating, as anthropologist Vera Rubin
noted, that cannabis “appears in the Old Testament because of the ritual and
sacred aspect of it” (Rubin 1978).

______________________

In addition to watching out for the challenges that the mainstream puts out
against the entheogen theory of religion, we also need to watch out for the
ways in which the insiders, the entheogen scholar community, harms its own
cause and unnecessarily unconsciously limits its own effectiveness by
accepting far too much of the dominant paradigm.

These scholars can exclaim about my criticisms just as G.A. Wells said about
Earl Doherty’s criticism of his work: “I am used to being criticized, but not
for being too conservative!”

G.A. Wells wrote books asserting that Jesus kind of basically pretty much
didn’t exist, not in any way we usually think — whereas Doherty came along
and said “enough with the minor corrective epicycles: out with it, admit it,
give us a *real* paradigm shift: Jesus didn’t exist, period. Honestly and
really change your thinking, and quit just shuffling the same old bits around
with minor changes.”

Then I come along criticizing Doherty as being nothing but a paradigm
destroyer, not a paradigm changer, as he recognizes no profundity and
relevance for the Christian myth system, and has no more insight than any
run-of-the-mill Christian-origins scholar that the myth refers to specific
dynamics experienced and understood during intense entheogenic mystic
experiencing.


I read much of Chris Bennett’s book Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible, and
quickly read his High Times article.

Just as James Arthur claims to have “clearly” emphasized the great extent to
which entheogens are present in religion, upon closer examination it becomes
clear that Arthur and Bennett end up making the same communication mistake and
unbalanced thinking mistake as Huston Smith: after a 50% careful reading of
Arthur, the reader most likely comes away with the idea that there was a
slight presence of Amanita way back only at the beginning of Christianity.

With Huston Smith, one ends up with a similarly tepid impression, that
entheogens are an also-ran, barely present throughout the eras of the
religions. With Bennett, there is a good reason why the Door Magazine
characterized him just like I do: Bennett puts 99% of his emphasis, so it
seems, on Cannabis, and only in early Christianity. Arthur puts 99% of his
emphasis, so it seems, on Amanita, in several religions, but only way back at
the beginning.

Huston Smith, another “defender” and “promoter” of the presence or legitimacy
of entheogens in religion, also ends up giving the readers an impression that
99% of religious experiencing and mystic tradition has *not* been entheogenic.
If these authors intend to communicate what I am emphasizing, they have
failed.

I don’t think this is a mischaracterization of the background paradigm behind
these books; this accurately describes what is actually communicated in
practice by these books.

If their theory is that all combinations of entheogens have been used during
all eras of all religions — which is the radical extremist alternative I am
tentatively or experimentally proferring — they don’t communicate that.
Bennett *didn’t* have that radical theory in mind when writing the High Times
article or the book. If he had, that would have been reflected in the Door
article.

But no, the Door article exclusively describes Bennett’s proposition that Mr.
Historical Jesus used cannabis and that the laying on of hands was with
cannabis. Not one word about any other entheogen in any religion in any era.

What I am criticizing the entheogenists for, and shaking them to wake them up
about, is that they are shooting themselves in the foot (like drug policy
reformers do in so many ways) by buying in too fully into the dominant mode of
thinking and communicating. The world will never pay attention to the
entheogen theory if it is communicated so timidly, with such an exclusive
emphasis on one plant such that the others are completely overshadowed.

*No way* does the book or article by Bennett effectively communicate a
multi-plant theory — it’s far too exclusively focused on cannabis. It’s
really time to discard that way of thinking that chronically overemphasizes a
single plant, with the others relegated to a footnote. Quit identifying with
a single plant, and move on to the “Integral Studies” spirit like Ott, and
like Dan Russell — *they* have the right, more extreme exphasis, probably Ott
most of all.

Don’t just tack on a bit of use of one plant onto existing, status-quo
thinking about religion, and then add an even lesser footnote to that. Like
Wilber would say, we need an “all era, all plant, all religion” Integral
theory of the role of entheogens in religion.

Amanita is plastered all over Arthur’s works. Cannabis is plastered all over
Bennett’s work. Ergot is plastered all over Dan Merkur’s work. They all
claim that they have promoted the multi-plant theory — they are deluded; they
are utterly failing to convey the ideas, because they are each in love with
one plant only. Ott is different — he consistently promotes awareness of,
and thinks in terms of, the entire pharmacopeia.

Today’s entheogen story doesn’t work, doesn’t fly, doesn’t have an impact;
look at how The Door magazine waved it aside like a gnat — Bennett supposedly
is the defender and representative of plant mysticism in Christianity, but his
approach carries no real weight, because in practice, in real-world
communication, it amounts to a theory of a single plant in a single religion
in a single period — *not* a theory of an entire pharmacopia in all religions
in all eras.

In claiming the latter, Arthur and Bennett and Merkur are deluding themselves
about the scope of their thinking are are claiming credit for more scope than
they have effectively ventured — the broad theory, more on the order of Ott’s
thinking, is just *barely* present in their works and isn’t really
communicated at all, any more than Ken Wilber could claim to have “covered” or
“included” the Hellenistic Mystery Religions in his theory.

My criticism is a matter of balance: it is totally commendable to focus on
establishing the use of one plant in one religion in one era, but eventually
the scholars need to adopt a balanced paradigm that assumes the use of all
plants in all religions in all eras, and these authors have not produced yet
such a balanced and ambitious paradigm, which is why we end up with such
effortless dismissals as the Door article.

Such minimalist theories as have been put forward attempt too little in their
surrounding framework. Everyone should buy and read these books, but make no
mistake, the entheogen theory has barely been hinted at yet, and there is much
work at even the most beginning stage of defining the scope of the entheogen
theory.

Today’s books about the entheogen theory of the origin of religion also need
to cover the ongoing nature of religion and the ever-popular use of all
available entheogens inside and outside all the major religions in all eras.

Entheogen scholars should be more on guard against inadvertantly supporting
the status quo theory which is exactly this: that yes, some deviant groups
have sometimes used drugs in some religions, especially in olden days. How
could today’s entheogen books challenge the status-quo dominant paradigm by
merely falling into it? Their little firecrackers bounce harmlessly off the
temple walls. The status-quo paradigm can eat ten of these scholars for lunch
as an appetizer.

These books and articles so far are utterly failing to communicate, partly
because they unconsciously downplay the very thesis they are trying to put
forward, while taking for granted far more of the conventional views about
religion than the authors realize. If you let the readers retain their
overall paradigm of what religion is about, and only introduce a focus on one
plant, one era, one religion, it’s a no-brainer what the result will be:
effortless dismissal; that is how paradigms work.

These scholars severely overestimate their sweep and scope of ambition, and
severely underestimate how massive a challenging paradigm must be. No one, no
one, understands why it is so important to take on the whole of Christian
theology and tradition and history, and transform the entirety of it into a
fully entheogenic paradigm (and drag along all other religions as well).
Bennett’s book was somewhat influential in my studying the whole of the Bible
canon.

Bennett thinks he’s presented a radical, sweeping alternative paradigm, but it
is no such thing, far overemphasizing cannabis, the earliest origins of a
religion, and the Christian religion only, while unconsciously accepting as an
overall paradigm the status-quo paradigm, which is that a few deviant groups
used one drug in isolated heretical cases long ago.

They don’t really offer an alternative paradigm — just a minor modification
within the dominant paradigm, which is easily brushed off like a bit of few
breadcrumbs off a good Christian’s tablecloth.

One kind of serious threat to a new paradigm is a way of thinking that appears
to be a new paradigm and thinks it is, but really is just a minor ill-received
modification within the same, old, half-baked way of thinking. This is how
paradigm replacement works: the new paradigm must be bigger and more
encompassing than the old, more ambitious, more cogent and concise, more
natural, more everything.

Nothing less than a whole new interpretation of metaphysics, religious myth,
the nature of myth, the ever-popular use of every entheogenic plant in sight
by everyone, stands a chance when battling the fierce dragon of the
established dominant way of thinking. Low-dose theories fail to cause
regeneration of the sinner’s heart.

These psilocybin caps just aren’t cutting it; we need a far stronger drink, a
far more efffective potion, to kill the beast of the dominant way of thinking
about the role of entheogens in religious history. We need to leave this
mellow jazz guitar music played by the Bennett, Arthur, and Merkur brothers,
and hook up a chain of guitar amps overdriving each other.

Everyone should buy and read these books and ask what would result by taking
their postulates as far as possible:

Mushrooms and Mankind: The Impact of Mushrooms on Human Consciousness and
Religion
James Arthur
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585091510


Merkur’s book Psychedelic Sacrament is very important; entheogen use by
rabbinic mystics is more important than my review implies. This kind of
serious engagement with Western religion is important and entheogenists really
must expand beyond idolizing Buddhist mysticism. Entheogenists need to get
interested in quasi-official Jewish and Christian mysticism; it’s the only
possible way to ever succesfully challenge the dominant way of thinking.

The one-topic revisionist scholars think that they have a new paradigm, and it
may seem like they do, but really, they don’t have anything but the dominant
way of thinking, with a minor revision; just a revision of the current way of
thinking, not really a new way of thinking.

One of my top priorities is to write a better review that explains why this
book is one of the very most important and why every entheogenist should read
it *even if* they imagine that they aren’t interested in “rabbinic
mysticism” — just like most entheogenists imagine that they aren’t interested
in “Christianity”. They’ll never make a difference and challenge the dominant
paradigm until the day they *get* interested.

I really need to write more explaining why the most important thing to do is
to completely take over the entire nature of religion and the entire history
of religion in order to sweep away the completely incorrect dominant, official
way of thinking about religion and especially to exorcise that delusion from
their own habitual character of thinking, and framework of assumptions.

The existing books have made *no impact* on the dominant way of thinking,
because they unthinkingly take too much of the dominant paradigm for granted
as the paradigmatic framework in which they put forth their minor revisions of
a few points. The problem these authors have on their hands, the only real
problem, is how to construct a serious challenger to the dominant way of
thinking.

It’s been proven by now that this will require far more than the puny, feeble
little gnat-like “entheogen theory of the origin of religion”. The time is
ripe for an actual transformation in thinking, rather than the isolated
revision of points that we have become accustomed to under the false and
deceptive banner of “revolutionary paradigm shift”.

The Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience
Dan Merkur
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/089281862X

The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible
Dan Merkur
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892817720


Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible
Chris Bennett, Neil McQueen
http://www.google.com/search?q=sex+drugs+violence+bible+bennett
Purchase: http://www.forbiddenfruitpublishing.com/sexdrugs – intro is online.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1550567985

It’s long, like Dan Russell’s book Drug War, but quite readable and makes the
scriptures interesting. If you substitute “entheogens” instead of “cannabis”
when reading and thinking about this book, this book is an essential key for
revealing that the Christian scriptures are inspired throughout. Many of the
sex or ritual sex aspects generally concur with studies like “The Historical
Mary Magdalene” and Allegro’s “The Sacred Mushroom & The Cross”. I’m not
interested in the subject of sex or ritual sex, but like the subject of
astrotheology, ancient religionists were.


Book list: Currently named “Entheogen theory of the origin of religion”.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/103-0184603-88342
66

When Amazon fixes a problem, I will rename this to something like “Entheogen
theory of religion”, “Entheogen basis of religion”, or something else implying
that real religion has always been about entheogen allegory — all plants, all
eras, all religions, all classes.

The very name of the theory I’ve been using has a fatal flaw: it asserts that
entheogens are only present in a disappearingly small moment: the temporal
beginning — very easy to dismiss as an anomaly that proves the rule that
“religions, generally and on the whole, are *not* about drugs, and are about
rejecting drugs”.


— Michael Hoffman
Egodeath.com

I wrote:

>>In contrast, I present this truly sane, wise, and sober interpretation:

Jesus is an entirely mythic representation of the specific metaphysical
experience and conceptual realization which Hellenistic mystery-religion
initiates and Jewish mystics underwent subsequent to ingesting the sacred food
and mixed wine of the ritual meals that were standard and ubiquitous in the
Hellenistic world.


Clark Heinrich conceded that and seems to have forgotten the presumably main
subject of our discussion, the changes in the new edition of Strange Fruit.
His book takes for granted the literal existence of a historical Jesus, which
I maintain hopelessly complicates any explanation of the origin of
Christianity.

Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy
Clark Heinrich
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819979


When ordinary Christians hear the no-historical Jesus proposal, they think
that the main problem with it is that it would be much harder to explain
Christian origins.

Scholars can more quickly recognize that the problem they are inadvertantly
coming across is that the more you study Christian origins, the more
superfluous and redundant is the need for any individual man, Jesus, to *also*
physically enact what the Jewish and Hellenistic thinking of the day had
*already* constructed with or without an actual man to uniquely literally
carry out the mythic ideas that were on everyone’s mind already.

For scholars, the problem is coming to be how to explain the rise of
Christianity as being a natural development in the political and mythical
climate at the same time as Christianity also “came from” the acts of a
presumed historical individual, Jesus; historical Jesus becomes more of a
complicating, problem-introducing extra hypothesis than a solution.

The historical Jesus assumption is like saying that when you push a door, the
door opens because of cause-and-effect *and* because the door spirit causes
the door to open.

As a theorist, it is a huge relief to abandon the historical Jesus
assumption — a far more compact and elegant mode of explanation results,
instead of trying to explain that Christianity was formed *both* by the
political and historical backdrop *and* by the uniquely actualized actions of
the individual man, Jesus, that just happen to exactly enact the mythic
allegorical drama that was present anyway in Jewish and Hellenistic thinking.

Today’s scholarly consensus amounts to a combination of “Jesus is archetypal
allegorical mystic metaphor” *and* “Jesus literally carried out the allegory”.
For scholars, the question now is how is it that Christianity started both
without needing Jesus, *and* involving Jesus? We have a double-explanation,
and then the question is what would have motivated a rational, clear-thinking
Jesus to have bothered *voluntarily* literally acting out the myths of the
day? To pull off some stunt of faking a resurrection?

Why would he do it? He wouldn’t be considered a victorious king in that
scenario which ends up with a regular literal Jesus walking around after
literally escaping the cross. That’s the problem I came across and grappled
with.

Then the spirit showed me that what mattered to *me* if I ever experienced a
crisis needing a vicarious self-will demolisher to finally and violently cross
out his self-will and self-control, was the *idea* of a divine savior and
rescuer; the savior figure was effective for me in my time of tribulation and
judgment by his actions in the mental realm, not by his literal existence, his
literal motives, and his literal actions.

I also assumed at the time the “savior” and “divine rescuer” idea functioned
the same in the other Hellenistic mystery religions with their
dying-and-rising god-man divine redeemer-figures, which scholars hold to be
purely mythical redeemers.

How could it be that the mystery religions experienced divine rescue and
redemption from their purely mythical saviors, while Christian mystic-state
explorers had to have a savior that was also literal in addition to
functioning allegorically in the mind? From this analysis, the literal
historical Jesus became totally superfluous with respect to the mystic’s
experience of being rescued by a divine savior.

In practice, the literalist assumption (the assumption that the origin of
Christianity was strongly focused on and dependent on a single historical
actual individual man) prevents understanding the high allegorical meaning.


I proposed asking Dale Allison why one should accept his historical-Jesus
interpretation of the apocalyptic Jesus instead of my entheogen-allegory
interpretation.

Clark wrote that I have more patience for theology than he does, and
characterizes literalist Christianity scholars as “can’t get the joke”. Chris
Bennett’s book is responsible for some of my patience for theology, such as
taking on the entire Bible as entheogenic scriptures and then later (unlike
Bennett) as mythic-only entheogenic allegory. If Bennett takes on the whole
Bible, working through each book, then I had better reach that bar as well.

I think Bennett omitted the Apocrypha between the testaments, which is a
mistake. The most literalist version of Christianity is Protestantism, and
that literalist, non-spiritual, non-allegorical mindset is supported by
removing the Apocrypha. In Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, there’s a much
stronger flavor of allegory.

That’s one reason why I’m thinking of retracting or qualifying my idea of
“middle-level religion” or “middle-level Christianity”: in some ways, low
religion is closer to the truth than presumably higher, demythicized religion
which removes all the supernatural and ends up with mundane history and
mundane ethics and oridinary-state archetypal Psychology symbolism.

It may be easier to grasp the entheogenic purely allegorical meaning of the
Jesus crew in Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity than Protestant
Christianity, because the icons and mood are already more archetypal and
symbolic than in hyper-literalist Protestantism. My brand of Christianity was
exclusively Protestant, albeit a mix of conservative and New Age
Protestantism.

The Protestant mythic-system is a more brittle puzzle, serving as more of a
challenge but more definitely and catastrophically breakable.

Catholicism can too easily absorb an allegorical theory, whereas Protestantism
tends to be entire demolished or completely transformed upon finding a sound
allegorical interpretation; Protestantism cannot remain literalist and absorb
and co-opt mystic allegory; it necessarily gives up the literalist ghost and
transforms to the distinct 2-level dynamic system it was originally designed
to be.

In the earliest Christianity, you could say that the collective community
understood the 2-level meaning-flipping character of the religion; this is
reflected in the Paul character’s distinction between milk Christianity and
meat Christianity, thinking as a child does and then putting away childish
things for the adult way of thinking. Catholic orthodoxy tends to bend and
absorb and co-opt mystic allegory rather than successfully transforming into
the exclusively higher mode of interpretation.

Compared to the first edition, “Strange Fruit”, the new edition of the book
has the following.

Large-format paperback, which makes it much more user friendly–larger type,
bigger pictures, new layout throughout.

The whole thing re-edited, syntax improved, typos and British spellings
corrected, five important illustrations that my first publisher lost and
therefore left out, two new color plates, two substitutions with better
plates, new layout of plates with different sizing in some cases.

The new photo of Rama and Hanuman holding opened mushrooms while touching a
Shiva linga with their free hands that is actually a large button-stage
muscaria; with pertinent new text explaining it.

New speculation about the pope’s beanie.


Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy
Clark Heinrich
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819979

>Michael,
>I have read your site about ego death and found it to be very interesting.
>I have a Suite 101 column on Rational Spirituality and I thought you would
>be interested in checking it out. I have added a link to your site from
>there also.
>
>http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/rational_spirituality
>
>Francois Tremblay
>personal site : http://www.insolitology.com/personal

High on my wish list is to convince Earl Doherty of the profundity of the
Christian myth, now that it is becoming understood in terms of systematic
theory, or science.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22earl+doherty%22+puzzle

There are 228 postings I haven’t read in the egodeath discussion group. There
are 138 subscribed members (and anyone can publicly read the group). I
haven’t promoted the group or website at all, except by including my domain
name at the bottom of postings in various online forums, and by including my
domain name in my Amazon page. If my work becomes popular, I will fall behind
in reading people’s postings at an even higher rate.

Outlook 2000 doesn’t permit me to sort by Read/Unread status — damn, what a
major feature limitation — otherwise I could print all unread postings and
read them like a book. I will see if Outlook 2003 permits this.

Similarly, I expect that few people are able to, or interested in, keeping up
with my postings, which have about a 90% redundancy factor per posting.

I’m considering a Web log but there are as many drawbacks as advantages. The
worst thing about Yahoo groups is that they aren’t logged by the Google search
engine.

I started gathering all my postings, including prior to the egodeath
discussion group. There are thousands of postings — just gathering them into
folders is a huge project. For example, my Sent mailbox has thousands of
emails from over the years, with guitar amp gear postings mixed with egodeath,
drug policy reform, and other postings.

I want to gather all my postings, organize them and compile them into a
full-featured frameset, but the tools for doing so continue to be inefficient.
It’s a major project and I’m too impatient to get on with the next insight;
I’ve never liked spending time polishing and presenting ideas neatly; I’m
totally a frontier explorer, hungry only for the next discovery.

A problem is that even if I did collect all my writings, it would be such a
huge collection, the size might work against effective communication of the
basics. Also, the high redundancy from one posting to the next is also
somewhat of a problem.

I could really use an assistant, like a graduate student, editing team, or
ghost writer, to organize my writings. I’m doing some writing myself, which
is like ghost writing, for a very busy famous person.

>This is a quick note to let you know that Trip 9, Spring 2003, will be

shipping
within the next few days. If you need to update your address or resubscribe,
now’s the time to do it! We’ve got a great issue featuring DJ Spooky,
Negativland, articles on Psychedelic Activism, and much more. For full details
on the contents of our new issue please visit http://tripzine.com

>James Kent

James Arthur ought to have tighter editing and more citations, more scholarly
style than in the book Mushrooms & Mankind. Dan Merkur convinced me of the
importance of scholarly discipline. It would be wonderful for Entheos journal
to work with James Arthur to publish a respectable article of his even if his
natural style is popular and undisciplined. I have little patience for
scholarly discipline, but unlike Arthur, I have a high respect for it.

Arthur has an interesting hypothesis that scholars already know the entheogen
theory so there’s no point in playing the charade of scholarly citation. Like
some of my experimental extreme hypotheses, there is some degree of truth in
his assertion, mixed with some untruth.

I have to criticize the many typos in the Mithras article in Entheos journal.
I’m sure the editor is as busy as I am, but typos are very harmful for
scholarly credibility, and are the most abrupt contradiction possible of the
magazine’s stated goal. I have great respect for the work of all entheogen
scholars, specifically including John Allegro, James Arthur, and Chris
Bennett, and I intend to give them as much credit for their contributions and
insights as possible.

There seems to have been a major rift in the entheogen scholar community
pursuant to these two books:

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of
Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East
John Marco Allegro, 1969?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340128755

Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality
R. Gordon Wasson, 1972?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156838001

Much of the rift centers around the no-historical Jesus theory. I was
surprised to find that Jack Herer is quite a scholar and considers it very
important to reject the historical Jesus assumption. I was surprised to find
that Jack Herer was even more critical of the book Apples of Apollo than I
was, because of its assumption of a historical Jesus. I am very forgiving of
the way entheogen scholars assume a historical Jesus — what scholars don’t?

I used to unthinkingly make the same assumption myself, as an entheogen
scholar; it’s hardly an outstanding reason to dock points for when reviewing
an entheogen book. But Herer seems to think that the presence of the
historical Jesus assumption fatally undermines the legitimacy of an entheogen
book about myth-religion.

I’ve been more tentative in postulating that literalist thinking about Jesus
practically prevents one from comprehending the profound entheogenic mythic
meaning of the Passion of the Cross. It seems that Herer is more absolute: it
is impossible to have a legitimate entheogen theory or a higher understanding
of entheogenic myth-religion if one assumes there was a historical Jesus.

Now that Clark Heinrich has conceded the entirely mystic-mythic,
ritual-metaphorical, and allegorical nature of the Jesus figure, Chris Bennett
and the Mark Hoffman/Carl Ruck crowd are the only remaining entheogen scholars
to assume or take for granted a historical Jesus. Would it be good for all
entheogen scholars to do away with the historical Jesus assumption? I don’t
know; maybe a range of views and thinking styles helps the entheogen theory
cause more than it impedes it.

Truly, the most critical of the critical thinkers are the no-historical Jesus
scholars. They have to be the clearest of thinkers. In general,
no-historical Jesus scholars immediately concede the high plausibility of the
entire entheogen theory of religion, whereas the less critical thinkers, the
entheogen scholars generally are completely uncritical about the historical
Jesus assumption — I know this mistake first-hand.

Entheogen theorists typically haven’t read books about no-historical Jesus,
and yet they actively adhere to the assumption of a historical Jesus, and
consider themselves to be critical thinkers. After having seen how
upside-down the world’s assumptions are with respect to entheogens, these
would-be critical thinkers dare to venture a strong affirmation of the
historical Jesus assumption.

Upon Heinrich conceding no-historical Jesus, and upon finding that Jack Herer
is (if possible) more intent than I am on dismissing the historical-Jesus
assumption as a harmful impediment to progress in entheogen knowledge, and
upon James Arthur’s dismissal of the historical Jesus assumption, it looks
clear at this point that the future of entheogen scholarship is moving in the
direction I advocate: effectively *replacing* the historical Jesus assumption
by, basically, Allegro’s view — give him credit for being too far ahead of
his time, so far that he has embarrassed us and now we repent — the view that
Jesus, like Dionysus, is none other than the entheogen.

The only flaw with Allegro is his disparaging attitude toward the early
enthenogenic Christians, not his theory *that* they were entheogenists and the
Jesus was none other than Amanita and its experiences and insights. The only
way forward for entheogen theory is to stop distancing itself by disparaging
Allegro, and instead, give him credit for being so far ahead of his time, that
even we would-be critical thinkers, have had to run to catch up with him.

We must criticize and reject Allegro’s bad attitude, while being in awe of his
prescient conclusion that Jesus was none other than the entheogen —
otherwise, our field is broken and dysfunctional, a field based on a sandy
foundation of untruth, leading to darkness as much as light.


I’m not sure of what constructive outcome can be had by entheogen scholars
criticizing and critiquing each other’s contributions. I was extremely
dismayed at the way the book Apples of Apollo insulted and disparaged John
Allegro by kicking him in the footnotes and refusing to include him in the
bibliography — that was truly bad behavior, bad scholarly citizenship and is
the opposite of the constructive criticism that is necessary for entheogen
scholarship to progress.

Constructive criticism can be blurred into destructive criticism. It’s
important to both criticize and praise other co-workers in this scholarly
field, giving them credit and giving them their due. That’s the only way the
field can really progress. I’m highly critical to the point of being or
seeming destructive, but critical, skeptical thinking has produced results in
developing my own thinking or theoretical system.

The effective attitude among entheogen scholars is neither an uncritical
love-fest nor the kind of insulting dismissals like the footnotization of
Allegro or the disparagement of James Arthur’s popularist, anti-scholarly
strategy.

There is some disadvantage of associating Entheos journal with James Arthur
because of his popularism and anti-scholar attitude — but the solution must
be to work together to overcome each other’s weaknesses and improve each
other, which includes a great deal of critical wrangling as well. It is very
stressful, the hard work of both criticizing the limitations of one’s fellow
scholars, while also working to build up each other’s work and contributions,
to maximize the potential of each scholar together.

Is there outright competition between these scholars? I don’t really think
so; not significantly — clearly there is enough territory for many more
scholars in this field; we need to invite and create and encourage even more
scholars to help work in this field. The real problem, the reason for
contention and insults — each controversial scholar is terrified of the
liability of being associated with each other.

Bennett? That marijuana-Jesus kook? No, he’s not my friend, his work sucks,
he’s totally wrong. Arthur? An embarrassment to us serious scholars!
Heinrich? The fool assumes a historical Jesus; he’s a terrible embarrassment
and liability to us clear thinkers!

Each controversial scholar aligns himself with certain other controversial
scholars, and aligns himself against certain other controversial scholars.
Why? Because being associated with another controversial scholar is partly a
boon and partly a harmful liability for a controversial scholar.

Allegro was tarred and feathered for his theory that Jesus is none other than
the Amanita in conjunction with ritual sex — no wonder entheogen scholars
publically disparage him and distance themselves as far as possible from him
and his theories.

Entheogen scholars should not try to distance themselves from Allegro (because
of his no-HJ, and sex hypotheses) or Bennett (for his seeming marijuana-Jesus
fixation) or Arthur (for his attitude against disciplined scholarly
conventions). Instead, the constructive attitude and the way forward is to
praise each scholar for what one takes to be their insight, and to criticize
just those aspects one disagrees with.

My treatment of Ken Wilber is a good model: the hardest thing in the world is
to legitimately critcize Wilber. He’s so right about so many things and has
made huge contributions to Integral Theory and transpersonal theory of
psycho-spiritual development.

I commend him and respectfully cite him, even while I consign to the flames
his pathetic, totally inadequate, muddled and inconsistent attitude toward
Hellenistic mystery-religion: he is practically oblivious to the entheogen
basis of Hellenistic mystery-religion and myth-religion, assumes a historical
Jesus, and has hardly thought about how cosmic determinism fits into the
Hellenistic way of thinking.

Because of these omissions and severe under-treatment of these subjects,
Wilber has an outright *weak* core theory of what ego-transcendence is about.
His theory of everything is as good as it could be, given the limiting factor,
which is his weak core theory of what is *most important* in the mental
transformation that is ego death and rebirth.

I don’t try to publically distance myself from Wilber, like the way an
entheogen scholar fearfully tries to deny any association with other entheogen
scholars. I associate my work with Wilber’s work *selectively*. It’s
dishonest and chicken of the book Apples of Apollo to take some of Allegro’s
insights, footnoting him repeatedly, and then insult Allegro on the whole, in
an effort to publically distance their work from his by shunning him from
inclusion in the bibliography.

The book’s insulting wholesale disparagement of Allegro is inexcusable (even
if strategically understandable), whereas the book’s gullible assumption of a
historical Jesus is fully understandable and excusable. Jack Herer seems to
have been taken aback by both flaws of the book Apples of Apollo: the
wholesale disparagement of and distancing from Allegro, and the gullible
assumption of a historical Jesus.

Entheos journal ought to do penance and prove that it is as constructive as I
wish to be, by publishing a favorable critical article about the whole Allegro
affair and debate, and by working with James Arthur to publish a scholarly
article (with no typos).


— Michael “brushed off effortlessly like a gnat” Hoffman
Egodeath.com

What are the outcomes of this experimental train of thought, the criticisms of
entheogen scholars’ backdrop of assumptions?

My criticisms are half-correct. It was entirely incorrect for me to associate
James Arthur with an exagerrated focus and weak framework of an all-plants
perspective: I should have used Clark Heinrich, instead, as an example of an
entheogen scholar whose writings inadvertantly equate religion with one plant,
Amanita.

James Arthur is hard to criticize — the main flaw of his work is the
unprofessional, unscholarly presentation of his research in Mushrooms and
Mankind; he’d be more successful among the scholarly community with more
careful editing and scholarly citations.

I have been very careful to qualify my critique of Ken Wilber — unlike my
first attempts at doing so, where I accused him of being oblivious to
entheogens. Now, my criticism of him on that point is far more qualified: he
has a bad *treatment* of entheogens, failing to see their ubiquity such as in
Hellenistic mystery-religion, and failing to see that they are not a
simulation of mystic technique, but are the main, original, and ever-popular
mystic technique. His statements about entheogens are largely right — he
just doesn’t make entheogens central as he should.

I have to improve my criticism of entheogen scholars the same way. There is
something seriously wrong with the existing entheogen scholarship — but what
exactly is it? I refuse to be morose or repentant about the flaws in my
critical efforts so far. Flaws are the price of making headway. I will
correct my criticisms but won’t apologize; I had to venture some flames to
push the envelope and see aspects of today’s researchers immortally survives
and which parts are perishable.

One important outcome of my extremist, experimental condemnation of today’s
paradigm for doing entheogen scholarship is the need to assess the degree to
which this scholarship has achieved influencing general knowledge.

James Arthur has been highly influential in certain respects, spreading the
gospel of entheogen-pharmacopia religion far and wide on the Art Bell show
with millions of listeners — other scholars ought to be jealous of Arthur’s
popular success. He has also been an extremely popular presenter at
conferences. His site gets many hits, and his book is highly popular at
Amazon, higher than 50,000 for a long time.

In the popular High Times and Cannabis Culture magazines, Chris Bennett has
spread the gospel of entheogen-religion, most visibly of “Jesus’ use of
marijuana”, as The Door magazine reports it.

Ruck’s work, altogether, has been influential, though it’s hard for me to
gauge. Heinrich’s work is much better positioned now that his second edition
of Strange Fruit has been published inexpensively in the U.S., rather than the
extremely fine and fairly expensive U.K. original edition.

I don’t really have a “work” to gauge the impact of, but my work at Amazon, in
Christianity and entheogens and no-free-will has probably been about as
influential as my personal communications with entheogen scholars.

Robert Graves deserves much more credit than he’s been given, for the
entheogen theory of religion: in fact, the Wasson Hypothesis really must be
renamed the Graves/Wasson Hypothesis. I wish to read Graves, such as White
Goddess, and King Jesus. Graves’ innovative ideas were influential, but he’s
given little credit for the entheogen theory of religion.

Were Allegro’s ideas about mythic Christianity and Amanita influential? In
some twisted and complicated ways, yes. Entheos magazine ought to have an
article about that question. I evade the responsibility for writing it, but
am a candidate for doing so, even though I’d ignore the sex aspects.

A review I posted today. There are presently no reviews. This book is in my
Amazon list, “Entheogen theory of religion”.


Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible
Chris Bennett, Neil McQueen
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1550567985
Search/purchase:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sex+drugs+violence+bible+bennett


5 stars

Valuable cannabis-focused entheogen theory
—–

Anyone interested in the entheogen theory of religion should get and read this
book. It is largely devoted to ferreting out the many entheogen references and
allusions in the Bible. It covers most books of the Bible in order.

High-quality scholarship. Aside from some distracting typos, it is highly
readable and reveals how interesting and complex many of the Bible stories
are. As is standard, it assumes the literal existence of Bible characters —
an assumption which entheogen scholars are increasingly calling into question.

I’m grateful for this book spurring me on to take on studying all the books in
the Bible. Highly recommended for entheogen and religion collections —
essential, in fact, especially in light of how few books there are about
entheogens in Christianity.

Chris Bennett strives to offer more credible evidence of the use of a variety
of entheogens in early Christianity than any researcher to date.


Per Ott, I criticized the word “artificial” in Siegel’s book:

Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise
Ronald Siegel
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671691929


Bennett’s “Sex…” book is about the Bible, so is focused on the Jews and
Christians:

Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible
Chris Bennett, Neil McQueen
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1550567985


For material on a variety of religions and cultures, see:

Green Gold, the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic & Religion
Chris Bennett
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0962987220


I am considering posting the Door review, which I consider a meaningful
weathervane of status-quo thinking and attitudes toward the entheogen theory:
many people assume that the theory need not be seriously refuted, because they
think it&#39#39;s unthinkable.

I’m finding so many entheogen-diminishing passages in books on mystic
experiencing and early Christianity and Buddhism, so many that I’m highly
aggravated. This is somewhat of a sign of the entheogens making significant
inroads. My driving goal in assessing the situation is to prevent religion
writers from so easily getting away with diminishing the spiritual use of
entheogens and the entheogen theory of religion.

Almost every run-of-the-mill scholar of early Christianity now is obliged to
do the same aggravating dance of “some theorists even put forth such absurd
ideas as Jesus leading a mushroom cult”. Those mainstream, official scholars
then feel that they have safely defused and swept aside the threat of the
entheogen theory, which threatens their paycheck and livelihood as explainers
of “what the historical Jesus and his beliefs were really like”.


One of Bennett’s High Times articles mentioned mushrooms, mandrake and other
entheogens.

One of the High Times articles:
http://www.hightimes.com/htsite/news/content.php?page=news_03021011&tpage=2&cm
nt=1

Regarding the question of to what extent the entheogen theory is being
communicated effectively, Bennett’s High Times article was coverd in every
major newspaper in the world, including the UK Gaurdian, Sunday Times, BBC,
India Times, Indai Express, Washington Post, and others.

Bennett’s article was likely the most widely covered entheogen story in the
last few years.
http://www.google.com/search?q=cannabis+jesus+bennett

There is
something seriously wrong with the existing entheogen scholarship —
but what
exactly is it? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I eventually came to the conclusion in my own pondering of this
question that the single fact, that it because it is, except in rare
cases, illegal to do either religious or scientific research on
entheogens. This has colored the way people including “scholars,”
have discussed entheogens and the single most important factor that
has dragged down the development of understanding about these things,

I do believe that at the level of Law, it CAN be proven, within the
lagal context, that entheogens are in fact the origin of religion,
or at least a religious thing.

We are talking about baby steps. You can’t expect a general
scholarly understanding and concurance to occur when reseach itself,
is legally prohibited.

Thus the first step is widening the legality of entheogens for
relgious use and scientific research. A comprehensive theory that
explores are the nooks andd crannies, comes later.

Even if the only definate legal proof of shamanisitic and hindu use
in religious practice, then that is a first step. Then prove the
the Judeo/Christian Islamic and Buddhist links.

“Freedom of Religion,” in the United States, and other countries,
is a legal fact on paper. Now the objective should be to change the
laws. If this means to first legalize shamanistic religious use,
then that is a first step. Effort in this direction, would mean
preparing the legal argument, not the all knowing, all
comprehensive “General Theory of Entheogenic consciousness,” that
all scientists and religionists must agree to at some latter time.

dc

It is very easy to demonstrate that Entheogen has been fundamental
to Shamnaistic religon and vedic Hinduism. The documentary proof in
these two areas could never be controverted in any court of law.

This is step one.

Once all the explorers and scientists involved in entheogen research
convert to a religion where entheogines can be studied legally then
great things can come. A new breed of “Medicine Man” or the
Ayuervedic Physicians of the future, would need to unite in the
legal arena, using all the proof at their disposal. If this cannot
be done, then nothing can be done and entheogenic theorizing could
never become mainstream. There are simply laws that need to be
changed based on religious rights.

dc

The sight mentions this if you go to Ozzy’s songs. S.A.T.O does not
mean sailing the acid ocean trip or anything like that. It’s the
initials to his wife, Sharon’s, full name.

This text file is automatically posted to the discussion group every two
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Description : BANISHING THE SLAVE GODS

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panoptes_x <panoptes69@…>