Making a Christian out of Jesus: Stevan Davies

I would like to weave together some thoughts on the process that turned Jesus into a Christian, posthumously. I think it is always a good, refreshing conversation starter to make it clear that Jesus was not a Christian, as is now increasingly evident from what we are starting to understand of the Thomas gospel and its historical relationship to the other Gospels, as in, the fact that it was earlier, and that it lacks the explicit theological ideas,which defined Christianity. Ergo, those were added later, and were never part of Jesus' teachings. In and of itself there's nothing wrong with that, and if Christianity is working for you, that's fine--if it ain't broke don't fix it. But if you're at all like me and have an experience of cognitive dissonance with Christianity, understanding what Jesus said originally may be of some interest. I myself always was tuned in to wanting to understand the historical context, and hearing the teachings of Jesus without anyone else mixing in anything. Later I began increasingly to understand that the most critical thing is of Course my own inner understanding of him, and alongside that, my discernment of the historical picture deepened as well of course.

For me the whole thing started at a very young age, in a manner that I imagine was not dissimilar to the process that led Thomas Jefferson to his Jefferson Bible: just plain being bothered by the sense that there was too much redacting of the sayings of Jesus and too much editiorializing going on, and I always wanted to hear him without the clutter. What was the unadulterated voice like? I was made aware very early that particularly since the time of the enlightenment many serious theologians had begun asking such such questions (o.a. Radikalkritik). So many years later it became clear to me that the Thomas Gospel was the single clearest means history has now given us for cleaning up these misunderstandings. In the process of writing my book I became aware of lots of materials that is available today, some of which might have pulled the book into another direction entirely, and lose focus. So there are always things you can't cover. The purpose of this site however is definitely (among other things), to provide a home for some explorations which might have been too detailed for the book.

One fascinating piece of research in this category was by Prof. Stevan Davies, and his main site on the Thomas gospel is available through the link of his name here, and the piece that caught my attention was an extensive analysis of his of how, in the transition from Thomas to Mark, the sayings were combined, and given a context, which set up the whole process of viewing Jesus a certain very specific way, namely the Christian way, as it was then beginning to emerge. The greatest influence in which was the theological influence of Paul. I want to discuss some of his findings here, not from a formal scholarly standpoint, for that I'll refer you to his original article, but from the point of view of the content, as we might understand it today based on A Course in Miracles. I will provide the links to the material, will avoid the detailed discussion, which invariably will boil down to the difference between choosing the ego or the Holy Spirit, since that is the only meaningful choice ever. I will simply expand on his comments with an eye to how you might look at the material from a Course standpoint.

In general terms then, it may pay to recap here something about the issue of level confusion as the Course sees it, which is really the psychological mechanism which the mind uses to defend against the teachings of Jesus, while conversesly the miracle is Jesus's way to undo the level confusion. And, as the Course makes abudantly clear, coming and going we have the need to defend ourselves againt his teachings of a Kingdom not of this world, since we prefer our own little kingdom which is very much of this world, for the very good reason that here we get to be the boss. So level confusion is in effect the ego's way of reinterpreting Jesus's sayings on the level where it operates, the body and the world, and as a result it now gets to tell Jesus what it is he means, rather than the other way around. It's a simple case of the ego telling him to play by its rules, or not at all, for the simple reason that it's the ego's ball.

After we kill him, we feel guilty, but then we turn around and we then sugar coat it by making an idol out of him, and creating a religion in his name, which acts essentially as a justification of the ego. The way the truth is preserved in spite of all the world's violence directed at him is exactly because he does not defend himself, since he knows that he is not his body. Here is one of the key passages from the Course:

    Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free, and will keep you free as others learn it of you. The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate. Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it. Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love. (ACIM:T-6.III.4)

Since our behavior reflects what we believe, we are always "teaching," i.e. expressing a belief system. Any one with parenting experience gets to find out how children respond to what you do, not to what you say they should do, although they can get pretty confused in the process, if as parents we are of a split mind, and take our confusion out on the kids. And it's not only the kids who get confused, we're confusing ourselves as well, and often times don't realize that the kids merely reflect our own confusion back to us. He is even more pointed in an earlier paragraph, dealing specifically with the crucifixion, in effect correcting our level confusion:

    That is why you must teach only one lesson. If you are to be conflict-free yourself, you must learn only from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him. You are only love, but when you deny this, you make what you are something you must learn to remember. I said before that the message of the crucifixion was, "Teach only love, for that is what you are." This is the one lesson that is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson that is one. Only by teaching it can you learn it. "As you teach so will you learn." If that is true, and it is true indeed, do not forget that what you teach is teaching you. And what you project or extend you believe. (ACIM:T-6.III.2)

In other words the only way to be consistent is to choose for oneness, is to choose for Love, since if there's oneness, there cannot be conflict, so teaching anything else creates conflict. The simple fact that remains is that truth is true, and everything else is a lie. Thus the way Jesus teaches--he did then, and he does now--is that it's all on the mind level, he asks us to follow him to his Kingdom which is not of this earth. Or to paraphrase that, here in this world, everything is dualistic, and therefore conflict ridden, for the world arises from a thought of conflict, which is the thought that I could be separate from God. So as long as we take the world and the body as our point of departure in our life, and our thinking, we have conflict built in, and the consequence are in accord with that. If we follow Jesus, we take spirit as our point of departure, on which level their cannot be conflict, since everything is one. This is why the Course constantly urges us that the answer is not in dragging Jesus into our messes, and making them good and real, but rather that we should take the illusion to the truth, and turn to Jesus or the Holy Spirit for help, which entails returning to the mind, and joining the solution instead of making the problem real and thus preventing the solution.

The Atonement does not make holy. You were created holy. It merely brings unholiness to holiness; or what you made to what you are. Bringing illusion to truth, or the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit's only function. Keep not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him and of yourself. The knowledge is safe, but where is your safety apart from it? The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you are. Thus truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and now. The past that you remember never was, and represents only the denial of what always was. (ACIM:T-14.IX.1)

So, as with Jesus before Pontius Pilate, to the world it's the other way around, as is explained here:

Much of the ego's strange behavior is directly attributable to its definition of guilt. To the ego, the guiltless are guilty. Those who do not attack are its "enemies" because, by not valuing its interpretation of salvation, they are in an excellent position to let it go. They have approached the darkest and deepest cornerstone in the ego's foundation, and while the ego can withstand your raising all else to question, it guards this one secret with its life, for its existence depends on keeping this secret. So it is this secret that we must look upon, for the ego cannot protect you against truth, and in its presence the ego is dispelled. (ACIM:T-13.II.4)

So this is the point also why Jesus's message is never lost, never mind how badly we mangle it. It also explains why across the ages people have found their way to him at all times, in spite of religious beliefs that sometimes seem to make hit harder, for his message never dies. That is its exact point, that is the resurrection. He taught to the seeming end that he was in the world but not of it, that he was spirit, not his body, and the final expression of that was to experience the crucifixion of his body, knowing full well that he was not his body. Thus the inner peace he demonstrated is the appeal to the heart, to value only truth, and no words, no theology can undo that message, since it is beyond words. It is the living reminder that his reality of Love (the Kingdom), is ultimately preferable to the substitute reality of the ego, in which we stubbornly believe we are the role we play, even after the play is over. The choice in the end is simply between disssociating the role, and remembering who we are in truth, as spirit, or justifying the role as our only reality and thus continuing the murder of Christ, or the crucifixion, as the Course usually refers to it.

What Christianity did with the teachings was to pull them down into this world, even while Jesus as appealing to our better knowledge, such as in Matthew, when he is quoted as saying: "How is it you don't understand that I was not talking to you about bread?" In short he is teaching in parables on what is going on in the mind, and so leading us back to the abstract reality of spirit, while we insist on dragging him down to our problems in the world, be they about bread, or finding a parkin spot.

Love Does Not Condemn

This is the book. The subtitle spells it out. In a way, if Ken Wapnick has a magnum opus, this is it. It is not for the faint of heart, but others will inhale this material, for it puts our entire Western spiritual/religious framework into a completely new perspective.

More than many other authors, Ken has the profound erudition in the Western intellectual tradition to understand the full scope of the intellectual context of the Course. For some, this may appear to be of passing interest only, but for many others this is very relevant indeed as our study of the Course deepens. Seen at an abstract level, the Course appears to be Advaita Vedanta for the West and with one very important twist, namely that the manifest world is not lent credence at all, as it does in Advaita by seeing it as a Divine play, but rather as a manifestation, a projection in physical form, of the "tiny mad idea" of the separation only. In other words, the world is only what the perceiver, who conceives of himself as separate from the all, perceives, and is a reflection of the erroneous thought process, that takes physical form only because of the separation thought itself, and has no external cause. This turns out to be crucial, as in a way this leaves even Advaita Vedanta with a compromise to dualistic thinking, granting some limited objectivity to the world of form - i.e. the world, although being seen as an illusion, and a silly play, is not our illusion, but is conceived in the mind of the godhead, etc. therefore my changing my mind is not enough. The Course is completely radical in seeing that the only source of the world is illusory itself, being only the tiny misthought, which it refers to as "the tiny mad idea," as if anything at all could be separate from God. And so our only problem is the healing of our own misperception, and what is needed is our willingness to find "another way" of looking at this world. And thus for A Course in Miracles, it's all in the mind, and therein lies the rub. With this little introduction, I want to simply highlight some of the exciting historical explorations in this book.

The terms for the subtitle were taken from a seventeenth century version of the Book of Common Prayer, which says the following: "From fornication, and all other deadly sin; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil, Good Lord, deliver us." And anybody who has been around the Jewish or Christian faiths, and their institutionalization of guilt, will immediately appreciate how central these concepts are. At least in the tradition of A Course in Miracles, it is clear how we are to be delivered of these evils, namely by relinquishing our investment in their reality, for as with all demons, they are brought to life and kept alive only by our faith in them, while Jesus teaches only forgiveness of our sins. The explorations of this book really deepen the message of the Course, by demonstrating how Jesus in its pages not only offers correction of certain Biblical passages and concepts, or our interpretation thereof, but how at a much deeper level, it deals with a number of themes peculiar to Western spirituality and religion, and resolves many issues where Western thought has been stuck at various times. And it is important to remember that very much in line with the thinking C.G. Jung expressed on this point, that if we were born in the West, it would probably be helpful to resolve our issues in the context of Western traditions, since we can only resolve the issues on the level where they occur. Jung meant his comments as a counterweight to the fashionable flight to Eastern spiritualities. The title of this book sets the tone immediately in line with the thought system of ACIM, in that it is a teaching of love, and non-judgment, non-condemnation, or, to put it positively, forgiveness. The dedication of the book is worth quoting as well:

To all "Gnostics"--past, present, and to come--who seek to know God through understanding this world's purpose, striving to realize, in the words of the oft-qouted Valentinian formula, that "what liberates is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we were, whereinto we have been thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we are redeemed; what birth is and what rebirth" (Excerpta ex Theodoto)

Thus in the typical quaint language of that time this highlights a path of inner inquiry, in a spirit we also find in ACIM, expressed in the second century gnostic teacher Valentinus, whose teachings are known to us only in fairly fragmentary form, but bear close resemblance to the Course in some respects. Ken then balances this statements, which a quote from the Course, which explains the title of the book:

The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions.
(A Course in Miracles)

For the rest, while there is no way to truly do this book justice in any reasonable length post, I'll offer an overview of its content with a few hopefully helpful comments. Part I, The Introduction covers the necessary background in Gnosticism, the Platonic traditions, the Early Church, and the gradual development of the antagonism between the church and the gnostics in the second century CE. All of these things are really covered in amazing detail, and their chief importance is again to gain an appreciation of how deeply many of the themes of the Course are a precise counter point to patterns woven into the fabric of the Western tradition, and how the Course properly understood proposes a very sophisticated resolution of many long standing philosophic/religious questions, frequently breaking through all categories. Also interesting is the realization how much e.g. the second century Gnostic teacher Valentinus really prefigured the Course, among other things in the myth stemming from his school saying that Jesus was off on the side laughing under a tree during the crucifixion--emphasizing again the resurrection as a spiritual event, not to mention as something that preceded the crucifixion, as many Gnostics in fact believed. Thus Jesus would have known at the time of the Crucifixion that he was not his body, and that even this violence could not affect who he truly was. Therefore he would not have been the vicarous sacrificial offering to a cruel God the father, but rather a wisdom teacher, demonstrating what he taught by living it, namely that that he was not his body, but spirit. What is clear by the end of this introductory section is that by the end of the 2nd century the free intermingling of "gnostic" ideas within the general budding Christian tradition is ending, with a polarization of the Gnostics, emphasizing inner experience of truth, as the more unruly crowd, who begin to be expelled more and more from the now forming orthodoxy, with the Church emerging as the winner, by every available means including book destruction, etc. In this context the Gnostics became mostly convenient scapegoats, against which the Church could define the right belief (ortho-doxy).

In Section IIa, the book develops the versions of the "creation myth" in Platonism, Christianity, and Gnosticism, showing strands both dualistic and non-dualistic thinking, demonstrating in depth how the more inward focused worlds of Gnostic and Platonic thought intermingled with emerging Christian thought. It is in the 9th chapter, about Jesus, that some of the formational themes in the development of early Christianity get an airing, in particular the principal difference between the Gnostic schools seeing the resurrection as an inner development, and something that preceded the crucifixion, versus the then emerging proto-Christian orthodoxy, which with Paul thinks of the resurrection mostly as a bodily event, which happens only after the crucifixion. It is very helpful for us to understand that these different positions were being widely debated in these early years. Another very important discussion is the one about Docetism, dealing with the question to what extent Jesus was or was not his body, or he only appeared in a body, which includes discussions of such gems as the Acts  of John, where the apostles discuss the differences in their respective experiences of Jesus. Again, exploring all of these precedents would give us a deeper appreciation that the later positions of the Course have deep roots in a long tradition, and address issues that people have struggled with for the last 2000 years, even though for long periods of time certain "orthodox" notions appeared to limit the questioning and the debate. As we can understand with the benefit of hindsight, such periods of quiet meant not that all questions had been answered, just more or less effectively suppressed.

This section concludes with a chapter on "Practical Implications," showing how all these different strains of thinking under the broader umbrella of Christian thought, resulted in widely differing lifestyles, again modeling all of the differing attitudes which we may recognize in students of ACIM to different degrees, if they run off half-cocked with a partial understanding of the Course. To start, it is noteworthy how little currency some dominant points of Christian practice seem to get in Gnostic circles, or at least how different they are in their interpretation, this applies to baptism, anointing. The eucharist barely makes a showing. The theme of The Bridal Chamber as an expression of spiritual "marriage" shows up, which prefigures the notion which in the Course gets the name of the Holy Relationship. This part of the discussion is therefore really about religious rites and symbols, then follows a discussion of moral concepts and behaviors, all resulting from different ways of looking at the world and our position in it, and varying from deliberate libertinism to ascetism to moderation, and some of these are truly interesting, such as the Gnostic libertines who essentially reasoned that since the world was not real, it was their sacred duty to break all the moral norms and act out. Ascetism then is the opposite mistake, instead of acting out because the world is unreal, it reflects a resolve of fighting the world and its hold over us, which of course likewise makes the problem real. Finally there is also a tradition of moderation. Next, in a further exploration of Platonism, Plotinus is perhaps the most interesting, for he focuses on a contemplative life, not on doing good deeds so much as through contemplation to arrive at a position where one cannot help but do good deeds.

The last third of the book addresses the position of A Course in Miracles, providing in fact an integration of all of the strands that were left dangling in these various traditions into a very different and amazingly coherent viewpoint, making the Course an intricate cauda to Western philosophical and spiritual tradition. As addressed at the outset, for the Course it is essential to understand that it's all in the mind, and that the world merely is the stage of our physical experience, but only a projection from the mind, not an objective reality. Thus the idea of separation happens in the mind, and this also makes salvation even possible, for if we made a mistake, and the implication is we can correct it, and the Course's position is that we overcome our futility by realizing we did not commit a sin which is incapable of change, but made a mistake which can be fixed. And the fundamental nature of fixing it is in taking responsibility for having made it, even if we seem clueless about the hows and whys and wherefores. The method of the Course is to experientially put us in touch with the minds ability to change--change our mind, or metanoia in NT Greek--so that it teaches us not mere theory, but a path of experience which helps us reintegrate our real self, instead of the proverbial idol worship which is essentially the world of the ego. For the ego always chases something that is not me, some idol outside of me, and that keeps me completely engaged in the world, oblivious to the fact that I have a mind which is capable of change. The Course says about this: "The secret of salvation is but this, that I am doing this unto myself." (ACIM:T-27.VIII.10:1)

In the Epilogue the book finally summarizes the Course's integration of all these strands of Western spiritual tradition as follows:

A Course in Miracles is such a rewrite of Christian theology (as suggested in a preceding quote from Helmut Koester, reflecting on the impact of Nag Hammadi), in the context of the Neoplatonic and Gnostic traditions, cleansed and expanded by the insights of twentieth century psychology. Thus the old wine of traditional Christianity has been reconstituted in new wineskins, its "old schemes" looked at freshly, and presented anew to eyes and ears receptive to the form of its message. Indeed, the Course can be thought of as the zenith of Western philosophical and religious thought, reconciling the paradox that has virtually imprisoned us in thought systems that reflected our conflicted experience in a world from which we could not truly escape. Holding the key that unlocks this prison door, the Course heals these conflicts of the past, freeing us to build upon its foundation a new beginning, turning the corner on a journey that will carry us ever closer to our God.

That paragraph alone would make it all worthwhile. And while some will not have the patience for this voluminous material, it is important to realize that indeed all these "strands" as I called them before, are somehow present in our spiritual DNA, and that indeed A Course in Miracles is an integration of it all, regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not. The Course certainly is intellectually very profound, but it does not demand that we become scholars of comparative religion, philosophy, psychology, let alone all three. The present book is a tour de force that manages to do all this, and for those of us who are so inclined, it offers endless exciting vistas into the deep structure of the Course's thought system and its roots in Western thought. We end up with a paranoramic, or maybe I should say symphonic, view of Western tradition, in which the Course now forms the cauda which picks up all of the loose ends, and brings it to a rousing conclusion. And finally of course it all ends in a whimper, when we do accept the atonement for ourselves, and realize that all of this was "much ado about nothing." Gratitude to Ken Wapnick as its author, and the pre-eminent teacher of the Course is certainly in order.

Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing

Oh well, this is to continue discussion of books I put on the reading list in Closing the Circle, either because I read them or because I recommended them "for further study." This one is a gem, and one of the most fun books about spirituality you could ever read. In short, I recommend it.

While per se the path that this book describes diverges in form from A Course In Miracles, it manages to clean up an awful lot of garbage, misunderstandings and plain misinformation, which plagues the whole category of spiritual literature. Why is that so, you ask? In the end it's simple, besides making interesting conversation, e.g. "I'm spiritual, not religious," is in vogue just now, nobody really wants to have anything to do with spirituality in the first place. That's exactly what I said. Nobody really wants to have anything to do with spirituality in the first place. And the reason for that is oh so simple. It is the same reason as why Jesus said that the Kingdom he talked about was not of this world, so that if we're at all attached to this world, which we all are if we take our personalities at all seriously, then we would not be interested in Jesus and/or his Kingdom, and we would be deeply offended by the irreverence of Jed McKenna.

McKenna does not leave any comfortable pseudo-truths in tact, but barges straight into the uncomfortable fact that undertaking a serious spiritual path means to always challenge everything and never ever stop questioning everything, until you get to the bottom of it all. A Course in Miracles says:

To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. It is the outcome of belief, and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom sinlessness. There is no substitute for peace. What God creates has no alternative. The truth arises from what He knows. And your decisions come from your beliefs as certainly as all creation rose in His Mind because of what He knows. (ACIM:T-24.in.2)

McKenna's book, and in fact all his books, see www.wisefoolpress.com reflect this spirit, no holds barred inquiry, until there is no place left to hide. That is what it takes. The shelves full of supposedly spiritual literature, are full of prayers, affirmations, meditations, etc. as if these were so many more skills we have to learn. All of that is BS, and McKenna does not leave those illusions in tact, and demonstrates very tangibly that the truth is on the other side of all that hoopla, and therefore that 99% of all spiritual literature belongs in the garbage. What makes these books great, is that they are written in an absolutely enjoyable style. Once in a while I find people who are offended by his approach, which is irreverent to say the least, but far more people seem to realize that it is really helpful how they puncture all these little balloons of pseudo-spirituality. Putting out the garbage does help you move on to the next thing, and that's the huge service that is given by these books and their author. So if you're serious about spirituality and are fed up with pablum, run, do not walk to the store, and buy these, or order them.

That Was the Week that Was

I admit it, I borrowed that title from a song by Tom Lehrer. Just for contrast, we might remember his hilarious, sarcastic song, National Brotherhood Week. We've come a long way, baby.

In the last 10 days, I've been having flashbacks to how as a 12 year old I would devour the newspapers, and followed the Civil Rights movement blow by blow, while eating up whatever books of MLK that were available in Dutch. I'd lay sprawled on the floor in our living room, always the first to grab the papers (we had no TV when I grew up). So many years later, I just watched MLK's I had a dream speech for the umpteenth time, on the website of ACIM monk, who adds to it a wonderful quote from Ken Wapnick on the meaning of Jesus' teaching. And then I realize that back while I was sprawled on the floor reading about all this, somewhere in Rotterdam, Holland, Ken Wapnick, who was later to become my principal teacher of A Course in Miracles, was there, for he too recognized the greatness and truth which radiated from MLK, and he was able to join in. So somewhere in idea space, paths crossed even then, which later were to cross again in the physical world, long before I had any clue at all that I would be living in the USA at this time, when Barack Obama became the 44th president. And ACIM monk provided us with a brilliant reflection on the inaugural address too, to which I could hardly add anything, so I won't try.

As I've shared here before, MLK led me to Gandhi, and a deeper understanding of non-violence, so that ultimately I became a conscientious objector when the draft came calling. Subsequently my reading wandered on to Krishnamurti, who in retrospect seems to have been a perfect preparation of the Course, just as much as Johan Willem Kaiser pointed me the way towards understanding that Jesus' teaching was about living his truth, and learning by experience what it was he stood for. His look at Jesus was almost exactly the same thing as the quote from Ken Wapnick which ACIM monk put next to the I had a dream video.  Looking back at this now I see the threads running through that carpet of time, which I call my life, in a way that tells me you can't miss it. No wonder then that I should get involved with the Thomas gospel, for from its pages speaks the living Jesus, and if you take your time with it, it is as if he's speaking to you, the reader, directly, leading us to that inner understanding of the experience of truth which he represents, and wants to share with us. And our relationship with him becomes real when we realize it's in the present tense, and not about some figure in history. In that realization lies the resurrection.

MLK Day and Building A Monument

Tonight I had the chance to attend Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where there was an event for MLK day, including a fundraiser for the new MLK monument in Washington. And there was a beautiful concert by the choirs of this church and another church from Queens, as well as performers from yet two other churches. It all brought back deep and moving memories of the profound connection I always felt with MLK since I was 11 or 12 years old, and read all of his books that were available in Dutch. It was he who led me first to Ghandi, and ultimately to become a conscientious objector, when I reached draft age in my native Holland. The truly heartwarming spirit of this service really swept me off my feet, and the occasion made it even more meaningful.

For me it also brought up the image of Dr. Helen Schucman--the scribe of A Course in Miracles--who, as a little girl, maybe at the same age as when I was studying MLK, went to baptist services with her family's maid, who was from Harlem. She kept a life-long fascination with churches, though she was ultimately to understand that Jesus's "church" was not a building, or an organization, but the loving dedication in human relationships which is the extension of his Love. More and more one realizes that it really does not matter how people find their way, or what their theologies and beliefs are. Whatever works for you is fine, and we all learn in different ways. The warmth and intensity of this gathering certainly spoke volumes, and if for me A Course in Miracles just happens to be the way, and I am not about to join a church, I can still enjoy the beautiful music, the atmosphere and relish the friendship, for that's really the only thing that means anything. The lady who invited me was the cousin of a former work colleague, and by the time it was all over and we walked to the bus, it was as if we had known each other for a lifetime, and she's regaling me with memories: "Now, child, you should'a been there when..."

And, judging by the success of the collection, that monument is going to get there, and at a very symbolic time in the history of this country.

Take Me To Truth

This book by Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira offers some interesting practical insights, and you can find out more about it pretty easily through their website, which simply has the same name as the book, Take Me To Truth. It is also one of the books I consulted in the writing of my book, and so a review of it on this blog is overdue by now. Specifically why I'm doing it right now is also because I'm rereading the book in preparation for translating it into Dutch.

This book is primarily based on the experiences Nouk and Tomas have had in growing through the various phases in their own personal relationship, everything from falling in love, to having children, divorce, and becoming friends and co-authors, and they have developed their own unique vocabulary in the process. For some magical reason it seems to be hitting a nerve with people, and offer just the right balance of generally accessible presentation in their own words. As I've argued elsewhere before, in a way you could view this book as a commentary to the section on the development of trust in A Course in Miracles, and it provides an interesting diagrammatic rendering of that process, including how it sometimes malfunctions. It also has a discussion of the a lot of relationship related issues, for which again they delve into their own experience, and offer a host of very practical ways of identifying issues, and recognizing the need for change. They develop their own language for things which at times seems to borrow from the Course and other sources, but it is uniquely theirs, and unintimidating, and for the most part very intuitive. All in all this makes it very accessible, and where it might not be they included a small list of terms to clarify their usage. Nouk and Tomas are able in this book to share their own growth process, and help us to some clarity, as well as share some practical insights and tools from their experience, and they do so in a language that certainly does not require the reader to have read any of the source materials before they enjoy this book, which is a remarkable accomplishment in and of itself. The reader at the end simply has the option to pursue any of the various source materials or not, but none of them are mandatory to appreciate this book.

What makes the book unique certainly seems to be the very accessible language, as the sales prove. For the rest, there is an emphasis on the practical and the pragmatic, on living it, rather than talking about it, which reflect how Nouk and Tomas grew through their own relationship which started as a special one like everyone else's, and which later involved a pretty extensive extended family group. And then there is an emphasis on tools and practicality which really is the hallmark of this book. The authors suggest using the Enneagram for help in personality typing, just as a broad way of characterizing ourselves, and as a tool that can help propel us to a view from above the battlefield. But like with everything else, it's an option, not mandatory.

In terms of their strong emphasis on the development of trust, which is an oft-misunderstood section of the Course, this book again is very practical, and among other things offers an excellent graphical way of understanding what happens when we try to "skip steps" and have to go back to "Go" without collecting $200. Their example is a bypass from steps 2 to step 4, from "a period of sorting out," to "a period of rest" by skipping the intervening stage 2, "a period of relinquishment." This phenomenon is akin to the ego's tendency of wanting to help out the Holy Spirit doing his job, which is really not in its job description. The result is that people focus on one aspect of the journey and mistake it for the final destination, and it truly explains the phenomena of formation of cults and religions, including Christianity as it derives from Paul's conversion experience. People build a concession stand halfway  up the mountain, and as a result they divert other travelers from going uphill, never mind stalling in their own growth. Being diverted like that results in nothing but painful delays, and in effect having to backtrack later on. The way Nouk and Tomas explain this phenomenon in illustrations is absolutely lucid, though I find that the text explanation is too crypto-Calvinistic in a New Age vein. The way the process is described there makes it all sound too mechanistic, like a precise progression, which is not at all the case in the experience of anyone I know, moreover is really contrary to the forgiveness process which A Course in Miracles advocates, which is by nature asymptotic in the way we experience it. So this is one clear area where the way this book describes the process completely diverges from the Course, which is not to say that some of the insights are not valuable.

Their workshops, of which I have hosted a few in New York City, are very lively, and have this same practical and experiential quality, and I can recommend the experience to anyone. In short this is an interesting book to read. It is a unique and very personal reflection of the experience of the authors, with their own insights, though it is not in the narrow sense e.g. a book about A Course in Miracles, except for liberally quoting from the Course. The Course remains one of the options for further study. Fortunately the authors use their own vocabulary, so that hopefully it will be clear to the reader that this is truly their own nomenclature, and not ACIM, although it does seem that way at times. To me the book is an on-ramp to a highway, which gives the reader options to proceed to any of the directions from which the authors took their inspiration, everything from A Course in Miracles, to Eckhart Tolle, to the Enneagram, and various other writers and traditions. The total framework of the book is more New Age than A Course in Miracles, in spite of the numerous quotes, but the treatment of evolution, energy, karma/reincarnation, and special and "unified" relationships have more to do with a variety of New Age teachings, which are also liberally quoted in the book. In particular the notion of the "unified relationship" in this book, while evidently inspired by the Course's notion of the holy relationship, is evidently not the same thing, since the book continues to frame this in the contexts of relationships between people, and therefore in a dualistic manner, such as there are multiple unified relationships, even though at some points the text seems to try to also embrace the notion of the holy relationship as being one, but it never reconciles these two concepts. In short, the book represents the authors' unique intersection of these various traditions, and quite evidently it is very accessible and speaks to a lot of people, and it's up to the reader where you want to go from there.

From the perspective of my own book I connected of course specifically with the development in this book of the bypass in the stages of the development of trust, the skipping of steps in our process, specifically as it relates to the development of Paul and Chritianity, for it would seem that Paul is a perfect example of what happens when we do skip steps in our process, and the point is that we all do. What matters is to learn to recognize it for what it is, and keep going. We arrest our own development in this process whenever we think we know and we take over from the only teacher there is. And then when we slide on the ice (again) we have the option to start over, and over, and over, until we learn NOT to run the show. As far as A Course in Miracles is concerned, the whole point is not that we should not make mistakes, but rather that we learn to be honest about them and forgive ourselves. Just like the problem is not that we once chose the tiny mad idea, but rather that we are still choosing it minute by minute, and Jesus' counter in the form of the Course is that equally we can choose the miracle instead of murder minute by minute, and if we forget, we can always start again, and by forgiving ourselves in the process, we lose the need to repeat the exercise.

In a more general sense the book stands on its own entirely, and in the context of the Course it seems to want to propose that this book/method is a shortcut to the Course, as is explained in Nouk's bio in the back. It professes the motivation of saving others the challenges they experienced in their years with the Course, which sounds honorable enough, but it does not work. As the standard joke goes, the Course is the shortcut, and therefore, when you're cutting it short, you are needlessly extending suffering. Shortcuts to the Course become like the skipping steps in the development of trust - detours. And in terms of saving others pain, the only effective way of doing that is by living the Course, which the Course also calls teaching it, and which has nothing to do with teaching workshops, or God forbid, being a "Course teacher." Here, just like with the proselytizing tendency in early Christianity, it seems that the temtation to teach is part of the natural ego urges which tend to surface in our Course process, but it is in fact a trap, and even more so when it professes to offer shortcuts, which really abort the process of the work. There is no suffering to be saved anybody, since the pain we experience is only the ego's resistance, which won't be overcome unless we learn that it is not real and cannot rob us of the Peace of God, not by avoiding it, for that IS the lesson, and therein lies the Peace of God. What prolongs the suffering are the ego's avoidance manoeuvers.

A Vast Illusion

 The discussion of the holographic model of our experiential world, the "universe," in this context would not be complete without mentioning this book by Ken Wapnick, which is the most comprehensive summary of the things A Course in Miracles  teaches about the phenomenal world of time and space, and is therefore also pertinent to a discussion of Gary Renard's work. As the case may be, the very lively dialog that makes up Gary's books actually covers the subject in a casual way, but nevertheless manages to be fairly comprehensive, the only problem being it's strewn all over the books. The problem is similar with the Course itself, because it has a symphonic structure, and if you want to explore this topic, in A Vast Illusion you find it all in one place.

The book dates from 1990 and is based on an original set of classes at the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, when it was still located in Crompond, NY, which at some time had been released as a tape set. In the introduction the book warns that it is not meant for students not familiar with the basic tenets of A Course In Miracles, its purpose being rather to assist the long term student in pulling together into one picture all of the materials about the metaphysics of time from across all three books. As best as possible I'll summarize here what the book covers. It really falls into three parts, I, The Origin and Nature of Time, II, The Plan of the Atonement - The Miracle, and III The End of Time.

This is one of those topics in the Course that makes you realize it was no accident when Helen Schucman, a super bright intellectual herself, said at the end of her dictation experience which produced the Course: " Finally God for intellectuals."  The treatment of this particular topic definitely falls into that category. Yet somewhere along the way you also come to realize that your failure to understand these things is not a limitation of your intellect, but fear. For in the process the Course completely reframes all of what we thought we understood of ourselves, and more often than not do the things we seem to fail to grasp at first become clear in experiences we have based on actually practicing what the Course says. And therein ultimately lies the point of the teaching that:  "No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead, there is a wish to understand all things created as they really are. And it is recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and then understood." (ACIM:T-30.V.1: 4-6) In other words as long as we keep hanging on to the ego's narrow framework, we are our own biggest impediment to understanding anything at all. Yet when we do take the leap, suddenly everything appears crystal clear. So different from the ego's obfuscations--which "twist and fit things into the dream of fear"-- and where oftentimes the "mysteries of the faith"  are cited to prevent us from questioning the exact points where the ego does not make sense, what is on offer here is a higher level of understanding that comes as we let go of those contorted answers that tried in vain to fit things " into the dreams of fear." The answers come as we let go of the narrow frame of reference that blocked our sight for too long already.

The first section of the book basically pulls together the underpinnings of the metaphysics of time and space, as they are presented in the Course. The resulting model is a holographic representation which aligns closely with the models of the experiential world that have emerged from quantum mechanics, with one important additional step: the big bang in fact is the physical manifestation of the projection of guilt from the mind, and the practical expression of the separation thought. This may seem baffling at first, when you read it like this, but actually giving it a try and practicing forgiveness as the Course suggests it, can put us in touch with a growing awareness that this whole concept makes sense, and is validated in those experiences.

This automatically brings us to the 2nd part of the book, the Plan of the Atonement, or the forgiveness process as taught by the Course, which is the "plan" of the Holy Spirit to help us let go of the sin, guilt, and fear, which we think define our existence, since after all we think we are really here. To put it differently, the ego thought, the thought of separation culminates in a feeling of loneliness in a bodily identity, combined with a profound existential guilt, that is ultimately grounded in the sense that we "threw it all away," and so we are caught in the Catch-22 of wanting to reaffirm the reality of who we are not (i.e. the role we play in the dream that is this life), spending all our energy on the persistent temper tantrum to prove that we're here and important, all of which reinforces the feeling of guilt about the separation.  The only way out must come from outside that self-reinforcing delusional system, and this is represented in the Course as the Holy Spirit, our memory of Heaven, and Jesus as the manifestation thereof, by virtue of the fact that he has fully identified with the Holy Spirit in remembering who he is in truth, and showing us how we can regain that memory too, by following him in the daily practice of living and the constant application of forgiveness, thus choosing incrementally to return to the original moment of the cosmic choice for the " tiny mad idea"  of the separation, and to make the other choice, for forgiveness, Love and the Holy Spirit, thus undoing the ego's belief system and the world of separation upheld by it.

And part III then covers the culmination of this whole process within the dream in what the Course calls the Real World, i.e. the experience of living in the knowledge of the Atonement, that nothing really happened, and all is forgiven. This also implies living in the full awareness of the primacy of spirit, and according no reality to the physical universe other than as a conduit for teaching, and helping our brothers. The final end of the process is what the Course calls God's Last Step, or the complete return to the oneness of the Father and the Son.

The end result of this whole presentation is a very complete and crystal clear metaphysics, in which it is seen that the entire experience of time and space, is nothing but an occurrence within the mind, which gives expression to the thought of separation, but is never real, only an illusion, upheld only by the strenuous efforts of our ego's to justify it, which we do by continuing to project the cause for the mess of our lives onto other people, starting with our parents, and continuing with all those who are nearest and dearest to us, or if the need arises our enemies, which can justify anything and everything. This illusion seems vast to us, but Jesus in the Course pokes fun at us and our self-importance by referring to the separation idea, as nothing but a "tiny, mad idea."  (ACIM:T-19.IV.C.5:6)

Navigating by Past Life Recall

As I have argued in the prior post, "reincarnation" may be a useful way of looking at certain aspects of our experience, even if in the abstract it may not be any more "true" than the more common Western linear view of time, which really implies Newtonian physics, and is long since obsolete for that reason alone. The notion of the holographic universe is certainly not easy to grasp. Meanwhile however, the kneejerk rejection of past life recall and reincarnation that is so common in certain quarters is also obviously meaningless. I've gotten some of that in commentaries to prior posts about Pursah's Gospel of Thomas, because it is based on her memory of her lifetime as Thomas.

To take an extreme example, General George S. Patton chose his strategy in France, guided rather strongly by past life recall of a lifetime in which he was a Roman soldier and marched with Caesar, and his intuition was to avoid all man made bridges which were built after that time, guessing correctly that the Germans would or at least were likely to, destroy them. So he planned his route based on the natural terrain, and where it would be easy to cross rivers and other obstacles. In his case, his past life recall was so vivid that in his own words, he could still smell the piss and sweat of the Roman soldiers he had been with in that terrain, and frequently he could recall features of the terrain. He experienced the same with the battle field of Gettysburg in the US, and many other historical battlefields. Nobody doubts his success. For anybody interested the full details I recommend Carlo d'Este's biography. I have also previously blogged about Patton elsewhere, particularly on his experience on the battlefield of St. Mihiel in World War I.

In short, as Shakespeare reminded us, there is more in this world than is dreamt of in our philosophy, and we are well advised to keep an open mind, and be duly sceptical about the would be obviousness of what our senses would seem to tell us. It is with this in mind that in my book I have addressed the provenance of Pursah's Gospel of Thomas as a putative kernel of the Thomas Gospel, which she feels is authentic based on her recall, but aside from that I have also validated het selection based purely on my own common sense. The combined result is what gave me the confidence to go forward. Here really lies the essence of the difference--quite in the spirit of William James' Varieties of Religious Experience-- beween formal religion and personal religion, or today we would probably simply say between religion and spirituality. Learning to have a healthy relationship with that inner guide, which we all do have, but which we have buried under rationalizations, is definitely part of waking up to who we truly are. It can also become a distraction, if we become too enamored of it, and give it more importance than it really has. The fact remains however that we all have this ability, and can generally learn to live with more ease as we learn to trust it more. This is quite independent of whatever conscious awareness we may or may not have regarding past life memories or déja vu.

The Time Has Come

The time has come for me to address the issue of reincarnation and past life memories here, and I'm guessing it won't be the only time. I had been thinking about this all week long, and then today AlterEgo909 posted some musings on déja vu experiences, surmising that they could be past life memories. So I took that as a sign that it was time to stop thinking about it and start writing.

Personally I do not "believe in reincarnation" in an explicit sense, but I do believe that it is a practical way to understand certain phenomena in our experience. The whole thing really becomes much more manageable in the context of a holographic conception of the universe, which is where quantum physics is leading us. There was an interesting article in the Scientific American in July of 2003, titled "Information in the Holographic Universe" and there are any number of other sources where these ideas have been put forth in understandable terms, which give us a framework for understanding that it is our linear experience of time which is really illusory, and just a function of our ability to perceive, but that just like in a movie, the beginning and the ending already exist, but right now I'm watching the scene that's on the screen for a split second, and that to me is "now" and I'm not even thinking about the fact that the beginning and the ending of the tape (film), are already in existence, and are really available simultaneously. Our experience of ourselves is similar. We see ourselves as specific to a time and a place. But some of our experiences can suggest otherwise.

Clearly Gary Renard's experiences -- and my book is after all based on his work -- are no doubt exceptional. Few people have ever had such clear experiences as he did with the visits of Arten and Pursah, who were the apostles Thaddeus and Thomas respectively, with the additional wrinkle that Pursah (a woman) represents Gary's identity in his next lifetime. As I've written repeatedly, in my book and on this blog and elsewhere, it is purely a personal decision for me to accept as authoritative Pursah's selection of an edited "kernel" of the Thomas gospel. I do so only because Gary's experience seems credible and cogent to me, and I find Pursah's edits of the text, which are mostly minor, highly credible, resulting as they do in a collection of 70 sayings which seems highly coherent to me, avoiding some internal contradictions that seem to be present in the historical text. Thus if you are from the school that linear time is reality, which is really a Newtonian conception of the universe, then none of this makes any sense. However, if you suspect that there may be something to the holographic model, then the experience of "memories" of other lifetimes, either past or future seems possible, and can be explained. The temptation always is to make such experiences special, because many people don't seem to have them or at least not be aware of them, but clearly in cultures where reincarnation is part of the common cultural tradition, there is nothing special about this. The problem, if any, comes again if those perceptions are taken as "reality," rather than as simply a way of looking at the world, given my experience of it.

As a young man, in my twenties, I was once askes by a gentleman who I regarded as my spiritual teacher for some twenty-five years, what I thought about reincarnation, and much to my own surprise, I answered that I found it plausible but not necessary, and he responded that he thought I was right. At this time I had already had extensive exposure to cultures where the belief in reincarnation was completely normal and natural, such as Tibetan Buddhism, among others because in the early sixties through friends of my father's, a student from the company of the Dalai Lama came to Holland to study from their exile in Switserland. I still remember the consternation at the dinner table, when he asked us how long it was on horseback from Rotterdam, Holland to Basel, Switserland - horseback riding being still the dominant mode of travel for him. Many years later I found A Course in Miracles, and its position on reincarnation mirrors my own, and overall its model of our experiential universe really matches up nicely with the holograhpic notions suggested by quantum mechanics, including the basic metaphysics of forgiveness, which entails that it is really always in truth ourselves we are forgiving, since the mind is one, and our belief in our personal identity, which we mistake for reality, is what prevents us from seeing that, so that by letting go of that belief we open ourselves up to a more universal experience. Here is what the Course says:

In the ultimate sense, reincarnation is impossible. There is no past or future, and the idea of birth into a body has no meaning either once or many times. Reincarnation cannot, then, be true in any real sense. Our only question should be, "Is the concept helpful?" And that depends, of course, on what it is used for. If it is used to strengthen the recognition of the eternal nature of life, it is helpful indeed. Is any other question about it really useful in lighting up the way? Like many other beliefs, it can be bitterly misused. At least, such misuse offers preoccupation and perhaps pride in the past. At worst, it induces inertia in the present. In between, many kinds of folly are possible.

Reincarnation would not, under any circumstances, be the problem to be dealt with now. If it were responsible for some of the difficulties the individual faces now, his task would still be only to escape from them now. If he is laying the groundwork for a future life, he can still work out his salvation only now. To some, there may be comfort in the concept, and if it heartens them its value is self-evident. It is certain, however, that the way to salvation can be found by those who believe in reincarnation and by those who do not. The idea cannot, therefore, be regarded as essential to the curriculum. There is always some risk in seeing the present in terms of the past. There is always some good in any thought which strengthens the idea that life and the body are not the same.
For our purposes, it would not be helpful to take any definite stand on reincarnation. A teacher of God should be as helpful to those who believe in it as to those who do not. If a definite stand were required of him, it would merely limit his usefulness, as well as his own decision making. Our course is not concerned with any concept that is not acceptable to anyone, regardless of his formal beliefs. (ACIM-M-24.1-3:4)

Thomas Jefferson IV

As a coda to my reading experience of The Hemingses of Monticello which of course is the corollary to the public life of Thomas Jefferson, the story we never heard, I want to add a few more observations. For as much as I've said at an earlier time how the inner contradictions of his life were bizarre, in some ways it got more bizarre as he got older, and withdrew to Monticello. For me it is a larger than life demonstration of the ego system being foolproof but not God proof, as the Course famously puts it. (ACIM:T5.VI.10:6) In short, hypocrisy, inner contradiction, etc. is part of the human condition, because it is innate to the ego system, which is the opposite of wholeness by its very nature, so our living arrangements never ever add up. And sometimes other people or historical figures can hold up the mirror very nicely. For Jefferson it was certainly an interesting evolution of how he embraced the rights of man, spoke out publicly for emancipation and against slavery, while harboring two slaves (under american law), but then gradually abandons that rhetoric back in Virginia, no doubt in part because of the political realities, but also because he himself was totally dependent on the system. He could not live with it, and he could not live without it, and the apparent compromises are just fascinating human drama, even if much must be guessed at for want of evidence.

The final denouement was something to behold, for all his seeming wealth more or less imploded pursuant to his death, collapsing under his massive debts, to the point that he almost posthumously became a symbol of a system that was broke, but that would not be deconstructed till afterwards. His wealth really came from his wife, but by the time he passed away it was all gone. Meanwhile it seems as if he lived quite contentedly on his estate, except for periodically fleeing from the many visitors, and enjoyed his private life with Sally, happily ignoring the fact that it was frowned upon by contemporary society. And she apparently got out of it what she wanted: freedom for her offspring.

Your Immortal Reality

The full title of the book is: Your Immortal Reality: How to Break the Cycle of Birth and Death, and for reference purposes on the Yahoo! group on Gary's work, it was promptly abbreviated to YIR. Within the work of Gary Renard, this book is the most important one with respect to the Thomas Gospel specifically, for it is here that Pursah gives us her version of the text, which comes in Chapter 7.  Her presentation lines up well with history. While the Nag Hammadi library was clearly buried around the time that Bischop Athanasius was propounding the Canon of the New Testament, and would-be Christians were turning violent against any books that disagreed with the accepted positions, and therefore around 375 CE. We know from the correspondence with the fragments of Greek Text which we have from a find dating back to the end of the 19th century that the text of the Thomas Gospel existed in similar form in Greek, which would have been the original language, in ca. 140 CE. And circumstantially it is now clear that the Thomas Gospel must have existed as an identifiable collection ca. 50 CE, or within the first 20 years after Jesus's death.

Pursah's proposition is that she is reducing the collection of 114 sayings to a presumed kernel of 70 sayings, corresponding to 71 in the Nag Hammadi collection because of the contraction of Logia 6 &14. Her edits are mostly fairly cosmetic, but for a few cases. In all cases her edits produce a crisper statement, without any compromise, usually leaving off stuff that feels like it could very reasonably be suspect. Her proposed contraction, discussed on page 161 of the book, of 6 & 14 into one statement makes so much sense, that one wonders why we did not think of it ourselves. In short her edited version is very convincing, and leaves off about 1/3 of the collection, of which Pursah says they were generally added later and subject to some amount of correction, and in the process some inner contradictions are removed. In short she proposes, based on her recollection, that these 70 sayings she selects are the ones she can vouch for were very close to the original, going sofar as to say that if you rendered these in Aramaic, you would have just about the words Jesus spoke back then. As I've argued in my book, Closing the Circle, the rest is a personal decision, quite along the lines of the distinction William James made between formal and personal religion: we have only our own inner compass to go by if we want to rely on Pursah's version. I did, and I even wrote a book about it. So for me it's a done deal. One important comment Pursah makes, which should be obvious, but merits mention here, is that quite evidently the Thomas Gospel is not a complete presentation of Jesus's thought system. The quotes are a bunch of pearls on a string, however in the treatment in both DU and YIR, it becomes evident that the string is the thought system of the Holy Spirit of which we do have a very profound and complete presentation in the form of A Course In Miracles.

The book as a whole is a continuation of Gary's deeply inspiring personal learning experience of the Course, as guided by Arten and Pursah. And in spite of all the clowning around he does, giving us so many ways to recognize ourselves in his exploits, he remains thoroughly humble in his overall presentation, presenting himself as just another Course student, but sharing with us just exactly how much it is all in the application, not in the theory. If Gary could learn it, we could too. We may not have the experiences he has, but we can still learn from his experiences, and the implicit promise is that to us all experience will come along the way in forms that we can understand. So it is never about imitating the form, as was the old Christian misunderstandig about the Imitatio Christi, which was the early Christian belief that if we only let ourselves be crucified for our tenaciously held beliefs we would go to heaven. Of course that was never what Jesus meant to teach, and he firmly disabuses us of that notion in the Course. It is always about learning to walk the talk, and Gary's sharing his own struggles with us via these books remains a powerful encouragement that we can do the Course, for we all can identify with him, since we've all done what he's done, and sometimes worse, or at least different variations. But in the process he really works through all the issues we all have with learning the Course.