All the Dumb Questions

Once when Krishnamurti was asked by a reporter what he would think of when the same question was asked for the umpteenth time, he said "tennis." This was late in his life, he might have been ninety at the time. By this time also he felt at times at least, that for all his sixty years of teaching, and God only knows how many books, no one or nearly no one had ever truly understood him. Dr. Helen Schucman, who was the scribe of A Course in Miracles had similar feelings at the end of her life. The Thomas Gospel talks about "hidden sayings" (Logion 1). None of that is elitism, though it has often been misinterpreted in that kind of light. The simple truth is that very few people really want to be bothered with the wisdom of the ages. Too much hassle. As the Romans knew, the people want bread and games (panem et circenses). Don't bother me with the Truth. No need today.

In the Gospels the scene at the end of Mark, when Mary Magdalene tells the other apostles of the resurrection, is priceless. The arguments that followed are equally telling, including the endless disputes of whether the resurrection was of the mind or of the body. What became Christianity adopted the latter position, though some other schools toyed around fairly seriously with the notion that the resurrection was of the mind. Certainly with the advent of A Course in Miracles it could not be clearer that this is the only way that the story makes any sense at all. But again these are concepts which we don't know right away what to do with, since on the face of it we seem to be a body that has a mind, whereas in the Context of such teachings as A Course in Miracles, it is clear that we are a mind projecting a body, and watching the experience of "My life," which is one of many thousands we could have ordered from Netflix, or picked up at Blockbusters. The main thing is we get so engrossed while watching, and we identify with the hero of the story, we end up completely believing we are him or her, oblivious to any other way of looking at the story. The Course however does tell us to learn to look at things from Above the Battleground:

     Those with the strength of God in their awareness could never think of battle. What could they gain but loss of their perfection? For everything fought for on the battleground is of the body; something it seems to offer or to own. No one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor could he value the body's offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere above the battleground. What can conflict with everything? And what is there that offers less, yet could be wanted more? Who with the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make? (ACIM:T-23.IV.9)

In short, whenever you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, you may remember this kind of advice. In Logion 42 of the Thomas Gospel Jesus expresses the same idea with fewer words: "Be passersby." Learn to watch what you're doing, observe it, don't identify with it and lose yourself, for that leads you to the way out.

It is only when we don't really like the story any more (our own damn fault for taking out a tragedy, when we could also have picked a comedy for the same price), that we begin to look at things a different way. And then when we find a teacher, like Jesus, Krishnamurti, or the Buddha, who hangs out not where the crouds are, but "in the wilderness," or "the desert" etc. this means we're now turning away for a moment of our ego's bread and games, and we immediately start having questions. This is what I read, when I look at the stories of the apostles, when I read the transcripts from Krishnamurti workshops/lectures, when I listen to tapes of workshops of the foundation for A Course in Miracles. These people are all asking all the questions that we all want to ask. Sometimes we haven't realized it yet, but if we haven't yet, we will realize at a later point that we're asking a question we heard somebody ask at a workshop, etc. Ultimately what will answer the questions however, is if we do so through our own experience, as long as we stay stuck in answering questions, we are really throwing up roadblocks against the experience that part of us wants, and part of us is deadly afraid of. Ultimately this is the type of reasoning which Jesus offers in ACIM: if you're in doubt if this is for you or not, try it for a while, and see if you like it. The great big risk is that you might feel more peaceful. Another important clue is in Logion 108 from Thomas, "Whosoever drinks form my mouth shall become like me. I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to that person." As usual this should not be read literally but figuratively. It is about sharing his experience, and becoming one with him on an experiential level, for only the experience will tell us where words fall short. It is not about the words, it is about a willingness to have the experience, and that means giving up on the ego's next ride (because we already know to expect the same old result from the same old actions), and following him in deed, not in word, and the means for that, as they appear in the Course are the practice of his forgiveness practice, which are a way of switching from the way our ego sees the world to the way Jesus sees it. A way to get out of our bad old habits which are making us miserable. And while we are at it we can listen to all the dumb questions, or ask our own dumb questions, which will only fade away when the experience catches up to us and we finally realize what he was talking about. As I pointed out in an earlier post, in Gary Renard's books he is really asking all the dumb questions for us, AND his teachers help him to experience the answers as much as answering him in words, so vicariously through him, we get the point that it is about opening ourselves up to the experience, instead of closing our minds, thinking we have all the answers.

Mary Magdalene Revisited

For some reason Mary Magdalene has been on my mind, so I figured it's time to write about her for Valentine's day. Every since the re-discovery of numerous materials that were left out of the New Testament, there has been growing attention to Mary Magdalene, but even the little that was in the New Testament books was intriguing. The notion that she was the first to understand the resurrection, and thus became the one to bring the news to the other apostles, making her the Apostle to the Apostles, is intriguing, and makes it all the more surprising that she should have exited stage left. In the various other books, perhaps the most interesting description of her relationship with Jesus comes from the Gospel of Philip, as follows:

There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary.
And the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ] loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often[]. The rest of the disciples [were offended by it and expressed disapproval.] They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you like her?"

There are other cute references to the apostles being bothered by the closeness of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and many have observed the logic that not only would it have been strange if Jesus wasn't married, but also the role which Mary Magdalene played at the time of the crucifixion, including going to the grave to anoint the body would be thoroughly consistent with the role of a wife. There is nothing explicit in the literature that definitively identifies her as Jesus' wife, but it simply makes sense. It is important to note however that not only was she physically close with him, but that there is extensive evidence that the Apostle to the Apostles was indeed a teacher in her own right and in all probability understood what Jesus stood for better than anybody. So much the more amazing that she should fade away in the literature.

At least it is now clear enough that the story of her as a penitent prostitute was a fabrication probably going back to Pope Gregory I, in 591, however that particular story fits in with the efforts of the church to trivialize her, and to shore up the importance of the "official" apostles, centered really on Peter and the theological foundations provided by Paul. The relative neglect of her, and later the attempt to deliberately trivialize her, do make sense if you take into account the fact that in Paul's theological framing of who Jesus was, he is made completely different from us. In that context having Jesus be married would be very inconvenient. Even more so towards the Middle Ages, when the emphasis on celibacy grew in importance and was ultimately made church law, at least in the Roman Catholic church, it becomes all the more important to think that Jesus was above all that, and was exceptional in that regard as well.

From the standpoint of A Course in Miracles it all makes more sense, for the fundamental underlying notion of the Course is that our spiritual growth happens only in relationships, and not by trying to abandon the world in that sense. The very simple logic of the Course is that the ego's notion of separation seeks to reassert itself by relationships to others, starting with parents and siblings, and then evolving to love interests. These relationships make us special (think Valentine's day), and besides that seem to give us the sense of completion which we gave up in embracing the separation, which is the very foundation of our individuality. The Course is based on the notion that the separation can only be healed in relationships, through outgrowing the specialness, and embracing again the Holy Relationship--to thine own Self be true--and therein to transcend our specialness claims on another and learn to embrace inclusive love as the Course means it, which can flow through us and extend into the world through our relationships, as we learn forgiveness ourselves. In this context, when we invite the Holy Spirit into our lives, in lieu of chasing the ego's goals, our partners become our teachers, and our relationships become the cradle for the rebirth of the Holy Relationship, which then becomes the central reality in the way we relate to everything in the world. This way the relationships which are started by the ego to reassert itself, form the perfect vehicle in the hands of the Holy Spirit, to relearn the meaning of universal Love through those very relationships.