Re: Mind's Eye Re: Religion as rebellion

On Monday, October 13, 2014 12:27:43 PM UTC-4, Allan Heretic wrote:

Churches are for basically for the masses .. There is a basic need to believe or explain the unknown. Transition into spirituality does not take much.

Common religious views are a starting point from which to build ones spiritual view and experience. Within Catholicism there are basically 3 levels of spirituality. The first level , believe God is real go to church follow the rules. The second level is where people become aware of the presence of God, with him becoming a major part of their lives, with experiences like Molly spoke of not being uncommon. Theses experiences being a driving force. The Third level the roll of the church changes from spiritual guide to one of an observer and scribe. At this level these people are no longer the ' churches ' problem but that of God. The official church very much likes these people as part of the church, providing assistance when possible.
Many centuries of observation allows the church to easily recognize the different levels.  It really is an interesting source of study.
The English are among the greatest slavers in the world.. Followed closely by islam.

Allan
Living Soul

-----Original Message-----
From: archytas <nwterry@gmail.com>
To: minds-eye@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 4:18 PM
Subject: Mind's Eye Re: Religion as rebellion

I've done much of the magic in the secret society bit (in what was once Zaire).  My friend (a tribal chief) and I were able to repeat the magic in my university office.  Sadly, I get rather the reverse experience of Molly in our churches.  Jean-Claude was a thorough-going Marxist, though detested the Lenin-Mao lines.  I tend to anarchist-mutualism myself and am never sure about Molly's higher plane - my sense is it emerges from the material conditions of possibility.  Sleeping near ants is not recommended.

I was thinking of the potentials of religion to free us from biological structuration, perhaps in the sense of a poison-cure.  It has both higher plane experience and chronic rationalisation - the latter, say, in jihad, crusades and the ant-like 'let's kill the Yazidi and steal their women' (or Numbers 31).  Many of our terms have this pharmikon status, though we allow them to dominate in 'good' form - education, government, freedom ...

John Brown is often presented as a deluded religionist, but at least wasn't talking western philosophy at the top table of a slave economy.  Religion these days seems silent on material matters.

On Monday, 13 October 2014 14:16:26 UTC+1, Molly wrote:

I suppose that it does provide a place to hide in community from the mundane and economic realities of the lower and middle classes if one is necessary.  I've always found a church community to provide its own cultural limitations based on what all human groups offer, and not much insight into faith or support in crisis of faith.  At the head of each church is a human being, struggling as we all do to make sense of it all. The tone of this culture depends invariable on the tone of the leader and they deviate more or less from the greater church dictates.  Mass itself is little more than a ritual although once understood as a process to higher consciousness, can take you there, I've experienced it, and not just in a Catholic mass.  Participating tribal ritual drumming can lead to ecstasies. Much if not all of this is lost on most congregations, in my experience.

On Monday, October 13, 2014 7:03:02 AM UTC-4, archytas wrote:

Many of our terms for freedom have religious origin in the rough phrase 'freedom from debt' - more and much wider than than Xtian kicking over the tables of the money-lenders.  There have been many debt jubilees in history, often on the death of a 'king'.  Debt slavery is and has been much wider in human communities than most seem to know.  We are not widely informed on biology and anthropology in this regard.  Religion can raise the best and worst in us.  Much of it raises the notion of adherents as some kind of chosen people, sometimes restricted to the in-group blood line. The Yazidi are such an example.

Chimps seem to have a form of 'religion' connected with the seasons - as many of our belief systems.  I saw footage of some southeast Asian spiders this morning - they lay eggs in a central tower surrounded by a henge - immediately bringing Stonehenge to my mind, though they don't hack stones to shape.  Religion raises Facil's 'we might both (all) be wrong' phrase to my mind, something often missing in our argument despite knowledge that we can make many equally powerful arguments about the same stuff (Sextus Empiricus).  To judge between arguments we need something mystical (religious).  I say this as a scientist knowing magic wands don't work.  Religion could be rebellion, a postmodern moment, oversimplifying to the extreme, of incredulity towards metanarratives like government, law and economics - a dreamtime against material and spiritual debt-rules.

Black holes have recently become 'grey', but dreamtime might challenge the geometry we use.  Global warming and much else on pollution challenges us to think 'This Changes Everything' (Naomi Klein) - the economics of 'we can never afford to do the right things' in my view.  So what does religion offer on the postmodern moment of rebellion?

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