Monday, January 09, 2006

History of Christian Scripture

Goldeneye from the Daism Forum requested some background on the history of Christian Scripture, based on some posts I did a while back on the topic. It's good timing, because I just got a book from Amazon called "From Jesus To Christianity" that delves into this very topic. I haven't started the book, but as I do I'll post some thoughts about it.

Before that, it would be a good idea to look at this website on "The History of the Gospels":

http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/Gospel-Timeline.html

The author of this site makes a chronological list of the actual historical references to Jesus, and early material written about Jesus. It's very sparse, indicating that there just isn't a lot of historically verifiable information about Jesus or his tradition until around 200 A.D. And by that time, the material that has begun to emerge, such as the four Gospels, is commonly criticized by contemporaries as mythic in orgin or just plain invented.

My sense of the history of the Christian scriptures is that nothing was written down during the time of Jesus' lifetime (presuming he lived). The only tradition that survived his death was an oral tradition. It is likely that this oral tradition had many threads to it, many sources, but the main ones would of course have been Jesus' direct followers, such as his brother James. What is revealing about other sources, such as Paul, who appeared on the scene only 10-15 years after Jesus' death and became the most prominent exponent of Christianity in his time, is that even though one must presume that Paul knew people who had known Jesus directly, and was intimately connected with the entire Christian movement, Paul seems to know almost nothing about Jesus' life. In fact, none of the apochrypha seems to know much about Jesus. They mention teachings such as "love thy neighbor" but they do not attribute these teachings to Jesus. Many of them, such as James, Jesus' brother, do not seem to regard Jesus as a Divine Incarnation, and do not seem aware of, or place any importance upon, most of the details that later appear in the Gospels. Prominent Christians writing about Christian doctrine do not mention the four Gospels until late in the 2nd century A.D.

I would gather that at some point after Jesus' death things began to be written down by his followers, but only some of that information would have been historically accurate. One or several "book of sayings" attributed to Jesus were circulated, and some of these sayings found their way into the four Gospels, but many did not. The criteria for inclusion did not seem to have much of anything to do with historical accuracy, but for how it served the agenda of the authors, and the various factions of Christianity that had developed in the interim. Christianity had in a fairly short time fragmented into numerous sects with competing views and interests. Each of these sects supported certain texts and sayings and stories attributed to Jesus, and many were in conflict with one another.

The four Gospels would appear to be an attempt by one particular branch of Christianity to codify these sayings and stories in a manner that suited their purposes, and to exclude those views that did not. In the process, the notion of "heresy" became intrinsic to the Christian movement, declaring some views, sources, and material officially sanctioned and others officially banned. The Gospels were written with the intention not so much of organizing the historial record in a true fashion, as organizing the Christian movement itself around a single, streamlined message, and purging Christianity of elements that "didn't fit" that message. Whether Jesus himself would have "fit" into this organized message is questionable, but whatever the case would have been, Christianity created scriptures to shape the organization, rather than building an organization around the existing record. It did so out of necessity - at least in their view. The existing record was by that time utterly confusing and contradictory, and not amenable to a centrally organized religion. Jesus himself had not made any effort to codify and organize either his teachings or his following into an official religion, and so it was only natural that it did not follow that pattern until over a century after his death.

When the Gospels were finally written, therefore, the organizing principle was not one of historical accuracy or fidelity to the original teachings of Jesus. The organizing principle was one of creating a scriptural record which could serve the purposes of an organized religion. This meant creating scriptures which would 1) hold a community of believers together, and 2) provide the best tools for missionary purposes. This meant that the complex and esoteric teachings of Jesus had to be simplified into the simple message: believe in me and be saved. The life of Jesus had to be simplified into a simple sacrificial ritual of birth, teaching, crucifixion and ressurrection. The Gospels are a conscious literary creation, not a passive gathering of texts, sayings, and stories. They are a work of genius in that respect, but they are not a trustworthy account of either the life or the teachings of Jesus.

Part of their genius is that the Gospels do in fact purport to be historically accurate. In this respect, they emphasize the mimesis element of tragic drama in a fashion that had never been fully implemented before. Aristotle wrote that tragic drama requires three elements: 1)identification with the hero, 2) mimesis, the creation of the illusion of dramatic reality, and 3) catharsis, or the sacrifice of the hero, which brings about the greatest emotional purging in the audience. Each of these elements has to be present to produce what Aristotle considered the beneficial experience of dramatic tragedy.

What we see in the Christian Gospels is an attempt to reformulate the Christian scriptures into a profound form of dramatic tragedy. First, we have Jesus transformed from a spiritual teacher into a tragic hero. Second, we have the story retold in a manner which dramatically accentuates its purported reality. Third we have a dramatic catharsis of universal import. And fourth, we have a happy ending, which is essential in giving the audience a reason to keep coming back.

In writing the scriptures as if they were an historical document, the Gospels create the illusion that this is how it really happened. This is essential for setting up the emotional impact of the final catharsis of the crucifixion. If we thought the story was simply a metaphor, or a myth, Jesus' death fails to have the necessary tragic impact that it does if Jesus is made into a real, flesh and blood character, a God tragically appearing in human history, and then dying for real also. Previous stories of the life and death of Gods, tragic as they often were, never seemed entirely real. But the Gospels use the mimetic device of appearing to be written not as myth or drama, but as historical fact in order to make their dramatic conclusion so powerful. And it works. The crucifixion achieves its lasting emotional power because the Gospels insist on our believing that it actually happened exactly as written. The scriptures are made into the "infallible word of God" in order to immortalize this mimetic device. This is why Christian fundamentalists cling so powerfully to the reality of the scriptures. Because without that mimetic reality, the dramatic story and conclusion fail to achieve full catharsis. And it is this experience of catharsis that Christians equate with the feeling of being saved.

The death and ressurrection of Jesus are made into a spiritual experience by the belief that it really happened. The scriptures build that belief by various literary devices, the chief of them being the use of a narrative voice purporting to be an eyewitness historian merely recording facts, rather than a canny storyteller spinning a good yarn. This leads to a cathartic experience of death and ressurrection in the emotional being of the believer, the audience, the reader, because he has been led to identify so strongly with Jesus, which is not possible with a mythic God. Thus, the cathartic experience of hearing or reading the Gospels leads to the sensation of Jesus being born in one's own soul. The Christian feels saved by his cathartic experience, and he relives that catharsis every time he hears the story retold. It achieves an incredible missionary power, and is able to bind together a community of believers who have achieved the same cathartic experience. This is the evangelical power of the Christian message.

So that's my view of how and why the Christian scriptures were created. They are literary creations of a high order, but that doesn't make them true in any but a literary sense. I seriously doubt that Jesus' actual spiritual teachings were about experiencing this cathartic release that comes from meditating on the story of Jesus' life, crucifixion and ressurrection as presented in the bible. When Mel Gibson experiences his great catharsis in his movie The Passion of the Christ, he is not experiencing a spiritual state that Jesus would have recognized and taught as having anything to do with his teachings about God and heaven. That experience of dramatic catharsis is essentially a pagan experience that is found in all kinds of sacrifical drama in the ancient world, from the Greeks to the Egyptians to the Persians. The difference is that the Christians pumped up the element of mimesis to such a height that the cathartic experience of the Gospels is much greater. Likewise, the billing of the hero is much greater, in that Jesus is presented not just as one God among many, but the only true son of God, and the consequences of his death and ressurrection are nothing more than the fate of the entire universe. And as mentioned, because Jesus is presented as a flesh and blood human being, it is much easier to identify with him. All of these are great dramatic devices which keep the audience on the edge of their seats, and keeps them coming back for more and more.

These devices are all very effective. They just have nothing to do with a genuine spiritual path of any kind, either of the type Jesus probably taught, or any other legitimate spiritual realizer. These are the kinds of devices used by charlatans, frauds, con men, and hucksters of all kinds. They are harmless enough when used for purposes of simple entertainment, but incredibly dangerous when used for serious purposes. They lead to an emotional arousal which supercedes rational understanding and insight, and which leads people to abandon their innate intelligence and follow instead a course of action which is emotional unstable and subject to indoctrination and control by authority. These are the emotional devices used to mount religious wars and pograms of racial and ethnic purification around the world. And that is why Christian scripture has been used so frequently and successfully for just that purpose. It's designed for that very use, not specifically, but at least generically. One can't use the Lankavatara Sutra, for example, to motivate people to launch a crusade, but one can use the Gospels very effectively for that purpose, because that is their purpose: to emotionally arouse people into a state of cathartic release, after which they are emptied of self, and can be reprogramed according to a new agenda. Many religious groups employ similar methods for "brainwashing" their members. Examine Adidam thoroughly, and one sees the same principle at work.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you read Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur sugesting the Christ story is a replay of an earlier Egyptian myth with many major details simply duplicated.

Mike said...

Here's the name and author
of the book I briefly mentioned
at the forum:
"The Lost Christianities: The
Battle For Scripture and Faiths
We Never Knew", by Bart D. Ehrman

www.beliefnet.com/story/150/story_15091_1.html

Mike said...

Link to an interview with
Ehrman:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/150/story_15091_1.html

Broken Yogi said...

Dear Friend,

No, I don't think I've read that particular book, but I've heard a fair amount of that kind of material, and it all seems legitimate. I know about the Nile floods being timed by the star Sirius rising, and the celebration of this coming on December 25, etc. I will look for that book on Amazon, because it would be nice to have the facts handy.

Goldeneye said...

Dear Broken Yogi,

I have read critical accounts that put to question things like the virgin birth of Christ, his crucifixion and resurrection. I have also read accounts that purport to confirm these essentials of the Christian faith as historically accurate (see http://www.equip.org). What it comes down to is whether you can say this with conviction: "I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart he was raised from the dead." This is what the Bible says is the criteria for salvation. I ask you, BY, do you believe this?

It is simply this matter of faith. And when you accept this, you will also accept Christ's principal teachings in the New Testament.

m said...

The Liver of Rife or
the fine art of having a discussion with yourself
After some time away from this post, I returned to find Conrads response to my confession. I noticed that he made a plethora of incorrect assumptions and interpretations of my original confession that had nothing to do with what I was stating. What is the collective expression for a multitude of assumptions? “A pride of assumptions”, perhaps? Therefore I felt that one last attempt of stating my position is necessary. After that, Conrad’s on his own.
I received a lengthy reply from a long-term devotee of Adi Da to my post In the Kali Yuga, Everyone Gets the Guru They Deserve:

http://brokenyogi.blogspot.com/2006/01/in-kali-yuga-everyone-gets-guru-they.html

His reply is found in full at:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20670916&postID=113763176387897496

I'll indulge myself in a lengthy reply and try to answer MJ's points without condemnation of either him or Adi Da.
Conrad does not live up to his lofty statements here in the slightest. More to say on this later in this commentary.
If he has gotten the impression that I am making “complaints” about Adidam, or trying to condemn Adi Da for his actions, let's put that aside. My primary interest is simply in getting at the truth
MJ does not dispute the facts I and other critics of Adidam have spoken out about.
First of all, I actually do dispute a great many of the facts. I simply didn’t make a big deal about it in my last email because I thought understanding the context of alleged events was a more important issue. And so many others have spent time disputing many of the facts so that I felt that my personal confession was more essential to add something of a unique nature to this discussion.
I gave you a strong hint that I disputed many of the facts when I stated that descriptions of the small “f” facts from disgruntled ex members was unrealiable “because they were almost always “Padded”, based on the emotional response of the individual reporting it”. Under stressful circumstances what one thinks they are seeing and hearing, verses what is actually happening, are frequently two entirely different events. This is especially true when that person is confronted with a situation which challenges their usual uninspected perseption of reality, or their ingrained early life prespectives regarding what they consider to be egoically acceptable modes of behavior. The mind of the observer sees what it “wants” to see, based on how well those observations supports one’s egoic survival strategies. I could share with you many stories of this sort of thing happening right in front of my eyes. I have personally observed on many occasions this phenonmena occur within the context of a seemingly ordinary occurance between two or more individuals all of whom were present at the same event. Given that many of these events which Conrad alludes to pushes many of the psychological “buttons’ of the conventional mind set, it seems most likely that the actual facts of a great many of these events are indeed very much suspect.
But as I said, I don’t think the “facts” as percieived from some third party observer are not the most important thing here. They are of the least improtance. Rather, I think that, as I have indicated above, the mindset of the inquirer is more important, and the short and long term effects upon the participants. And these are all ways of pointing to in a crude small r realty context, the Big R Realty, all points of view context, of the events, which is the most improtant issue of all in these matter, ie., whether those actions on the part of the initiator are done in relation to a greater or lesser Reality, is the most core issue to the discussion here.
Man likes to think of himself as a rational being who can reason his way thru the obsticles that life throws at him in a logical fashion. But we are far more complex then mere right brained cognitive thinking can explain in explicit detail. We are a Gordian knot of conflicting emotions ruled by early life verbal and preverbal impulses which direct our thinking into channels of acceptance and rejection based entirely upon the most primative and uninspected infantile experiences. Conrad demonstrates this well when his logical mind says he doesn’t want to attack me at the beginning of the letter, and then he attacks me personally, referring to me in degrogatory terms in the middle and end of the letter using judgmental notions like “weak” and “sad”. “Do as I say, not as I do”, eh Conrad? I think that like everyone else, Conrad has two sides to him: the side that “wants to discover the truth” and the other side; the side which “wants to be right” as a tacit support of his own uninspected egoic survival strategies. And I think that Conrad, from his point of view, having gone thru a “divorce” with his Guru, and all the emotional upheaval in his person that has spent his entire adult life and a good portion of his adolescense in relation to that One would incur, does not fully appreciate how the side that wants to be “right” in order to congratulate and affirm this “new mind” direction in Conrad, unconsciously trumps and directs his thinking processes in ways that a strictly rational mind which merely wants to find the truth, would not agree with if it had enough “distance” to inspect the matter. So while I can appreciate the spirit of wanting to get down to the truth of the matter, I think that it is naïve, without fully and really understanding what it is that one is “up against” in their own psyche, when they define themselves as a someone who “ merely wants to know the truth”. You must start, in this pursuit of truth, that you (all the “you’s”, “you” you and “me” you) are being two faced, the logical joe on one side and on the other uninspected emotional side, the primative ape who would just as soon tear the head off of his opponent) then learn about “three kinds of truth”!
________
He does dispute whether I or other critics have a right understanding of those facts.


What MJ must also concede, however, is that Adidam has made a concerted effort to suppress, conceal, distort, and fraudulently lie about the truthful facts of Adi Da's life, and Adidam's own history.
Conrad is making all kinds of assumptions here. In spite of his earlier statement that he is not trying to condemn, and that he is only trying to get at the truth, his statement about what he feels I “must agree with” is a condemnation on the face of it. I thought Conrad was logically trying to get at the truth? Sounds like here he is assuming it! Then he is using his assumption as a means to prove his own point of view.
My direct response to Conrad, and the reason that I don’t agree with his statement that he feels “I must concede” is because it is a loaded statement that implies condemanation of the alleged actions themselves, as if the actions themselves define their own morality outside of the context in which they are appearing.
If the Dutch family that hid Anne Frank from the Nazis during the war involved suppressing, concealing, distorting and fraudulently lying about the truthful facts of her existence, are those actions to be praised or condemned? I would suggest, and I would suspect that you all would strongly agree with me, that those actions would be considered to be positive, praiseworthy and laudable because they are in support of a higher truth then the “reality” recognized by the Nazis of World War two. In this instance , I suggest that there would be little argument about what is the higher reality here. Then, when engaged for a righteous purpose, those engaged in concealing, distorting and fradulently lying about the truthful facts, are considered as hero’s, and sentinals of freedom.
Conversely, one could point out that the misguided german youth, who “gave up” their parents to the harsh military authortities, if their parents point of view seemed to contradict the prevaling Nazi Party, were only telling the truth, and they were supporting the highest espoused tennets of their society, namely the good of the state, and representing the greatest good for the greatest people. They were betraying their parents, possibly even to the point of sending them to their death. But they were supporting the higher goals of their government and the prevailing society at that time. My judgement of them being misguided now is my judgement based on this historic viewpoint and society. In their own time and their own society, they were considered heros for telling the truth about their parents.
Consequently , the heart of the matter, if one feels as though they must bring a judgement upon events, is not whether a person or a group or people told a lie, or whether they told the truth. Because both actions could, in different circumstances be considered either heinious, or heroic. Rather the real question here is whether those actions were done to uphold a Higher Reality, or done to promote a lesser one.
It is only when there is a debate about whether or not a given set of actions repesents a higher Reality or a lesser one that we get into trouble collectively agreeing with whether those actions were heinous or heroic. Conrad obvouisly considers these actions taken by Adidam, or by Adidam’s managers as a group, to be a sign of decay and decadence which supports his (initially unstated but soon to emerge in his email) point of view that he thinks what Adi Da and Adidam represents is a lesser realty. This is what I mean when I say that Conrad attempts to support his (eventually emerging) point of view about Adi Da and Adidam by assuming it to begin with.
While I know that the management of Adidam are just ordinary people in one sense, and therefore are capable are making all kinds of self serving and egoic mistakes and errors in judgement, such as they are in any organization, when I take those actions collectively, I do not arrive at the same diabolical conclusions as Conrad.
Conrad assumes that Adi Da is false and therefore any actions to protect Him is done in a false context, and therefore henious, and should be understood as such. I personally experience Adi Da as an Incarnation of the Divine and therefore see the general spirit of such “alleged” deception, if it exists at all of the public, as done in the same spirit of protecting the Good, in the highest sense.
Which one of us are right? Depends upon your point of view, doesn’t it? If you have the constantly supported multi decade tacit experience that Adi Da is a Incarnation of God, then wouldn’t it be your duty to protect him from the angular and judgmental prosecution that all Truth Teachers that have experienced not only in western society, but in just about any society that has existed thruout recorded history? Does that possible concealment of the personal facts of Adi Da’s life represent something reprehensible, or something that supports the Light of the Divine in this world? Once more, it depends on your point of view, and is informed by the existence of a personal relationship to God which is tacitly felt and stengthed in Adi Da’s company and away from it.
On the other hand, what I have no trouble pointing out, because, once more, it is my personal experience over the past 30 years, that a vast number of the critics of Adi Da, whether by conscious or unconscious design, to use Conrad’s own words, “have made a concerted effort to suppress, conceal, distort, and fraudulently lie about the truthful facts of Adi Da's life, and Adidam's own history,” even to the point of committing explicit acts of legally defined extorsion, in order to support their own uninspected egoic assumptions about what they think is the truth! That is the tradition that Conrad is supporting, by saying many of the things that he is stating in this email, from my point of view!
Conrad’s criticism of my words is all mind based. His mind tells him “it just aint so” “look at the horrible ‘facts’”, the “cover up is worse that the crime, etc, etc, etc. Blah, blah, Blah.” He is once more ascerting the very thing that he is “logically” committed to discovering. The bottom line here is he, Conrad, has not felt, or he has forgotten in order to support his own egoic survival strategies, that in Adi Da’s Company, whether personally or via contemplation anywhere, one can experience Communion with the Divine that is totally rare, incomparable and unique, compared to whatever one might call such an experience of “Communion”under other conditions. That is my confession. Unlike Conrad, who came to the Adi Da Work in his mid teens, I arrived somewhat later in life. I had an oppportunity that Conrad, alas, missed, to test the spritual waters for a number of years with other great Teachers and Masters, before I was led to Adi Da. I had the opportunity which Conrad did not, to observe that for myself, Communion with Adi Da cast all my other experiences with with Great Teachers and Masters in a pale light. Those other great teachers, to continue the simile, for me, were like comparing a bright candle to a 60,000 watt search beacon. But Conrad trys to turn my confession into his own, in his declarations that my confession represents mental weakness and lack of clarity.
Conrad’s criticisms of my personal confession are smug, condescending and mind based. His criticisms are made of the same judgementalism that condemns someone because they feel differently from his or herself. It the kind of uninspected historically tragic mind that says the jews were “evil”, the blacks were “inferior”, or the indians were “savages” and therefore it provides its own excuse for abusing those individuals, via both words and actions, all others who don’t neatly fit in the accusers conceptual fame of mind.
Conrad has no way to disprove my feelings other than to say that I am “toting the Daist philosphy”, rather than admit the fact that they are my personal and tacit experience of truth. That is because it is far easier to dismiss my confession as “weak” then to accept it on the face of it as one who has experienced unique Divine profundity. Better to just attack such confessions as weak. Makes for a better argument. Otherwise, oh-oh! This guy M might really have something real here. And something Real doesn’t match color scheme wise, with Conrad’s mental furniture arrangement!
I would say that Conrad is the one with the “weakness” of mental clarity! He assumes, and then on that basis, without pausing for one moment to admit the possibilty that my confession could be the Truth on the face of it, and then he attacks. Where is his high spoken logic and integrity here? Just goes to show that when ego walks in the door, logic and intergrity goes inuendo!


...the point is not the event itself but whether the individual actually can resort to God Communion in their darkest moments, or any moment, via heart surrender, and thereby transcend by Grace of the Guru, their usual karmic destiny.
This is of course the crux of any moment of life, but MJ makes many assumptions about God-Communion and the transcendence of karmic destiny that he has not examined closely enough, but clings instead to a narrow Daist interpretation which does not strengthen the capacity for God-Communion, but actually weakens it.
So much bullshit, Conrad. So much bullshit!! Where do I start? OK. Within the illusion in which we all essentially live as though we are separate from God, we can certainly argue about what our limited perceptions tell us about the small “f” facts. But if we are debating about the large F facts there is a limit to what can be concluded with language and deductive reasoning. How can one use logic and deductive reasoning to come to some proof that God exists, or that an unobstructed Avataric Incarnation in Human Form of God exists? How absurd a proposition! For that is exactly the nature of what Conrad is attempting to debate with me here. I say that Adi Da Samraj represents an unobstructed vehicle for such an Avataric incarnation based on my personal experience. Conrad if you read on, is stating that that is not the case and that my personal feelings based on my experiences are somehow flawed, immature or undeveloped. He has lost site of the point that all that either of us, or anyone else for that matter, have is our personal confession, our personal experience of our feelings about God to offer. All the deductive logic and reasoning from here to Kingdom Come will not prove to one single person whether Conrad or I are correct. It is a personal confession. Therefore Conrad’s critisicm of my confession is totally unfounded, because he cannot understand what I am communicating with my words. He can only think he understands, and he can know what he would communicate if he spoke those same words. And it is clear by his commentary, that Conrad would be communicating something entirely different that what I be communciating with those same words. We’re not talking about the Dodgers here! We’re talking about one’s personal `confession of God. When I say that I am in Communion in God when in relationship to Adi Da, how can Conrad possibly know one iota about what I am talking about and then take my words and make it sound like everyone all over the planet has my same experience? Sorry to inform you Conrad, but that is just plain idiotic.
I Ask, how can a personal confession be criticised by anyone? It can only be heard and believed, or heard and not believed. Conrad chooses not to believe me. That is his perogative. But by critisizing that confession, and acting as those he has any idea at all of what I am talking about, Conrad is lying to himself and he is attacking me inspite of his perfunctory mention of his non violent intensions. And he is talking that lie, that misunderstood interpretation and then making much of it, debating that misinterpretation, that self projection, and critisizing it. This is essentially the ancient technique of putting up a straw man and then knocking him down again whether done consciously or unconsciously. This approach is all about Conrad having a conception of what he thinks I am communicating and then having a debate with himself. It doesn’t have a whole lot of anything to do with me. But for him to pretend that he knows what I am talking about in regards to something so personal and incredibly intimate as my confessions of God Communion, and then to critisize that personal confession about which he understands almost nothing, is very abusive, aggressive and destructive.. Conrad can make his confession and I can make mine. I cannot critisize Conrad for his confession.
But I can critisize Conrad for his totally inappropriate criticism of my confession, and have done so with vigor, thoughout this email response.
Any attempt of Conrad to try to interpret my words about what I feel is Divine Communion and to somehow compare it to every other human being on the planet, or to himself, without getting into my skin, and having felt what I have felt in the presence of a host of other Great Masters through the year, without having a lifetime of my other experiences, is being very short sighted, naïve, and abusive, and merely asserting his own egoic need to be “on top”. He is not stating or understanding anything about what I am talking about.
So what is this discussion about? Conrad has no way to disprove or cast dispersions upon my personal confession about my tacit feeling of God in the Presence of Adi Da Samraj. All that He can do is think he can. And Conrad can be disturbed because my confession of God Communion in Adi Da’s personal company and in all kinds of moments in contemplation of Adi Da when not in his company, doesn’t mesch with his. I have had incomparable unique exquisite liberating Communion with God in relationship to Adi Da Samraj that I have never experienced with many other teachers, teachings and Masters. That experience has been of a Tacit or “self-authenticating” nature. I have experienced this state of Divine Communion in His Company intermitently for short and long periods of time for many years and almost whenever I Contemplate Him in Relationship. You don’t feel this Conrad. ‘Tuff luck old boy. Live with it! But don’t bother me with your truckloads of assumptions about what you “think” I am saying. Because, its clear that for all your intellect, you’re clueless. This is my confession about God and your calling it “weak”, or “sad” just because you don’t personally feel it don’t make it so, big boy! What is “weak” and “sad” is your driven need to criticise it.
I don’t know about anyone else, but Adi Da Samraj has clearly given me the means to do that, when I choose to. And not in 10 millennium would I have ever, ever found but how to resort to, or find that Place of God Contemplation on my own. No way. I ould not even have imagined how to do it. Or even had the slightest notion of how uch a Divine Resource could, exist or be contacted apart from my own head trip notions of it, which fall light years short of what is actually the case.
Conrad’s activity of critisizing my confession and other confessions about the revelation of God in relation to Adi Da, looks very much to me like someone who is stuck in adolescence making a problem out of anthing that smells like authority that is not Conrad himself. Otherwise why spend ones days and years dwelling on the imagined “problem” of Adi Da’s authority? Just get a life! Just assume Divine independence, Conrad, if you think your up to being your own Guru, and walk away and do your thing. Just forget the great tradition of sprituality absolutely supporting the Guru devotee relationship. Bury your however many decades of experience of Adi Da’s uniquely liberating Heart transmision, deep within yourself, underneath your “new mind” understanding of the truth. Fly away, you new age birdy, fly! And stop burdening everyone with your horseshit. I believe your own words were "sound and fury signifying nothing".
Yep!
-M