Spirituality Vs. Religion 1 – Theological underpinnings of our modern world

Stephen Hawking died on March 14 and a great many people posted that he was now free, and numerous cartoons showed him walking away from his wheelchair to the ‘light.’  Besides being a major example of ‘Ableism’ in which only fully capable people are assumed to be able to do great things, writer Morgan Wildwood said about his death, “If death is liberation, it is so for everyone, disability or otherwise.”  So why is life so hard?  While there are many atheists, the majority of people accept that there is something beyond the last breath when the heart stops beating and we let go of all earthy things.  Yet so many of us fear physical death.  It could be a desperate need to not want to lose ones egoic identify.  After all, who were you before you realized you were you?  Or perhaps it could be a memory of something we always knew but forgot about after we became socialized into this world in which we were born.  There is no way to prove that life is a part of random universal chaos, but for the possibility of life outside this one we live within, there is ample evidence from many different sources, but few that would fit a modern rigorous scientific study.  Throughout history and even today, a great many exceptional mystics have spent their time here on earth talking about the ‘other side’ and how humans ought to live.  What links ALL the mystics stories is that they ALL say the same thing in one way or another.  We come from a spiritual realm, are born into this world (the simulation), and then at the end, die and merge back with our spiritual selves.  Indigenous shamans and the many great mystery schools (e.g. Esotericism) teach about this in great detail.  Unfortunately, in many cases the mystics teachings rather than liberating people from fear of the great beyond end up becoming a religion that capitalizes on this fear!  The mystery teachings emphasize that we are all divine beings of ‘love and light’ having an emotional experience in a human body.  In a nutshell, religions on the other hand, tell us that a deity created us, and in the end, judges our remaining soul on how we lived on earth according to the doctrines set forth by the religious elites.

If you think about organized religions, (and for this post I’ll focus on Christianity, but it works for any religion in any era), it is a great job security and control scheme if you make yourself the priesthood that acts as the only intermediary between the deity and the masses.  And if you have a story that is the only one the masses are allowed to hear, and you push it enough, then you get the masses supporting and justifying your priestly story all the way – even to the death (of potentially everyone if necessary).  Just think of the death, destruction, and misery that has been waged throughout history between ‘claimants of the one true message by their sect.’  The upper elite echelon of the priesthood inevitably had a political agenda of control and power using sanctioned beliefs to keep the rest of the masses in line.

In Denver at the moment, there is a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition.  Many people will come to see this collection of scrolls and to amaze themselves of writings that may have been from people who knew Jesus personally, or the writers knew people who may have been alive at the time of Jesus.  I haven’t been to the exhibit yet, but I suspect that while people may admire the scrolls, they will not get a real translation of what is actually written in the scrolls.   While many may google them and find out they are gnostic Christian writings, the gnostic story itself will be quietly dismissed.  Why?  Because the gnostic writings contradict for the most part what is in the New testament and hence what is held as sacred doctrine by nearly all the modern Christian religions!  To Christian fundamentalists, the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and therefore indisputable.  The reality that these ancient scrolls reveal is actually a history of stories that reveal a Jesus and that is very different from the one presented in the Bible, and especially in cinematographic epics that now account for what many people think and believe the Bible says!  Many years ago, a fundamentalist co-worker told me she loved the Bible because it had no contradictions within it. I somehow kept a straight face and asked her what version she was reading!  The biggest contradiction for starters is between the old and new testament God.  I’m always fascinated by Christian fundamentalists claiming to follow the teaching of Jesus that use the Old testament to justify their negative and judgmental thoughts, feelings, and actions against heretics (anyone not believing and acting as they do).  These true believers will use whatever straws they can grasp to prove that they are just in their conclusions. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus was an incredible sage and spiritual mystic master.   But reading gnostic texts reveal his teaching differently than the orthodox religious groups understand them.  A quick description of the two set of gnostic scrolls that were found immediately after WWII between 1945 and 1956.

The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the ‘Chenoboskion Manuscripts’ or ‘Gnostic Gospels’) was found near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.  The bulk of the codices are full copies of the Gospels of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, and Gnostic Truth (and no you won’t find them in the Bible).  The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves of that area between 1946 and 1956.  It is believed that this library sums up the teaching of the gnostic Essenes, a sect of Second Temple Judaism that flourished from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD.  (The other two main Jewish sects at that time were the Pharisees and the Sadducees who can be summed up as the more orthodox forms of Judaism.)

The Roman Emperor Constantine established the orthodox Christian church as the Roman empires official religion around 311AD in order to stabilize the empire from numerous uprisings concerning religious interpretations.  He apparently never became Christian, instead remaining with his pagan Mithraism, which was a mystery religion having its roots in Persian or Zoroastrian sources (at least 2000BCE).  At this time there was no official text for the many doctrines that the church espoused.  In 325AD, Constantine requested the first council of Nicea (first ecumenical council) and through the subsequent next 6 councils ending in 787, the orthodox Christian church met to discuss what was acceptable and what was not acceptable within the beliefs and teaching of the church.  In essence, it was a massive editorial cleaning up of all the religious writings to establish one text that promoted the doctrines espoused by the orthodox Holy Roman Church.  Elaine Pagel is a devout religious historian and I recommend her books The Gnostic Gospels, and the subsequent Lost years of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Jesus as a good base to understand the early church.  Understandably, there is an amazing amount of scholarly work about what happened in the first centuries after Christ’s presence.  To sum up what I have read from theological sources, between 1 and 100AD there may have been more than 9 different sects of Christianity claiming to hold the truth of Jesus’s teaching.  I also read that it may have been as few as 15 zealous orthodox Christian clerics who established orthodox Christianity as the central Christian religion, driving all other sects of Christianity underground.

Very little of the Gnostic Nag Hammadi or the Dead Sea scrolls relate directly to the Bible.  In 325, most of the Gnostic texts by women and other Gnostic writers were expunged by the Ecumenical councils.   There was further editing over the next few centuries, including many of the teaching of Jesus.  Around 1610, during the English reformation, the King James Bible version was finished.  Besides making sure it fit new non-Catholic orthodox Christina beliefs, it also cleaned up the Bible to make it more comprehensible (one of my theological friends tells me the original bible was a disconnected and confusing set of writings – I think it still is).  As an example of how the bible was edited, note how often the Bible talks about how Jesus gave talks that enraptured crowds of people.  In the 5 loaves and 2 fishes miracle, people followed Jesus around just to hear what he had to say and apparently forgot to eat.  What did he actually say kept them so enraptured?  No mention.  But at the end of the day, what he said was so compelling that people went without food just to be sure they didn’t miss anything!  The bible interestingly has little to say on his actually teachings at these gatherings.  Elaine Pagel and others say that it was because Jesus was preaching a Gnostic perspective, and the Gnostic texts reveal in depth much more of Jesus and his teachings than the bible ever will!   So what are the main points of Jesus’s teachings that mirror the teaching of the many mystery schools and shamanic transitions throughout history that give us a framework of how humans ought to live sustainably, and more importantly, why life needs to be more spiritually lived??  To Be Continued…..