The best theological work you ever read?

[More Than A Feeling]

Ok, leaving out the Bible, Qu'ran, and so forth, what has been the best work of theology you have ever read? (I am looking for recommendations to add to my reading list)

For me, the best I have ever read is The Nature and Destiny of Man by Reinhold Niebuhr. It was really long (two books totalling 600 pages), but in the end, it really helped to clarify my faith. It helped me to figure out what I believe and why I believe it. Niebuhr was a theologian who was also a Democrat, so I knew I could trust him not to start spewing hatred. I was not disappointed.

What theology have you read that has made a big impact on you, and what would you recommend?

[Fovea]

1. I, thou

by Martin Buber.

[Tace]

2. Why, The Kybalion, Of Course

http://kybalion.home.att.net/kybalion.html

But, it isn't really theology, and you'll be disappointed if that's what you're really looking for.

[NAO]

15. The Kybalion really helped my understand things during an unusual period

in my life. I first read it about 15 years ago, and it ALL made sense to me and explained ALL.

I just went back and re-read it about 2 months ago and it is still a remarkable book to those who have eyes to see and understanding.

I have the little blue hardback from Yogi Publication Society.

[snot]

3. Frankl's Search for Meaning and Becker's Denial of Death. nt

[kodi]

4. Aquinas's Summa.

took an entire semester, with a jesuit priest teaching it. only finnigans wake and feynman's lectures on physics were harder to read or took longer to understand, even as superficially i did.

but, i have learned more about the world from my dogs than all of those texts.

dogs live righteously and in the moment. its the only time we actually have.

thict nhat han's(sp?) "Living Buddha, living Christ" is an excellent book too.

[Tace]

7. I Always Smile At How Aquinas Disavowed All His Work Before His Death

I don't have the exact quote, but it was something like "I have wasted my entire life, and I was very wrong."

[kodi]

11. that's what an epiphany is all about, eh?

at least he found out before he died.

“Everything that I have written seems to me worthless in comparison with the things I have seen and which have been revealed to me”, from the “Acta Bollandiana”, p.712 Reginald of Piperno, (his best friend).

And reason, again, does not lead to faith.

[bobbieinok]

5. several works by Tillich...sorry, don't remember names just now

[The Traveler]

6. Andrew Harvey: The Way of Passion (n/t)

[pop goes the weasel]

8. Blameless in Abaddon

By James Morrow

It's a fantasy novel about religion, written by an atheist. Where else are you going to find an everyman protagonist discussing the problem of good and evil with Satan and St. Augustine, or God facing the World Court on charges of crimes against humanity?

[lvx35]

9. Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

This book blew apart my church dogma instilled in me as a kid and showed me how broad and rich religion could be.

[NAO]

22. Tales From Topographic Oceans, Anyone? Yes.

from "The 10 Worst Concept Albums of All Time"
http://www.westword.com/issues/1996-11-28/music4.html

*****

# 4. Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans (1973)

First Bad Sign: Four songs, four album sides--you do the math.

Concept: Jon Anderson, with some free time in his hotel room before a show, dreams up Yes's waterlogged Waterloo based on a lengthy footnote in Autobiography of a Yogi that describes the four-part shastric scriptures, "which cover all aspects of religion and social life as well as fields like medicine and music, art and architecture." Why couldn't he just ball groupies before a show like normal rock stars?

(Note: Rick Wakemen reportedly quit the group in frustration soon after touring behind this album because people kept asking him what it was about and he didn't know.)

Worst Moment: Steve Howe slips the "Close to the Edge" riff into "Ritual" before quickly remembering, "Ah, wait--that was last album."

Grand Finale: "Ritual" features a drum-and-bass duel that's supposed to mirror life's struggle between the forces of evil and pure love--a struggle that's played out nightly on hundreds of creaky car backseats in far more lively fashion.

*****

also a favorite from this list:


#7. Emerson, Lake and Palmer Tarkus (1971)

First Bad Sign: The inside cover art spells out the gobbledygook story in eleven panels. Stylistically, it's a bad mix between Destroy All Monsters and the stations of the cross.

Concept: Rejected Transformer toy prototypes ravage the Earth to the sound of ripped-off Bach riffs played in weird time signatures. Tarkus, (half armadillo, half Sherman tank) battles Manticore (half lion, half scorpion with a human's head) and a combination pterodactyl/bomber plane. There is also a combo grasshopper and safari helmet that looks like a real pushover, even with the cruiser missiles.

Worst Moment: "Aquatarkus," when the hideous creature/artillery takes to the water and Keith Emerson gets to unload all his farting-in-the-bathtub Moog sounds.

Grand Finale: In an unrelated story, the album concludes with "Are You Ready, Eddie," an attempt by these lofty classical-music bandits to rip off something more current: Little Richard's "Ready Teddy." For two minutes and eight seconds, Greg Lake quizzes engineer Eddie Offord on whether he is indeed ready to shut down his sixteen-track recorder. Why couldn't he have done that 38 minutes and 56 seconds ago?

10 Worst Concept Albums of All Time
http://www.westword.com/issues/1996-11-28/music4.html

[wli]

10. Bertrand Russell, "Why I am not a Christian" n/t

[kweerwolf]

12. The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong

It deals with the history of fundamentalism in the three monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Armstrong also wrote A History of God that I liked as well. It's more of a history of the evolution of the concept of "God" through the same three religions.

[Old Mouse]

14. A Historty of God

goes well with The Biography of God

[saltpoint]

49. Karen Armstrong is terrific. The books you cite are really good,

and her BUDDHA is very good also.

She must be a great teacher.

[OneBlueSky]

13. among others, "Original Blessing" by Matthew Fox . . . n/t

.

[NAO]

16. Atheism, The Case Against God by George H. Smith

It was so clear, so comprehensive, and so compelling that I went into the book a dedicated theist and came out a dedicated atheist.

It does an excellent job of proving, beyond any doubt, that the concept of "God" is meaningless and empty; that revealed religion is fatally flawed, and that "God" as (?) described by theists cannot exist.

I highly recommend this book. It can really clear things up and take even a devout believer and turn them into an aggressive critical atheist in a matter of a few hundred pages.

Atheism: The Case Against God
by George H. Smith
ISBN: 0-87975-124-X

[SPKrazy]

43. Yuh Right, LOL

I highly recommend this book. It can really clear things up and take even a devout believer and turn them into an aggressive critical atheist in a matter of a few hundred pages.

That was the funniest post I've read tonight

thanks for the laugh


:rofl:

[grumpy old fart]

17. "Doubt" by Jennifer Michael Hecht...opened by my eyes to the history of...

dogma, faith, religion in general. Let me know I was not alone and fortified my agnosticism. Hecht discusses the history of great doubters in all religions from ancient to modern times.


http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060097957.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

[Lexingtonian]

18. two

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism A. J. Heschel
Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness Evelyn Underhill

[Igel]

19. Thomas a Kempis.

Imitation of Christ.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

20. Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis

I'm an atheist, but even I found Mere Christianity well-argued and well thought through.

It's presented in a beautifully syllogistic form - he makes a point, justifies it with reference to his preceding ones and external evidence, and then repeats.

Unfortunately, he makes a mistake right at the start, in chapter 2, where he attempts to prove the existance of an omnibenevolent supreme being, but apart from that, even though I disagreed strongly with his conclusions, I thought that everything followed logically and (in nearly all cases) irrefutably if you accept his (faulty) premise.

It's a perfect example of how a polemic ought to be written, I think.

I'm also very fond of most of Lewis's other theological works.

The writer on theological subjects I think is right most often, as opposed to writing best, is Richard Dawkins (and he also writes very well indeed, although not as well as Lewis in my view), but his views tend to come in asides or short articles, not actual works of theology.

[NAO]

21. "Stranger In a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein

Thou Art God!

[skyblue]

27. I need to reread that one. Is there a movie also?

[CatholicEdHead]

23. Pastoral Letters of the late Bishop Lucker of New Ulm, MN

http://www.dnu.org/news/lucker/luckerbook.html

http://www.dnu.org/news/lucker/

Edit:
Samples:
http://www.dnu.org/news/lucker/writings.html

Excerpts:
http://www.dnu.org/news/lucker/bishopoverview.html

[Sam1]

24. Books by Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr is one of the real greats of American Theology. Several other books of his that you might want to check out are "The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness" and "Irony in American History". I am not sure of the second title, but the important words are there.

[saltpoint]

25. Matthew Fox's ORIGINAL BLESSING, A.N. Wilson's PAUL and DEMIAN

by Hermann Hesse.

[skyblue]

26. The DaVinci Code. It dabbles into the historical truths behind why

Paganism had to be destroyed in order to keep a stable environment in Europe at the time. It made me want to read more on the topic. Tho' I have also read a few books by the Dalai Lama and tried to read some other Buddhist type books.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

29. Please tell me you're joking?

If you want more on the topic, I'd recommend the computer game "Gabriel Knight III", which deals with similar themes, and is also a great game.

I should caution you, though, that the stuff in the Da Vinci Code about secret cults and the supression of the Divine Feminine and Mary Magdalene and.. well, basically everything, is... well, "not supported by evidence" is probably the kindest way of putting it.

[PabloLego]

28. The Mountain of Silence

The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos Markides.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

30. C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

and Goodnight Moon

[Orrex]

34. I read Goodnight Moon before bed last night

Not a big fan of Mere Christianity, though--too many unsupportable logical leaps.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

35. Goodnight moon just about says it all.

[Orrex]

37. It sure does!

[TallahasseeGrannie]

36. Goodnight moon just about says it all.

[Orrex]

38. It sure does!

[BigMcLargehuge]

31. The Consolation of Philosphy (Boetheus)

A one-man narrative, penned in the cell where he was condemned to death, and lamenting of his fate, is visited by Philosophy. That visit and the subsequent discussion melded the core of Christianity with the rigors of philosphy (at least in the narrative) and the idea of Fate as a force.

One of the few books I read every couple of years just to enjoy the language.

[kwassa]

32. "Mysticism", by Evelyn Underwood

really about Christian mysticism, first published in 1906, but it holds up very well

"The Science of Mind" by Ernest Holmes.
"The History of God" by Karen Armstrong.
"Among the Dervishes" by a name I can't currently recall.

[Orrex]

33. The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

Thoroughly decimates every single argument for a "divine designer," thereby gutting all of the modern apologetic works based on perceived complexity.

After Dawkins, I'd say Philip K. Dick's VALIS is the second best theological work that I've read.

[FDRLincoln]

39. huxley

"The Perennial Philosophy" by Aldous Huxley

[Jeroen]

54. Very inspiring book! nt

[cain_7777]

40. The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

The part about Plato and his impact on the development of Christian philosophy gave me yet another perspective of the religion. Why I Am Not a Christian by the same author is also great, as well as some of Ingersoll's work.

[CatholicEdHead]

41. "Revelation and the Church: Vatican II in the 21st Century"

By the late Bishop Lucker, et al.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570754799/104-3467043-6624742?v=glance&n=283155

It is a good companion to his book compilation of pastoral letters, which you can still get at the address on the link.
http://www.dnu.org/news/lucker/luckerbook.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

42. Unity of Religious Ideals

by Haz. Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan.

From the blurb on the back:

In The Unity of Religious Ideals, Hazrat Inayat Khan presents an overview of the evolution of the religious life of the planet, and sheds new light on the spriritual thread unifying the messages brought by all the great religious teachers of humanity.
The Unity of Religious Ideals is a sourcebook of deep wisdom concerning the essence of religon and its significance to humanity and the world today.

[SPKrazy]

44. I Enjoy Marcus Borg

well, enjoy may not be the word, but I do like and appreciate his views on theology.

As for inspiration, I always liked Richard Bach- Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Illusions

[saltpoint]

45. And not to be sneezed at: THE MISTS OF AVALON by Marion Zimmer

Bradley.

What a gem of a book.

[charlie]

46. Spectrum of Consciousness

by Ken Wilber. Probably the most comprehensive synthesis of East/West, sacred/profane, psychology/mysticism I've ever read.

The Real Frank Zappa Book, by FZ himself. No, I'm not kidding. Raucously profane, yet slyly profound observations on our world, delivered in Frank's inimitable imperious style.

Edit: spelling

[TechBear_Seattle]

47. "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann

The name means, "things desired."

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have the right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

http://www.serv.net/~techbear/humanism/desiderata.html

[saltpoint]

48. If you'd like to piss off some fundies, I recommend Margot Adler's

DRAWING DOWN THE MOON, a very good treatment of wiccan and pagan paths.

Not for every taste, but awfully well prepared and updated.

Adler is an NPR reporter as well.

[LiberalVoice]

50. The Da Vinci Code

:rofl: :hide:

[Meshuga]

51. The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors

by Reeve Robert Brenner.

Great research study that reports on the changes in religious belief and practice undergone by Holocaust survivors as a result of their horrible experience. This book has personal testimonies of the survivors. Excellent book!

[shimmergal]

52. My favorite--the book which

persuaded me I could honestly remain a Christian: that much-maligned book to come out of the 60's: HONEST TO GOD by Bishop John A. T. Robinson.

[bobbieinok]

53. I remember when that came out and the discussions in a group in

grad school.

My books:

--CS Lewis Screwtape Letters

--several books by Tillich

--Kueng's book Does God Exist?

--Hugh Schonfeld The Passover Plot and Those Incredible Christians.....He is/was a Jewish scholar who wrote these and other books; they contain much info about the period of Jesus and later periods that most church goers do not know.

--Elaine Pagels Adam, Eve and the Serpent (1987) .... Lots of info about the early church fathers and their doctrinal disagreements; it made me sad that the views of those who lost disappeared from 'acceptable christianity.'

--Anderson (?) Understanding the Old Testament, a text-book we used in 1959/60 in a college class on the history of religion.

[jokerman93]

55. These had an impact

-not all theology, but related:

The Experience of Nothingness, Michael Novak
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche
Androgeny, June Singer
The Cloud of Unknowing, unattributed
The Politics of Experience, RD Laing
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton
Living with Kundalini, Gopi Krishna
Freedom from the Known, J. Krishnamurti

[bloom]

56. Lots of interesting sounding things on this thread.

I'm not big about "bests". I read this online today and thought it was interesting....


The Wisdom of the Serpent

<snip>
Perhaps it is time to ask with some seriousness what it was that Asherah offered that attracted so many away from Yahweh? What is the wisdom of the serpent? To answer that question, let us begin by looking at the Goddess's sometime adversary. Yahweh is surrounded by the hosts of heaven. He rules over the world, but his true throne is located in the realm above. When he appears, he descends from that higher realm. In other words, like all celestial beings he transcends the earth and stands in judgment over it. As the writer of Ecclesiastes puts it, "God is in heaven and you upon earth" (Eccles. 5.2). To use a metaphorical ratio, God is to the world as the immortal soul is to the mortal body. Although the Hebrew Scriptures are not extreme in this regard, this metaphor, when followed out, leads eventually to a sense that the heavenly soul is everything and that the body is the enemy which must be controlled or escaped. The end of radical transcendence and disassociation is Gnostic flight.

It is the New Testament which takes the Hebrew metaphors to their inevitable conclusion. Jesus comes from above, the offspring of the Holy Spirit, and in the end he returns to heaven. And he calls his followers to renounce this world - family, possessions, even life – in order to enter the kingdom of heaven (see particularly Luke 14.23-33). He teaches his disciples to pray to the Father who is in heaven, whose will must be obeyed, whose compassion is shown by forgiving the debts owed to him. It is not surprising that many of his early followers understood Jesus as teaching the denial of the body and the supreme importance of the soul.

We know much less about Asherah, because her worship was officially repressed and with her worship whatever teaching she had to offer. Our picture, therefore, must be conjectural, based not only upon specific references to her but also upon our knowledge of goddesses in general. What we can be sure is that Asherah is a wholly different sort of deity from Yahweh. Though connected to the Moon as Yahweh is to the Sun and sometimes identified with the morning star, she is of the earth, earthly. She affirms the body and its desires; her symbol is the tree of life, an organic, growing cosmic reality. Like Yahweh she too can punish and destroy - the serpent who intimates immortality also threatens a venomous bite - but both her immortality and her mortality are of this world. To find immortality in her is to be absorbed in her perennial cycles, to know yourself as one with her body. To worship the goddess is to participate in those cycles of the seasons which constitute the rhythm of life. For Yahweh the seasons are but occasions to remember historical (or perhaps pseudo-historical) events in which he is said to have acted and revealed himself. For the Goddess, spring is spring, a time of renewed warmth, fecundity, birth.

If Yahweh represents civilization - the tribe, history, the forefathers - Asherah is nature in both its creative and destructive modes. In her is life and death. Yahweh is particular and unique; Asherah is universal and non-discriminating. Yahweh's salvation is historical and elective. The Exodus from Egypt only happens once, to one group of people. Great emphasis then is put upon remembering with gratitude what happened in the past. Asherah also provides salvation, but it is cyclical and available to all. To live in harmony with her rhythms is to find peace. Death is not her enemy but simply an aspect of her rhythm. Moreover, her salus (health) is not metaphorical and spiritual but real and practical. Paracelsus in the 16th century expressed his faith that Natura contains within her a cure for every human illness (Paracelsus 69, 76). It simply is up to the physician to find it. Her secrets, he saw, are not historical but botanical.

<snip>

http://southerncrossreview.org/38/williams.htm

[Vidar]

57. Martin Buber's "I & Thou".

[Evoman]

58. Darwin on Trial by Philip Johnson and Denying Evolution by Pigliucci

I like the first because it shows all the misunderstanding, misinterpretations, and lies about evolution all in one book. Its shows all the Idiot Design/Creationism arguments in one ignorant go. The latter is great in showing both misunderstanding about evolution AND science, and then tries to explain how things really are. A very interesting read.

[Hidden Stillness]

59. "Mystical Theology"

My favorite: "Mystical Theology," by the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, early mystic from around 500A.D., both the out-of-print 1897 John Parker translation and the 1923 Shrine of Wisdom translation. Very beautiful, and very profound; also the Letters of Pseudo-Areopagite. Also great, the early Christian mystic Isaac the Syrian, also known as Isaac of Nineveh. Beautiful, poetic abtrstract imagery that captures the lesson and the meaning. Better to teach with the great writing that makes you feel the glory, than explanations that set you apart from it, and then trying to find your way back home.

[saltpoint]

60. Hello, Hidden Stillness. I could use an update on these two

recommendations you've given us.

Are both titles available, or out-of-print, or just hrd to find, or what?

They sound absolutely fascinating and I've never heard of them.

[Hidden Stillness]

61. A Few Sources

Hi, Old Crusoe. The Shrine of Wisdom translation is I believe out of print, but was not hard to find--go to any good used religious or "occult" bookstore, or any place that has "rare" books; also, the Mystical Theology from this text has been reprinted in other books (it is a very short book). It is complete, five chapters, in "Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology," by F.C. Happold. The Parker book was so rare and unavailable that, after years of searching, never having found it, I finally located it in a University library in my State, (Michigan), got an inter-library loan to my library, and photo-copied the whole book on the copying machine in my library. It was worth it, as all of Dionysius's works are there, including the wonderful Letters. These things have also been put online, another good thing about the internet. Religious groups or Universities often put, complete, rare old texts online, and if you just print them all up, it can give you priceless treasures right there. If you Google the words Mystical Theology, you get a few versions, and if you Google Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, you can get other information.

Two Shrine of Wisdom links are: www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/dionys1.htm and www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/MysticalTheology.html and the 1897 Parker version is at www.tertullian.org/fathers/areopagite_06_mystic_theology.htm . The Shrine of Wisdom, by the way, I think still exists, in England. It is an organization that preserved and published the great texts of all religions, in nice but inexpensive volumes, showing the basic unity, truth and glory of all.

Pseudo-Dionysius was once an extremely influencial Christian writer, influenced Dante, Milton, St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, Johannes Eckhart, etc., and the Mystical Theology and Divine Names were hugely popular manuscripts, often quoted, as late as the Middle Ages. Pseudo-Dionysius was believed to have been a monk or cleric in Syria around the year 500, but that is a guess from the references of the texts, etc.; the name reference is to the Dionysius of the Bible. This was the original, pre-Catholic, Middle Eastern/Eastern Orthodox Christianity, before Popes, centralization, and "original sin"/literalism, etc.

Mystic theology itself was once a common Christian approach, contrasting to "affirmative" theology. Also known as "negative theology," it tells you "It is not this, It is not that," not to attach the ultimate sense, or sense of the Divine, to anything in this world, or that you can think of, as you will be limiting it, and have actually lost it. It cautions you always to be aware, and to avoid mistakes, by thinking that the small part, or the single example, was the whole. We will never reach the Whole, where God was complete. The Mystical Theology is all of this approach, No not This, No, not That, telling you that even the place Moses got to was not God, but the Place where God was, etc. It is a more helpful approach to know always what to avoid doing, than to pretend that you actually "describe God"; a careful desire to be clear and to know, not just be sloppy and more and more misguided. Although I do not like the "Father," "He," etc., references, knowing that you cannot "refer to" the Totally Inward Absolute All and Beyond Manifestation, the book is still a true guide. It gives you the real sense that Pseudo-Dionysius is acquainted with the further state, and of course, if the person is not somewhat further along than you are, to lead you and tell you things, then what good are they?

It is like the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse, another great and favorite "theology," telling you cautiously "not this, not that," etc. Sometimes it is more important to address the mistake that you were making and get it removed first, than to learn things and pretend you will not just distort everything, before you have cleared error out of your thinking. Be aware of what you were presuming, then learn. Also, don't forget the great and underrated Christian book, "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman. Read some of Whitman's poems, and know a "modern" who has found Something further.

[saltpoint]

62. I have printed out the information you've provided, as there would be

almost no way for me to remember enough of it to navigate toward these texts and sources.

Thank you! What a treasure trove. I will make a deliberate (if slow-motion) hunt for some of these texts/sources, and appreciate very much your offering them.

I love the image of you photocopying an entire text since it is so rare and difficult to find. I won't tell even one patent and copyright attorney! And the original author would express delight. After so much time, here again is a questing soul. Perhaps ghosts attend such reverential gestures and smile undetected as we go about our lives.

The era of pre-Catholic spiritualism in the known ("literate"?) world is a huge draw. So I am hoping to find many unknown things -- let us say, unknown to me -- in this hunt. I've spent some time in Catholic Churches but am unaligned these days. Centralization of many ideas is a threat to their potency and power. As Eric Hoffer puts it:

“The conservatism of a religion -- its orthodoxy -- is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.”

--Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

And I intersect with some of the influences your recommended texts inspired all the way to contemporary English drama:

“I wish there was one person in my life I could show. One instinctive, absolutely unbrisk person I could take to Greece, and stand in front of certain shrines and sacred streams and say, ‘Look! Life is only comprehensible through a thousand local gods. ‘ And not just the old dead ones with names like Zeus--no, but living geniuses of place and person! And not just Greece but modern England! Spirits of certain trees, certain curves of brick wall, certain chip shops, if you like, and slate roofs--just as of certain frowns in people and slouches... I’d say to them, ‘Worship as many as you can see-- and more will appear!’”

Dr. Dysart in Peter Shaffer’s EQUUS

____
And are you ever right on LEAVES OF GRASS -- a spellbindingly beautiful work. Whitman is one of the true ones.

[Hidden Stillness]

64. Mystical Theology--Further Thoughts

It seems to me that the ultimate wisdom of the approach of the mystical or "negative" theology, that refuses to treat contemplation as the final truth, that refuses to go on naming things, that realizes, finally, that all the descriptions do not necessarily bring you any closer to the Divine than you were at the beginning, but that ignorance surely does not, is proved true by two facts about the situation.

The first is what you realize, dimly, to be the nature of the Absoluteness that is God. Once you start to realize that if you were to think every aspect of every thought of every incident on all levels, from every perspective, on all parts of the universe simultaneously, that it would still be as nothing, only spanning one aspect of creation, and that all the infinite is so complex, so fluid and living, that the very next second it would change, like a kaliedoscope and all the multiples of a second ago would be obsolete and a new world begun, that it is then futile even to try to have a "final understanding," even a grasp at all, of what we call "God." Beyond that, God is not an expressed part of creation, being the Uncreated beyond, the all-containing totally inner core where All exists, before words. The description is just an applied limit. If you realize that the Creator must be even more complicated than the creation, then you now know that you will never get to the end of God, by knowledge or anything else. God is Living, and not a finished sermon or treatise, and therefore all that you knew a moment ago, has now passed by and been replaced with multitudes of other unknowns.

The second part is when you realize the flawed nature of our own thinking and comprehension about things. How do we perceive things, or know them? Do we understand things, flawlessly, by direct psychic connection with them, and know them from the inside, as if by experience and perspective taken on? Of course not--we judge, with ulterior motives, from too little evidence, and never realize, because we have never gotten appropriate feedback on it, that we were ever even wrong. We do not really get the facts about the outside world from the outside world, directly, but instead all we ever really know are our own opinions about it, in our own heads. How many times has it happened, that we have had our minds all made up against somebody, for example, and learning one single sympathetic fact made the entire "reasoned case" against the person collapse like a house of cards, and a delusion. We were never actually right before, no matter how it seemed; yet it seemed all along that we were getting all our information from the outside world, when really it was the opposite--we were imposing our opinion on the outside world, and calling it what we wanted to.

How can you describe an individual by using standard, stereotypical phrases, as if reacting to a predetermined class of things, "the same thing," even though you have not met it before? Your thoughts associate with other thoughts in your mind--not in the mind of the person you were thinking of--and so begin to take on character traits that you were not getting as implied by them, but as invented by you.

"You can only know things by yourself," or "You only judge things by yourself," according to these old expressions, meaning that the knowledge you already had in your head was the actual standard. This, as a matter of fact, is one of the greatest things that people can learn, if they ever do, that the opinions you give of things in the outside world are not based on objective knowledge about them, but come from your own perspective and state of mind. There are many problems, even many unbridgeable gulfs, concerning the attempts to know others. First, the only thing we ever know of them is what is on the outside; only things that have been made apparent or manifest can be available to us to be thought of. Yet who among us would ever believe that we ourselves could be known and understood by a tally of facts that could be known externally? Deep in the heart of you, beneath all the changing traits and opinions, beyond the reach of time, there is the deepest core, where all is pre-created silence, where it is deeper than description, and where you actually feel this is where you live, "This, I am." It is the truest self, the "real me," where you feel even your mind itself is "external" to it; you actually live in your mind as your first/immediate environment. Yet who from outside could ever access your real sense of self? Only the traits that clothed you from outside, however far away from them you felt, were available for others to think with. (There is a truly great expression of this situation, one of the greatest essays ever written, "The Lantern-Bearers" by Robert Louis Stevenson, in the book "Great Essays" by Houston Peterson, in anthologies of Stevenson's short stories and essays, and maybe on the internet; by Googling the title and author. It is a wonderful, profound essay.)

Further, we sometimes find our opinions of people changing--getting more favorable, or more adverse--based not on having learned a new objective fact about them, but because something about ourselves, our personalities, our life-situations, has changed; totally unrelated to the supposed subject of the opinion. This makes you wonder then, where the opinion really comes from, and what it was actually made up of. Is it really even about someone else at all? We can only think clearly by comparing, but we only compare by using our own sets of facts, not theirs, and if we are honest, much criticism is motivated by our own interests and posturing, with the "target" only as pretext. If you attack someone for this or that "reason" but do it to flatter yourself, to avoid facing the same trait in yourself, or because you have completely misunderstood the situation, then you have really never even gone out of your own head to try to meet the outside world at all, but are actually merely having an internal discussion with yourself. Often, judgments about others seem designed more to organize and make sense of the information and emotions in ourselves, than to actually try to grasp the qualities and standards of others, and this is often necessary, so we do not lose ourselves or our real psyches. Regardless, it makes attempts to understand and know others, now revealed to be much harder than it might at first seem.

I believe there is an objective reality of truth, unlike the more "Buddhist" way of teaching, and that we will someday know it. I also know that this ordinary world is a mystery, and that the simplest things are infinite mysteries of God. This is why any theology or metaphysics must always be aware of how complex all things are, and that we all live in shadows, and think from afar.

[nealmhughes]

63. Common Sense by Thomas Paine.

Classic enlightenment prose, witty in its examples, and completely destructive of fundamentalism, and in praise of Deism.