While growing up I attended a small fundamentalist church. I found I could never follow the sermons and in fact I generally fell asleep before they were over. Memorizing and quoting Bible verses never had much appeal for me as it made me feel more like a parrot or trained seal than an intelligent human being. Even as a child I wanted to ask the more probing questions, but I knew they would get no satisfactory answer outside of more Bible verses.
Back in the late 1950s two things happened as I sat in my fold-down seat and struggled through the sermon. I was maybe 11 or 12. The first thing was that I tried to imagine who I was before I was born. What characteristics did I have, and where did I come from?
Who am I, who am I?
As I pursued the questions in my mind I fell into such a void that I recoiled in fear and struggled to come back home, come back to my small home and alcoholic family, come back to the drone of the preacher and the monotony of the Bible verses. Sunday after Sunday I would fall into that void and then fight to come back home. I never talked about it because there was no one to talk to. I realized that no one was large enough to know the answer, let alone entertain the questions. My only solace was to try and hang on to the reality I had as best I could. As bad as it was, that reality seemed better than falling into a place where beliefs had no anchor and where there seemed no ground beneath my feet.
In addition to my trips to the void, I also began to imagine a child like myself, an Arab child sitting in his mosque somewhere. He was being instructed that he was being told the true belief. I was being told that what I was being taught was the true belief. How were we to know what was true? We were both being guided by hearsay, asked to trust and believe in the hearsay, then asked to build our realities around it. I wanted some way of direct knowing, of being able to determine for myself the nature of true reality without being told to just memorize verses.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - zingzing
this may anger some people. but you know who those people are.
we don't need religion--religion needs us.
2 - chantal
John....
Amazing, as usual, and the Thought is definitely something that I have been contemplating for quite a while now.
The idea that the ideology of religion hinders us from living our lives fully---with true awareness--makes so much sense to me. I do go to church about twice a month and most times I find my mind wandering, looking at the people around me, thinking how they follow so blindly, it seems. I wonder if they ever even consider What or Who they pray to, beyond what they are taught over and over every week.
Blind faith is what we're taught is necessary....but is it? What's the point in being blind? I know too many people who are raised within a faith, and never question or explore anything outside of it.
::Considering::
3 - gonzo marx
John sez...
*We are dying from our beliefs, and our beliefs won’t save us. We act like silly, lazy children waiting to be saved, rather than growing up and saving ourselves.*
Quoted for Truth
nuff said...
Excelsior?
4 - John Spivey
zingzing-
all in all, it's just another brick in the wall...
chantal-
what a sweet audience you are. thanks
gonzo-
quoted for the gonzo truth...what can I say?
5 - Baronius
I can't remember which logical fallacy you're using. I think it's called false generalization. You take your experience, and the experience of the Arab child, and generalize it to "every god is a limited doorway". Even if all gods but one were limited doorways, that wouldn't prove that all gods were.
Actually, since neither example supports the idea that any religion is wrong, the error is deeper than a false generalization. You use queues: the alcoholism, the 1950's, boring sermons. They create an impression of dissatisfaction. But they don't prove that your memorized lessons were wrong, only that you didn't enjoy them.
I wonder, in what sense is this the work of a scientist? You approach the question of belief with predetermined assumptions. (Darn it, my system is about to crash. I'll have to leave it at that.)
P.S. - Zing's error is called poisoning the well. It's a way to insult the person who might disagree, before he disagrees.
6 - John Spivey
Baronius,
The article was not meant as a treatise in logical argument, but only as a thumbnail sketch of the path I have walked. To be transparent, I told the story of sitting in the church as a literary device to catch the minds of readers who may have formulated similar questions in their minds and may have had similar experiences. I think most people have witnessed a crack in the veneer of our conditioned reality, but most erase it from their minds out of fear or the presence of dogma. In the course of such a short piece I couldn't enumerate all the points along the way.
It sounds as if strict argumentative logic is your belief system, but either/or breaks down at fundamental levels as witnessed by the nature of light. I have been trained in the logic of mathematics, but even those systems rely on sets of assumptions. Euclidean geometry falls apart and becomes something else by altering one basic assumption. The intent of the article is to challenge people to go beneath their assumptions and find what world might exist there. Do your assumptions treat you well?
7 - Baronius
John - sorry. My computer system wasn't doing me any favors, so I had to post as quickly and precisely as possible. I hope I'll have the time to flesh out my criticisms today.
You've created a system with a huge assumption, that the divine has no voice. What a sad little deaf-mute you believe in! It doesn't love; it doesn't have anything to tell us. Why should we seek it out? If it were the truth, then the false veneer is more interesting.
But (and this is why I was harping on structured argumentation) you don't present any reason to believe that it's true. I want to know the truth, even if it's the tiny little infinity you think it is. But you don't even try to defend your opinions. And you ask a lot, based on a system you don't defend. You want us to abandon all our beliefs. You make some pretty sweeping indictments of them.
But hey, I love a good challenge. You want to purify our symbols, great. Purify them based on what? On the idea that if they represent anything specific, they must be wrong. By declaring that everything is symbol, and that symbols are limitations, you set yourself above any religious tradition or personal interpretation.
Then there's the assumption that other people have failed to pursue your line of thinking "out of fear or the presence of dogma". I find that assumption condescending. So much so that I can't really reply to it without breaking the "no personal attacks" rule. So I'm going to move along, and hope that I've clarified my position a little.
8 - diana hartman
I am pleased to tell you this article is being featured in the Culture Focus today, August 15.
Diana Hartman
Culture Editor
9 - John Spivey
Diana,
Thank you.
Baronius,
It seems you really want to defend some belief system, but you don't say what it is. Have you ever reached out and touched the essence of life without the filter of your beliefs? Have you touched your purpose in being here?
10 - zingzing
baronius--if i poisoned the well, it wasn't because of what people would say, it's because of what they've already said. experience isn't limited to a single post.
11 - Baronius
John, I'm a Christian, but I don't think that's really what I'm defending here. This is about the right of a Zoroastrian to say that there are two gods, and to be completely wrong. It's about the dignity of religion, which is lost when someone says that all religions are the same.
I've seen efforts to get to the truth "behind" belief, and the result is always the same. A warm, sticky paste with no shape, certainly with no demands. If an obligation exists, it's a limitation that should be ignored. If there's a doctrine, we need to move past it.
It reminds me of that Orwell quote, "Whoever controls the present, controls the past. Whoever controls the past controls the future." By defining all previous religious experience, you are able to co-opt it. You have the map, and you read the road signs. And the destination you've chosen is literally the middle of nowhere (if you see any attributes, we're not there yet). The trip doesn't sound fun.
I guess you're right, that I want to defend some belief system. I want to defend the possibility of having some, any, belief system. I keep thinking about something G.K. Chesterton wrote, about the masculitiy of faith. Maybe that's the problem with your boundless nothing god: not that he lacks ears or a voice, but that he lacks testicles.
12 - Mark Schannon
Baronius, as one of John's worst acolytes (LOL), I think you're approaching his philosophy from the wrong end.
You've created a system with a huge assumption, that the divine has no voice.
I don't think one creates such a system, one comes to recognize it through the process John describes. Are the attributes we hope of God really of God or of ourselves? Since we can never prove or disprove God (and therefore His attributes), they must be of ourselves.
Symbols are representations of things, not the things themselves. (Yikes, I'm going to start talking about Platonic Ideals in a minute.) They have value in that they tell us things about ourselves, but they have no inherent value--it's individualist.
You really should read John's book. He's shameless! He'll borrow from every religion on earth to understand his world...but in the end, I think his path is what I have just decided to call Spivey-Buddhism.
If you start with a belief in a God with balls (a wonderful image by the way,) it seems to me that you're at the end of your journey. If you begin simply by observing, in silence, with a trust in yourself, then, if you're lucky (I suppose), a path or many paths open up before you.
I can't remember how John describes it his book, but there's a story about any path can be correct--I'm not even going to try.
Another approach: John is a pure Cartesian, in the sense that, like Decartes, he starts by accepting nothing as true and then examines his world with dispassion in the search for truth. (Unlike Decartes, I hope, he doesn't chicken out at the end and fall back on God as the answer.)
This is dumb...me trying to explain John's philosophy when I'm struggling with it myself.
Oh well...he who lives by the mouth dies by the mouth.
In Jameson Veritas
13 - Christopher Rose
I love John's writing and you are a fine fellow traveller, Mark. I'm loving my own personal walk into the unknown and it's good to know that there are a growing number of people who understand that spirituality and religion are entirely unrelated.
14 - John Spivey
Baronius and mark,
Words will always fall short of the mark, but I'll try anyway.
While growing up I worked in the fields for my grandfather. It was in the San Joaquin Valley of California, Grapes of Wrath country. I worked a few days with this guy from Arkansas. You always swap stories while you work and he told me a story about his dad, a crusty old guy I had met. Seems his dad had always been a pretty horny guy. The father for one reason or another (probably cancer) had had to have a surgical castration. Later the old man said, "If I had known it would be this peaceful, I would have had it done a long time ago."
If we are seeking to understand God (and peace), why throw balls into the mix? Is God so small as to need cojones to get the job done? Sounds more like Zeus. I think men fear that if they find peace and understanding that they'll become a woman.
Imagine in your spiritual search you come upon an infinite unknowable flow of energy. There seems no way to touch or grasp it. However you find that you can project an image on whatever it is and the image becomes a window or door to the infinite unknowable. Through that image comes a small flow of the great energy, however that small flow is colored and shaped by the window itself and the pattern and color of the glass.
We are in a quandry. The only way we can communicate is with our projected images, yet the images limit the nature of the infinite unknowable.
The answer lies in awareness of the situation, to use an image that is at the cutting edge of our understanding. As our understanding expands, then we can also with awareness expand our projected image. Religious traditions fix the image. A God with features and characteristics fixes the image. All god symbols are not equal, nor are they necessarily to our benefit.
Not having characteristics does not equate to nothing. That is your projection, your fear of losing something. There is a partnership here between the ego and the infinite, but I don't have the space or time here.
This is not a do whatever proposition. With knowledge comes great compassion and great responsibility. This is no wishy-washy thing.
15 - Baronius
I probably shouldn’t have mentioned Chesterton; I always assume that people have read him. (Great writer, by the way. He covers these topics much better than we ever will.) When he refers to religion’s masculinity, he means its bravery and nobility. Even that description falls short, but it’ll have to do.
You say that “this is no wishy-washy thing”. But frankly I don’t believe you. Every Ivy League bodhisattva and Joseph Campbell wannabe I’ve ever run across says the same thing. Their central belief is how brave they are, how they have stepped into the abyss that other people are afraid of. So you call me a coward. (Not the best way to win an argument, by the way.) Maybe your departure was brave; I don’t know. But your journey is rather self-indulgent, picking up symbols and rejecting them when you find something that doesn’t agree with your expectations. And your destination is by definition impossible. I just don’t see any great courage in this.
You keep asking a question that I’ve been avoiding. The question essentially is, have I ever encountered the infinite unnamed? I’ve been reluctant to answer because I can’t see how it will advance our discussion. But yes, I have faced the transcendent. Most everyone has. I’d be sceptical of someone who said they never had such an experience.
Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Apollo worship, and Voodoo (among others) believe that the unknowable is able to communicate with us. What you see as a limitation, we see as a revelation. In fact, I see your view as a limitation. You’ve cut ourself off from the possibility of belief. You can look at a statue of Ganesha all day and never see a statue of Ganesha. That’s limitation. I'm not afraid of abandoning divine attributes; I don't know if you're afraid of the possibility of them. But I do think it's pretty cool that the transcendent told us His name.
So we both see each other as limiting our spiritual lives. Limitation isn’t necessarily wrong, incidentally, if you’re eliminating an error. So, is your vision wrong, or is mine? That brings us back to the question of mine that you’ve been avoiding. Why do you believe what you’ve said?
16 - John Spivey
Baronius,
When I made the "wishy-washy" comment I was referring to the idea of living with great responsibility, great dedication. It is more difficult, but also more meaningful, than having it imposed by an outside authority.
You seem to have a thing about Campbell. I'll admit that initially he inspired me, but I have my own life. I actually know people who worked with him (his archives are here in Santa Barbara), some of whom are wannabes. Viewing that at first hand I know that it's not the life I want for myself.
You infer or ascribe some Ivy League privileged softness to me, but nothing could be further from the truth. I worked in the fields to buy my own clothes in high school. I put myself through a private university entirely on my own. Nothing has ever been given to me. I have spent many years swinging a hammer and being a master carpenter in addition to my years teaching. I earned a blackbelt from a sensei who made my training life miserable.
I believe many people have revelatory spiritual experiences and don't recognize them. I claim no uniqueness in this. I have only sought to go far beneath the experience and understand the underpinings.
As for the bravery and nobility of religion, of the Church, in another age I would be burned at the stake as a heretic by said Church. Bravery and nobility are some of the last words that would come to mind when I consider the history of Western religion. The greatest nobility I ever found was in Zen Buddhism. All in all, Western religion has put us all into a terrible jam, and Christianity has certainly done its fair share of the bad. With religion as we know it, it's all about crowd control. It could be different. I actually think religion can save us, but it would require a great evolutionary leap in the way we see ourselves in relationship to God and the universe.
As to answering your question, I'm only relating what I have experienced. I trust that far more than reading Saul of Tarsus, a man with some definite control issues. I'm not asking you to believe my experience, only consider it. You are certainly free to reject it and let it go on by. I live as best I can with honor and nobility.
js
17 - Christopher Rose
Baronius, I get the impression that you're a man of faith of some kind. That alone undermines everything you believe, as clearly there are no gods at all.
18 - Baronius
Objection, Your Honor. Assuming facts not in evidence.
19 - Clavos
Baronius,
I got the same impression while reading this thread. I even thought I had figured out which faith.
Clavos
20 - gonzo marx
ummm..Baronius has indeed typed about his Faith in other threads of varying topics...
so "Objection, overruled"...but noted
oh yes...John, you ROCK!!
carry on...
Excelsior?
21 - Clavos
Excellent dialogue going here, gentlemen...
22 - John Spivey
If you were to ask a Zen teacher if God existed, the teacher would probably say, "That's a good question."
I think it best to hold that question in mind like a Zen koan. Teacher says, "If you say yes I'll hit you with a stick. If you say no I'll hit you with a stick."
To demand a yes or no answer is reductionist. To seek such an answer is to attempt to curtail mystery and curtail exploration. Exploration is the key to human understanding. We provide a codified list of the details of God because we really want exploration to cease. We want to live in a codified stasis, free of surprises, free of change.
Saying there is no God also curtails the search in order to operate in our comfort zone.
Seeing is not a yes or no proposition. We cannot apprehend ISness with the answer already in mind. Do you want to really see or only have your beliefs, desires, and preconceptions validated?
23 - Mark Schannon
John, well put about God vs. no God. Start whacking away with your stick.
Gonzo, I have to overrule you. Objection sustained. Lord knows we've been through this enough with what's his name on my "I'm confused about Jews" post...but one cannot prove or deny God's existence through any rational means.
That doesn't minimize God...if He exists, he transcends reason which is why even Baronius speaks of transcendental experiences.
If I understand John correctly, anything that limits where the mind can go is to be avoided. Exploration, the journey, the path...however one travels it...that is the goal--as long as one recognizes that we are genetically and environmentally programmed to try to create meaning through symbols when none actually exist outside ourselves. (There is something of the Platonic Ideas here...very odd.)
In another of John's articles, I coined a term for what I think his religion is Spivey Buddhism so I was pleased to see his reference to Zen here.
Here's a question: Can one be a Christian or a Jewish or even a Muslim Buddhist(scratch that last one?) Assuming that the Bible was written by people who are fallible but that the universal truths are to be found there, the religion need not be a collectioon of symbols that bind one to a certain vision, but rather encourage one to explore and challenge.
And Baronius, John didn't call you a coward. He spoke of fears--which we all have--even our Guru. It's how we face the fears that matters--show me a man without fear, and I'll show you a man with a case of Irish whiskey.
In Jameson Veritas
24 - gonzo marx
ah Mark me boyo..over rule me and yer likely ta have yer fingernails clipped...
up to the elbows
but i digress...
i was NOT denigrating Baronius at all, exactly the opposite actually.. he has shown on many occasions to be clear and erudite in his positions , and openly interacts with other views in a calm and reasonable manner
my point earlier was that his own personal predilictions are on the Record from previous commentary doen by him, and thus are relevant to this discussion as pertinent background... that's all
very difficult for me to adequately comment on John's Writings themselves... since i share many of the sentiments he expresses, and i don't want to assume, nor muddy the Waters which he pours into the "teacups" of reader's Minds
my only Advice is for the gentle Readers... if your "cup" is already full from pre-Concieved strictures, then you have no room in that *cup* for the Water being offered...
empty the *cup*
Excelsior?
25 - John Spivey
Mark,
Zen--The harmony of empty oneness and the world of particulars.
I have a vision of something called Zen Christianity. Of course there could be Zen Judaism (in fact many Zen teachers in the US are Jews) and Zen Islam. Zen is merely the practice of probing deeply through meditation and awarteness practice into the true nature of reality. In doing so one has to pass on by preconceived notions. This can be quite painful at times, the giving up of cherished notions in order to see clearly. Of course this is all heresy.
As a side note, when the Muslims invaded India, they did great damage to the Hindus, but they totally destroyed Buddhism in the land of its origin. This deep inquiry represents a great threat to fixed dogma. The reaction is to destroy the questioner.
Trashing the symbols of your culture and religion is like trying to get rid of the operating system on your computer. With awareness and intelligence one can go below the operating instructions and see what is, then come back and tweak the code.
I am not a Buddhist because it makes more sense to me to go beneath the symbols of my own culture rather than try to take on Indian, Japanese, or Chinese culture, then go below that. I don't need to chant in Sanskrit, don't need to go to the sacred mountains of China or Tibet. English also works as a spiritual language. The sound doesn't matter as much as the intent behind the sound. The Sierra Nevada are wonderful sacred mountains. In fact every word we utter should be weighed as sacred, every place our feet fall should be considered sacred. If we kept that in mind, our world would be a bit different.
Life has gone to great lengths to give us intelligence and we've pissed all over it. We'd rather have codes and not have to be intelligent. We like to bask in ignorance. I'm simply asking people to recognize their true intelligence and not only respect that intelligence, but also its source.