ka
Padawan Learner
One reason I follow this Forum is to think about what is really going on in this world. So much of what we see and hear is designed to prevent us from noticing what’s going on all around us. And there is so much conditioning and disinformation to un-learn! SOTT, the C’s transmissions, and the members of this forum provide a place where it is possible and acceptable to talk about realities.
For the past year or so, I have intensified my search into the deep, dark processes that made our world what it has become. Christianity is a big part of it. [Money is another, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.] I’ve come to a point where I see a “big picture” that I have wanted to see for a very long time. And I see that what was going on around the beginnings of Christianity is going on HERE and NOW.
The rather brief outline below is distilled out of personal experience and shelves full of books and articles. [If anybody wants a list of sources, I will cough them up.]
Here goes:
As human beings, our existence is biological, social-political and spiritual
Many traditions testify to collaboration of human beings with spiritual beings and realities:
animism
Shamans
totem
pagan pantheism
Ba, daimons (personal spirit-guides), guardian angels, Higher Self,
Demons, evil spirits, etc.
Prophets, “holy men,” seers, oracles, saints
Divine revelation, Gnosis
Visions, dreams, channeling
In simple societies, individuals with the most frequent contact with Spirit tend to become the authorities on religious practice. This gives the spiritual person political power, the ability to influence people to do their will. [This has provided an incentive to “fake it.”]
Religious authority is a very powerful influence on society, and a political ruler cannot afford to ignore it. History is full of instances in which political rule has been subverted by religious authorities or ideas. So, a ruler wants to get control of religion. [This is one reason why Laura has to be so vigilant.]
When a social hierarchy takes authority over religious practice and belief, the authority is usually based on political and family connections, rather than knowledge of Spirit. Religion becomes a social organization, typically a priesthood.
The foundation for religious authority shifts away from personal experience and wisdom, to “tradition,” eventually to scripture and theological orthodoxy.
In order to hold spiritual authority without maintaining contact with Spirit, the priests spin out a non-spiritual body of knowledge that they can monopolize and mystify: a mythology is elaborated with metaphors and symbols, interpreted in various ways, organized into an orderly structure of thought that evolves into a theology, philosophy, ideology. All these serve in the place of spirit-contact, to provide a guide to conduct.
Such institutional authority will discourage communication between people and Spirit, and persecute as “heretics” anyone whose spiritual experiences do not confirm the approved ideology. People living in authoritarian religious environments may have contacts with Spirit and not recognize them for what they are; they may have to be careful not to speak of them, for fear of being considered “kooky” or insane.
Typically, the religious institution will also take control over basic social events such as inducting a newborn into the community, conducting rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, blessing marriages, ensuring that the souls of the dead are properly conducted to the next world. (There are fees to be collected! Empires are founded on fees!)
In our cycle of history, it was not until the age of the great empires--Mesopotamian, Persian, Greek, Roman—that societies transferred spiritual authority from spirit-contact to priestly hierarchies.
In the age of empires, the seers, oracles, astrologers, wizards, artists, directors of theatrics, record-keepers, and experts in any form of wisdom had to bend their knowledge to the service of the rulers. Political propaganda and theater became part of the business of religion.
Everywhere the fundamental belief was that the prosperity of the people depended upon the favor of the gods, and the righteousness of the ruler. This was the origin of the concept of “The Mandate of Heaven” and the “Divine Right of Kings.” These beliefs supported a mass focus on “civic” religion, religion in support of the State.
In the centuries of the Roman Empire, Rome took over many different populations that had very different religions and traditions. It was a challenge for Rome to overcome religious opposition to its rule. For many reasons, Rome began to lose the power to impose a credible civic religion on its subjects.
In most cases, the “old” religions had been closely tied to local dynasties of divine kings. For a long time, in many cases, the Romans allowed local puppet-rulers to go through the motions of the traditional political/sacred roles. But increasingly, people became unwilling to overlook the obvious.
For many people, the rule of Greco-Roman emperors brought the very opposite of prosperity. The whole Mediterranean region was convulsed by warfare, slave-taking, strong-arm tax collectors, and foreign customs that all flew in the face of what people considered sacred.
Disorders of society and nature were taken as evidence that men were terribly out of harmony with Divine Order. People became cynical about the civic religion, and motivated to find their way back to some kind of contact and harmony with Spirit and Truth.
The local gods and divine kings had failed to honor their parts of the bargain (divine protection in exchange for worship). Heroic attempts to return to the old ways of honoring the gods got people nowhere. The prophesies of a messiah or great-king that would restore righteousness to the earth went unfulfilled again and again. Had the gods abandoned the people? Had the old gods lost their powers?
In the early centuries AD, the Jews, the Christians, pagans and the gnostics—all in their many different ways—turned their hopes away from a restoration of divine justice on earth, to focus on a more individual experience of “salvation,” or knowledge of and harmony with god.
When Roman power failed, political power broke up into smaller, less totalitarian regimes that lacked the mechanisms for keeping religious practice strictly within approved bounds. By the third century AD, wildly heterodox religious sects, wonder-workers, healers, exorcists, hermit saints, holy men (throw-backs to shamanism), and crazy preachers of all stripes were active all around the Mediterranean.
A succession of self-proclaimed messiahs instigated Jewish uprisings that were very hard to put down. Judas Maccabaeus had been successful in the 2nd century BC in winning Jewish independence from the Hellenistic Seleucid ruler; from then on, about once per generation, a Jewish messiah led religious zealots into political rebellion. Typically, the rebels were unhappy not only with the political ruler, but the religious elite as well. By the “time of Christ,” Jewish nationalists had a terrorist wing that carried out political kidnappings and assassinations. In the second century AD they coordinated—without benefit of smart-phones—a Jewish uprising that erupted simultaneously in half a dozen major commercial cities around the Mediterranean. Jewish rebellions occurred throughout Roman and Byzantine rule, and didn’t stop until Islam put a lid on it. The rabbis eventually learned to discourage the hotheads, after all the rebellions ended in bloody disaster. [Until the 20th century. ‘Nother story.]
The Christianity preached by Paul of Tarsus (mid first century AD) posed no challenge to Roman rule; Jesus’ kingdom was said to be ”not of this world;” he went on record in favor of paying one’s taxes to Rome; Paul taught that political rulers were to be obeyed as the instruments of God. (Did some Roman propaganda expert contribute to Paul’s missionary activities and writings?)
The Roman emperor Constantine may have endorsed Christianity (in the 4th century AD) partly in hopes that, since it already included so many disparate elements from paganism and Judaism, it could suck the wild and widespread religious creativity into itself. Then, it could be shaped and brought to order, made into an institution that would support the Empire.
By the 7th century, Christianity had done just that. It had organized itself into worldly institutions with worldly interests; it depended on the protection and patronage of the political/military rulers, and it began to root out all religious elements that did not support the institutional authority and orthodoxy. The holy men, the healers, the seers, prophets and mystics had to go. The age of saints was declared OVER.
The Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church became pillars of the political state, and career ladders for the second sons and poor relatives of the ruling elites.
The possibilities for abuse and corruption of this arrangement were all exploited. When northern Europeans got fed up past endurance, we got the Protestant Reformation, and a couple centuries of vicious religious conflicts, in place of the Inquisition. The break-up of old authority allowed for another period of apocalyptic expectations and religious, political, and intellectual creativity.
Science was IN. Spirit was OUT. They beat every bush in the countryside to root out the witches at this period. The astrologers had to go, too.
Fast-forward to the present:
Laura’s writing on the subject of New Age “religion” as COINTEL PRO has exposed to us how religious “creativity” can be sponsored for political purposes. It was used to divert trend-followers away from meditation practices that actually produce results. The New Age served up an alarming smorgasbord of “heresies,” that galvanized Christian fundamentalism into a kind of panic reaction. The anxiety was turned to good use by political strategists.
It begins to look as if some recent trends in the organization of Christian congregations in the USA have been designed for social control on a BIG scale. The gathering of people into HUGE congregations serves to reduce the diversity of stubbornly quirky and independent little sects that once resisted conforming to any dependable “party line.” The “facilitators” who serve in small sub-groups to bring them to the approved “consensus,” to pressure ideological conformity, to monitor and keep records of member “progress,” the loud political activism—all show a change in the relationship of Christianity to the State in my lifetime. This is not exactly the same as Dominionism, but it feeds into it.
The beat goes on!
In all this change, the spiritual dimension of human life has been pretty thoroughly neglected. Yeah, the preachers may say the word “spiritual” from time to time. But the possibility of perceiving the spiritual reality in which we live, the possibility of CONSCIOUS participation and collaboration with the Cosmic Mind in the substantial affairs of our lives, is not a possibility most religions want to develop.
Nobody else can do it for you, anyway. But a few pointers along the way can help.
What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
For the past year or so, I have intensified my search into the deep, dark processes that made our world what it has become. Christianity is a big part of it. [Money is another, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.] I’ve come to a point where I see a “big picture” that I have wanted to see for a very long time. And I see that what was going on around the beginnings of Christianity is going on HERE and NOW.
The rather brief outline below is distilled out of personal experience and shelves full of books and articles. [If anybody wants a list of sources, I will cough them up.]
Here goes:
As human beings, our existence is biological, social-political and spiritual
Many traditions testify to collaboration of human beings with spiritual beings and realities:
animism
Shamans
totem
pagan pantheism
Ba, daimons (personal spirit-guides), guardian angels, Higher Self,
Demons, evil spirits, etc.
Prophets, “holy men,” seers, oracles, saints
Divine revelation, Gnosis
Visions, dreams, channeling
In simple societies, individuals with the most frequent contact with Spirit tend to become the authorities on religious practice. This gives the spiritual person political power, the ability to influence people to do their will. [This has provided an incentive to “fake it.”]
Religious authority is a very powerful influence on society, and a political ruler cannot afford to ignore it. History is full of instances in which political rule has been subverted by religious authorities or ideas. So, a ruler wants to get control of religion. [This is one reason why Laura has to be so vigilant.]
When a social hierarchy takes authority over religious practice and belief, the authority is usually based on political and family connections, rather than knowledge of Spirit. Religion becomes a social organization, typically a priesthood.
The foundation for religious authority shifts away from personal experience and wisdom, to “tradition,” eventually to scripture and theological orthodoxy.
In order to hold spiritual authority without maintaining contact with Spirit, the priests spin out a non-spiritual body of knowledge that they can monopolize and mystify: a mythology is elaborated with metaphors and symbols, interpreted in various ways, organized into an orderly structure of thought that evolves into a theology, philosophy, ideology. All these serve in the place of spirit-contact, to provide a guide to conduct.
Such institutional authority will discourage communication between people and Spirit, and persecute as “heretics” anyone whose spiritual experiences do not confirm the approved ideology. People living in authoritarian religious environments may have contacts with Spirit and not recognize them for what they are; they may have to be careful not to speak of them, for fear of being considered “kooky” or insane.
Typically, the religious institution will also take control over basic social events such as inducting a newborn into the community, conducting rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, blessing marriages, ensuring that the souls of the dead are properly conducted to the next world. (There are fees to be collected! Empires are founded on fees!)
In our cycle of history, it was not until the age of the great empires--Mesopotamian, Persian, Greek, Roman—that societies transferred spiritual authority from spirit-contact to priestly hierarchies.
In the age of empires, the seers, oracles, astrologers, wizards, artists, directors of theatrics, record-keepers, and experts in any form of wisdom had to bend their knowledge to the service of the rulers. Political propaganda and theater became part of the business of religion.
Everywhere the fundamental belief was that the prosperity of the people depended upon the favor of the gods, and the righteousness of the ruler. This was the origin of the concept of “The Mandate of Heaven” and the “Divine Right of Kings.” These beliefs supported a mass focus on “civic” religion, religion in support of the State.
In the centuries of the Roman Empire, Rome took over many different populations that had very different religions and traditions. It was a challenge for Rome to overcome religious opposition to its rule. For many reasons, Rome began to lose the power to impose a credible civic religion on its subjects.
In most cases, the “old” religions had been closely tied to local dynasties of divine kings. For a long time, in many cases, the Romans allowed local puppet-rulers to go through the motions of the traditional political/sacred roles. But increasingly, people became unwilling to overlook the obvious.
For many people, the rule of Greco-Roman emperors brought the very opposite of prosperity. The whole Mediterranean region was convulsed by warfare, slave-taking, strong-arm tax collectors, and foreign customs that all flew in the face of what people considered sacred.
Disorders of society and nature were taken as evidence that men were terribly out of harmony with Divine Order. People became cynical about the civic religion, and motivated to find their way back to some kind of contact and harmony with Spirit and Truth.
The local gods and divine kings had failed to honor their parts of the bargain (divine protection in exchange for worship). Heroic attempts to return to the old ways of honoring the gods got people nowhere. The prophesies of a messiah or great-king that would restore righteousness to the earth went unfulfilled again and again. Had the gods abandoned the people? Had the old gods lost their powers?
In the early centuries AD, the Jews, the Christians, pagans and the gnostics—all in their many different ways—turned their hopes away from a restoration of divine justice on earth, to focus on a more individual experience of “salvation,” or knowledge of and harmony with god.
When Roman power failed, political power broke up into smaller, less totalitarian regimes that lacked the mechanisms for keeping religious practice strictly within approved bounds. By the third century AD, wildly heterodox religious sects, wonder-workers, healers, exorcists, hermit saints, holy men (throw-backs to shamanism), and crazy preachers of all stripes were active all around the Mediterranean.
A succession of self-proclaimed messiahs instigated Jewish uprisings that were very hard to put down. Judas Maccabaeus had been successful in the 2nd century BC in winning Jewish independence from the Hellenistic Seleucid ruler; from then on, about once per generation, a Jewish messiah led religious zealots into political rebellion. Typically, the rebels were unhappy not only with the political ruler, but the religious elite as well. By the “time of Christ,” Jewish nationalists had a terrorist wing that carried out political kidnappings and assassinations. In the second century AD they coordinated—without benefit of smart-phones—a Jewish uprising that erupted simultaneously in half a dozen major commercial cities around the Mediterranean. Jewish rebellions occurred throughout Roman and Byzantine rule, and didn’t stop until Islam put a lid on it. The rabbis eventually learned to discourage the hotheads, after all the rebellions ended in bloody disaster. [Until the 20th century. ‘Nother story.]
The Christianity preached by Paul of Tarsus (mid first century AD) posed no challenge to Roman rule; Jesus’ kingdom was said to be ”not of this world;” he went on record in favor of paying one’s taxes to Rome; Paul taught that political rulers were to be obeyed as the instruments of God. (Did some Roman propaganda expert contribute to Paul’s missionary activities and writings?)
The Roman emperor Constantine may have endorsed Christianity (in the 4th century AD) partly in hopes that, since it already included so many disparate elements from paganism and Judaism, it could suck the wild and widespread religious creativity into itself. Then, it could be shaped and brought to order, made into an institution that would support the Empire.
By the 7th century, Christianity had done just that. It had organized itself into worldly institutions with worldly interests; it depended on the protection and patronage of the political/military rulers, and it began to root out all religious elements that did not support the institutional authority and orthodoxy. The holy men, the healers, the seers, prophets and mystics had to go. The age of saints was declared OVER.
The Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church became pillars of the political state, and career ladders for the second sons and poor relatives of the ruling elites.
The possibilities for abuse and corruption of this arrangement were all exploited. When northern Europeans got fed up past endurance, we got the Protestant Reformation, and a couple centuries of vicious religious conflicts, in place of the Inquisition. The break-up of old authority allowed for another period of apocalyptic expectations and religious, political, and intellectual creativity.
Science was IN. Spirit was OUT. They beat every bush in the countryside to root out the witches at this period. The astrologers had to go, too.
Fast-forward to the present:
Laura’s writing on the subject of New Age “religion” as COINTEL PRO has exposed to us how religious “creativity” can be sponsored for political purposes. It was used to divert trend-followers away from meditation practices that actually produce results. The New Age served up an alarming smorgasbord of “heresies,” that galvanized Christian fundamentalism into a kind of panic reaction. The anxiety was turned to good use by political strategists.
It begins to look as if some recent trends in the organization of Christian congregations in the USA have been designed for social control on a BIG scale. The gathering of people into HUGE congregations serves to reduce the diversity of stubbornly quirky and independent little sects that once resisted conforming to any dependable “party line.” The “facilitators” who serve in small sub-groups to bring them to the approved “consensus,” to pressure ideological conformity, to monitor and keep records of member “progress,” the loud political activism—all show a change in the relationship of Christianity to the State in my lifetime. This is not exactly the same as Dominionism, but it feeds into it.
The beat goes on!
In all this change, the spiritual dimension of human life has been pretty thoroughly neglected. Yeah, the preachers may say the word “spiritual” from time to time. But the possibility of perceiving the spiritual reality in which we live, the possibility of CONSCIOUS participation and collaboration with the Cosmic Mind in the substantial affairs of our lives, is not a possibility most religions want to develop.
Nobody else can do it for you, anyway. But a few pointers along the way can help.
What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
