"> I'm still not religious; that just isn't my > temperament. But I no longer see religious > ideas as bunkum. How they're *taught* is what's > bunkum."
I have a lot more confidence in people on this board doing the work you are describing rather than the mainstream movement types who seem to love their dogma at face value. I'll see your Anthony Campbell and raise you a Joseph Campbell! I think he was on a good track to give myths their proper due without taking their surface value as God's truth. This is a fascinating area. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" > <curtisdeltablues@> wrote: > > > > If you are right then this is just one step in Sam's appreciation > > of that. But the problem remains that in every religion, it is an > > elite minority that view it as you are. How many Hindus are > > Vedantists? > > Well, but that's just why I wish somebody would sit > down and start figuring out the correspondences, > make them broadly understandable to both religionists > and atheists. Then there would be some common ground. > > And it would be a lot more effective if both sides > had had some systematic experience of "higher" > states, of the *referents* of the metaphors. > > Gotta quote Anthony Campbell, from his "Seven > States of Consciousness": > > "Having...gone to a good deal of trouble to rid myself > of the beliefs of a conventional [Catholic] religious > upbringing, I found it rather hard to be expected to > swallow them all once more. However, as my understanding > of Maharishi's ideas began to grow a little, I saw that > I had really been making a fuss over nothing. It was an > extraordinary experience to see ideas I had rejected as > meaningless because they had been taught by people who > did not themselves fully understand them suddenly catch > fire like diamonds in a muddy stream." > > He went on to recommit himself to Catholicism, > but with a transformed understanding. > > I didn't have *any* religious upbringing--my > parents had rejected theirs--and at the time I > learned TM, I was completely confident that all > religious ideas were bunkum. > > I'm still not religious; that just isn't my > temperament. But I no longer see religious > ideas as bunkum. How they're *taught* is what's > bunkum. >
