Krimel says: Shouldn't a belief system be judged by the amount of original experience it gives rise to?
dmb says: Yes, and that's why I quoted and/or invoked Pirsig, James, Campbell etc on the problem of literalism, with Christian fundamentalism being the prime example in our own culture. But, as the references to the "promised land" of Judaism and the Ganges river in Buddhism showed, this is a problem is all religions. Each religion has a system of symbols that work to precipitate this original experience but to the extent that these symbols are read as facts they fail to function, they become opaque and block the light. Then, to put it in Christian terms, the resurrection become something you believe in rather than something that happens to you. Or, to put in terms Judaism, the promised land becomes a war zone rather than a state of mind. And in our scientific, technological, rational world this misreading extends very far indeed. Krimel said: I saw that movie [Jesus Camp] about a year ago. ...My memory of the movie is not as fresh as yours but let me speak to what underlies the practices it shows. Speaking in tongues is a manifestation of the indwelling and out pouring of the Holy Spirit. When people are really taken up in the Spirit they are given a "prayer language". It doesn't have to be nor is it necessarily supposed to be an actual language. The believer becomes open to the Spirit and speaks as the Spirit guides. Others who hear the unknown tongue may be similarly moved by the Spirit to interpret the words of others. Speaking and interpreting tongues are listed by Paul as being among "the gifts of the spirit" ... dmb says: This would serve as a fine example of the kind of literalism that destroys the meaning of symbols. The practice of speaking in tongues in an imitation of a story from bible as it is understood literally. I forget exactly how the story goes, but basically it's a miraculous redemption of the curse imposed on humanity in the tower of babel story wherein we are no longer confounded by language. There is a sudden healing of the rift so that we are no longer separated from each other by language. In the literalized version the idea is basically that one spontaneously knows how to speak some foreign language so as to be able to preach the gospel in their own tongue. But when this story, or rather these stories, are not taken literally they refer to that state of nirvana, that pre-intellectual, pre-linguistic unity that Jill Bolte Taylor experienced. In this view, the holy spirit is not a supernatural giver of super powers but a state of consciousness wherein the distinctions between self and other are absent. It's a symbolic reference to that pre-verbal, undifferentiated awareness, that original lack of division. But it's never understood that way in the evangelical churches precisely because it fails to give rise to the experience. I suspect that if the church leaders ever had a first-hand experience of this mystical awareness they would see that the story symbolically references it and then they wouldn't encourage the actual, literal babbling that goes on every Sunday. Krimel said: ...But I don't see any qualitative difference between the experiences you advocate and the explanations for them you give and those you condemn. They differ in form but not substance. dmb says: Well, then you're not a very good reader because I've provided the explanations in the words of James, Pirsig, Campbell, Jung and my own. I've explained it in terms of empiricism, brain science, mysticism, symbolism , linguistic and psychology. I honestly don't know how that can fail to work for you. You seem like a smart guy. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® goes where you go. On a PC, on the Web, on your phone. http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/learnmore/versatility.aspx#mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_WL_HM_versatility_121208 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
