[Krimel] Isn't the belief system there to guide the believer on a path towards an original experience of their own?
[Arlo] Ideally. All too often its there to reify its power. This is the line between esoteric and exoteric, and we see the vast, vast majority of those being "guided" by a Church to be given exclusively the exoteric view. Indeed, the single largest growing "Christian" church in America is not only vocally exoteric, its agressively anti-esoteric. The "radical Islam" that we are told to fear shares this agressively anti-esoteric approach to Mystical Awareness. [Krimel] I don't know enough about Islam, radical or otherwise, to comment on that but I would say you are wrong to claim that fundamentalist Christianity is anti-esoteric. In fact I would say the opposite. There is much more emphasis among evangelicals on one's personal relationship with Jesus, than in the main line denominations. The holy rollers are the ones to incorporate mystical experiences directly into their services. [Arlo] Manly Hall wrote several great treatises on mystery traditions throughout the ages, and one common point he finds is that the esoteric awareness was reserved for an "initiate" group, with the idea that the hoi poloi would always be too sheep-like, too weak, too unable to handle the esoteric wisdom, and so the stories served a two-fold purpose. First, they functioned as metaphor to point those wise enough to get the Mystery in a Quality direction, and second they enabled a power-base by which the majority could always be controlled, or at the least "opiated". [Krimel] The idea of an inner and outer circle of believers is probably dead on, Leo Straus certainly thought so as did the Jewish philosopher Maimonides. The idea is also present in the New Testament when Jesus reveals some of the inner meaning of his teachings to "The 12". But I find it hard to complain that an institution should strive to perpetuate itself. If it didn't, it wouldn't be an institution. And it is not always true the office politics is about personal control and power. Especially within religious institution, even if these are the true motivations, at least the arguments are couched in terms of the underlying ideology. [Arlo] But again, the other issue here is exclusiveness (I think Ron mentioned it). Apart from the exoteric force of the bulk of modern theism, it creates walls that the Mystic would never build. "God stories" are PART of the Mythos, they are not self-contained, all-in-one stories. The Gnostics knew this and used not only multiple "god stories" to point the way to the Void, but non-god stories as well. [Krimel] I think you are giving the Gnostic Christians way too much credit. While some of their ideas survived into modern times the Gnostics themselves were long gone by the fall of Rome. All we knew about them until 1948 was vague rumors and the writings of their critics. Nor am I sure that Mystics don't build the kind of walls you mention. Paul was a mystic and the chief architect of Christianity. Mohamed was a mystic and he not only founded Islam but the dynasty that oversaw it in its early days. Pirsig is right, there is always tension between the prophet and the priest. Call them the yin and yang of institutional theology. At least one of the mainline denominations points out that throughout its history there has been a conflict between ardor and order. 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/
