God demands heresy. I obey, devoutly.

Fairly frequently I hear from true believers who ask me, in so many words, "Brian, how could you?" Almost always my reply is "There's no way I couldn't."

Meaning, my nearly lifelong search for the way things really are necessitates leaving aside the way things aren't.

The fancy philosophical term for this is Via Negativa, the negative way.

In negative theology, it is accepted that the Divine is ineffable, an abstract experience that can only be recognized—that is, human beings cannot describe the essence of God, and therefore all descriptions if attempted will be ultimately false and conceptualization should be avoided.

Religions love to blab on about how God, or ultimate reality, is this or that, and demands that we do such and such to show our devotion to him, her, or it.

Mystics, poets, lovers of mystery, and others who bow down before the altar of "Who knows?" reject the notion that the beating heart of the cosmos can be hooked up to a concept machine and have its nature explained.

Intuition, sometimes sparked by walks under a full moon, tells me that religious dogmas can't begin to encompass the wordless wonder of the universe.

Which, naturally, includes us.

There's no way I can describe who I am. Nor can you. So what monstrous act of egotism allows anyone to claim that he or she is able to talk about God?

Logic accords with my intuition.

Religions explain the cosmos as God's creation. OK, now we have to ask, "Who or what created God?" If the reply is "No one; God is eternal" (which is the only way to avoid a never-ending series of creation questions), then this answers nothing.

Why not simply say that no one created the cosmos, as it is eternal? Either way, one ends up with an insoluble mystery: that the world exists.

A sense of this mysterious "thatness" is, in my quasi-humble opinion, the most genuine Godly feeling it is possible to have (using "God" as synonymous with the Big Question Mark).

It took me quite a few years to come to this realization. Old habits die hard.

For a long time I enjoyed an illusory (in retrospect) belief that the holy books I read, and the holy person I revered, were able to describe the nature of what lies at the farthest reaches of reality.

I believed this, even though the teachings I followed spoke of the need to go beyond form so the formless could be embraced. So does Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and the mystical side of the monotheistic religions, including Christianity.

Thus my answer to those who question how I could become a heretic: an honest search for God demands heresy.

Luther Askeland says it well in his wonderful "Ways in Mystery" (one of my favorite books): 

We can define the negative way as a twofold process. First, the mystic tries to become consciously aware of the various ways in which the intellect presumes to approach God: all the statements, concepts, words, and images that may be thought to enable one to know something about God. We note the logic of this enterprise as well as the enormity of the task.

Let us also observe that the logic of the negative way inevitably leads the mystic toward a denial of the most fundamental teachings and concepts of the very tradition to which the mystic belongs. In fact, it is precisely these teachings and concepts that form the heart of the mystic's particular "misconception" of God: They are the subtlest and also the most deceptive layer of the blindfold.

For this reason, DIonysius and Eckhart single out the most orthodox conceptions of God -- God's existence, unity, wisdom, and goodness -- for the most explicit and vehement denial.

Become a heretic: a lover of God.

Comments

[Martin Langeland]

Heresy is thought or deed contrary to doctrine. Doctrine is made by man. Nothing to do with what is.
--ml

[Brian]

Martin, good point. That's why I called the post linked to above, "Heresy is heretical."
http://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2004/03/heresy_is_heret.html

In it I said:

"So it isn’t those who question religious pronouncements and religious leaders who are being disrespectful to divinity. Rather, it is those who accept religious or spiritual claims uncritically. What is truly heretical is believing that there is such a thing as 'heresy.'"

[The Rambling Taoist]

Your post underscores why I embrace the Taoist philosophy. The very first words in the Tao Te Ching stipulate that whatever we think about or describe as being the ultimate whatever are so far off-base that we can't even begin to imagine. Tao (or whatever one wishes to call it) is just so far beyond words and concepts.

For me, it's the measure of a person's absolute arrogance and egocentrism to think that they could describe "God" in terms that do it any justice (even if they read it in some stink'n book)!

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,

So...are you therefore able, as a "heretic," to deny the contention that: "Awareness is always just simply awareness"? Or the contention that: "Awareness is always nondual"?

I do.

Robert Paul Howard

[tAo]

The Broadcasting Mind Control

These times in which we live become increasingly more surreal. It could be that things have been strange for a long time but we are just seeing it more now. Of course, a larger percentage of us are not seeing it at all, but even they know something is wrong. They just assume it is for the obvious reasons because that is what they have been told. They’ve been told it’s because of the terrorists and that "Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia". They’ve been told that all of the problems are due to somebody else and that the new people are going to fix the problems now. They’ve been told a lot of things.

There’s a pervasive hypnosis that floods the rooms in which we live. It drives down the street with us. It says hello to us like a Wal-Mart greeter when we enter a store and it vibrates under the bird songs in the parks and it only fades when you walk far enough into the desert or sail into the middle of the sea. Because it is happening every day and because everyone just goes about their business as usual there is the general understanding that it’s not hypnosis, it’s just the color of life; a natural thing.

We’ve been subjected to this mind control for so long that we find it hard to imagine what life might be without it. Everything that torments us comes out of the lies being broadcast across the airwaves we move through. They slip through the earphones inside the music that they allow us to hear. They travel inside the words of the people speaking out of your television and radio. They move inside the words on the newspaper and then open up inside your head and create for you the understanding that they want you to have.

We’re told that certain people are our enemies but our real enemies are the people telling us this. We’re told that certain things are bad for us but these things aren’t even as bad as the things they tell us we can have and which they make and sell to us so that we can hear the lies better and to put us in the mood to agree with the lies which cause us to injure ourselves and each other. The people who tell us these lies all went to school together and they learned to speak a certain language so that they can say things to each other that we won’t understand. While they were in their special schools they had their humanity removed so that they could do things that no human being would even consider because they have no conscience to inhibit their behavior. They have been compared to reptiles because that is the part of the brain that they act out of.

There was a movie where you could put on a pair of sunglasses and you would see things the way they really were. Back in the beginning you didn’t need sunglasses to see how things were but that was before the subliminal broadcasts began. After awhile… after a couple of generations… after the broadcasts started, the illusion was complete. From the time you were children… when you were learning to walk and to speak you also learned what was real. Even though it never has been real, it is real enough because there is nothing else to compare it to, unless you take a certain kind of mushrooms or you go away into the forest and practice things that neutralize the sounds and images that control the magic show.

This kind of behavior was made against the law for this very reason or it is made to appear abnormal and the practitioner is marginalized to the fringes of society. These people who do not conform are made into objects of ridicule and whatever they try to tell others is laughed at and generally ignored. None of the conforming multitudes want to be seen in this way. It can be hazardous to their livelihood. It can bring shame on their families and friends and they might lose both as well as their income and their standing in the community.

It is a curious question as to why there are some people who are immune to the broadcast. There always have been. History records many incidents of people revealing the existence of the broadcasting and image making force. We read that these people have warned humanity through the ages and we also see that humanity has paid no attention. Even with all of the examples that history shows about the ugly circumstances that are created by a mass belief in the broadcast, people still do not learn and each day they rise to the hope that the broadcast is going to lead them into the Promised Land but they die in Gary, Indiana, Calcutta or London town.

The broadcast tells them that consuming poison will grant them good health and that going to war will bring them peace. The broadcast tells them that bad men and women are the heroes of their time and that those who want to liberate them from the broadcast are villains. They routinely imprison, defame and kill these messengers but for some reason there are always new ones to take their place. There are never very many of them and that might be one reason that people do not come to see the true nature of the broadcast. Fear is another reason. This is why intelligent people, who know in their hearts what the broadcast is, will deny that they know. They will even encourage others to continue to accept the broadcast because there is no profit to the alternative which can get them into a lot of trouble.

A few years ago some men, who couldn’t even fly small planes, flew several big airliners into large buildings with a skill that even some experienced pilot's lack. Not only did they do this but very shortly after two buildings were hit, these buildings collapsed at the speed of freefall and a neighboring building that wasn’t even hit by a plane also fell down into its own footprint at the speed of freefall. A television station in London announced that the third building has collapsed twenty minutes before it happened and most of the world saw nothing strange in any of this. Now… of course… plenty of intelligent people know that the explanation given for why these things happened the way they did is a lie but… they are going to tell you it did happen the way the broadcast says it did because they don’t want to get pointed at by their fellows and maybe have a run of really bad luck.

A major war happened because of this event. It is a war that cannot be won and the only thing that is different there- except that a lot of the people are dead- is that the opium trade is booming. It had been shut down before the war happened. Then another war got started based on a similar broadcast but without any planes or falling buildings and a lot more people died in that war which also can’t be won and now they are broadcasting about yet another war, which was the main target all along and which is why the countries that were the previous targets just happen to border the main target.

The broadcasters planned all of this a few years before they set to work. It’s a big project, a project for the new American century and it takes a while to complete. They had a particular president for the first part of the operation and now they have a new one for the next stage. It will seem that what follows will be based on new decisions by new people but it will just be another step in the same operation. It’s happening right now and people are learning what the broadcasters want them to know about why it is important for a lot more people to die.

There’s a small place called Gaza where genocide and casual murder is taking place on a daily basis. Hideous weapons are being used on people with no capacity to defend themselves. It’s a new weapons testing area that uses real people in order to study the effects so that these weapons can be used in other places. The broadcast has convinced a lot of people that terrorists are living in this over crowded little ghetto but the real terrorists are the ones testing the weapons. On an island off the coast of America some other well to do terrorists are torturing prisoners for information that only they possess because they are the ones who did the things that they have accused the prisoners of. This is an interrogation testing laboratory but the broadcast says otherwise.

Because all lies must eventually fail, some of the countries responsible for the majority of the lies are falling apart. The broadcast says they are going to fix it. The only country that isn’t falling apart and where a great many of the lies are being manufactured has actually been looting the countries that are falling apart. They are supposed to be really good friends with these countries but… you know how it goes… or do you?