"He
who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me
scatters. And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven
men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but
anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven,
either in this age or in the age to come. "Make a tree good and
its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad,
for a tree is recognized by its fruit." Matthew
12:30-12:33, NIV, 1984.
If
Jesus' words have a non-supernatural meaning, what might be meant by
the term "the holy spirit"?
In
the last essay I talked about how the word "holy" comes
from the same root word as "whole" and so can be
interpreted as meaning "whole" or "of the whole".
The largest whole is the universe. Everything which exists in the
universe is a whole which is part of that whole and there are wholes
within wholes within wholes. Each of us is a whole individual, made
up of cells which are wholes, and the cells are made up of atoms
which are whole and the atoms are made up of electrons which are
wholes. The meaning of a whole is found in it relationship to the
larger whole of which it is a part in just the same way that each of
the words in this sentence conveys a meaning through its relationship
to the rest of the sentence.
There
is a creative principle which is intrinsic to the nature of the
universe. Were this not the case there would be nothing in the
universe but unstructured energy. Creating more complex wholes is one
of the things the universe does. Otherwise we wouldn't be here.
But
the disintegration of wholes is also an inescapable part of the
functioning of the universe. Among we living things there is life and
death. Death brings with it disintegration.
While
each whole has its own integrity, each is of
the larger whole and ultimately of
the universe. We may think of ourselves as separate entities but we
are actually a system through which energy and matter is always
flowing – coming in from outside when we eat, drink and breathe and
leaving us when we move, sweat, excrete, etc. And our mind also is a
system with information and ideas coming in from outside and being
then shared with others. So, while we think of ourselves as a
continuing entity, we are not entirely the same person from moment to
moment. The qualities we associate with ourselves are really more
like statistical probabilities. The fact that I've liked eating
spaghetti for 50 years makes it likely that I will still like eating
spaghetti in ten years time, but it is possible that at some stage
I'll get sick of it, or be introduced to some amazing kind of pasta
which will lead me to never consider spaghetti again. On the other
hand the fact that I may be a person with a head cold today does not
indicate that I'll probably still be a person with a head cold next
year at this time.
The
reason we needed to develop the concept of the holy is that we became
divided, i.e. we became unholy. As I speculated in How
to Be Free, there must have been a time
before the human neurosis, a time when our ape-like ancestors lived
peacefully together and at one with the natural environment. This
would have been made possible by our species extended nurturing
period which kept our psychological and social development from being
hindered by the struggle for survival in a harsh environment and by
the need to compete for food and mating opportunities. This would
have been fine except that the men had to protect the group from
predators such as leopards. In fighting the leopards, and also in
trying to learn to understand them, the men would have had to become
more like them, to be aggressive and competitive. Eventually this
would have caused problems in the tribal group, creating a rift
between the men and the women. This would have been the beginning of
the human neurosis as the need to minimise social disturbance led the
men, and later the women, to internalise the other's criticisms of
them. First we were criticised by our fellows, then we began to
criticise ourselves. We developed a conscience. Judgement and
condemnation came into being. Judgement and condemnation of others
and judgement and condemnation of ourselves.
How
easy must it have been when a natural disaster occurred for us to see
this as some kind of punishment for bad conduct? Even today, when we
know so much about the way the world works, those of us who do not
believe in the supernatural often find ourselves thinking, when
something bad happens in our lives, "Perhaps I'm being
punished." But our early ancestors didn't know what made a
volcano erupt or lightning fall from the sky or a flood wash away
their village.
From
this must have come the concept that there were gods who stood in
judgement on our behaviour and might punish us for wrong doing. At
the time it was probably different gods in charge of specific natural
forces. At some stage the concept of sacrifice to appease the gods
must have developed. This makes sense. We had nothing on which to
base our concept of what these gods might be like except ourselves.
Since we knew that we were sometimes willing to forgive an act
against us if the perpetrator gave us something in the way of
reparation, it made sense that this would also work with the gods.
At
some stage the idea developed in some cultures that there was one
single god. Once again we imagined him or her in our image. Once our
neurosis developed to the extent that the psychological insecurity of
males made it necessary for them to enchain women and take total
control, i.e. our society became patriarchal, those societies, if
they believed in a single god, believed in a male one.
Some
of the qualities which were assigned to this male God were qualities
which belonged to the creative principle of the universe. God was
seen as the creator of all things, including humans. All matter and
life, including humans, arise from and are an expression of that
principle. God was considered to be invisible and omnipresent. These
qualities also apply to the creative principle of the universe.
But
the creative principle of the universe is neither male nor female. It
has no supernatural powers. After all it is
nature. And it does not stand in judgement over us. We may stand in
judgement over ourselves. In fact we generally do. But the creative
principle of the universe could give a shit. The sun continued to
shine on Adolph Hitler and Idi Amin and Charles Manson. It they had a
garden it would not stop producing because of their crimes against
their fellows. If we harm our fellows they may strike back or shun
us. If we do something we feel is wrong, we may feel guilty. But if
the creative principle of the universe is God, and I believe that
this is the God of the mystics and shamans as opposed to the God of
the Old Testament, then God does not
condemn us. Both condemnation and forgiveness are human terms.
Something immaterial, like a law of nature, cannot condemn or
forgive. On the other hand condemnation and forgiveness are
understandable metaphors with regard to natural forces. You could say
that if we treat an eco-system so harshly that a vegetated area
becomes a desert, our behaviour has been condemned by nature.
Likewise, we could say that a robust eco-system which can take a lot
of harsh treatment and remain verdant is very forgiving. But we know
we are using metaphors and not actually assigning emotional reactions
to plants.
So
by the time of Jesus, we were severely neurotic as a species. We were
at war with ourselves internally, feeling that we were torn between
the forces of good and evil. And we were divided from each other
emotionally and often in conflict with each other. And above us was
the figure of a stern cosmic father who had been known to send fire
or flood to wipe out those who broke his laws or in any way gave him
offence.
It
is in the context of a society of individuals divided internally and
also socially (just as we still are today), that the concept of the
holy can be seen to be deeply meaningful. What we so crave is to heal
the division within ourselves, to achieve individuation as Carl Jung
put it. And also to find a healing of society – to heal the
divisions which blight our lives.
The
creative principle of the universe operatives via forces which draw
together parts to form wholes. In human society this principle takes
the form of love. Love is simply a form of communication
characterised by openness, honesty and spontaneity. Where this kind
of communication occurs between human beings it is accompanied by
warm feelings of attraction and a cathartic breaking down of any kind
of emotional repression which may have been interfering with the
emotional health of the individual. It is through this process that
we become aware that we are all life itself contained as we may be in
the temporary shell of our body. The divisions between us exist only
in the unrealistic artificial conceptions of our minds.
Since
we long for wholeness for ourselves and our society, that which is
truly whole and of the whole has a tremendous importance for us. And
to describe this we use the word "holy".
So
what might Jesus have meant by the "holy spirit"? We think
of a spirit as being a supernatural entity, perhaps synonymous with a
ghost. And the term "holy spirit" sometimes seems to be
used interchangeably with the term "holy ghost".
But
we don't always use the term "spirit" to mean an actual
supernatural being. Sometimes we talk about "the spirit of
fairness". We can use the term to refer to the essence of
something.
What
might be the essence of the holy?
What
is it which divides us? Lies, delusions, prejudices, differing
opinions, differing ideas...
If
we were going to be united, what would be the common ground on which
we could stand together? If we were to all once more become an
integral part of a whole, what would that whole be, and what would be
its essence?
The
whole would be reality. And its essence the truth.
Now
I don't mean some specific hypothetical "truth", like "the
truth that the Lord Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour." I mean
the real truth. Whatever is factual.
If
you stopped off at the pub on the way home from work for a few drinks
with your friends, and your partner angrily asks you where you've
been when you get home, then "I had to work back late" is
not the truth and "I
stopped off for a drink with my friends" is
the truth. This is the kind of truth I'm talking about. But I'm also
talking about the truth that the earth is about four and a half billion
years old. And the truth that the concept of a supernatural being
standing judgement over us is a figment of our imaginations.
We
may not always know the exact factual truth, but the best
approximation of it that we can come to is the only thing which can
ever unify us – make us whole and make us part of the whole. There
are many lies and delusions, but there can only ever be one truth.
So
now we can look at the "holy trinity". The "father"
is the creative principle of the universe. The "son" is
anything which is a product of the creative principle. And "the
holy spirit" is the frame work of truth – the facts – which
can be apprehended by the senses and understood, in time, by reason.
Now
imagine that you are Jesus and you can see these things and you've
been born into a society where people are divided within themselves
and in conflict with each other. A society of people who feel ashamed
of themselves for various reasons and feel that a cosmic father
figure stands in judgement over them. You know that this father
figure is a delusion. Unlike them you live in the real world, your
mind unclouded by guilt or dogma or superstition. Your God is the God
of nature, the creative principle of the universe which does not
judge and which gives generously. The God who clothed the lilies of
the field more magnificently than Solomon clothed himself. What are
you going to do to lead your fellows out of their madness and their
misery?
Now
you could tell them that it's all in their imaginations. You could
tell them that God the Father doesn't exist. This probably wouldn't
get you very far. Psychiatrists often try this kind of approach with
their psychotic patients. It doesn't work. That's why they rely on
drugs. Jesus didn't have access to drugs.
To
take that kind of approach is what improvisation teacher Keith
Johnstone would call "blocking". A successful improvisation
requires that we accept what we are given to work with. One thing
which made R. D. Laing such a great psychiatrist was that he took the
view that he did not have the right to try to impose his experience
of reality onto his patients. He joined them where they were and then
tried to help them to find their own way out of the prison cell of
their neurosis or psychosis.
I
believe that this is also the approach taken by Jesus.
If
these people believed that a grim father figure stood in judgement
over them then he would tell them that this God had sent him to bring
them forgiveness for their "sins". This was not a lie. He
knew that the God they feared was the same God in whose world he
lived, and that the human face and the judgemental attitude were the
distortions of their disturbed minds, like something seen in a crazy
house mirror. And he was a product of the creative principle of the
universe, as we all are. He was not lying when he said that he was
"the son of God". Nor was he lying when he said he had been
sent to bring forgiveness. A creative system has to produce what is
needed for creation to continue. Flowers produce pollen. If they
didn't the bees would die. So it is not inappropriate to say that
flowers are sent by nature to bring pollen. Whatever we find to do in
our lives to aid creation or the health of the system into which we
are born, that is what we were sent to do. But he had to talk the
language of the people to whom he was communicating his message.
Jesus
realised that God did not judge people. If there was a big flood
which killed a lot of people it wasn't because God was unhappy with
them. That is not how nature works. And it doesn't take a scientist
to see that. Fear-based superstitions were not our original mode of
viewing the world. They were a product of our neurosis and they
obscured our original realistic view of the world in which we did not
try to fill in the gaps in our sensory information about the world
with chimeras of the mind.
Jesus
realised that we are the only judges, both of ourselves and of
others. And he realised that the only Hell was the one we made for
ourselves during our life. And he realised that our neurosis left us
more dead than alive. The bliss of living in the real world which was
his daily experience was unavailable to us. Trapped within the cage
of our wounded ego we were deadened emotionally and sensually and our
embattlement, our character armour as Wilhelm Reich called it, meant
that we could no longer interact with the world and our fellows
spontaneously as we had when we were children. We can tell when
something dies because it stops actively interacting with its
environment. The more armoured we were, the more cut off from
interaction, the more we were, metaphorically-speaking, dead. This
was acknowledged by those who referred to Jesus as "the first
born from among the dead".
Jesus
talked a lot about life after death and not having to die. Clearly
the body dies. Those who believed in him still died physically. So
what was he talking about? Principally, I think, he was talking about
the state of spiritual death in which he found people. He was saying
that this was a preventable mental illness, one which was reversible,
one from which they could be "resurrected" or "born
again". And it was a disease which those young people who
followed his advice would never have to experience, at least so he
thought.
Of
course there may have been more to it than that. He talked of eternal
life. There are three parts of our consciousness – our raw
consciousness, our physical sensations and our ego, or conscious
thinking self. Our raw consciousness is life itself, the shared
consciousness of the entire universe. We have that in common, not
just with all other humans, but with animals, plants, inorganic
matter and all forms of energy. And since it is all one network of
energy and energy can never be destroyed, it is eternal. Our physical
sensations and our thoughts are individual to us and provide the
shaping of raw consciousness. One day you will no longer have a body
or a brain. There will be no "you" to feel or think
anything. But raw consciousness has always been not "you"
or "me" but "us" – or rather a big
all-encompassing "me". We know what this means when we feel
love. When we feel love we realise that "you" and "me"
are really "us", that that which is individual to us in our
consciousness is tiny compared to what is communal. What we fear when
we fear death is the death of the ego, the lesser part of our
consciousness.
So
why did Jesus say that blasphemy against the holy spirit is the one
thing which will not be forgiven? Dishonesty is the blasphemy against
the holy spirit. Now, of course, we have all been dishonest at one
time or another. He is no talking about something for which we are
going to be condemned by a cosmic father figure. He is telling us
that dishonesty is the one "sin" by which we condemn
ourselves to the prevailing psychological disease. If we do something
to harm other people then we may suffer the consequences. They may
take revenge on us or shun us. But the universe won't punish us. The
universe could give a shit what we do.
But
access to the bliss of living in the real world is something we can
deny to ourselves. If our mind is truthful, if it is grounded on the
bedrock of what is, then there is no fog of confused dogma,
self-deception or denial to stand between us and the joy, in all its
forms, that the real world has to offer to us. On the other hand,
when we start to tell lies we can create a hell for ourselves in
which we live constantly in fear of being found out. And we cut
ourselves off totally from the possibility of love, because love is
open, honest, spontaneous communication. The real world is the only
place were love can occur. Lies separate us. Love requires the common
ground of truthfulness.
To
the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my
teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We
are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How
can you say that we shall be set free?" Jesus replied, "I
tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave
has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it
forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John
8:31-8:36, NIV
Often
we are led to believe that the term "sin" refers to having
a good time – sex, carousing, whatever. That's not what Jesus is
referring to. What he means by "sin" is selfishness, and
slavery to "sin" is neurosis. Neurosis is mental suffering.
And, naturally, when we are suffering our attention is directed
towards our self, in the same way our attention is directed towards
our thumb when we hit it with a hammer. Sex and carousing are not
sinful in this sense unless they are pursued selfishly and thus are a
cause of division between individuals, or unless we feel guilty about
them, in which case they feed back into our neurosis. And the answer
to guilt is to be truthful in our assessment of our behaviour. If it
does no harm to anyone then there is no reason to feel guilty, and if
it is in the past then we can't change it and so, once again, there
is no need to feel guilty. But the key here is "you
will know the truth, and the truth will set you free".
This doesn't mean any specific dogmatic "truth". It means
simply the truth. To be able to see things realistically and to be
truthful about one's self.
If
we have built a cage of fabrications for ourselves, then the way out
is to admit the truth about ourselves. To come out of the closet so
to speak. The gay liberation movement have set a great example for
this. And there are examples of liberating truth-telling throughout
our culture. A recent example was the hilarious ending of the film
The Campaign
(2012) in which rival politicians compete to see who can be the most
truthful. They admit all sorts of embarrassing things about
themselves and find that the public love them for it.
"Do
not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge
others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be
measured to you." Matthew
7.1-7.2, NIV, 1984.
Jesus
recognised that we were only being judged by ourselves and each
other. God could give a shit. What mattered, if we were going to be
free from our neurosis, was that we could return to honesty. But how
could we be open and honest about ourselves in a social context in
which we would be judged by our fellows for past actions or present
feelings? Honesty was the one thing which could set us free, and
dishonesty was the one thing which was condemning each new generation
to the same fate. No matter what we did to hurt each other, without
dishonesty, the effects would heal within a few generations or less,
but if we couldn't be truthful, and each generation grew up
surrounded by lies and half-truths, the suffering of humanity would
just continue. So he tried to encourage the idea that people should
accept their fellows regardless of what they might confess to,
because to do otherwise was to exclude us all from a world in which
we could live together in the bliss of reality. And he was also
acknowledging that the mindset which judges others is one which opens
itself up to self-judgement.
The
human neurosis has been a terrible curse. At times it has made us do
terrible things. But if we are willing to not bar the way back to
Paradise – the paradise of the real world (the world that science
is telling us so much about) – to anyone else, then we can all
return there together.
If
Moral Virtue was Christianity
Christ's
Pretensions were all Vanity.
The
Moral Christian is the Cause
Of
the Unbeliever and his laws.
For
what is Antichrist but those
Who
against Sinners Heaven close.
William
Blake, The Everlasting
Gospel
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