This book is a Get Out of Jail Free card and a passport back into the playground.
The aim of this book is to set you free. But free from what? Free from neurosis. Free from the feeling that you have to obey authority. Free from emotional intimidation. Free from addiction. Free from inhibition.
The key to happiness, mental health and being the most that we can be is absolute and unconditional self-acceptance. The paradox is that many of our problems are caused by trying to improve ourselves, censor our thinking, make up for past misdeeds and struggling with our negative feelings whether of depression or aggression.
But if we consider ourselves in our entirety in this very moment, we know these things :
1. Anything we have done is in the past and cannot be changed, thus it is pointless to do anything else but accept it. No regrets or guilt.
2. While our actions can harm others, our thoughts and emotions, in and of themselves, never can. So we should accept them and allow them to be and go where they will. While emotions sometimes drive actions, those who completely accept their emotions and allow themselves to feel them fully, have more choice over how they act in the light of them.
Self-criticism never made anyone a better person. Anyone who does a “good deed” under pressure from their conscience or to gain the approval of others takes out the frustration involved in some other way. The basis for loving behaviour towards others is the ability to love ourselves. And loving ourselves unconditionally, means loving ourselves exactly as we are at this moment.
This might seem to be complacency, but in fact the natural activity of the individual is healthy growth, and what holds us back from it is fighting with those things we can’t change and the free thought and emotional experience which is the very substance of that growth.
One need not be a religious believer to feel that we live in Apocalyptic times. We are reaching the limits of our society to maintain basic cohesion and of our ecosystem to support us. And we see the spread of toxic forms of ideology which emphasise identity and difference in a way which works against the spirit of universal love which might gather us in and set us on a true path. And the pandemic has tended to make us fear each other and to put our trust in a centralised authority which has often proved unworthy of that trust.
Some say that we need to return to Christian values. This seems valid if one takes those values from a non-literal interpretation of the Gospels. There are too many of us who call ourselves Christians while departing from those values - of love and honesty and non-judgement and charity - to expect that holding up Christianity as an answer will win the approval of unbelievers.
I say this and yet the one thing I fall back on to give me some modicum of hope is that Jesus prophesied that the darkest moment would herald his return. I may not believe in a supernatural sense, but a pattern which is central to our greatest story is not to be lightly dismissed, especially when the alternative is a slow painful extinction for the human race and all the beauty in the world.
Some believe that the heart of human psychology is competition. Nature is a competition for food and mating opportunities. But it seems to me that love is the primary grounding of our psychology. The love bond between mother and child is the foundation of our development. Later there are factors which alienate us from that. If our survival as an individual is in peril, if we are feeling the impulse to serve the breeding impulse, and, particularly, if we are in a psychologically insecure state, then this acts as interference temporarily blocking out our more profound nature. But if we meet a stranger in a situation in which we feel no danger to our survival or our psychological integrity, then there is no reason we won't feel a fellowship with them which is a return to the essence of our first way of relating to another human being, but without the element of complete dependence.
Psychological insecurity is the root of our problems. I know it all too well. If my belief system were made up of secure building blocks, then I would not want to see those who think differently proven humiliatingly wrong. Don't we see this in ourselves and others, particularly on the topic of politics. We build our ego castles and hurl projectiles of mockery at those of our fellows. The "other" becomes perhaps a stand-in for everyone who has ever hurt us. We get an outlet for our frustration, but no healing for that hurt.
So is, perhaps, an Apocalypse the last stand of a failing strategy? There is no doubt that business as usual is proving to be a massive failure. If that failure breaks us, will we, in newfound humility, acknowledge the long-denied truth and fall back into our capacity for love?
For a while I’ve been intending to do some more writing about what Christian ideas mean to me as a person who doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Why not have a look at a central text - The Lord’s Prayer? This is found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.
“Our Father…”
I think it helps to draw meaning from this concept of “God the Father” if we acknowledge that it is an expression which originated in a patriarchal culture. The source and guiding principle of the universe might have been depicted as “The Mother”, but in this case it wasn’t, so what we have to ask is “What does the father figure mean to a culture in which a man was considered the head of the family?”
Our parents are the source of our existence. They came together and we were the result. So the father is a representation of the process by which we came into existence.
The father, in such a culture, is also the teacher of morals and the one who punishes us if we depart from them.
I don’t believe in the supernatural, but the term “God” is meaningful to me as a symbol.
First there is “God the Creator”. For me, this is a personification of the creative process of the universe whereby more complex and capable wholes come into existence. Somehow atoms came to be arranged in the meaningful form which allows me to exist as a complex intelligent entity sitting at my computer and typing this sentence. We know a lot more about this process now than we did when the Lord’s Prayer was first spoken, but it is still something worthy of the kind of awe we associate with the term “God”.
Then there is “God” as a motivating force in human behaviour - “God” as love. Here again we have something which brings into being more complex and capable wholes. While love is all too easily subsumed by conflicts of one kind or another - to the extent that there is such a thing as a friendship or a family or a tribe or a community, these are wholes which are greater than the sum of their parts made possible by love. Love being a form of communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity.
“God” is seen as a teacher of morality and a judge. Love is the source of our morality. I believe we have an instinct for it which is born in us, and, if we are lucky, that is reinforced and encouraged by the example of those who love us. While we often suffer from experiences which are simply bad luck, we can also be taught lessons by life. We may make a selfish decision in which we neglect to recognise that our wellbeing rests within the wellbeing of those around us, and as a result life may teach us a lesson via negative consequences. I think “God the Judge” is a symbol for that process. Life could be imagined a bit like a video game. We have a certain capacity for love which can be recharged in positive encounters with others, like picking up power packs, and there are encounters with mischance and with the malevolence of others which may deplete us. There is a chance we may lose our way entirely. Maybe we will lose patience and “go over to the dark side” because it seems easier, less of a struggle. The idea of “God the Judge” is of someone who is keeping the score. Maybe there is no such entity, but our life situation and its consequences are real.
“…who art in heaven…”
To me, the word “heaven” represents a realm of potential which we can apprehend using our imagination. We can imagine what the human world would be like if it reached its creative potential, if love and reason ruled over all. In our world we see “God” as if “through a glass darkly”. Love shines out here and there amidst the darkness, but war and crime and depression and all the rest can easily seem to be the larger part of reality. And foolishness is more common than wisdom or reason. So we have to look to our imaginary vision of how things could be to see “God” clearly.
“…hallowed be thy name…”
“Hallowed” means “made holy”. As I’ve said, the creative principle of the universe is one which allows for the formation of more complex and capable wholes. “Holy” comes from the same source as the word “whole”. So that which is “holy” is that which is “whole” or “of the whole”. To heal is to “be made whole”. “God” is our symbol for all that “makes whole”.
“…Thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”
The essence of the prayer is that the potential for wholeness - through love and reason - be realised in the world as it exists in our imagination.
“…Give us this day our daily bread…”
A plea that we are able to obtain the means to meet our daily physical needs, but this also could be a way of symbolising our emotional needs for hope, inspiration and love.
“…And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”
One of the major threats to wholeness, of the individual or the group, is lack of forgiveness.
Conscience acts as a guide to our behaviour, but a healthy relationship with the conscience requires self-acceptance and the flexibility it makes possible. If our self-acceptance is undermined to the extent that the conscience becomes an intolerable source of oppression, then we can go to war against it. Instead of doing what we know to be the best thing, we may deliberately do the opposite of what our conscience would tell us. This seems to me to be the best way to understand the extremes of human malevolence. There are acts of evil which have a pragmatic purpose. One might torture someone to get information to help one’s own side in a war. But some people commit such acts without such an external motive. How do we explain such sadism? The impulse is the exact opposite of the love impulse. Is it unreasonable to interpret malevolence, of which this is the purest form, as resentment at a conscience which demands loving behaviour when, because of undermined self-acceptance, there is no more love to give? If hatred of the conscience were not a motivating force there would be no point in wasting time, or risking one’s freedom, by inflicting suffering when one could spend that time and effort indulging in sensual pleasure.
So a healthy relationship with the conscience is one in which forgiveness for past transgressions frees us up to do better next time. Self-forgiveness is a major part of self-acceptance. By self-acceptance I don’t mean complacency, because our potential to improve is a key part of what is being accepted. To be self-accepting is to recognise that one has nothing to prove about one’s self and thus be able to open up to intrinsic motivations for doing things rather than ones rooted in maintaining a fragile sense of pride.
And clearly the functioning of human groups require forgiveness amongst their members. It won’t work if there is an imbalance here, with some forgiving all the time and others always being the ones whose misbehaviour is being forgiven. So it is linked : “…forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” (the unforgiving don’t get forgiven) and followed by the next two lines which address the origins of the transgressions which might need to be forgiven.
“And lead us not into temptation…”
It’s all too easy to be tempted by opportunities to seek immediate gratification of some desire even when we know that the longer term consequences will be harmful to both ourselves and others. So there is a plea to limit such tests. Since I’m not looking at this as something involving a supernatural being, I would see this as an intention to develop the spirit of stoicism as an defence against impulsiveness.
“…but deliver us from evil.”
Once again a positive focusing on the power of love, reason and wisdom, personified here as “God”, to heal our malevolent motivations, An opening up to all that might lead us back to wholeness.
This is needed to compliment forgiveness. Forgiveness can’t be expected in the absence of a move toward better behaviour.
“For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.”
The creative principle of life, expressed in inter-human affairs as love, is that through which everything becomes possible. In a limited sense it is possible to defy this principle, but such defiance is ultimately in vain as nothing worthwhile comes to us as a result. Selfishness is ultimately self-defeating, because we have far more to gain by working together for our mutual benefit. In this sense, that which we symbolise under the word “God” is the source of everything wonderful and the ruler of the system of which we are an expression.
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7
I often find passages from the gospels a great stimulus to exploratory thinking. I’m not a believer. It seems to me that, to be a believer, is to think that we know what something means. The fact that I may look for meaning in a passage of text, first of all requires a degree of mystery. It is also an experiment. I don’t intend to try, as one might by researching context and language, to make a case for some kind of objective interpretation. I’m treating the passage as if it were a seed that I’m planting in my imagination to see what will grow there. I can’t make any claim for the healthiness of any plant that this experiment produces. I may be gardening in contaminated soil.
The above passage is a mysterious one. No doubt many who thought their faith was strong have asked for things they didn’t receive.
The passage guarantees that the asker will receive and the seeker will find. This sounds a bit like the theme of a Disney cartoon feature - “Don’t let go of your dreams and eventually they will come true.” It may be true that those who give up their dream are unlikely to achieve it, but there are plenty of people who hung onto a dream and came to a sticky end or found themselves mired in debt.
For the time being anyway lets ignore the guarantee. Maybe the guarantee comes back in if we understand the meaning of the passage. Maybe if we do it right, it’s bound to work, but I feel more comfortable being skeptical about that at this stage.
There are three things that it is suggested that we do : ask, seek and knock.
Ask
When we ask for something we describe what it is that we want or at least give it a name.
Unless we are asking for something trivial, we are most likely also admitting an insufficiency in our own ability to supply it.
What do we want? We might make like a beauty pageant contestant and say “World Peace.” But what exactly do we mean by “world peace”? What would it look like? How would a peaceful world need to function in order to maintain that state. What are the barriers which stand between us and it which we need to ask to be removed? The more specifically we can describe what we want, the better chance we have of that description acting as a blueprint that could draw us and others toward it as a reality.
So whether we get what we want can depend on the quality of our asking. If we ask for something which others want as well and in a way which inspires them to action then our wish may be granted.
The creative principle which we see in operation around us - both in nature and in culture - works through the formation of new wholes. Ecosystems are wholes in which the individual organisms interrelate in a way which not only keeps each species alive, but has allowed for increasing complexity both in the system and its most advanced members. In society, individuals come together in families to produce and raise offspring and individuals come together also to form organisations which engage in creative endeavours, such as producing increasingly powerful forms of technology. Individuals create by bringing parts together to form new wholes, for example I’m creating this blog post by bringing together a new arrangement of words.
One need not have a supernatural concept of God to see that bringing some new thing or new arrangement of things into being means opening up to this creative principle - looking outside ourselves, as well as beneath the surface of our inner self, perhaps - seeking the connections which are the very essence of creation.
Our pride may stand as a barrier to receiving the blessing we seek from the creative principle. Maybe we think we already know. Maybe we think we can already do. But if we get down on our knees and admit that we don’t know and we can’t do, then maybe we will be prepared to see a realisable potential we had been missing.
Seek
Seeking is all about looking. It is about paying attention.
Seeking means first admitting that something might exist. We can’t afford to be too cynical.
Only if we pay attention to the people around us and to the systems - natural, social and technological - of which we are a part, will we see the opportunities - the potential new connections - through which what we seek can come to pass.
If we get too caught up in our own personal schemes we lose sight of the power that we can have through our appreciation of the talents of others. Many a talent lies dormant because nobody has called upon it.
Knock
A knock is a determined action intended to call forth a response.
If we want something we need to take some kind of action. We need to initiate it, while at the same time remembering that there is much that we don’t know and much that we can’t do.
We might take action to share our vision. We might ask people what they need. It might involve literally knocking on doors.
***
If I can ask for anything, why not ask for the “Kingdom of Heaven”.
What does this phrase mean to me?
This is a potential which exists within us and within the world to manifest a community characterised by loving fellowship.
Thus, “…your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”, to me, means the realisation in the material world (“on earth”) of the matrix (“kingdom”) of love (“God”) which otherwise only exists in the world of positive potential (“heaven”).
Don’t we want to experience the ultimate pleasure and save ourselves from suffering?
The ultimate pleasure is that of loving connection with others or with the world around us in which we lose ourselves in the experience of being part of something larger. Maximising our ability to savour this pleasure requires a harmonious social environment and a harmonious relationship to the natural environment. Within the context of such a loving community, it would be much easier for us to work together to solve the practical problems which face us.
What stands between us and this potential loving community?
Egotism, greed, prejudice, aggression, despair, resentment… There are so many psychological barriers. There is so much in us which can make us enemies and thus lock us all out of “Heaven”.
Let’s imagine a tyrant who inflicts terrible suffering on his people. He is a fortress made of beliefs and behaviours which hold fear and guilt at bay. Can he acknowledge the common humanity of those he oppresses? No. Because to do so would be to confront his own guilt at having treated other humans so appallingly. Can he take his sword away from their throat? No. Because he fears they will rise up and exact their revenge. He really has no freedom of mind or freedom of behaviour. He is a reflexive pattern of oppression within which the loving being he was when he was born is imprisoned.
This is the extreme, but there is something of that tyrant in all of us. We have our rigid defensive beliefs and our fears which push people away.
The Kingdom is the state of freedom. Imprisonment is what keeps us from that kingdom. We are troubled by other’s selfishness, egotism, prejudice, violence. But these are their prisons. Each of us has our prison which is the source of our suffering and may contribute to the suffering of others. Our enemy is the jailer and not his victim.
So what do I ask for?
I ask not for justice, for justice is something which must be imposed. Instead I ask for the key which unlocks the prisons of the mind of which the injustices of the world are the outward expression.
It seems that the battle between the conscience and the insecure ego is playing itself out around us all the time. It is the theme of our times and it has been the story of our history from the very beginning. And, surely, it is not just around us but within us that the battle rages.
I feel myself torn. Those who play the conscience of our times articulate the realities of our situation ecologically and socially. While they may not always get it right, they are pointing to things which cannot be dismissed without burying one’s head dangerously in the sand.
On the other hand, when such individuals inspire even violent hatred, that is not something alien to me. I identify with those who feel this way. I feel it in me too. Preach at me. Tell me what is wrong with me. Remind me of the things I deep down know are true but desperately wish were not true. And I’ll wish you were dead.
This dilemma is the story of our species. What we need in order to behave lovingly towards each other is self-acceptance. From this comes our ability to be generous, open, spontaneous and honest. But an unforgiving insistence on such behaviour means that our self-acceptance is progressively undermined by feelings of guilt. Beyond a certain point, the more the conscience insists, the more the ego resists.
Selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the suffering or insecure organism. Thus guilt, far from correcting the totality of our behaviour, makes us selfish.
And the dictatorial demands of the conscience on the selfish individual generate malevolence - the desire to revenge ourselves on the critical voice by doing something ever worse.
Of course we couldn’t do without the conscience. We needed to have some concept of what loving behaviour would look like which could continue to exist in our minds long after the love needed to realise it had died from our hearts. If we had been able to forgive our failures to meet that standard, then that love would never have died, but we have never been able to forgive ourselves enough.
The history of the human race has been one of great courage, determination and initiative. When we think back at the dangers and challenges our ancestors met head on and the terrible suffering they experienced, and inflicted upon each other, it is remarkable that beings of mere flesh and blood could persist through all that.
As Hamlet said, “…conscience does make cowards of us all.” Historically we persisted against the odds partly because we repressed our conscience. Our conscience would tell us that it was wrong to conquer, to steal and to oppress. But we did it anyway. If we had followed our conscience exclusively we would probably be living in huts in the jungle eating nuts and berries - without science and without the benefits of technology.
This doesn’t mean we could or should continue to live a life of conscience-suppressing domination. We just don’t want to lose the spirit and courage which we will need to meet our current crises. If we are to find a new relationship with the conscience it mustn’t be one in which our spirit is broken, crushed beneath it’s unforgiving jackboot.
If we are to have a sustainable new way of living it will have to be an expression of exuberance arising from an unalloyed love for ourselves. It can’t be some humiliating act of penance for past misdeeds.
The courage that brought us through the nightmare of history was the courage of divided beings. We were carrying the burden of a condemning conscience. If we can heal this conflict and all of the social divisions it gave rise to, then we will find a courage and determination we have never known.
How do we do this?
We need an understanding of this underlying human dilemma.
We need to unconditionally accept thoughts and feelings, recognising that they are the inevitable product of our current situation and that, the more we acknowledge them consciously, the more easily we can chose appropriate behaviour in the light of them. To accept a thought does not mean to believe that it is a truth. And to accept a feeling does not mean to act upon it.
We need to be able to honestly articulate our psychological position.
Acceptance is what shrinks the dark side of us. It was inflamed by unforgiving criticism, and criticism open or implied continues to exacerbate it.
So what if someone hates me? I say : “It’s O.K. if you hate me. If I were you I know I would hate me too.”
Hatred is a cover emotion for underlying feelings of guilt or shame. If we can feel that our feelings of hatred, as an emotion, are accepted, perhaps the feelings of guilt or shame can come into consciousness. The idea that an emotion is accepted acts against the impulse towards repression, while criticism of that emotion encourages repression of whatever lies beneath it.
Sometimes sadism masquerades as righteousness. Sometimes the sense of humiliation which we experience when we look at our own sins makes us need to point out the sins of others and glory in their humiliation.
Instead we could realise that we are all in the same boat. If we can feel love and behave benevolently in the world, then we are one of the lucky ones whose situation in that world has not been one that killed our love and drove us to malevolence. If our love is real and our benevolence not a show, then we will have no interest in the egotism which would take credit for it.
The path towards healing for society is the path of honesty. That means acknowledging our own darker emotions and accepting them in others.
Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, claims that a better translation of the Greek word ήμερος usually translated as “meek” is “those who have weapons and the ability to use them but are determined to keep them sheathed”. Those who take the right path are those who integrate their shadow, who acknowledge the dark side of their nature but do not succumb to it, gaining strength from their encounter with it. He is afraid that we may assume that meek is synonymous with “weak” :
Here is a guide to how the Greek word is generally translated.
Here is some discussion of Peterson’s interpretation.
One problem I have with both interpretations is the failure to acknowledge the meaning of the word “inherit”. An inheritance is something unearned which falls to us. Now it may have been earned in some instances, in the sense that someone may put us in their will because we have been of service to them or we may be written out of a will because we have done something to offend a family member. But none of this is intrinsic to the meaning of the word “inheritance”. The passage doesn’t say “the meek will earn (or win) the earth”.
I think we have to look at the context to get a better understanding.
This is the third in what are known as the Beautitudes. Jesus tells us that eight particular classes of people are “blessed” or “fortunate”. He then tells his followers that all of them are “blessed” or “fortunate” if they are persecuted because of him.
He first claims “blessedness” for the “poor in spirit” and then for “those who mourn”. Clearly these are not those who are blessed with good fortune in the world as it currently stands.
I think that, to understand the Beatitudes, we have to recognise that Jesus was an apocalypticist, i.e. a person who believed that some event was going to occur which would overturn the established social order and usher in some kind of paradise on earth. (I recognise that it is more popular to interpret the concept of a “Kingdom of Heaven” as some ethereal place we go to when we die, but that doesn’t make so much sense to me.)
The Beatitudes make sense in the framework of two worlds - the social world we know, with its injustices, its dishonesty and its oppressive power relationships - and a potential world of honesty and love which lies buried beneath its repressions.
Sermon on the Mount 1 Le Sainte Bible Traduction nouvelle selon la Vulgate par Mm J -J Bourasse et P Janvier Tours Alfred Mame et Fils 2 1866 3 France 4 Gustave Dor Engraving photographed by ruskpp.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 5:3
Perhaps the “poor in spirit” are those who have been very wounded by their experiences of life. They have little spirit left in them. But in a world of love their wounds will be healed and they will be free of oppression. In terms of a transition to the new world, they have the advantage - “the blessing” - of not being invested in the old.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” 5:4
To be in mourning is not a form of righteousness that one pursues. As with being “poor in spirit” it is a disadvantage in the old world, but one which makes us less invested in it. We fixate on loving relationships which we have lost, through the death of the loved one or through a breakdown in the relationship. In a world where everybody loves everybody else, it will be easy to let go of the past and live in the present.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” 5:5
No amount of power or aggression can keep the old world from dying. Terrible destruction can occur. Nothing can necessarily protect anyone. But, only a healthy society will not eventually fall. If such a healthy loving truthful world comes into existence, it will belong to the meek as much as to anyone else. The point is that the powerful and aggressive try to hang onto the world, and, individually, they always fail. They can postpone the new world, but they can never have a world of their own which persists.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” 5:6
Those who long for a world in which we treat each other well, are not invested in a world in which we don’t. So, once again, we have a group of people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain in a transition from the old world to the new world.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” 5:7
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” 5:8
I think this is where we come to what Griffith calls “the innocent”. As very young children we were aligned to the world of love. If God is the creative theme of the universe which is manifested in human behaviour as love, then children can “see God”. This is the source of their “enthusiasm”, i.e. “the god within”. It is the wounds of life, which sow the seeds of internal division and breed resentment, which “hide the face of God” from us. In a world in which these divisions are healed with understanding, everyone will live in full awareness that they are manifestations of this creative force.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” 5:9
This is similar to 5:7. Peace between warring factions is keeping us in the old world. Those who can resolve conflicts are architects of the new world. The reward falls to all, not just to those who behave this way. It isn’t about pursuing righteous behaviour in order to pass a test and get a reward, it is about being a manifestation of a social process from which the whole of humanity benefits.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 5:10
The old world is threatened by honesty and is insecure in it’s sense of its own worth, so those who tell the truth or act in a way which shows up the old world’s corrupt behaviour tend to be persecuted. It is necessary to keep the vision of the new world in mind in order to not give in to this pressure.
Another interpretation could be put on this sentence. Some people are persecuted because of a false sense of righteousness (what William Blake called “Moral Virtue”). A good example might be people who are persecuted for their sexuality. Someone who is in a loving gay relationship is being honest and loving - requirements of the new world - and someone who tries to persecuted them in the belief that they are deviating from righteousness, by not adopting dishonesty and suppressing their love, is part of the old world. The new world is for the person being thus persecuted as it is for all who have been persecuted.
So how does this apocalypse, this death of the old world and birth of the new take place?
What makes the most sense to me is that the human race has always been engaged in a kind of collective improvisation to find the path to the new world. Art, philosophy, religion, science… These are all ways in which our minds and our hearts have been engaged in a process of trying to sort ourselves out. We make mistakes, we strive to learn from them and compensate for them. We examine the world around us and try to better understand where we come from.
Think of us as a computer trying to work out the bugs in its own programming. We can even see this in the evolution of different religions. We can see Jesus as someone trying to compensate for the flaws in Judaism, just as Judaism was an attempt to compensate for flaws in various pagan belief systems. It’s all a part of a process of trying to find something which works. And, in the modern world, we have new abilities and new problems not dreamt of in Jesus’ time.
The advantage we have is that this collective improvisation is taking place at an exponential rate. We can share ideas very quickly and with minimum censorship.
What should we do? Participate in the process. Speak what we feel to be the truth. Listen to the ideas expressed by others and test them for flaws. The conceptual framework of understanding which ushers in a new world will be the one which passes the test of such scrutiny. And we will know it because it works, because it heals conflict and spreads wellbeing wherever it is expressed. “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Matthew 7:16
Every day we see evidence of how rotten the old world is - lies and corruption are exposed. It’s time for the new world to find itself amidst the collapse of the old. It can only grow out of open, honest, spontaneous and generous interaction between individuals. Dogmatic utopias constructed through social programming or the impositions of more laws are part of the old world. We will know the truth by the fact that it sets us free from all that.
A beautiful young man named Dorian Gray becomes an obsession for two gentlemen - artist Basil Hallward and cynical socialite Sir Henry Wotton. To Hallward he is a muse, to Wotton an amusement and would-be protege. Hallward captures his beauty in a remarkable portrait. When Wotton tells him that youth is all that matters, Gray makes a wish that the portrait might age instead of him. He is astonished and frightened when he finds that the painting shows the signs of his loss of innocence, while his own face remains the same. Under the tutelage of the witty cynic Wotton, he comes to embrace a life which runs after beauty and pleasure with no regard for the welfare of others. He leaves a trail of broken individuals behind him, his ex-friends and ex-lovers, himself apparently untouched. But there is always a price to be paid.
Oscar Wilde’s only novel begins with a preface consisting of epigrams on the subjects of art, literature and criticism. “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book,”he tells us. “Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”There is perhaps something paradoxical about this statement appearing in the preface to a book which conforms very much to the conventions of the morality tale, and in which a book plays a corrupting role in the life of the protagonist, at least in his own mind.
So what is the apparent moral? A warning against idolatry. To worship at an idol, we are told repeatedly in the Old Testament, is a certain way to lose our soul.
The soul of any person or thing is that integrity which maintains its existence as a functioning whole. To place too much emphasis on any part or quality of the whole is to risk the loss of the integrity which gives it its meaning. Dorian Gray comes to give youth primary importance - to worship at its altar - and any worship requires sacrifice. The soul of life is its impermanence. An inanimate object may remain the same. To live is to change, to be affected by others and by our own actions.
Dorian Gray is emotionally affected by life to some extent - he feels fear and self-pity - but something in the resilience of his flesh seems to keep the negative emotions from persisting.
There is a chapter in the middle of the novel which takes Dorian from the age of 20 to 38. It is a florid description of jewels and tapestries and unusual musical instruments - objects of fascination for him, to read about or to experience. This is the way that Wilde articulates his path of decadence. There will, later in the story, be hints at sexual excess, not to mention a visit to an opium den, but everything is left up to our imagination, which works well. Each of us can easily conjure our own personal image of depravity. But the fact that so much time is spent on descriptions of treasures seems significant to me. Someone could devote themselves to social pleasures - the pleasure of fellowship in song or dance, the sensual pleasure of skin on skin - either in a sexual or non-sexual context. Such pleasures might bring them closer to others and encourage them to be open also to their welfare. Or one might take pleasure in communing with nature. But the jewels and tapestries are like Dorian himself, beauties which exist outside of time - beauties cold in the face of human vulnerability.
The character of Henry Wotton is like the public face of Wilde himself taken to the extreme. He too was known for his cynical wit. It seems as if he recognised that his persona - and his philosophy of aestheticism, which championed beauty over all else - could be dangerous if taken too far. This gives the novel its brilliance. There is nothing like a great artist playing out through his imagination something which could symbolise his own possible downfall. As it is, extracts from Wotton’s dialogue are often presented as if they were things which Wilde said in own social life. Within the context of the novel we can see that he recognised the limitations of such cynicism.
Nevertheless, Wotton’s siren call carries weight with Gray, and with the reader, because there is truth in it. Repression, in order to conform to society’s demands, robs us of our vitality. Virtue, as it is assessed by the current standards of society, can also become a idol which robs us of our soul. In Wilde’s satirical portrait of self-important philanthropists we get a glimpse of the emptiness of respectable society. And, after all, it was respectable society which would put Wilde in prison. The danger is always one of over-compensation. As the Taoists point out, the key is to walk the line of balance.
In The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Wilde said : “For each man kills the thing he loves…”That idea is here also in this earlier work. We see how romantic love can be more about attachment and projection than appreciation of the other person for who they really are. We are bound for disappointment, a disappointment which can be deadly. Genuine love is the spirit of openness to who the other person really is that does not close off if they prove to be something other. It requires openness to being changed in fundamental ways through the encounter. Yet Dorian Gray has prayed to be immune to change, therefore he is not capable of love.
This book by controversial psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich is unlikely to appeal to traditional Christian believers. Reich theorises that Jesus must have had sex with one or more of the women who surrounded him during his ministry. If Jesus was a naturally loving individual, Reich concludes, he must have exhibited the free genital expression intrinsic to a healthy character structure.
Reich was not a traditional believer. He views Jesus as a man whose presence had a profound impact on the world because he was so healthy and the rest of us are so sick. The very tendency to interpret his specialness as something otherworldly, something supernatural, and to create myths of magical events such as virgin birth and resurrection from the dead around his memory, is evidence of how alienated we are from the functioning of our own bodies.
We are born with primary instincts which direct us toward loving behaviour through the pleasurable streaming of the life energy in our bodies. But we are born into a society which is antagonistic to such feelings. The frustration of the primary instincts causes them to be re-channelled into secondary drives. These can take many forms, including various kinds of egotism, aggression, anxieties, etc.
What Reich admits he cannot explain is how this occurred in the beginning. The story of Adam and Eve gives this change from healthy functioning to antagonism towards the free operation of the life force, i.e. God, a mythological expression. We are caught in a terrible trap and that trap is our own neurotic character structure, which alienates us from each other and from nature. In the first chapter Reich gives a description of The Trap and the various ways we try to reconcile ourselves to imprisonment within it. Religion is one source of solace, a promise of a life outside the trap after death.
But Reich presents Jesus as a man who never entered The Trap. A man with a healthy character structure, a man who unselfconsciously gave expression to our original loving instincts. His wisdom was the honest clear thinking anyone would exhibit who was not impeded by the fears and frustrations that come with being divided against one’s own life energy.
Central to this condition is fear of our sexual feelings. This is the hook on which our loving instincts get snagged.
In Western culture things have changed a lot since Reich’s death in 1957. We are more honest about sexuality. He played a role in opening things up. It was he who coined the term “Sexual Revolution”. But that doesn’t mean that the problem he highlighted is any the less with us. What he felt was repressed in us was not so much sex itself but the loving expression of “the genital embrace”. It’s possible to have sex several times a day and still be a denizen of The Trap. Reich uses the term “four-lettering” to describe compulsive neurotic sex - the “wham bam thank you ma’am” kind of copulation that is all the world away from the gentle process which builds slowly and naturally to an orgasm which frees the soul to meld with that of one’s partner.
Maybe attitudes to adolescent sexuality are more enlightened than they were in Reich’s day. He talks of the sexual agony of the adolescent. This is something I could identify with. Even though I had sexually liberal parents, I was greatly disturbed by the onrush of powerful sexual desires at puberty. I remember wishing at one point that my sexual desires could be medically removed, because they were such a source of terrible anxiety. Why? I don’t know. Reich felt that young people were psychologically damaged by the sex negative attitudes of parents, teachers and the church, which caused them to fight against and repress their sexual desires instead of expressing them in a healthy way. Thus one generation of sexual cripples cripples the next.
Once again, the fact that young people today are more sexually active would not necessarily be a positive sign for Reich. Compulsive unloving sex is just another neurotic symptom.
In this book, which was written only a few years before he was imprisoned and died, Reich doesn’t try to make a carefully reasoned or evidenced argument about human nature or about the life and death of Jesus. This is written more in the mode of the prophet crying in the wilderness. His early work was supported with references to case studies and anthropological research. Here he simply states what he strongly believes to be true and it is up to us to either feel that it makes sense of our own experience and what we have read in the gospels about Jesus or that it doesn’t. Given that, in the middle of his career, Reich claimed to have discovered scientific evidence of the life energy, which he called “orgone” - evidence which was taken seriously by very few other scientists - perhaps this less scientific approach is preferable. One need not agree with everything Reich says to gain from the stimulation of his iconoclastic thought. We all need to be shaken up from time to time.
The story of the life and murder of Christ is, arguably, the most important story in Western history. Even those of us who are not Christians know its major events. It permeates our culture. It doesn’t matter that Reich is no Biblical scholar. Even if this were a fictional story, it is one which embodies the central human dilemma. Reich is using the basics of the story as a way of contemplating and illustrating the human condition. And he doesn’t hide the fact that he identifies aspects of his own situation with that of Christ. He too, at least in his own mind, is a speaker of truths unwelcome to the authority figures of his time. He too had reluctantly taken on a leadership role.
Reich presents Christ as a man who only gradually discovers that he is special. He has to learn that others are not free in the way that he is. His psychological freedom and loving nature make him very attractive to those around him. He wants to help them. But he doesn’t understand that their character structure is such that they will suck up whatever love he shows them and then resent him because they can’t be like him. They will seduce him into becoming a leader - into marching on Jerusalem - but it will all be for nothing. He will be killed because those with a sick character structure always have a murderous resentment for those who are still truly alive inside themselves.
It is this tendency which is the central subject of the book. For Reich, the murder of Christ is something that happens all over the world ever day. Christ was an embodiment of our original loving instincts as they are expressed in the body. And the Murder of Christ continues through the stifling of the expression of those instincts in every child. Who is the murderer of Christ? Reich points the finger at all of us.
Like Listen Little Man!, another book Reich wrote in the latter part of his life when he was at the centre of much hostility, The Murder of Christ is often a harshly accusatory book, but we may gain much through our encounter with its thorniness. Today we know more about the chemistry of love. We know that there are forms of intimacy, sexual or otherwise, which cause our bodies to produce the chemical Oxytocin. The experience of this chemical in our blood stream, which produces warm feelings of affection and bonding and thus, no doubt, works to melt the rigidity of our angry, frightened or resentful ego structure, is perhaps what Reich and his patients experienced as the flow of “orgone energy”. Perhaps it is true that a significant element in the dark side of our life as humans - aggression, sexual predation, greed, depression, loneliness - arises through a fear of bodily sensations which, were we less troubled by them, could lead us to a more loving society.
Eva Reich, Jerome Siskind, Peter Reich, Wilhelm Reich and Ilse Ollendorff in Maine
