Month: April 2019

Here is a question someone asked on my Dreams and Resurrection Facebook page: If Jesus was truly who he claimed to be, instead of performing random miracles, why didn’t he just present medical and natural knowledge time has only given us at the expense of suffering?

My response: That is an excellent question. I wish I had a short, snappy answer that would awaken all minds hearing it like a million light bulbs turning on all at once. But I don’t. I’ll try this instead: I believe that if God could make it possible for us to experience only joy with no suffering, he would do it. Since we suffer, then He can’t do that. But I do think that He can make it so that we can experience such a joy that we don’t mind that we also suffer. I have felt it. God could have guaranteed that there would be no suffering by not creating us in the first place. But that’s like saying that suicide is the surefire cure for suffering. And it would be, if death were permanent unconsciousness. But I am not aware of any reasoning, deductive or inductive, that leads to the conclusion that one’s own death is equivalent to losing consciousness and never regaining it. We have strong inductive evidence that death is not permanent unconsciousness in that we die to the world of our dreams when we awake every morning. And I can’t imagine, from my own first-person perspective, being permanently unconscious. I am willing to pay the price of suffering for the experience of joy.

Jesus’ message was that the kingdom of God is near. He healed particular people whom he encountered because he felt love and compassion for them.

That clause “if Jesus was who he claimed to be” is unfortunate, I think. This is something I think C. S. Lewis is wrong about. He makes it sound like Jesus lords it over us. I think Jesus was telling us we are children of God just as much as he is. And he was telling us that we will have, or in some sense already have, the cure for all suffering, which is the joy that makes us not mind that we suffer. It doesn’t follow that we should glorify suffering or not bother to relieve it when we are able. That it does not follow is the lesson of the healing miracles.

If Jesus had revealed the natural and medical knowledge that we have discovered over the intervening centuries and that has allowed us to alleviate suffering, then you could ask why God didn’t do it sooner, from the very beginning. But what He has done from the very beginning is to create the conditions under which naturalistic humanism is worth pursuing. It is worth pursuing only because death is not permanent unconsciousness and because there is a joy such that one doesn’t mind suffering. Naturalistic humanism alone, without those conditions, could never deliver us from fear and anxiety about suffering, death, and meaninglessness.

A dream about His Highness Art Kleps

A dream I had last night has convinced me to take up the thorny subject of His Highness Art Kleps again. Immediately after the dream I was of the opposite opinion. I was glad I woke up, and thought, “I should forget about writing any more about him.”

In the dream a small van with silver and black paneling pulled up to deliver party supplies. The driver also handed over a receipt for $2000 which had been charged to the church account. With a sinking heart I remembered that I had placed the order, and at the same moment I realized that Art had just arrived. “Who ordered that?” he demanded to know, and then he instructed me to tell the guy to take it back and not to pay the bill. I put off telling him that it had already been paid. He was already accusing the man who delivered it of fraud, and I knew that it wasn’t fraud and that Art was going to want me to back up the claim that it was. Then he asked me, “Why did you order it?” I replied that I had had a feeling that something important was going to happen so that there would be a celebration. I was being dishonest, and trying to flatter him that his arrival was the important event. In fact I had had no such premonition and was just hoping Art would be pleased with me or at least not mad at me. At the same time I was disgusted with myself for letting myself be controlled by Art in this way.

As I began to realize it was a dream and to wake up, I was dismayed that this ghost from my past still had this power over me in my dream. I thought about the fact that I have been thinking for some time about writing about my relationship with Art, and at that moment, I resolved not to do it. I just wanted to be done with him. But now I’m thinking that I don’t need to be done with him. I just need to change the relationship by making it clear to myself that it was good and right for me to be a loyal disciple of his for a while and then to quit, and that it is not clinging to the past to want to think about what he was right about and what he was wrong about. Yes, he is dead, but also he is still alive, and that is consistent with what he taught and with what I now believe and tell anyone who is interested.:

Art Kleps says (in “The Excommunication of Timothy Leary”, DTS, okneoac.org):

“The understanding which the peak psychedelic experience brings to everyone is always and everywhere identical (but is repressed in a million different ways): Life is a dream, and it is your dream. This message, which we may call ‘solipsism’ or ‘nihilism’ or ‘yogacara’ or ‘madhayamaka’ or ‘Zen’ Buddhism is the message of every great mystical philosopher in human history—the message, within the dream, that tells you it is a dream.

“Everything else is repression.

“Three dimensional space is an illusion. The flow of time is an illusion.

“History is an illusion. Timothy Leary is an illusion. I am an illusion.

“Within your illusion, the great religious traditions (repressed, no later than they begin, in a million different ways) always stand for the assertion that one does not ‘attain immortality’, but rather realizes, upon one’s enlightenment, that there is no ‘death’ any more than there is any ‘life’, other than as fake dramas to maintain the illusion of externality, multiplicity, and space-time. One’s mind does not exist in the world, the world exists in one’s mind. What is the nature of that mind—that is the question. The ‘conscious’ wish system, obviously, is only a part of it. The ego may steer, but it does not rule. There is more to it than that.”

But I say (Dreams and Resurrection, pp. 24-5):

“. . . [I]f I am dreaming right now, then there must be a waking reality relative to which this is a dream. Even though I am not consciously aware of anything in that reality, I may be in some way dimly aware of it or it may be affecting what I am dreaming. So, the relativistic conception of dreaming and waking does not have the consequence that there is no reality and all is merely a dream. We would be equally justified in saying that there are no mere dreams and all is reality. We are more justified, though, in thinking that sometimes we sleep and dream, and other times we are awake; that these alternate on a fairly regular basis; that, although it is possible that in the future we will sleep and never dream again, or sleep and only dream, and not wake up again, or that we will wake up once and for all and never sleep or dream again, we have no basis in experience that would justify us in expecting any of those possibilities.”

The medieval sense of “comedy”

The medieval sense of “comedy” is that of a narrative that ends happily. It is in that sense that, for example, Dante’s Divine Comedy is a comedy. The central revelation of a peak LSD trip and of Christianity is that life is a comedy in this sense, not in the sense of a performance intended to provoke laughter (which is consistent with the fact that life does include times of laughter).

Buddhism teaches that nothing is permanent, that the cause of suffering is wanting some things to be permanent, and that there is a solution to the problem of suffering, which is the realization that nothing is permanent. Christianity teaches that we are permanent (“we” includes all subjects of experience), and that suffering is bearable because in the long run joy is so much greater. So, I suppose both Buddhism and Christianity teach that life is a comedy in the medieval sense, and the whole issue depends on whether it’s true that nothing is permanent.

For Unamuno, who wrote The Tragic Sense of Life, the life that is tragic is a life with no afterlife. For him, the life that includes the afterlife is a comedy, in the medieval sense, and not a tragedy. And this is because he hoped for the apokatastasis, the restoration of all things.

C. S. Lewis would say that he, too, hopes everyone will be saved, but he doesn’t realize, as Unamuno does, that if even one person is not saved, then life is a tragedy, after all, for all of us. The evidence that he doesn’t realize this is that he is happy to defend what he calls “mere Christianity,” which teaches that some, maybe even most, people will be damned forever. The ethics of this misunderstanding of Christianity is no better than the utilitarianism of nonbelievers. One should repent of one’s sins, ask for and accept God’s forgiveness, and teach others to do the same; and do this in the hope of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” while allowing that many will not attain happiness at all, because if they haven’t repented and accepted forgiveness before their death or Judgment Day, whichever comes first, it is too late for them forever.

Jesus didn’t say, “Maximize utility,” or “Do the best you can do.” He said, “Be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”

Art Kleps says (Millbrook , Bench Press edition, p.93):

“It all comes back to Dick Alpert’s question to me when I was explaining what I had realized back at Millbrook: ‘I do have a life of my own, don’t I?’ That’s his business. All I know about him is what I know about him, and, if he ‘thickens the plot’ I’m glad he is there to serve as a character in my story. I am content to have him think of me in the same way.”

But I say:

When Art says, “I am content to have him think of me in the same way,” he shows that he does think Dick Alpert has a life of his own. Even when he says, with emphasis, “That’s his business,” he implies that Alpert does have a life of his own. But when he says, “All I know about him is what I know about him, and, if he ‘thickens the plot’ I’m glad he is there to serve as a character in my story,” he says something consistent with the solipsistic reasoning that since he can’t know Alpert’s experience in the same direct way that he knows his own—that is, as the subject of that experience—then he can only know Alpert as an object of experience and that, as far as he knows, he himself is the only subject of experience that exists. And that reasoning is flawed. It is true that my experiencing of something is not the same as your experiencing of that same thing (or event or process). But to believe that is to believe that I am not the only subject of experience. It’s not just your business whether or not you have a mind of your own. It’s my business, too, because it makes a difference in how I should treat you.

In God in the Dock (p. 157), Lewis says there are two sides to Jesus: “On the one side clear, definite moral teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most sane and humble of men. There is no half-way house and there is no parallel in other religions.” And he makes a similar argument in Chapter 3 of Mere Christianity.

But in Hinduism there is the doctrine that the Atman, the true inner essence of each one of us, is Brahman, the ultimate reality. Lewis might reply that this is different from what Jesus was saying, because Jesus was saying that he alone among men is the Anointed who has the power to forgive sins, not that all men do. These claims, Lewis argues, are either the ravings of a lunatic or they are true. But a third possibility is that Jesus means that he is the only one so far who truly realizes that God is a loving Father and that we are all his children, so that if only we all realize it, we, too, could say—and mean it—“I am begotten of the One God, before Abraham was, I am,”—and Abraham could have said and meant it, too. Lewis thinks this possibility is ruled out by the creeds (Jesus is the only begotten Son, and we are made by God, not begotten), but how is Jesus’s recognition that he is a child of God so different from our believing Jesus when he says that we are also the children of God? Isn’t this what Paul means by our “putting on Christ”?

On p. 178, in his “Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger,” Lewis writes: “. . . I think that Jesus Christ is (in fact) the only Son of God—that is, the only original Son of God, through whom others are enabled to ‘become sons of God.’” This is in reply to Dr. Pittenger’s speaking of “the validity of our Lord’s unique place in Christian faith as that One in whom God was so active and so present that he may be called ‘God-Man’” (p. 177). Lewis’s response is that if “may be called” does not equal “is,” then he disagrees.

My question is this: Does Jesus tell us we can become children of God in the same sense and to the same degree that he is, or only in some different sense or to a lesser degree?

On p. 180, Lewis has this to say: “Moderns do not seem startled, as contemporaries were, by the claim Jesus there [in the Synoptic Gospels] makes to forgive sins; not sins against Himself, just sins. Yet surely, if they actually met it, they would feel differently. If Dr. Pittenger told me that two of his colleagues had lost him a professorship by telling lies about his character and I replied, ‘I freely forgive them both’, would he not think this an impertinence (both in the old and in the modern sense) bordering on insanity?” In Chapter 3 of Mere Christianity he makes the same point: “We can all understand how a man forgives offenses against himself. You tread on my toes and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct.” (p. 51)

My answer: For those who saw Jesus as just a boastful liar who was really nothing more than the son of a carpenter from Nazareth, it would fit that he would grandiosely claim to forgive sins not done against him. But those of us who believe Jesus should ask ourselves: Is Jesus telling us, “I am the Son of God and you aren’t and never will be. At best you can be a son or daughter of God in some lesser sense.”? The creeds may suggest this, and Lewis may agree, but I don’t think that is what Jesus is saying in the Gospels. It follows that we, too, can in our better moments forgive others for sins done against others and not ourselves only, without being raving lunatics. If God forgives all sins of everyone, surely it is not lunacy but the height of sanity to try to do the same.

It isn’t clear to me whether or not Lewis believed in universal salvation. I do. What I mean by universal salvation is not that God makes everyone accept His forgiveness and obey the two greatest commandments, because that is logically impossible. No one, not even God, can make someone else accept a gift, because then it wouldn’t be a gift, or love himself or herself or anyone else, because then it wouldn’t be love. When I say I believe in universal salvation I mean I believe that God offers forgiveness and love to everyone, and that everyone, sooner or later, realizes this and accepts it. I also mean that if even one person rejects it and misses out, then no one is saved. The promise is that God will be all in all, not all in some.

The reason to try not to sin and to try to love one’s neighbor as oneself and to do what is fair, decent, and morally right is not fear of everlasting punishment if one doesn’t or hope of heavenly reward if one does. The only good reason is that it is an obligation that one takes on oneself. It comes from inside. This doesn’t mean that it is a mere fancy or a social construct. The obligation we take upon ourselves is as real as anything can be. To say that we are all sinners means that we don’t live up to our ideals. But they are our ideals, not someone else’s. Thus, we don’t need to believe in God in order to account for why we care, not only about being treated fairly, but also about whether we treat others fairly.

The reason to believe in God is to account for the ultimate subjective, personal fact for each one of us that he or she is just this person and nobody else. If there were not these facts—one for each of us—none of us would have any reason to care about what happens, or any ability to do something about it even if we did. And it is not up to any of us to choose which person he or she is, out of all the persons there are (although it is up to each of us to choose what to do given who he or she is). It is just given. It doesn’t make sense to think of this most personal fact as given by an impersonal nature. God, then, who is a person and not a thing or a force or a collection, and who has a power none of us has, is the one who makes it so that each of us is who he or she is, out of all the persons there are.