The scriptures are a meaningful myth. VERY meaningful. The Christian church got all caught up in literalist interpretation. Doesn't matter whether you talk Catholic or Protestant, it is all the same. The Bible is to be taken literally. The Catholic Priesthood, and the Bishops don't necessarily, although they still do to a certain extent, but that is what the flock is led to believe. We take the Bible literally. In fact, the laity of most if not all religions do the same thing. And if you take it literally, well, they all tell us to fight the evil. And there are sure a lot of things out there we can call evil, including every religion, or nation, or tongue, besides our own. It's us against them. Always. That mean old Devil is out there to get us! Well, maybe he is, in his own sneaky little way. But we will deal with that later. Supposing we do find significant allegory in the Bible, and other sacred books. Maybe some of its literal, but the real story is not so literal. Maybe the teachers are trying to tell us something else in parables but we don't get it. We literalize it because that is how our little old brains think. There is the objective, or you could say the subjective, us, and then there is the objective world, out there.
What if Jesus birth, weren't really a birth, or if it is, what if that is still not the meaning that is conveyed? Could his birth be an allegory of our own spiritual birth? The one Jesus talked about to Nicodemus. Could his birth really be the allegory of the second birth? What does that mean. Or the death of Jesus. Maybe he really did die on the cross, maybe not, but either way, does it change the allegory? Perhaps what is meant here is the death of the ego.
It has been shown conclusively by todays scientists and psychologists that man has two sides to his brain. The left side is more analytical, and more independent, dissecting things into their parts more what we could traditionally describe as having so called masculine traits. The right side is more intuitive, more cooperative, more into comparing things and bringing things together, to find the part that each plays in the whole. There does seem to be incomplete communication between the two though, and in the Eastern world many meditation techniques have been developed to improve the cross communication between the two halves. When Jesus died the veil between the holies and the holiest of holies was rent in half from top to bottom. Perhaps this is an allegory of the breaking down of the wall that separates the two halves. I have heard that one meaning of "Pharisees" is those who separate. The Pharisees demanded jesus death. Whether they really did is conjecture, we weren't there, but the symbolism makes sense. Separation is our lot, until we, as Paul said, "break down the middle wall of separation between us. Perhaps meaning the ego that causes separation?
More on this later
Hi Gene,
ReplyDeleteI think that most (if not all) sacred writings are written so that they may be understood on many levels.
A very simple outline: First there is the level of taking a writing literally, then there is the level of taking it symbolically, then there is the level of living what you have learned....becoming a living symbol of the writing as, for example, the way a Daoist does with water symbolism.
In order to get there, yes, the ego has to go. The thing I have noticed about people and the Bible is that most of them are ruled by the ego, and are too intent on convincing you that, whether literal or symbolic, their interpertation is the only right one, and if you don't believe and follow them, you're going to hell. (I guess some of them haven't heard that the church has admitted that hell is not real.) They spend much less time living the lessons, which is a shame I guess. (I don't actually know too much about the lessons and the Bible, so I better stop talking before I get into trouble!) :-)