The Dispassion of the Christ

[daniel]

I have started writing a column for a new free national magazine, Arthur. Arthur is attempting to revive the original Rolling Stone format and spirit with lots of countercultural features and music reviews... I will post their website later so you can find copies in your local area.

My second column for them will be the text below, titled "The Dispassion of the Christ," using the Mel Gibson movie as a jumping-off point. I will be curious to hear what people think of this. Some of it is material for my next book.

* *

"The Dispassion of the Christ"

Like Fast Food Nation, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ may have
converted some of its audience to vegeterianism. The film was like watching
a slab of wounded roastbeef stagger through an elaborate literalization of
the New Testament’s nasty bits. Calling to mind the Smiths’ anthemic "Meat
is Murder", The Passion was long on flayed flesh and short on fun.
Apparently, Gibson escaped cocaine addiction by connecting with his Higher
Power, and the film could be seen as a metaphorical enactment of Mel’s
ordeal as the stages of the 12 Steps.

Fundamentalists in the US - the core audience for The Passion, and
supporters of the Bush agenda - maintain a self-serving and atavistic
understanding of the Bible. Since Fundamentalists consider themselves
automatically among the "saved," they believe they have the right to ignore
the most basic Biblical commandments. These still-fresh ideas include "Love
Your Enemy as Yourself," and "Thou Shall Not Kill." The Fundamentalist
attitude seems to be that as long as you are "saved", you can support a
government that kicks global ass, toxifies the biosphere, gobbles the
Earth?s resources, and converts "developing nations" into cheap labor camps.

At the same time, "spirituality" is increasingly trendy among the
wealthy elites of the modern-day West. This "spirituality" generally has an
Eastern caste, avoiding Christ and the Bible altogether. Models and their
stockbroker boyfriends spend thousands of dollars to attend yoga and raw
food retreats, where they practice asanas and mantras in tropical locales.
Corporate executives and their trophy wives decorate their country homes
with Hindu statues and Tibetan thangkas. Architects incorporate a bit of
feng shui into their designs. Nightclubs are called Karma and Spirit, while
bands are Nirvana and Spiritualized. Millions meditate and chant, seeking
relief from anxiety and some undefined feeling of "unity" with the cosmos.

Words can turn into their opposite. They can be emptied of meaning
altogether. This seems to be the case with the common usage of
"Spirituality," which is amputated from the processes of life. Devoid of
meaning, the term is banalized into a new system of commodifiable
life-experiences, a way of making a pampered and guilt-ridden class feel
better about themselves. Although it is crude and perversely violent, The
Passion of the Christ does imprint the idea that pursuit of meaningful
"spirituality" might require some form of tangible sacrifice that goes
beyond vegetarianism or om-chanting.

Over the last few centuries, Christianity’s ambience of guilt and
repression and its denial of the flesh increasingly repelled the modern mind
- and rightly so. The Christian religion remains a destructive element in
world affairs. Yet as Westerners, we can reclaim our own tradition. This
requires careful thinking about this tradition, to reach a deeper level of
understanding. As the Sufi philosopher Frithof Schuon writes: "The
sufficient reason for the existence of the human creature is the capacity to
think; not to think just anything, but to think about what matters, and
finally, about what alone matters." Thinking should be part of a spiritual
path. Dedication to truth is a spiritual discipline.

Perhaps our separation from the Biblical and Gnostic Christ is a
necessary part of the process of return. We needed to be cut off from this
tradition so we could recognize it as if it was new and original. The
significance of the events relayed in the Gospels can only be revealed to
each individual through his or her own process of introspection. You must
come to it in your own time, and in your own mind. What follows is my
personal interpretation, a thought experiment I have made, borrowing ideas
from Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung, and others.

From my psychedelic experiences, I think of consciousness as a kind of
vibration or frequency. There might be an infinite number of possible
vibrations of consciousness, of levels of soul-development, at various
planes of intensity. In this sense, the purpose of Christ’s "mission" was to
bring a more intensified form of consciousness to the Earth.

Christ's incarnation not only fulfilled the prophetic traditions leading
up to his arrival but pointed the way to the future. The vibrational
frequency of consciousness that Christ brought to the Earth was too much for
humanity at that time - save for a few - and up until the present day. Of
course, "descending" as he did from a more intensified phase of Being,
Christ knew this would be the case. That is why he said he did not come to
bring peace, but a sword - not to unite, but to divide. And indeed, the
legacy of Christ's coming has been two millenia of incessant bloodbaths and
primitive horrors.

World avatars are frequency transducers who step up the voltage of Mind.
Christ's parables are not just "mythologemes" but devices to store and
transmit higher energies. The receptivity of his audience to his impacted
fables and statements was in itself miraculous - as much a miracle as any
of his suspensions or transmutations of seeming physical laws. There is an
almost cybernetic quality to much of Christ’s discourse. His parables break
open ordinary logic to introduce a "supramental" element or higher-level
logic that can only be conveyed through symbolic speech. His disciples
listened in wonder, but understood only in part. Their amazement becomes
apparent through reading a stripped-down version of the "Gospel of Thomas,"
which dates from the same period as the canonical texts.

In the "Gospel of Thomas", Christ proclaims the necessity of achieving
direct knowledge - gnosis - of the Divine: "Open the door for yourself, so
you will know what is." He also declares: "If you bring forth what is within
you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is
within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The essence of
Christ’s "doctrine" can be summed up as: "No more bullshit." There is no
hierarchy, no priest caste, and no mediation.

To trasmit, a receiver is required. Without reception, there can be no
meaningful transmission. The "Gospel of Thomas", along with other gnostic
texts, was found in a jar in the Nag Hammadi desert of Egypt, in 1945. I
suspect that these lost scriptures were intended for our time. Throughout
"Thomas," Christ reiterates: "Those who have two ears better listen!" We are
the subjects with the capacity to understand, and it is to the advanced
present-day consciousness that Christ directs his statements.

We develop "ears to hear" by reconciling modern empirical cognition, which
accepts the quantum paradoxes of spacetime discovered by physics, with a new understanding of myth. Myth is not antithetical to science. A new attitude
to myth is described by William Irwin Thompson in his books Imaginary
Landscapes and Coming Into Being. Thompson proposes we make a shift "from a
postmodernist sensibility in which myth is regarded as an absolute and
authoritarian system of discourse to a planetary culture in which myth is
regarded as isomorphic, but not identical, to scientific narratives."

One can understand the meaning of the "Christ event" from several
different angles. From one perspective, Christ’s incarnation initiated the
descent of the Logos into humanity. This process continues - realizes
itself, I suspect - in our own time. Realization of the Logos illuminates
the human soul from within. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God," so begins the Gospel of John. The Logos is
the light that came into the world, "and the darkness comprehendeth it not."
Through awareness of the Logos, consciousness realizes its self-identity
with the Divine.

God is not a conscious being. God is the Logos, who, as William Blake
wrote, "only acts, and is, in existing beings and men." Immanent rather than
transcendent, God, the Logos, comes to consciousness in humanity. Man is a
Logos-being. Reality is syntax.

Only in stages of intensification that naturally appear in the physical
realm as the destructive shocks of a historical process can consciousness be
brought to realization of the Logos, and achieve awareness of its direct
participation in the creative process. Christ says, "The Kingdom of God is
within you." No external temple or mountaintop contains the Sacred. The
Sacred is everywhere. As Black Elk realized: "Every place is the center of
the world." The fact that religions today squabble and make war over
particular spots on the Earth only reveals their deficient and out-dated
mentality.

From the Jungian perspective, Christ’s arrival humanizes the God-image.
The tyrannical and patriarchal God-image presiding over the Old Testament
represents phases in a dialectic. Humanity looks up to see itself in the
mirror of the God-image, the God-image beholds Himself reflected in
humanity. Both are shocked by what they find, and evolve as a result.
Conflict creates consciousness. As human consciousness develops more
sensitivity, the previously barbaric God-image becomes sensitized and
compassionate.

In "God’s Answer to Job," Carl Jung suggests that humanity’s moral and
intellectual progress forced God to incarnate in suffering humanity. This is
His mercy. First, He "descends" as a special and singular being, the Christ,
thereby introducing the new vibrational level of consciousness. Eventually,
God incarnates - seeks to know Himself - within the larger body of prosaic
humanity. History is this story of the "descent" or incarnation of the Logos
into humanity. At the same time, in fulfillment of His wrath, He prepares
the Apocalypse. Edward Edinger, in Archetypes of the Apocalypse, describes
the Apocalypse as "the momentous event of the coming of the Self into
conscious realization." Like the human psyche, the God-image unifies
opposites: Creation and destruction, male and female, being and nonbeing are
fused in Him, as in us.

Theorists have proposed that consciousness was not fully individualized
in the pre-Christian Era. It may be that consciousness was first experienced
as an extrinsic voice or presence - as Julian Jaynes outlined in The Origin
of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. For Rudolf Steiner,
before Christ’s incarnation, a person identified him or herself with their
"group soul" or ancestral line. When the Bible says that Abraham or another
patriarch lived for many hundreds of years, it signifies that the
descendants of Abraham had an awareness of themselves that was not clearly
distinct from their originator, hence the descendants also considered
themselves to be "Abraham." Christ instilled the "I AM" in the human soul.
He said, "You have to leave your father and mother to follow me." In other
words, people had to break from any diffuse connection with their lineage or
tribe, and awaken to their own individuality. Once the process of
individuation is complete, the Ego can be consciously sacrificed.

According to Steiner, the materialization of the Earth and the Ego increased
the powers of demonic or Ahrimanic forces, seeking to drag humanity down
into the mineral world, the inorganic, and the death-trap of technology.
Without the spark or seed-impulse provided by the Christ, impelling
consciousness and feeling to a new vibratory level, humanity would have
surrendered completely to materialism. The separation of human souls into
discrete individualities necessitated the new commandmant that Christ
brought to Earth: "Love one another as you are loved."

In the modern age, Colonialism on the one hand accelerated the materialist
urge in its most destructive aspects. On the other hand, Colonialism spread
the "word of Christ" across the planet, although this was done through the
most brutal means. This process is, again, dialectical. Despite the genocide
and cultural annihilation inflicted upon them by the colonialist powers,
indigenous people understood and accepted the doctrine of Christ,
incorporating it into older traditions. In this dialectic, the intensifying
of consciousness first manifests naturally as destruction and capitulation.

These days, certain movies seem to be noospheric events - a means for the
collective unconscious of humanity to speak to itself. This was the case
with The Lord of the Rings. I would say that the "ring of power" represents
the Ego, with its delusionary temptations of power. The ring has to be
carried until all the psychic dark matter is revealed, then tossed away. As
Jung wrote, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious." This is one element of the
collective process taking place in our time.

It is only as a fully self-reflective individual consciousness that one can
make the choice, out of free will, to reconcile with the Divine, the Logos,
through sacrifice, or supercession, of the Ego. As Christ says: "He that
loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world
shall keep it unto life eternal."

In his words, his actions, and his inner being, Christ exemplified such a
sacrifice. Unfortunately, Christ did not "save our souls" through the
crucifixion. Instead, he showed us the path - a model for selfless action
that can be internalized, and followed, if we make the free choice to
evolve. Christ is only a "savior" when we follow his lead. We still have to
save our own souls. Alas, this is no easy task. But without real sacrifice,
there is no spiritual progress.

[Gift Horse]

Wow.

Thanks for that Daniel. There is alot of information in there. I will have to read it again when I have more time.

I participate on another forum where I think they would appreciate alot of what you wrote here. May I copy and paste some of it to there?

[gone]

I find there’s a danger when talking about *these matters* of mirroring the sermon, of being stuck in the same position, just on the opposite bank across the river. It’s hard to avoid, even with a generous sprinkling of perhaps and maybes.

I like the personal stories. Christ’s atonement was as it says, at-one-ment. I want to be at One rather than adrift in a sea of good advice. That may well be weak, absolving of responsibility. But there’s gotta be a bit of warmth, surely.

[gone]

Also, another Smiths reference – these have been crossing my path a lot lately. 20 years *gulp* and still telling it like it is.

When you say it's gonna happen "now"
Well, when exactly do you mean?
See, I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone.

[Charlie]

Hi Daniel,

Words like "Jesus Christ" are, for some people, so loaded with religious upbringing baggage, it´s hard to objectively look at the man, his life and his teachings. I was taught by South American nuns from the Catholic sect called the Sacred Bloody Bleeding Agonized Heart of The Absolute Divine Immaculate Immortal Body of Christ or some shit like that, and 30 years later I am still trying to shake off the damage they did.

I have always been more interested in the life and teaching of the Buddha, because he never talked about "heaven", but said that liberation and awakening could be found by anyone, at anytime, right here on earth, if they followed the right course. I always theorized that Jesus was a simple carpenter who led a pure life, and through ascetic experiments (like being in the desert for 40 days) led him to a deeply profound satori experience where he saw the "truth". Unfortunately, not having a teacher of his own to guide him, he mistook this experience to be a sign that he was touched by God, and subsequently, was the son of God. As a credit to him, he did not veer into insanity but maintained his vision of the truth, and spread a gospel of love that really could save the world.

All that now stated, my opinion is that anytime you mention the word "God" even as a symbol for man's own alter-ego, you weaken your argument considerably. Although I understand your main point that Jesus advanced the concept of consciousness as an individual rather than a collective element, requiring personal responsibility, you don't show it well. The apocalypse has been interpreted and reinterpreted to death, and you are cherry-picking cliched bits of sermons that don't pan out as a cohesive argument or stream of thought. Even though he looked at a coin and said "Give to Caesar what is Caesar´s, and give to God what is God´s", did he really divert the tide of materialism? How much of his teaching has to do with Nature and the earth itself, rather than the redemption of sin?

Perhaps my comments are based on my prejudices, but for someone who drank ayahuasca in the rain forest with indigenous people who understand the sacredness of the earth itself, you seem to really be veering off the track talking about Jesus and spirituality.

[gone]

Mmm, man this is a difficult one, trying to reclaim Jesus. It’s certainly a worthy enough exercise on an individual level, whether we know Jesus as Consciousness Tuner or Saviour. But I feel it is a gamble with the published word. The distinction between reclaiming Jesus and the Usual Story may well be too subtle for the average reader (if there is such a thing and if that’s not too condescending). Lots of smart people do turn off at the mention of JC, even if there is a valid point to be made. Then those who don’t turn off can focus on JC as THE point of what your saying rather than as an exemplar, so there’s the possibility of losing in two directions. Of course, there is a possibility that the message shines through like a beacon and creates something of a renaissance among Western Folk and their attitude towards Christ.

That aside, personal stories and warmth. This stood out in BOTH for me.

[Woodpecker]

In the interest of debugging:

The brotha's name is spelled "Frithjof," not "Frithof."

And what are "mythologemes"? The term is introduced in quotation marks and not defined.

More response later, maybe; my proofreader's radar just went "peep" at those two. I like the ongoing ruminations on the meaning of Jesus' messages and the noospheric reading of the Ring films.

[gone]

Originally posted by Woodpecker:
And what are "mythologemes"? The term is introduced in quotation marks and not defined.It means the author is unorthodox in the hippest of ways yet can converse in the language of sexed-up academia. Often used in the “Professorial Three-Way Book Title,” such as “Mythologemes, Hot Milk And the Subtlest of Google Returns.”

I have been overusing “polyphrenic” a bit myself lately… ;)

[jezebelle]

My goodness, you guys have me reeling. One minute laughing, one minute my world opens up, just wonderful!

I sometimes see it as this: there is a being that can hold us up, on all levels of manifestation, until we can do it (connect) for ourselves to the orignal logos. I think Chrisitianity is the manifestation a conscious discipline of awakening, yet once instituationalized is loses its' personal revelation. Like many institutions it must be reborn, or transmute, lose-it-self, to allow for the garrenteed (sp) forth-coming galactic events.
Free information is embedded in all the family tribes and religions. They all weave together as one explores ones own personal connection, parceled out, in the beginning of time.
Hopefully I arrive at the awakened self, and hold it balanced in my awareness. Like peaks in a wave, up the oscilation of daily peaks.

[willoweyes]

I liked "mythologemes." Even though I've never seen it before it was easy to infer what it meant (it does mean a bigger-than-life story that is easy to remember and teaches us how to behave?). It wasn't in my dictionary. But it stood out. The word reminds me of what poetry is: essential information that is easy to memorize.

I liked the essay--thoughtful, exciting, mind-expanding. A bit swirling and dizzying as well! I wouldn't have missed it for the world, and boy am I glad I tuned in today. If I may be allowed one teeny suggestion: all William Irwin Thompson quotes must be consumed in the blue delete line of oblivion.

[daniel]

Thanks for all of these responses - I hope more people will chime in. And Woodpecker, especially thanks for the proofreading catches. My understanding of "mythologemes" is as a term used by Claude Levi-Strauss to make his study of myth sound more like a science.

Charlie and Gelfer - I appreciate your caveats and criticisms. All of my early associations with JC and Christianity were negative, so I feel I come at the subject fairly cleanly. The first book that turned my attention in this direction was The Masters of Wisdom by JG Bennett, then Jung, and Steiner, who has an extremely complex esoteric interpretation.

willoweyes, what is the problem with WI Thompson quotes? I think he is both useful and brilliant.

Gift Horse - you can paste whatever you want.

[forteanajones]

Daniel,

I enjoyed this very much also. Curious to see how they would react, I also took liberties of pasting onto a Baha'i forum. Got an immediate response about how some of your ideas seem to be 'curiously aligned with Baha'i teachings'. One person seemed to take issue with the idea that the movie is aimed at fundamentalists:

I would have to disagree that the movie was targeted at fundamentalists (a term usually but not exclusively applied to certain Protestant viewpoints), since in the main it followed Biblical storylines and included a number of Catholic extrabiblical traditions. Certainly the audiences drawn to it were not exclusively or even primarily composed of fundamentalists.

(Personally I don't view 'core audience' as being the same as 'majority of viewers').

Still digesting the material. Thanks again for a good read.

[Buzz]

Daniel,
Your last paragraph in the statement above certainly resonates with me. We can not ride the coat tails of a God to Heaven. But try telling that to those "worshippers" of Christ.

When I was 5 years old I had a theological arguement with my mother. This is the woman who forced me to go the Sunday School and Church every Sunday morning of my young life. From what I had gathered God was inside each of us and all things. My mother tried to set me straight, "God was out there somewhere." Even as an impressionable young lad I never bought what she said, I just could not talk about it with the regular Christian crowd.

I left the Church but never blamed Jesus for what mankind had done in his name. I've always felt his message was, "look what you can do". Until recently I have felt like he was just a man who transcended. Now I'm not so sure that he was not someone, a god, from a higher realm, who came here to get humankind back on the right plan. Either way, the message is the same and just as potent.

I'll probably never go to see Gibson's movie. I don't really like gross stuff, just for the sake of it.

Some say that we are coming into an age where we as a collective will realize that God is within us. The Hopi speak of God having two faces, one is the Sun and the other is that the sun is what he/she looks through. I've come to believe that the creative, animated spirit that gives life to our flesh body is a spark from the Sun. Many traditions speak of this. Time to accept the responsibility that comes with that.

[Buzz]

Forgot something.

in your post, Daniel, you quote Christ from the Gospel of Thomas. "If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." What is within us is that eternal life spark spirit from the Sun (in my opinion). What Castenada called the nagual. Having re-read Tales of Power recently I see a lot of parallels with Don Juan's teachings and mystical teaching from around the world, including the teachings of Christ.

[willoweyes]

Daniel, I'm sure William Irwin Thompson is both useful and brilliant. However here is his quote, unclothed: "we should make a shift 'from a postmodernist sensibility in which myth is regarded as an absolute and authoritarian system of discourse to a planetary culture in which myth is regarded as isomorphic, but not identical, to scientific narratives."

You can blame it on watching too many cartoons as a child (lazy brain? instant gratification?) but I found this statement willfully incomprehensible.

Does the "postmodernist sensibility" actually regards myth "as an absolute and authoritarian system of discourse"? I'm not sure.

In a genuine effort to understand, I considered the word isomorphic. When not located in my Holt Intermediate Dictionary, I went to Google. Definition found: "two graphs are isomorphic if there is a one-to-one correspondence between their vertexes and there is an edge between two vertexes of one graph if and only if there is an edge between the two corresponding vertexes in the other graph." There must be other definitions; however this one put the brakes on my curiousity.

I'm pointing out that for me this quote did two things: stopped the flow of the essay, and created a lot of confusion in a tiny space. I still don't understand what Thompson is trying to say, or how this quote adds to the larger form of the piece.

[Agent Smith]

...gibson's movie could be more accurately named 'the distemper of christ'... the x-ian meme gives me cognative indegestion...

...but don't mind me, I'm just feeling grump today.

good article daniel.

[durga]

I'm printing this out so I can reflect but on first read I really think it's brilliant. I haven't seen the film yet but have heard from two different friends how much they liked it! Could have knocked me over with a feather. I was raised catholic, 8 years of catholic school, know the standard gist of the story pretty well-all the childlike pondering over who you would be in the story--mary magdalene or veronica--knowing I'd be Thomas after the resurrection--asking to feel the wounds and all. Anyway I digress...

The spirituality rant is great, and I have to admit to liking being able to do a retreat in a cushy area since my core practice and teacher is the exact opposite. It reminds me of what jesus' church and church goers became. For lots we just want enough spritualty to feel better than we do without--justify our good natures-hope it makes others easier to live with. Not really bad in itself but once you cross the line in yourself it becomes a much bigger ballgame. It certainly makes me feel at times like running from the field and not wanting to play anymore.

The part that jumped out at me is the paragraph that talks about the "Christ incarnation" it's message to us- -pointing to the path of each individual becoming a Christ. This happens in the Gita--Krishna talks about at this point there being no more real need to pour libations for the ancestors--perform lengthy sacrifices empoying priests. At times when I have focused on ceremony or playing with the spirits, if you will--(I do think this can be a useful tool) it's really because of that dark night of the soul kind of thing--the agony in the garden--I just don't want to do it alone, I want outside intervention--and while my own perceived pain seems real enough when I am in it --when it passes and i compare it --I feel a little embarassed. No real diseases, hunger, slavery, natural disasters--I love that word--portrays so much--I guess the point I am elluding to and what Jesus' story reveals to me is that the way though or to your true self or the next state of conciousness in the evolution of mankind might feel like being crucified, not that it lasts or that it's bad to feel good or even great for that matter, but at the time--and there might even be a few of these--it's going to be really hard--really turn everything insideout upside down and be a death with no guarantees.

I think that is why us as a people might find it easier to focus on the details of the story rather than ponder the message. But here again we are pondering--think we'll ever have--Mohammed the Prophet with a heroic spin- as a big film?