Jesus: His Religion or the Religion About Him?

This is a lecture by Alan Watts, circa 1969, which I transcribed in 2004. I will be publishing a few more transcripts over time. It's no substitute for listening to one of his lectures, where his spirit and sense of humor come through better. I recommend you subscribe to the Wisdom of Alan Watts podcast, which you can find on iTunes or at alanwatts.com.

Some years ago I had just given a talk on television in Canada when one of the announcers came up to me and said "You know, if one can believe that this universe is in charge of an intelligent and beneficent God, don't you think he would naturally have provided us with an infallible guide to behavior and to the truth about the universe?" And of course I knew he meant the Bible. I said "No, I think nothing of the kind. Because I think a loving God would not do something to His children that would rot their brains."

Because if we had an infallible guide we would never think for ourselves, and therefore our minds would become atrophied. It is as if my grandfather left me a million dollars: I'm glad he didn't." And we have therefore to begin any discussion of the meaning of the life and teaching of Jesus with a look at this thorny question of "authority." And especially the authority of Holy Scripture. Because in this country in particular [the USA] there are an enormous number of people who seem to believe that the Bible descended from Heaven with an angel in the year sixteen-hundred and eleven, which was when the so-called King James – or more correctly Authorized – version of the Bible was translated into English.

I had a crazy uncle who believed that every word of the Bible was literally true including the marginal notes. And so whatever date it said in the marginal notes, that the world was created in 4004, B.C., and he believed it as the Word of God. Until one day he was reading - I think - a passage in the book of Proverbs and found a naughty word in the Bible. And from that time on he was through with it. You know, how Protestant can you get?

Now, the question of "authority" needs to be understood, because I am not going to claim any authority in what I say to you, except the authority – such as it is – of history. And that's a pretty uncertain authority. But from my point of view the four Gospels are I think to be regarded on the whole as historical documents. I'll even grant the miracles. Because, speaking as one heavily influenced by Buddhism, we're not very impressed with miracles! The traditions of Asia – Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and so forth – are full of miraculous stories. And we take them in our stride. We don't think that they're any sign of anything in particular except psychic power. And we in the West have by scientific technology accomplished things of a very startling nature. We could blow up the whole planet, and Tibetan magicians have never promised to do anything like that.

And I'm really a little scared of the growing interest in psychic power because that's what I call "psycho-technics." And we've made such a mess of things with ordinary technics that Heaven only knows what we might do if we got hold of psycho-technics and started raising people from the dead, and prolonging life insufferably, and doing everything we wished.

The whole answer to the story of miracles is simply imagine that you're God and that you can have anything you want. Well you'd have it for quite a long time. And then after awhile you'd say "This is getting pretty dull because I know in advance everything that's going to happen." And so you would wish for a surprise. And you would find yourself this evening in this church as a Human being.

So, I mean, that is the miracle thing. I think miracles are probably possible. That doesn't bother me. And as a matter of fact when you read the writings of the early fathers of the church – the great theologians like Saint Clement, Gregory of Nissa, Saint John of Damascus, even Thomas Aquinas – they're not interested in the historicity of the Bible. They take that sort of for granted but forget it. They're interested in its deeper meaning. And therefore they always interpret all the tales like Jonah and the whale. They don't bother even to doubt whether Jonah was or wasn't swallowed by a whale or other big fish. But they see in the story of Jonah and the whale as a prefiguration of the resurrection of Christ. And even when it comes to the Resurrection of Christ they're not worrying about the chemistry or the physics of a risen body. What they're interested in is that the idea of the resurrection of the body has something to say about the meaning of the physical body in the eyes of God. That the physical body – in other words – is not something worthless and unspiritual, but something which is an object of the Divine Love.

And so therefore I'm not going to be concerned with whether or not miraculous events happened. It seems to me entirely beside the point. So I regard the Four Gospels as on the whole as good a historical document as anything else we have from that period, including the Gospel of Saint John. And that's important. It used to be fashionable to regard the Gospel of Saint John as late. In other words, at the turn of the century the higher critics of The New Testament assigned the Gospel of Saint John to about 125 A.D.. And the reason was just simple. Those higher critics at that time just assumed that the simple teachings of Jesus could not possibly have included any such complicated mystical theology. And therefore they said, "Well, it must be later."

Now, as a matter of fact, in the text of the Gospel of Saint John the local color, his knowledge of the topography of Jerusalem, and his knowledge of the Jewish calendar is more accurate than that of the other three writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And it seems to me perfectly simple to assume that John recorded the inner teaching which He gave to His disciples and that Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the more exoteric teaching which He gave to people-at-large.

Now, what about them, the authority of these scriptures? We could take this problem in two steps. A lot of people don't know how we got the Bible at all. We Westerners got the Bible thanks to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church and members of the church wrote the books of the New Testament. And they took over the books of the Old Testament which even by the time of Christ had not been finally decided upon by the Jews. The Jews did not close the canon of the Old Testament until the year 100 A.D. – or thereabouts – at the Synod of Jamnia. And then they finally decided which were the canonical books of the Hebrew Scriptures and embodied them in the Masoretic Text, the earliest copy of which dates from the tenth century – early in the tenth century A.D.. The books to be included in the New Testament were not finally decided upon until the year three hundred and eighty-two – A.D. again – at the Synod of Rome under Pope Damasus. So it was the church – the Catholic Church – that promulgated the Bible and said "we are giving you these scriptures on our authority and the authority of the informal tradition that has existed among us from the beginning, inspired by the Holy Spirit."

So you receive historically the Bible on the church's say-so. And the Catholic Church insists, therefore, that the church collectively, speaking under the presumed guidance of the Holy Spirit, has the authority to interpret the Bible. And you can take that or leave it. Because obviously the authority of the Bible is not first of all based on the Bible itself. I can write a bible and state within that book that it is indeed the Word of God which I have received. And you're at liberty to believe me or not. Hindus believe that the Vedas are divinely revealed and inspired with just as much fervor as any Christian or any Jew. Muslims believe that the Koran is divinely inspired. And some Buddhists believe that their Sutras are of divine – or rather Buddhic – origin. The Japanese believe that the ancient texts of Shinto are likewise of divine origin. And who is to be judge?

If we are going to argue about this – as to which version of the Truth is the correct one – we will always end up in an argument in which the judge and the advocate are the same person. And you wouldn't want that if you were brought into a court of law, would you? Because if I say that, "Well, thinking it all over I find that Jesus Christ is the greatest being who ever came onto this Earth," by what standards do I judge? Why obviously, I judge by the sort of moral standards that have been given to me as somebody brought up in a Christian culture. There is nobody impartial who can decide between all the religions because more or less everybody has been in one way or another influenced by one of them.

So if the church says the Bible is true it finally comes down to you. Are you going to believe the church or aren't you? If nobody believes the church it will be perfectly plain, won't it, that the church has no authority. Because the people is always the source of authority. That's why de Tocqueville said that the people gets what government it deserves. And so you may say "Well, God Himself is the authority!" Well, how are we to show that? That's your opinion. Well you say "Well, you wait and see. The Day of Judgment is coming, and then you'll find out who is the authority!" Yes, but at the moment there is no evidence for the Day of Judgment, and it remains until there is evidence simply your opinion that the Day of Judgment is coming. And there is nothing else to go on except the opinion of other people who hold the same view and whose opinions you bought.

So really, I won't deny anybody's right to hold these opinions. You may indeed believe that the Bible is literally true and that it was actually dictated by God to Moses and the Prophets and the Apostles. That may be your opinion and you are at liberty to hold it. I don't agree with you.

I do believe, on the other hand, that there is a sense in which the Bible is divinely inspired. But I mean by "inspiration" something utterly different from dictation, receiving a dictated message from an omniscient authority. I think inspiration comes very seldom in words. In fact almost all the words written down by automatic writing from psychic input that I've ever read strike me as a bit thin. When a psychic tries to write of deep mysteries instead of telling you what your sickness is or who your grandmother was, he begins to get superficial. And psychically communicated philosophy is never as interesting as philosophy carefully thought out.

But divine inspiration isn't that kind of communication. Divine inspiration is, for example, to feel – for reasons that you can't really understand – that you love people. Divine inspiration is a wisdom which it's very difficult to put into words. Like mystical experience. That's divine inspiration. And a person who writes out of that experience could be said to be divinely inspired. Or it might come through dreams. Through archetypal messages from the collective unconscious, through which the Holy Spirit could be said to work. But since inspiration always comes through a Human vehicle it is liable to be distorted by that vehicle. In other words, I'm talking to you through a sound system. And it's the only one now available. Now if there's something wrong with this sound system whatever truths I might utter to you will be distorted. My voice will be distorted. And you might mistake the meaning of what I said.

Now so therefore everybody who receives divine inspiration – and I'm using that in a very loose way – you could mean anything you like by "divine" – that's your option – but anybody who receives it will express it within the limits of what language he knows. And by language here I don't only mean English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Sanskrit. I mean language in the sense of what sort of terms are available to you; what kind of religion were you brought up with.

Now you see, if you were brought up in the Bible Belt – you came out of Arkansas somewhere – and that's all the religion you knew, and you had a mystical experience of the type where you suddenly discover that you are one with God, then you're liable to get up and say "I'm Jesus Christ!" And lots of people do. Well the culture that we live in just can't allow that. There is only one Jesus Christ. And so if you don't look like you're Jesus Christ coming back again – because it said in the scriptures that when He comes back there'll be no doubt about it: He'll appear in the Heavens with legions of angels, and you're not doing that; you're just old Joe Dokes we knew years ago. Well now you say you're Jesus Christ. Well, he says that when Jesus Christ said he was God nobody believed him and you don't believe again. You know you can't answer that argument. (laughter)

But you see, he says it that way because he is trying to express what happened to him in terms of the religious language which is circumscribed by the Holy Bible. He's never read the Upanishads. He's never read the Diamond Sutra. He's never read The Tibetan Book of the Dead or the I-Ching or the Lao-Tsu, and therefore there is no other way in which he can say this.

But if he had read the Upanishads he would have had no difficulty, and nor would the culture – the society in which he was talking – have any difficulty. Because it says in the Upanishads we are all incarnations of God. Only they don't mean by the word "God" – in fact they don't use that word; they use "Brahman" – they don't mean the same thing that a Hebrew meant by "God." Because the Brahman is not personal. Brahman is – we would say – supra-personal. Not impersonal, because that is a negation. But I would say supra-personal.

Brahman is not he or she, has no sex. Brahman is not the creator of the world – as something underneath and subject to Brahman – but the actor of the world, the player of all the parts, so that everyone is a mask (which is the meaning of the word "person") in which the Brahman plays a role. And like an absorbed actor the divine spirit gets so absorbed in playing the role as to become it, and to be bewitched. And this is all part of the game, hereto believing that I am that role. When you were babies you knew who you were. Psychoanalysts refer to that as the oceanic feeling. They don't really like it, but they admit that it exists. Where the baby cannot distinguish between the world and the way it acts upon the world. It's all one process. Which is of course the way things are.

But we learn very quickly because we are taught very quickly what is you and what is not-you, what is voluntary, what is involuntary, because you can be punished for the voluntary but not for the involuntary. And so we unlearn what we knew in the beginning. And in the course of life if we are fortunate we discover again what we really are, that each one of us is what would be called in Arabic or Hebrew "a son of God." And the word "son of" means "of the nature of" as when you call someone a "son of a bitch," or in Arabic you say "Ibn-kalb" which means "son of a dog," "Ibn al-Himar": "son of a donkey." So, "a son of Belial" means "an evil person." "Son of God" means "a divine person," a Human being who has realized union with God.

Now my assumption – and my opinion – is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Human being like Buddha, like Sri Rama Krishna, like Ramana Maharshi, etc., who early in life had a colossal experience of what we call "cosmic consciousness." Now you don't have to be any particular kind of religion to get this experience. It can hit anyone anytime, like falling in love. There are obviously a number of you in this building who've had it in greater or lesser degree. But it's found all over the world. And when it hits you, you know it. Sometimes it comes after long practice of meditations and spiritual discipline. Sometimes it comes for no reason that anybody can determine. We say it's the "Grace of God," that there comes this overwhelming conviction that you have mistaken your identity, that what you thought, what I thought was just old Alan Watts – who I know very well is just a big act and a show – but what I thought was, you know, "me!" – was only completely superficial, that I am an expression of an eternal something-or-other: "X," a name that can't be named, as the name of God was taboo among the Hebrews; "I am."; and that I suddenly understand why – exactly why – everything is the way it is. It's perfectly clear.

Furthermore I no longer feel any boundary between what I do and what happens to me. I feel that everything that's going on is my doing, just as my breathing is. Is your breathing voluntary or involuntary? Do you do it or does it happen to you? So you can feel it both ways. But you feel everything like breathing. And it isn't as if you had become a puppet. There is no longer any separate "you." There is just this great Happening going on. And if you have The Name in your background you will say "This happening is God," or "the Will of God," or "the Doing of God." Or if you don't have that word in your background you will say with the Chinese "it is the flowing of the Tao." Or if you're a Hindu you will say "it is the Maya of Brahman." "The Maya" means "the magical power," "the creative illusion," "the play."

So you can very well understand how people to whom this happens feel genuinely inspired. Because very often there goes along with it an extremely warm feeling. Because you see the Divine in everybody else's eyes. When Kabir, a great Hindu Muslim mystic, was a very old man he used to look around at people and say "To whom shall I preach?" Because he saw the Beloved in all eyes, and could see – sometimes I look into people's eyes, and I can look right down, and I can see that Beloved in the depths of those pools, and yet the expression on the face is saying "What, me?!" Ha ha ha ha, it's the funniest thing! But there is everybody, in his own peculiar way, playing out an essential part in this colossal cosmic drama. And it's so strange, but one can even feel it in people you thoroughly dislike.

So, let's suppose then that Jesus had such an experience. But you see, Jesus has a limitation that he doesn't know of any religion other than those of the immediate Near-East. He might know something about Egyptian religion, a little bit maybe about Greek religion, but mostly about Hebrew. There is no evidence whatsoever that he knew anything about India or China. And we – people who think that, you know, Jesus was God assume that he must have known because he would have been omniscient. No! Saint Paul makes it perfectly clear in the Epistle to the Phillipians that Jesus renounced his divine powers so as to be Man. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought not equality with God a thing to be hung onto, but humbled himself and made himself of no reputation and was found in fashion as a man and became obedient to death." Theologians call that "kenosis," which means "self-emptying."

So obviously an omnipotent and omniscient man would not really be a man. So even if you take the very orthodox Catholic doctrine of the nature of Christ, that he was both true God and true Man, you must say that for true God to be united with true Man, true God has to make a voluntary renunciation – for the time-being – of omniscience and omnipotence... and omnipresence for that matter. Now therefore if Jesus were to come right out and say "I am the son of God" that's like saying "I'm the boss's son," or "I AM the boss," and everybody immediately says that is blasphemy. That is subversion. That is trying to introduce Democracy into the Kingdom of Heaven. That is –– you are a usurper of the throne. No man has seen God.

Now, Jesus in his exoteric teaching – as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels – was pretty cagey about this. He didn't come right out there and say "I and the Father are one." Instead he identified himself with the Messiah described in the second part of the prophet Isaiah, "the suffering servant who was despised and rejected by men." And this man is the non-political Messiah, in other words. It was convenient to make that identification even though it would get him into trouble.

But to his elect disciples as recorded in Saint John, he came right out "Before Abraham was, I am." "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "I am the resurrection and the life." "I am the living bread that comes down from Heaven." "I and the Father are one, and he who has seen me has seen the Father." And there can be no mistaking that language.

So the Jews found out and they put him to death – or had him put to death – for blasphemy. This is no cause for any special antagonism toward the Jews. We would do exactly the same thing. It's always done. It happened to one of the great Sufi mystics in Persia who had the same experience. Now, what happened? The Apostles didn't quite get the point. They were awed by the miracles of Jesus. They worshipped him as people do worship gurus, and as you know to what lengths that can go if you've been around guru-land. And so the Christians said "Okay, okay: Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God but let it stop right there! Nobody else." So what happened was that Jesus was pedestalized. He was put in a position that was safely upstairs so that his troublesome experience of cosmic consciousness would not come and cause other people to be a nuisance. And those who have had this experience and expressed it during those times when the church had political power were almost invariably persecuted. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake. John Scotus Eriugena was excommunicated. Meister Eckhardt's theses were condemned. And so on, and so on. A few mystics got away with it because they used cautious language.

But you see what happens. If you pedestalize Jesus you strangle the Gospel at birth. And it has been the tradition in both the Catholic Church and in Protestantism to pass off what I will call an emasculated Gospel. Gospel means "good news," and I cannot for the life of me think what is the good news about the Gospel as ordinarily handed down. Because, look here – here is the revelation of God in Christ, in Jesus, and we are supposed to follow his life and example without having the unique advantage of being the boss's son. Now, the tradition – both Catholic and Protestant Fundamentalist – represents Jesus to us as a freak! Born of a virgin, knowing he is the son of God, having the power of miracles, knowing that basically it's impossible to kill him, that he's going to rise again in the end. And we are asked to take up our cross and follow him when we don't know that about ourselves at all! So what happens is this: we are delivered, therefore, a Gospel which is in fact an impossible religion. It's impossible to follow the Way of Christ. Alright. Many a Christian has admitted it. "I am a miserable sinner. I fall far short of the example of Christ." But do you realize the more you say that the better you are? Because what happened was that Christianity institutionalized guilt as a virtue. (enthusiastic applause) You see, you can never come up to it. Never. And therefore you will always be aware of your shortcomings, and so the more shortcomings you feel the more – in other words – you are aware of the vast abyss between Christ and yourself.

[Audience member] "You are just setting up straw men and knocking them down!"

You will have your opportunity to speak during the question period, madam. So, you go to confession.... (laughter and applause) ... and if you've got a nice dear understanding confessor he won't get angry with-at you. He'll say, "My child, you know you've sinned very grievously but you must realize that the love of God and of Our Lord is infinite and that naturally you are forgiven. As a token of thanks-giving say three 'Hail Mary's." And you know, you've committed a murder and robbed a bank and fornicated around and so on, but the priest is perfectly patient and quiet. Well you feel awful! "I have done that to the love of God? I have wounded Jesus, grieved the Holy Spirit," and so on. But you know in the back of your mind that you're going to do it all over again. You won't be able to help yourself. You'll try. But there's always a greater and greater sense of guilt.

Now, the lady objected that I was putting up a straw man and knocking it down. This is the Christianity of most people. Now there is a much more subtle Christianity of the theologians, the mystics, and the philosophers. But it's not what gets preached from the pulpit, grant you. But the message of Billy Graham is approximately what I've given you, and of all – what I will call – fundamentalist forms of Catholicism and Protestantism.

What would the real Gospel be? The real Good News is not simply that Jesus of Nazareth was THE son of God, but that he was a powerful son of God who came to open everybody's eyes to the fact that you are too. Now this is perfectly plain. If you will go to the tenth chapter of Saint John, verse 30, there is the passage where Jesus says "I and the Father are one." And this is – there are some people who aren't intimate disciples around, and they are horrified! And they immediately pick up stones to stone him. He says "Many good works I have shown you from the Father, and for which of these do you stone me?" And they said, "For a good work we stone you not, but for blasphemy, because you being a man make yourself God." And he replied "Isn't it written in your law 'I have said you are gods'?" (He's quoting the 82nd Psalm.) "Isn't it written in your law 'I have said you are gods'? If God called them those to whom he gave his word 'gods' – and you can't deny the scriptures – how can you say I blaspheme because I said I am a son of God?" Well there's the whole thing in a nutshell.

Of course if you read the King James Bible that descended with the angel you will see in italics in front of these words "son of God," "THE son of God" – "...because I said I am THE son of God." And most people think the italics are for emphasis. They're not. The italics indicate words interpolated by the translators. You will not find that in the Greek. The Greek says "a son of God." So it seems to me here perfectly plain that Jesus has got it in the back of his mind that this isn't something peculiar to himself.

So when he says "I am the way. No man comes to the Father but by ME," this "I am," this "me" is the divine in us which in Hebrew would be called the "Ruach Adonai." This – a great deal is made of this by the esoteric Jews, Kabbalists and the Hasidim. The Ruach is the breath that God breathed into the nostrils of Adam. It is differing from the soul. The individual soul in Hebrew is called "Nephesh." And so we translate the "Ruach" into the Greek "pneuma" into "psyche" [see´kay] or "psyche" [sy´kee]. The spirit – and you ask the theologian what's the difference between the soul and the spirit and he won't be able to tell you – but it's very clear in Saint Paul's writings.

So the point is that the Ruach is the divine in the creature by virtue of which we are sons of, or of the nature of God: manifestations of the divine. This discovery is the Gospel. That is, the Good News. But this has been perpetually repressed throughout the history of Western religion because all Western religions have taken the form of celestial monarchies, and therefore have discouraged Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven. Until, as a consequence of the teachings of the German and Flemish mystics in the Fifteenth Century there began to be such movements as the Anabaptists, the Brothers of the Free Spirit, and the Levelers, and the Quakers. A spiritual movement which came to this country and founded a republic and not a monarchy.

And how could you say that a republic is the best form of government if you think that the Universe is a monarchy? Obviously, if God is top on a monarchy, monarchy is the best form of government. But you see, ever so many citizens of this republic think they ought to believe that the Universe is a monarchy, and therefore they are always at odds with the republic.

It is from, principally, white racist Christians that we have the threat of Fascism in this country. Because you see, they have a religion which is militant, which is not the religion of Jesus – which was the realization of divine son-ship – but the religion ABOUT Jesus which pedestalizes him and which says "Only this man – of all the sons of woman – is divine, and you had better recognize it." And so it speaks of itself as The Church Militant, the onward Christian soldiers marching as to war. Utterly exclusive. Convinced, in advance of examining the doctrines of any other religion that it is the top religion. And so it becomes a freak religion, just as it has made a freak of Jesus, an unnatural man. It claims uniqueness, not realizing that what it does teach would be far more credible if it were truly "Catholic" – that is to say: restated again, the truths which have been known from time immemorial, which have appeared in all the great cultures of the world.

But even very liberal Protestants still want to say, somehow – so as, I suppose to keep the mission effort going or to pay off the mortgage – "Yes, these other religions are very good. God has no doubt revealed himself through Buddha and Lao-Tsu. But...!"

Now, obviously, it is a matter of temperament. You could be loyal to Jesus just as you're loyal to your own country, but you are not serving your country if you think that it's necessarily the best of all possible countries. That is doing a disservice to your country. It is refusing to be critical where criticism is proper. So of religion. Every religion should be self-critical. Otherwise it soon degenerates into a self-righteous hypocrisy. If then we can see this, that Jesus speaks not from the situation of a historical deus-ex-machina – a kind of a weird, extraordinary event – but he is a voice which joins with other voices that have said in every place and time "Wake up, Man. Wake up and realize who you are."

Now I don't think, you see, until churches get with that that they're going to have very much relevance. You see, popular Protestantism and popular Catholicism will tell you nothing about mystical religion. The message of the preacher, fifty-two Sundays a year, is "Dear people, be good." We've heard it ad-nauseam! Or: "Believe in this." He may occasionally give us a sermon on what happens after death or the nature of God, but basically the sermon is "Be good." But how? As Saint Paul said, "To will is present with me, but how to do that which is good I find not; for the good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do." How are we going to be changed? Obviously, there cannot be a vitality of religion without vital religious experience. And that's something much more than emoting over singing "Onward Christian Soldiers."

But you see what happens in our ecclesiastical goings-on is that we run a talking shop. We pray. We tell God what to do, or give advice as if He didn't know. We read the scriptures, and remember: talking of the Bible Jesus said "You search the scriptures daily, for in them you think you have life." Saint Paul made some rather funny references about the spirit which giveth life and the letter which kills. I think the Bible should be ceremoniously and reverently burned every Easter. We need it no more because the Spirit is with us. It's a dangerous book. And to worship it is of course a far more dangerous idolatry than bowing down to images of wood and stone. Because you can –– nobody's senses can confuse a wooden image with God, but you can very easily confuse a set of ideas with God, because concepts are more rarified and abstract.

So with this endless talking in church we can preach, but by-and-large preaching does nothing but excite a sense of anxiety and guilt. And you can't love out of that. No scolding, no rational demonstration of the right way to behave is going to inspire people with love. Something else must happen. But we will say "What are you going to do about it?" Do about it? You have no faith? Be quiet. Even Quakers aren't quiet. They sit in meeting and think. At least some of them do. But supposing we get really quiet; we don't think; be absolutely silent through-and-through? We say "Well, you'll just fall into a blank." Oh? Ever tried?

I feel then, you see, that it's enormously important that churches stop being talking shops, they become centers of contemplation. What is contemplation? Con-templum: It's what you do in the temple. You don't come to the temple to chatter, but to be still and know that "I am God." And this is why, if the Christian religion – if the Gospel of Christ – is to mean anything at all instead of just being one of the forgotten religions along with Osiris and Mithra we must see Christ as the Great Mystic. In the proper sense of the word "mystic," not someone who has all sorts of magical powers and understands spirits and so on. A mystic – strictly speaking – is one who realizes union with God, by whatever name. This seems to me the crux and message of the Gospel, summed up in the prayer of Jesus which Saint John records as he speaks over his disciples praying that "they may be one even as you, Father, and I are one." That they may be all one. All realize this divine son-ship, all oneness, basic identity with the eternal energy of the universe and the love that moves the Sun and other stars.

DMT The Spirit Molecule

I've just been watching DMT The Spirit Molecule with some interest, mainly in the hope of discovering what is known about the chemical and how it affects the brain. It starts out well, with a lot of attention paid to ayahuasca and the shamanistic traditions. Throughout the documentary people describe their experiences under the influence of DMT during scientific tests under controlled conditions. While individual experiences differ markedly, the overall consensus is that there is a lingering sense of wonder, amazement, and improved optimism following its use.

It strikes me in watching this how intensely literally people take the "places" and "experiences" that they have "outside of time" and in altogether "alternate universes." You can't blame them for their enviable enthusiasm, because it's true that DMT makes your brain feel like it's gone through "a thousand years of experience" without the sticky constraints of having to be you, or anyone in particular.

I haven't tried DMT, but I have experienced the very similar effects of Salvia divinorum, and I can attest to all of the above. I left my body but retained a sense of existing, though I had no identity. The concept of time –before and after– became completely meaningless, as did any ability to conceive of self and other. You might say that every mechanism of differentiation or discernment was tuned way way down. Other commonly-reported experiences also came with it, such as the sense of a separate presence, or two, a vision of the universe as a vast living machine, etc.

After subsequent experiences with Salvia I came to the definite conclusion that all these experiences are taking place in the brain, brought on by the chemical, and that the actual content and sensory stuff that people bring back from the experience is entirely synthetic. It doesn't mean in any sense that these experiences aren't highly valuable, but I think it is a mistake to take one person's subjective report about what they saw, heard, and felt, as being anything other than the resultant contents of their brain, which is now re-composed very much as if it had actually had these experiences, as if such experiences were possible in the world that our bodies occupy.

This is one of the great things about the brain. It is a continuous reality generator, and most of the time it deals with inconsistencies and incongruities in our experience by filling in the gaps. In fact it does this continually, to build a picture of the here and now from fragments of our long and short-term memory, from visual images entering the eye, sounds, smells, the temperature, etc., etc. The physical world is real, and our brains are firmly embedded in the physical world. Consciousness is not separate from chemistry, cellular respiration, and neuronal activity. I think DMT The Spirit Molecule actually makes a strong case for this, and simultaneously it's an exhibit of the strong social desire —even of scientists— to take the subjective reports of others literally and give them the same level of credence that the original witness does. We are polite beings to the core, at some level, and a person beaming with a thousand years of transcendent experience is the kind of person to whom we naturally defer.

As I said, I think these experiences are valuable. DMT experiences improve people's sense of well-being and gratitude, feelings of universal connection, personal resilience, optimism, and sociability. They help people to let go of past hurt and fears, and, as a rite of passage, to move forward with their lives and to reconnect with their core selves, beyond limiting conceptions. In short, it is a dose of enlightenment, in the transcendent sense. But in the intellectual sense, the scholarship on DMT is a muddle.

We can't tell people not to take their very vivid experiences as "mere hallucinations," nor should we. The visceral quality of any experience is what lends it its significance, and very often these experiences yield a treasure of unexpected associations and insights. But I think it's important for anyone really seeking to understand how the brain makes consciousness to utilize Dan Dennett's hetero-phenomenological approach for these subjective experiences. From dozens or hundreds of personal reports, we can begin to build a stronger picture of which activities of consciousness are being augmented or dampened by DMT, and correlate those elements with the regions of the brain being affected, which can be determined through FMRI and other technologies arriving in the coming decades.

DMT The Spirit Molecule is not wrong in describing the phenomenon as "spiritual" but I think it's a mistake to connect that with the usual superstitious meaning of the word, which literally invokes spirits from other realms, communication from ancestors, and the usual complement of mythical creatures. What is called "spiritual" here is altogether 100% psychological and physiological. DMT reveals very uncommonly-witnessed aspects of the human potential, which is usually constrained within the personality, which is the activity of relating to the outside world. And for the subjects themselves, it permits a synesthesia that's almost always suppressed, except possibly in sleep, and then only in some brain regions. So, when we discuss "spiritual" transformation we're talking about a marked change in personality that takes place as a result of the experience. The person's voice and hair color won't change, but they get many of the benefits of spiritual exertion without all the exertion, and so they may suddenly make a big life change, do the thing they've been putting off for too long.

When the word "spiritual" comes into play people get caught up in a classic inversion of reality, which I think is completely wrong, but which others feel very strongly about. From the materialist perspective, there is only the physical energy of the universe, and this energy generates all the phenomena that we know and love, including the brain. The experiences of the brain are thus coterminous with the physical processes of the brain. Conscious states are physical states. The "spiritualist" stance might say that physical reality can't be proved to exist out there, and therefore consciousness and the mind could very well be the primary constituent of reality. So a spiritualist would say that when someone takes DMT their consciousness really does go to another continuum, or that it transcends this continuum. They are correct only in the sense that the physical brain and its metabolism of the DMT is happening in space and time, therefore consciousness is "traveling" as it changes, but it is definitely not bound to the usual neuronal limitations, and therefore it is not bound to this plane in the same sense that the brain itself is. The whole reason being, of course, that consciousness really is an epiphenomenon of the activity of the brain. So if the activity of the brain is affected, the consciousness is affected. In the case of DMT the personality has a few minutes to cobble together a consistent narrative for its experiences of late, including making sense of space, time, and self, and in doing so it coalesces meaning from a flood of near chaos.

Until we establish more formal definitions, and maybe add some modifiers, there's always going to be a muddle concerning the concepts of things like free will, consciousness, and determinism. Most of our terms are too broad and more philosophical than scientific. In the case of determinism, quantum physics has rendered the debate meaningless. At the quantum level, the universe is non-deterministic. At the large scale it is largely deterministic. For some this opens the door to ever-more subtle consciousnesses subsisting at ever-smaller scales, which appear to our instruments of observation as quantum particles, waves, and strings. We have a strong prejudice against our minds being complex machines embedded in the physical world. And for most of us it's hard to imagine how it could really do what it does, it seems too miraculous.

If there is no spirit realm that we can visit hand in hand, but only these transcendent states of consciousness that we must experience entirely within our own minds, does that somehow make the universe out there mundane and limited? I personally don't feel that way. Profound experiences of self-transcendence are correlated with overcoming the past and moving forward with renewed purpose, and it doesn't seem to matter if you get there by prayer, climbing Everest, witnessing your first child being born, or ingesting Ayahuasca. They are all spiritual experiences.

Anti-Science Representatives, Senators, and Councilmen

Florida

SB 1854 (pdf link)
Sponsor: Sen. Stephen Wise (R)
Opponents: Howard Simon of the ACLU
States that instructors will "faithfully teach ... [a] thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution."

Kentucky

HB 169 (doc link)
Sponsor: Rep. Tim Moore (R)
Teachers "may use, as permitted by the local school board, other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner."

Louisiana

Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA)
(wired) (arstechnica)
Sponsors: Gov. Bobby Jindal, The Discovery Institute, The Louisiana Family Forum
Opponents: AAAS CEO Alan Leshner, Prof. Arthur Landy, Louisiana Science Coalition, Prof. Barbara Forrest, NCSE Policy Director Joshua Rosenau, "A subcommittee of the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education"
Allows local school boards to approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories. “promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories.”

Missouri

HB 195 (pdf link)
Sponsor: Rep. Andrew Koenig (R)
Calls for protection of teachers that "help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution."

Amendment 2 (pdf link)
Sponsors: Rep. Mike McGhee (R), Missouri Catholic Conference, Missouri Baptist Convention
Opponents: The Episcopal Diocese of Missouri and "several non-Christian groups"
The so-called "right to pray" amendment to Missouri's state constitution includes the provision that "no student shall be compelled to perform or participate in academic assignments or educational presentations that violate his or her religious beliefs." The amendment was proposed in a referendum and passed by an overwhelming majority of the electorate in August, 2012. The amendment is unnecessary, given the robust protections that religious expression already enjoys in the USA, but it was mainly designed to get the academic portion into law. As evidence of its cynicism, it also strips prisoners of their state constitutional protections for religious expression.

New Mexico

HB 302 (pdf link)
Sponsor: Rep. Thomas A. Anderson (R)
Would prevent schools from punishing teachers for "informing students about relevant scientific information regarding either the scientific strengths or scientific weaknesses pertaining to [a controversial scientific topic.]"

Oklahoma

SB 554 (doc link)
HB 1551 (doc link)
Sponsors: Sen. Josh Brecheen (R), Rep. Sally Kern (R)
Opponents: Gov. Brad Henry
Schools “shall not prohibit any teacher from informing students about relevant scientific information regarding either the scientific strengths or scientific weaknesses of controversial topics in sciences"

Tennessee

HB 368 / SB 893 (pdf link)
Sponsors: State Rep. Bill Dunn (R), Family Action Council of Tennessee
Adds protections for teachers who wish to help "students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught."

Texas

HB 2454 (pdf link)
Sponsor: Bill Zedler (R)
Specifies intelligent design as a supposed "alternate theory" to evolution.

Summary of Sponsors:

• FL Sen. Stephen Wise (R)
• KY Rep. Tim Moore (R)
• LA Gov. Bobby Jindal
• MO Rep. Andrew Koenig (R)
• MO Rep. Mike McGhee (R)
• NM Rep. Thomas A. Anderson (R)
• OK Sen. Josh Brecheen (R)
• OK Rep. Sally Kern (R)
• TX Bill Zedler (R)
• TN State Rep. Bill Dunn (R)
• The Discovery Institute
• The Louisiana Family Forum
• Family Action Council of Tennessee

Ardour

I've been busy these months with web work and shoring up the career manifold, but some music is being developed in paper and strings, which will be soon going into the studio. My eye still peers longingly in the direction of Linux migration, especially for audio. I just hit on this great article and set of videos on recording with Ardour. Very inspiring. Meanwhile I've updated to Ubuntu 11 with the new Unity desktop. I'm about to make the switch back to the old desktop, I think. Unity is sort of Mac like, but then (as another reviewer said) it's not.

Ok blog fans, see you in the virtual! I have drafts in the queue, so with luck more posts soon....

Studio Daze

Cracking Up for Sanity

My sense of the world has been fracturing in interesting ways during these cold days, and I've been abhorring my discursive mind. The endless web work, late nights, and snowstorms have finally pushed me to the brink, and only a return to my artistic roots will suffice. So tonight I carried a big old table up the stairs to my room, where it will serve as my recording studio for the winter. I'm in no mood to record old material – I just want to experiment and play and see what happens.

Ubuntu In the Mix

I'm having a ball with Ubuntu Desktop, a popular distribution of Linux. I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on a Core 2 Duo MacBook about a week ago as a secondary OS and so far I'm very impressed. The window manager "Compiz Fusion" deserves special mention. It uses OpenGL 3D graphics effects for window animation, workspace and application switching, object selection, etc., and some of these effects are pretty amazing. (I genuinely miss "wobbly windows" when using other systems now.) There are plugins that work like Spaces and Exposé in Mac OS X, of course, but Compiz takes the concept of a virtual space to a higher level. The Desktop Cube with 3D Windows is not only impressive but really useful for visualizing the whole workspace at a higher level. And if that's not your taste, endless varieties of switchers are possible. Personally I'm holding out for a desktop where my inactive windows are at the bottom of a swimming pool.

As a working environment I consider Ubuntu a better desktop OS by a wide margin than Windows XP (as anything in 2011 ought to be). I hesitate to call Ubuntu better than Windows 7 because Windows is a very rich and well-established desktop environment with a lot of polish. The desktop environment of Ubuntu (Gnome/Compiz) still feels pretty rickety by comparison, in spite of some really cool, flashy, and even useful features. There are many Linux apps that are as functional and stable as their Windows and Mac OS X counterparts, yet in spite of their individual quality, the poor aesthetics and usability of Linux window managers just makes them seem less trustworthy. What's needed is a series of "sprints" where developers get together to bring consistency, usability, and beauty to user interfaces across several apps.

So, how does Ubuntu compare with Mac OS X? Well, I'm a power user of Mac OS X and a Mac developer, so (as you might imagine) I consider Mac OS X to be the most rich, usable, robust, and polished desktop OS on the planet, and I tend to find useful the new features Apple adds in each release.

That said, as a desktop environment Gnome/Compiz only falls short in a few areas compared to Mac OS X...

1. I find myself missing the system-wide Spotlight search a lot. I have a lot of content, and although it's well-organized it can be a real hassle to navigate to folders I haven't used in a while and pick out the document I want. With Spotlight, every document is indexed and I can instantly find everything related to "hot peppers" on my system. Nothing available on Linux has all the powers of Spotlight, but Google Desktop fills much of that niche and I intend to install it soon.

2. The promise of GNU/Linux is that we can build any system we want to suit any preferences and any hardware. Well in my Linux I'd like a proper command key rather than needing to use the control key for menu shortcuts. A command key just makes more sense in a windowed environment. The control key has special meaning in Terminal, Emacs, and elsewhere, and using it for the menu system – especially in a Linux environment – only complicates things. (It wasn't a good idea when Microsoft did it either.) In Linux the command key is called the super or meta key, and out of the box it's used for some of Compiz's special effects. But there's just no simple way to make Command the master modifier for Gnome's menus. Others have undoubtedly come across these issues and found some ways to deal with some of them, so I'll keep googling.

3. Column view. I'm told there are file browsers that have it. But I like the default file browser a lot, and would love to have a column view option. Why it's not there already I'm not sure. It may be that adding it would make the browser too close to Mac OS X, which intellectual property is guarded by many lawyers. But cascading columns were in file browsers long before Mac OS X came along, and with good reason. They're really usable. I can live without Cover Flow, but I need my columns. I'll be exploring add-on options soon and will report back.

4. Keyboard selection in lists and menus. When you pop open a menu in Mac OS X or Windows you can type a few letters and the most nearly-matching item will be highlighted. This is so useful it should be mandatory. Ubuntu has accessibility as one of its aims, so maybe this feature would clash with the way menu accessibility works. Who knows? Anyhow, I really miss this feature, so it's another thing I'll be hunting down.

5. The default music app included with Ubuntu is RhythmBox, and unfortunately the current version is unstable, dog ugly, and lacking in features (including some of the sort which could easily be added in a weekend). What I really want is iTunes, which is just a great, solid, and powerful all-in-one media library app. There's no reason in 2011 why there shouldn't be a kick-ass media library manager / player in Linux. Someone must be obsessed with such a project, right? Once again, googling...!

But Will It Blend?

All these gripes aside, the main issue is, can I actually get real work done using a Linux desktop system in 2011? I've decided to find out, and audio production is my chosen testing ground. I expect to discover a whole slew of new and interesting software to make, record, edit, and mix audio. Linux is very popular in creative college environments and among math and audio geeks, and there's a lot of really cool stuff out there. Some of it is good enough (Audacity) to have made the crossover to popularity in Mac OS X and Windows.

The next step is to download a bunch of tools and immediately start making tracks, endless tracks...