LSP37: The Coat of Many Colours: What Scientology Teaches Us About Gnosticism

There's only thing I like about L. Ron Hubbard's cult of Scientology, and that's the way it serves as a teaching tool about the brutal efficiency of prophetic "revelation."

This morning, on the BBC site, I found a wonderful article by Owen Gleiberman about the new Alex Gibney documentary on Scientology. The documentary, called "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" has been attracting a lot of attention since its release earlier this year. The film is in turned based on the 2013 book by Lawrence Wright called "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief."

Gleiberman ends his article by saying this:

The twisted genius of L Ron Hubbard is that he figured out a way to define and exploit contemporary soul sickness. He was right about the disease. But Going Clear makes a powerful case that he came up with a cure that only made it worse.

Yes, L. Ron Hubbard was a twisted genius. As Gleiberman notes, the film "captures how Hubbard fused reality, fantasy and the pursuit of enlightenment in a way that, according to the film's witnesses, expressed his own highly unstable and even violent nature."

This is what prophets do.

(Please note that I draw clear distinctions between the terms "prophet" and "mystic." For me, the term "prophet" is reserved for an individual of dubious mental health who uses claims of "divine revelation" to establish his or her primacy of authority over others. By contrast, I use the term "mystic" to refer to individuals who are on the extreme end of the "intuition" spectrum, most of whom go through life as writers and philosophers without becoming consciously aware of their vocation as "mystics.")

Prophets who claim divine religious authority for themselves aren't new. Shown here is a red granite statue from Egypt's 18th Dynasty (Temple of Khonspakhered) on display at the British Museum, London UK. Photo credit JAT 2023.

A prophet isn't interested in teaching people how to heal their relationship with God. A prophet is instead interested in crafting an entire "philosophy of science" (a cosmogony, if you will) for the purpose of explaining to you in ruthlessly logical ways why you should hand over to the prophet your integrity; your money; your free will; your core self of worthiness and wisdom; and your relationship with God.

The coat of many colours you were born with is stripped away from you, and in its place you're given a "new and improved" garment of ash.

You're told when you put it on that you're donning the pure white garb of enlightenment. You're told that you're abandoning the burden of emotion, replacing the heaviness of emotion with the weightlessness of pure reason. You're told that all the proof you need lies around you in the Materialist laws of Cause and Effect. You're told that when you see past of the illusions you've created for yourself, you'll suddenly recognize that you can transcend your lowly humanness and reclaim your rightful place in the universe as God. Or Buddha. Or Thetan (as Scientologists describe it).

The garment you've been given reeks of pure narcissism. It reeks of the prophet's absolute refusal to accept that he's a mere child of God. It reeks of his conviction that he himself is so omniscient and so omnipotent that he surely MUST be a god who has lost his memory of his own godhood and fallen to Earth, where he's obliged to dig his way out of Earth's heavy muck so he can stop being reincarnated here.

So have I conflated several different religious beliefs here? On the surface, it would seem so. But no.  What I've done here is describe a single religious paradigm that manifests again and again in humanity's many diverse cultures, not because it's right but because it so beautifully suits the psychological needs of bullies, tyrants, narcissists, and psychopaths.

What I've described here is Gnosticism.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Scientology's underlying cosmogony:

Scientology beliefs revolve around the thetan, the individualized expression of the cosmic source, or life force, named after the Greek letter theta (θ). The thetan is the true identity of a person – an intrinsically good, omniscient, non-material core capable of unlimited creativity. 

In the primordial past, thetans brought the material universe into being largely for their own pleasure. The universe has no independent reality, but derives its apparent reality from the fact that most thetans agree it exists. Thetans fell from grace when they began to identify with their creation, rather than their original state of spiritual purity.  Eventually they lost their memory of their true nature, along with the associated spiritual and creative powers. As a result, thetans came to think of themselves as nothing but embodied beings.

Thetans are reborn time and time again in new bodies through a process called "assumption" which is analogous to reincarnation. Like Hinduism, Scientology posits a causal relationship between the experiences of earlier incarnations and one's present life, and with each rebirth, the effects of the MEST universe (MEST here stands for matter, energy, space, and time) on the thetan become stronger.

It's easy to see the narcissism that underlies the teachings of Scientology. This particular body of teachings is so new that most of us haven't yet overlaid the raw narcissism of it with layers and layers of "divine authority" derived from "ancient tradition." Scientology would like you to pretend that L. Ron Hubbard successfully transcended his own flawed humanity, but, as Going Clear shows, this isn't true. The legacy of a revelatory prophet is most vulnerable in the decades soon after his life, when there are still witnesses with long memories and solid documentation who can attest to the true character of the prophet.

Scientology, like other forms of Gnosticism, is really an attempt to rupture the relationship between individuals and God.

It's just so damned inconvenient, from the narcissist's point of view, to have a God who's already here and already acting for our benefit. The narcissist can't tolerate the idea that he -- a human being -- isn't the smartest, fastest, strongest being in Creation. So, to assuage his intolerably monstrous ego, he invents an entire cosmogony where he is God and he is on a brave and bold quest to reclaim his rightful power as God. Or Buddha. Or Thetan.

By looking at the origins of Scientology -- and specifically at the psychological issues that have driven the founders and chief promoters of this new cult -- we can see the pattern of narcissistic behaviours for ourselves. We can then use our observations to help us decide which aspects of our own spiritual journeys are holding us back as we try to heal our relationship with God.

In order to progress on the Spiral Path of faith, science, wonder, and relationship with God, you must start with the assumption that it's good enough for you to be a child of God instead of trying to become Mother Father God themselves.

Being a child of God entitles you to all the benefits of wearing the coat of many colours God gives to all God's children. It entitles you to be fully yourself, without judgment, abuse, or psychological violence. It entitles you to live passionately according to the needs of both the Heart and the Mind. It entitles you to view your human lifetime as a richly rewarding, positive experience instead of a punitive, degrading, sin-filled, mud-wrestling match. It entitles you to blend both Materialist laws and non-Materialist laws in your daily life. It entitles you to be honest with yourself about how much you really want and need to be in relationship with God.

Gardens are one way to experience the coat of many colours while you're here on Planet Earth. God invites you to help with planting and watering and weeding a garden to create a place of peace, beauty, and healing for others to enjoy (including creatures great and small). But God doesn't expect you to be in charge of the design of every living organism in the vast universe we live in. That's God's job!  Enjoy the gardens of Earth while you're here and rejoice in the ways you can help create and sustain such beauty. It may not be a much of a contribution as far as a spiritual narcissist is concerned, but it's important as far as God and your angels and your own soul are concerned.  Great blessings come in small packages!

It's no fun at all believing you're required to be responsible for everything in Creation. Fortunately, God doesn't expect you to be God.

If you can manage to embrace the first stanza of the Serenity Prayer and live in basic accordance with the tenets of the Twelve Step Program, you'll be doing very well as far as your angels -- and your God -- are concerned.

Best of luck to you!

LSP34: Signs and Wonders and Mummified Monks

"Mummified monk in Mongolia 'not dead', say Buddhists."  This is the headline on a short article that appeared this week on the BBC news.  Other news sites carried similar stories.

To recap, a very well preserved mummified Buddhist monk was discovered in Mongolia last week.  The body is seated in the lotus position (a position that assists in entering an intentional meditative state) and the monk appears to have died while in this position.  The body (the exact age of which isn't certain) was recovered by police just before it was about to be sold on the black market.

What's extraordinary about this story is not that a mummified body was found in a cold, dry climate (which preserves body tissues quite well), but that an expert, Dr. Barry Kerzin (a Buddhist monk and physician to the Dalai Lama) has gone on record to say it's possible the monk may not be dead at all.  He may, according to Dr. Kerzin, be in a rare meditative state called "tukdam."

Dr. Kerzin apparently told the Siberian Times this:

'If the person is able to remain in this state for more than three weeks - which rarely happens - his body gradually shrinks, and in the end all that remains from the person is his hair, nails, and clothes. Usually in this case, people who live next to the monk see a rainbow that glows in the sky for several days. This means that he has found a 'rainbow body'. This is the highest state close to the state of Buddha'.

He added: 'If the meditator can continue to stay in this meditative state, he can become a Buddha. Reaching such a high spiritual level the meditator will also help others, and all the people around will feel a deep sense of joy'.

The Siberian Times article also reports that "over the last 50 years there are said to have been 40 such cases in India involving meditating Tibetan monks.

You can read about a recent example of this on the website of the Benchen Monastery Community.  There, they offer notice of the death of Kyabje Tenga Rinpoche, who "chose to end the state of Tukdam, which is the deep meditative composure that some realized masters enter into after the demise of their physical bodies, after three and half days."  The notice also describes the unusual weather conditions that took place on the day of Kyabje Tenga Rinpoche's 2012 death.  The unseasonal thunderstorms, followed by rainbows, were not thought to be coincidental or irrelevant, the notice strongly implies.

The point I want to make is this: Although you might like to believe that Buddhism isn't a religion, but is instead an atheistic, secular, humanist spiritual practice, it is not.

Buddhism is, and always has been, a religion.  This is especially obvious in Mahayana Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism (of which the Dalai Lama's school of Tibetan Buddhism is a part).

Buddha, Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

ROM text accompanying the Buddha sculpture.

I have to smile at the similarity between the description of Kyabje Tenga Rinpoche's death and the description of Jesus' death (the whole 3-day-thing plus multiple signs and wonders).  But the similarities don't surprise me.  I've seen many signs and wonders, and I know they happen all the time.  They happen to all of us -- far more often than most people realize.

No one religious group has a right to claim a monopoly on signs and wonders -- neither Christianity nor Buddhism nor any other group.  Everyone who lives on Planet Earth is part of the same Creation.  There isn't one Creation for Christians and a different Creation for Buddhists.  We all come from the same place (God's Heart). We all live under the same roof here on Planet Earth.  We all live by the same "house rules" while we're here (which is why the need for morality is universal).  And we all return to the same place when we die (claims for apotheosis notwithstanding).

Do I think the mummified monk is still alive and in a deep state of tukdam?  No, I do not.  I think the poor man is dead.  I think he's been dead for a long, long time, and I think we should trust that and let him be instead of trying to force the mantle of Buddhahood onto his very shrivelled shoulders.  (Did you check out the photo on the BBC?)

Do I think it's possible his physical body -- what remained after his soul and his biology parted ways -- has been miraculously preserved?

I think it's theoretically possible.  I really do.  I've seen much stranger things than abnormally extended tissue preservation.  (And tissue preservation is, after all, simply a matter of knowing your chemistry, physics, and biology really, really well -- a particular talent of God.)

The real question is this: what does this news story tell you about you?  What does this story make you think about?  Do you want to laugh with contempt and call it all a hoax?  Or do you have a small itchy sense of curiosity in the very back of your head?

If you're just a little bit curious, it's a good sign.

P.S. Thank you to the persons-of-soul who made this discussion possible.  Without you, we couldn't do this!  Amen.

Postscript February 26, 2015:  Please see "Eerie remains of 1,000-year-old mummified monk inside Buddhist statue unveiled by CAT scan," which was posted this week on Canada's National Post news site.  Please see also another helpful story story posted this week by the BBC about the elaborate and beautiful Ajanta caves built for the Buddhist community of India’s Maharashtra state until the complex was abandoned in the early 6th century CE.  Again, my point is that Buddhism is a religion, not just a simple philosophy or way of life that anyone can -- and should -- incorporate into their spiritual journey.  It's up to you to decide whether the religious doctrines of Buddhism are right for you.  But please don't pretend there are no doctrines!

LSP27: Seeds of the Divine: Approaches to Mysticism in Christianity and Buddhism

This post is an excerpt from a reflection paper I wrote for a 2014 inter-religious dialogue course offered through a Roman Catholic seminary (though I myself am not Roman Catholic).  I decided to include this excerpt because it explains in a more formal way some of the points I've been trying to raise about the roots of our world religions.  I welcome comments on these reflections.  Thanks for reading!

Jen
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The Christian world view, with its focus on mystery and love, redemption and forgiveness, is so open to everything in Creation that there is room within it for all God’s children, regardless of when or where they have lived.This photo of spring crocuses, taken in the morning light of the spring equinox, speaks to the joyful images of life, beauty, and creation that were central to Jesus' cataphatic mystical teachings. Photo credit JAT 2016.

It is in response to Sottocornola and De Giorgio’s closing remarks about apophasis and kenosis that I would like to offer some in-depth observations, especially as these relate to Brassard’s opening thesis about the three basic soteriological questions.   First, I should acknowledge that some of my interpretations spring from my daily personal experiences as a Christian mystic.  To refine this statement, I turn to Bernard McGinn’s three-fold definition of mysticism as “a part or element of religion; . . . as a process or way of life; and . . . as an attempt to express a direct consciousness of the presence of God” (McGinn xiii–xvi).  McGinn’s research has revealed there are different mysticisms, just as there are different Christianities and different Buddhisms.  Apophatic, anagogic, and cataphatic mysticisms do not share the same goals, experiences, or practices.  They also do not share the same answers to the three basic questions about “the human problem” or human psychology.  I myself am a cataphatic mystic in thought, word, action, faith, and experience of the Divine.

Apophatic mysticism, which in its very essence is an experience of losing one’s personal identity within a transcendent cloud of oneness and unknowing, is a phenomenon which crosses all boundaries of race, religion, and creed.  Within Christianity, the tradition of apophatic mysticism can be traced from Plato through many centuries of later Christian figures up to and including Thomas Merton.  In the words of Merton’s biographer Lawrence Cunningham, it is “an imageless mysticism” with an emphasis on “silence, lack of image, presence, and so on [that] is characteristic of the dark mysticism that goes back to Saint Gregory of Nyssa, mediated through the writings of the Pseudo Dionysius and down to John of the Cross, and mediated again through the monastic and scholastic doctors of the Middle Ages” (Cunningham 97).  There’s no doubt that apophatic mysticism is part of Christianity’s tradition, just as apophatic mysticism is the starting point for the Buddha’s own suppositions about “the human problem.”  The point I wish to make is that apophatic experiences necessarily lead to a particular way of understanding Creation that is in direct conflict with the cataphatic and life-affirming teachings of Jesus.

It is a curious thing that a transient experience of transcendent oneness in a person’s life should lead him or her further and further away from an understanding of love (specifically agape) and closer and closer to pure logic and reason as the only adequate tools for understanding the universe.  Yet this is indeed what seems to happen.  Plato, as mediated first through Paul’s own writings on sin, law, and death, has had an enormous influence on Christian thought with the “imageless mysticism” he highlights in Phaedrus.  In Plato’s well-known tale of the Charioteer, which probably dates from Plato’s middle period, he presents a “myth” about the nature of the immortal soul (Phaedrus 245c-250c).  In this myth, the soul is compared to a winged team of horses and their charioteer.  Souls compete to try to ascend to the region above the heavens, the region that is “occupied by being which really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates.” If a soul succeeds in its required task of gazing upon “what is true,” it will be happy and will return to its home in the heavens; but if a soul fails, it will be filled with the weight of forgetfulness and incompetence, and it will fall to earth, where it must incarnate according to specific dictates of divine law.
 
I see strong parallels between the intangible cloud above the heavens accessible only to Plato’s intellect and the cloud of codependent origination accessible only to the Buddha’s intellect. Is it possible that both Plato and the Buddha had personal, apophatic mystical experiences that led them to theorize about the underlying structure of the universe – and therefore the nature of the beings who live within it – and conclude Creation is a “closed system” of oneness governed by immutable law?  It is interesting that both men, writing from an apophatic perspective about the cloud of oneness known only to the intellect and will, both claim that incarnation is governed by rigid laws that can be understood by select human beings and escaped from through rigorous discipline and mental focus.  It is noteworthy, of course, that neither apophatic teacher speaks of the preeminence of love and forgiveness for anyone, least of all God.  Unlike Jesus, they refuse to speak of heart and mind and strength and soul in the same breath (Mark 12:28–34), but instead focus entirely on the mind’s efforts to transcend such lowly human “needs” as love and forgiveness by subjugating and even denying them through ascetical practices.  I have begun to wonder if Plato and the Buddha both make claims for a “closed system” because there is no other way to justify an impermanent apophatic experience of oneness with all that is.
 
As I – and all mystics throughout history – can attest, a mystical experience is so intense that it changes the way the mystic looks at everything.  One cannot help but seek a framework in which to understand the experience.  An apophatic mystic seeks a philosophical framework that starts with a transpersonal, impermanent oneness and works backward.  A cataphatic mystic seeks a philosophical framework that starts with a highly personal, “image-filled,” permanent Divine Love and works backward.  An anagogic mystic uses elements of both paths and tries with all his or her might to unify them (as the majority of Christian mystics seem to have done, perhaps following Paul’s lead in 2 Corinthians 12:1–9 and 1 Corinthians 15:50–57).

As a practising cataphatic mystic, who has daily experiences of the presence of God, I can attest to the feeling of “being filled up with love” that comes from being in humble relationship with God.  I would not describe it as a feeling of kenosis or self-emptying.  In fact, it feels exactly the way Jesus described it: using the fullness of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength to sustain a relationship of love and healing with a God who is an infinitely loving and healing God.  It takes every ounce of courage plus all the gifts given to us by God to participate in this kind of relationship with God.  The corollary is that when we speak of shedding aspects of ourselves in order to be freed from suffering or sin, instead of using the alternative presented to us by Jesus – forgiveness! – we slowly but steadily chip away at the gifts God has given us so we can know what Divine Love and forgiveness really mean.  Of course, apophatic mysticism is not interested in the question of a personal Divine Love, because such a love is a question for the heart, not the mind.

I therefore argue against the use of a doctrine of kenosis in inter-religious debate.  There have been efforts to describe kenosis as self-giving (in contrast to the original meaning of the word, which is self-emptying) but if it is self-giving Christians wish to speak of, then I would suggest we speak of it as Jesus himself spoke of it.  The Gospels tell us clearly that Jesus does not endorse a withdrawal into a cloistered or consecrated ascetic community but instead insists we be full participants in community life and healing, even when others shun us for our unflinching commitment to wisdom, compassion, dialogue, healing, and service.
 
The remarks I’ve made here apply equally to any closed apophatic system, including Christianity’s own dark mysticism, and is not an indictment of the Buddhist quest for wisdom and compassion, which is filled with true sincerity, dedication, and long experience; instead, my remarks are a realistic assessment of the ways in which an apophatic world view may block and actually interfere with our quest for wisdom and compassion because of a starting assumption that denies the Divine Heart.  By contrast, the cataphatic world view is a universal theory but not a closed system.  In fact, the Christian world view, with its focus on mystery and love, redemption and forgiveness, is so open to everything in Creation that there is room within it for all God’s children, regardless of when or where they have lived.

Despite my dissatisfaction with apophatic teachings, wherever they originate, I see many positive “seeds of the Divine” in Buddhism.  Two “seeds” that seem to have sprouted more systematically in Buddhism than in Christian orthodoxy are “the deep knowledge of human psychology shared by Buddhists” (Brassard 439) and the intense focus on praxis, as expressed through the moral teachings of the Eightfold Path.  These two seeds were also primary concerns for Jesus, as shown throughout the Gospels.  It is interesting to ponder how Christianity might better fulfill its stated goal of helping people heal their relationship with God if the Church were to combine Jesus’ cataphatic teachings with a stronger focus on both praxis and human psychology.  I argue this would in no way diminish the sense of mystery and awe that are so important in the Christian relationship with our loving God.  In fact, when Jesus presented his own thesis (the Kingdom paradigm) on the three basic questions about the human problem, he may already have understood that the mysteries of Divine Love, healing, forgiveness, faith, and redemption are intertwined in our physical reality in positive ways that somehow transcend the cause and effect laws formalized within apophatic teachings.
   
As Jesus taught us, and as Nostra Aetate affirmed, great things can be accomplished in this world when we open both our minds and our hearts to each other and to the mysteries of Divine Love.  There is no need to choose between the mind and the heart.  Both are reflections of God’s own image and God’s good Creation:  “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.  And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace (James 3:17–18).”

Thanks be to God.

Works Cited:
   
Brassard, Francis, Maria A. De Giorgi, and Franco Sottocornola.  “Buddhism and Christianity.”  Catholic Engagement with World Religions: A Comprehensive Study. Ed. Karl J. Becker and Ilaria Morali.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010.  438–458.  Print.

Cunningham, Lawrence S.  Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.  Print.

McGinn, Bernard.  The Foundations of Mysticism.  Vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism.  New York: Crossroad, 1991.  Print.

Odin, Steve.  “Kenosis as Foundation for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue.”  Eastern Buddhist 20.1 (1987): 34-61.  ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials.  Web.  23 Mar. 2014.

Plato.  Phaedrus.  Trans. Christopher Rowe.  London: Penguin–Penguin Classics, 2005.  Print.


For Further Reflection:

As you proceed along your own Spiral Path of wonder, science, and faith, it's important that you always keep your eyes and ears open to the promises being made to you by various religious leaders and gurus. Are the promises you're hearing based on equality of outcomes? Or are the promises based on equality of relationships? Although these two religious "highways" may not sound different from each other at first, they lead your brain's biology in different directions, so the physical wiring of your brain will depend on which of these two "highways" you give priority to.

The former highway (equality of outcomes) leads to moral codes based on laws, uniformity of belief, denial of historical and scientific fact, eradication of uniqueness, and the pure logic of salvation. All major world religions include some doctrines that promise equality of outcomes (i.e. if you correctly obey Laws A,B, and C, you'll get guaranteed results of X,Y, and Z), but some religions have more such doctrines than others. Platonism, Buddhism, Philosophical Taoism, and Ancient Near East Wisdom rely almost exclusively on equality-of-outcome doctrines. So do New Age and New Thought teachings derived from these earlier sources.

The latter highway (equality of relationships) leads to moral codes based on respect for interpersonal boundaries, openness to experience and change, conscientiousness, remorse, and the quixotic logic of healing. The Abrahamic religions, as well as Sikhism, Baha'i, and a number of aboriginal traditions, contain strong equality-of-relationship doctrines (though this isn't a comprehensive list of religions that incorporate equality of relationship). Wherever such doctrines exist, you'll see religious customs that are more expansive, inclusive, and emotionally uplifting.

Your guardian angels (the ones who are trying to help you heal your relationship with God during your human lifetime) are very keen on spiritual and religious theories that lead to equality of relationships. This means your angels are especially enthusiastic about praxis (i.e. spiritual practice) that promotes strong, healthy, respectful interpersonal boundaries between you and others, as well as between you and God.

Sometimes this means learning to say no -- learning to say no to those who are trying to take advantage of you by blurring the healthy boundaries that should exist between you.

From my own perspective, this has been one of the hardest things to learn and remember and implement in my daily life. I often struggle to say no, but I've learned it's a necessary part of knowing God and knowing myself.

Opening up your heart to others means you instinctively feel their pain. (This is what empathy is, after all.) But it doesn't always mean you should take on other people's pain or fix everything for them. You have to trust that your brothers and sisters are fully capable of learning how to heal their own pain without abusing and manipulating others.

Yes, it's not always easy to step back and let someone take charge of their own choices. And yes, people need many kinds of assistance and support as they learn how to cope in mature, effective, loving ways with their own pain. But if you really want to know what Divine Love feels like, you have to accept that individuals have the power within themselves -- within their own souls -- to become stronger, wiser, and more courageous as they wrestle with the fear that comes with pain.

Sometimes you have to step back so the sunlight of God's love can work its magic on the seeds of redemption that lie within everyone you know and love.

This is the one of the most overlooked aspects of Jesus' teachings -- trusting that God wants us to say no to religious beliefs that damage healthy boundaries and respectful relationships.

Religion and faith aren't the problem in our world. Doctrines that dictate equality of outcomes are the problem, both within and without religion. So try to recognize and push back against such salvific doctrines wherever you can.

It's one of the fastest ways I know of to build your relationship with God.

LSP26: Materialism, Buddhism, and Karma

Sometime in the 6th century BCE, in a region now known as Nepal, a man was born who is credited as being the Awakened One.  Siddhartha Gautama -- known to us as the Buddha -- crafted an entirely new philosophical system in response to the problems he saw in Hinduism (as it existed then).  His teachings are currently of great interest to spiritual seekers in the West who are tired of the turmoil created by our cultural norms.

From the earliest years of the movement, the Buddha's core teachings looked very different on the surface compared to Hinduism's ritual-bound, authoritarian teachings. Therein lay Buddhism's appeal. Unlike the highly supernatural Hindu teachings, the earliest Buddhist teachings were empirical, scientific, pragmatic, therapeutic, psychological, egalitarian, and directed to individuals.*  The Buddha's original religion (or way of life) was therefore long on intense self-effort, short on metaphysical speculation, devoid of authority, devoid of ritual, devoid of tradition, and devoid of the supernatural.**

Unfortunately, because the Buddha continued to uphold the laws of Karma -- not only using Karma as the main root system for his philosophy but pushing the logical implications of Karma to its ultimate purified form -- the religion he founded is also devoid of relationship with God.

Technically, Buddhism is referred to as a non-theistic religion or philosophy because there's no room in it for a personal God.  This isn't to say that God doesn't exist -- just that a personal God isn't needed. Or wanted.

This is a strong statement, so before I say anything else, I want to emphasize that my comments in this post refer only of those narcissistic individuals (some of whom I've had extremely unpleasant dealings with) who use the core teachings of Buddhism for their own selfish purposes and gain.  Most Buddhists, I'm sure, try not to misuse the teachings -- just as most Pauline Christians try to rise above the low bar set by the Church for their personal conduct.

In the Buddha's earliest teachings, which are intensely transpersonal in the way that all apophatic teachings claim to transcend the self, a personal God is discarded and replaced with the numinous cloud of Knowing/Unknowing that many people now call Source or Godhead.  It's this unknowable cloud of universal law that lies behind the theories of Karma in the East and Wisdom in the West.

As with all major world religions, Buddhism isn't a single religious entity, but is instead an umbrella term for various schools and branches that have diverged from the earliest teachings. A common belief in the doctrine of Karma is one of the uniting threads among diverse forms of Buddhism. This statue fragment of the Buddha is from the Gandharan art collection of the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

According to Karma's teachers, the cloud's Materialist laws of cause and effect (i.e. Karma) are THE laws you must obey -- no two ways around it.  Although it's a bummer to be stuck with these laws, the good news is this: he who can read the cosmic laws encoded in the cloud gains great power -- infinite power, actually.  He who can read the cosmic laws and control them no longer needs a relationship with God because he has, in a sense, become God.

In other words, once you have law, who needs love?

Bear in mind an important point here, a point which is often overlooked: it's the people who claim to have achieved nirvana who get to tell the rest of us what the laws are.  It's the normal, regular, everyday people -- not the universe or the planet or the laws of non-Materialist science -- that are dictating these Karmic laws to others from the inner reaches of their own human minds (minds which are, after all, still human, though you wouldn't know it to listen to them).  And guess what?  They don't have to explain themselves, because explaining and engaging in direct debate is for ignorant minds.  We're simply expected to trust that anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering), and anatta (absence of a permanent personality or soul) tell us everything we need to know about life on Planet Earth -- because the Buddhist philosophers have told us so.  (When they see this pattern of top-down authority in Christianity, we call it revelation.)

In its purest, earliest form, the teachings of Buddhism are no different than the teachings of other apophatic mystical traditions that seek to depose God as a person (actually, two people) and elevate the human mind to a position of authority it doesn't deserve.  It's the ultimate form of narcissism.

Ironic, yes?


* Huston Smith, The World's Religions (New York: HarperCollins, 1958 and 1991), page 98.
** Huston Smith, The World's Religions, pages 94-97.


For Further Reflection:

Sometimes, when we've been born and raised with certain beliefs about how the Universe works, we can discover it's no easy thing to set aside those beliefs even when we're sure they're wrong.

A few researchers in recent years have been looking for evidence in the human brain for "the God Spot" or "the God Code" to explain why most people seem to want and need religion in their lives. Some researchers have noticed there's a sort of "God-shaped conceptual space" in the brain that tends to fill up with non-Materialist beliefs. But it's really more complicated than this. From the moment of birth, the biological brain starts looking for evidence for two things: (1) how the 3D Universe works and (2) how the self fits into this strange new 3D Universe.

Bear in mind that, for the soul, the 3D Universe of baryonic matter (i.e. atoms and molecules that respond to the laws of classical physics) are not the norm. Souls (angelic consciousness) are born into the non-baryonic quantum world that governs 95% of all energy in Creation, a world where Divine Love and Divine Forgiveness and non-locality and quantum weirdness are normal parts of everyday life. Souls are used to weirdness. So when we choose to incarnate, we hit the ground running (so to speak) as we try to take in all the sights and sounds and gravitational laws that apply to 3D life on Planet Earth.

In our early years, we rely heavily on our own built-in observational skills as little scientists-in-human-form. We're constantly exploring the laws of classical physics, testing and retesting (yes, the peas still fall when I threw them!), and filling up our brains with all sorts of important data sets. Soon we start to ask more advanced questions about the laws of classical physics, and at this point we turn to wisdom of the adults around us. We absorb what they tell us directly about how the Universe works. We also absorb what they tell us indirectly through their own choices and their own responses to the world around them. We use the wisdom of adults as a sort of macro to filter and sort our understanding about the laws of the Universe. And this is a sensible thing for us to do because there's so much to learn and process.

When the adults around us live and breathe a highly specific cosmogony -- for example, Young Earth Creationism in Christianity, or Karma in Buddhism -- our growing brains start to accept this cosmogony not as a working theory but as an actual scientific truth. Based on our acceptance of cosmogony as truth, we then build an internal moral code that's consistent with our cosmogony. We do this because we want our inner selves -- our inner laws and choices -- to be in harmony with the laws that govern all Creation. This is the only approach to life that makes sense, because even when we're very young, we sense that we're not alone in Creation, that our lives are fully interdependent with the forces that govern all Creation. So we want to flow with the forces as we understand them, not against them.

You can imagine, therefore, how the biological brain will shape itself in childhood and early adulthood if the laws of Karma are upheld as scientific truth (even though the laws of Karma are pure conjecture). Planet Earth will, of necessity, look like a very grim place to you, and your lot in life will seem like a scientific reality that you must deserve and can't do anything about unless you commit to the path of letting go of the one thing that's truly yours: yourself.

The System 2 networks of the brain, scarily enough, see the logic in this path. But the System 1 networks, which hold within them the seeds for the path of love and forgiveness and meaning and empathy and relationship with God, will fight and fight against this ghastly "truth" until their biological networks are finally broken apart through constant suppression and denial.

Eventually, the brain's networks, so overgrown with the tenacious kudzu-like roots of Karma, can only see the world as proof of the theory itself. It's a vicious cycle, one that reinforces the theory of cyclical time and further damages the brain's ability to objectively assess religious doctrines.

One final note: You might think that a theory that's been around for a long time is surely correct simply because of its longevity. But many spiritual and religious theories have existed for centuries, even millennia, before being discarded. So longevity is in itself no proof of anything. In the past few centuries, Christianity has been undergoing a process of sorting and winnowing, and now many Christians are proud to say they don't accept ancient doctrines such as patriarchy and infallibility. We're constantly being called upon as children of God to be honest with ourselves about doctrines that create and sustain harm.

I personally believe that no religion anywhere on Planet Earth is -- or should be -- exempt from this constant process of reexamination, healing, and redemption. This is how we make the world a better place, one choice at a time. But we can't do it without Humbleness.