#also the catholicism. the ghost of my childhood catholicism | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

earlgreytea68 · 3 years ago

Text

This post got me thinking about Pete and religion.

Fall Out Boy lyrics are full of Christian religious imagery. You kind of get the impression that Pete was raised in a household where he was just casually surrounded by all of this STUFF, that he absorbed and turned over in his lyrics. I mean, “Knock once for the Father, twice for the Son, three times for the Holy Ghost”... (West Coast Smoker).

He’s preoccupied by Heaven as an exclusive party. The idea shows up again and again. The Black Cards (I *love* the Black Cards stuff, I need to devote a whole thing to Black Cards at some point) have an entire song called “A Club Called Heaven.” On “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Fame,” “Heaven’s got a gate full of metal detectors.” On “Thriller,” he shows up with his plus one to the afterlife.

But Pete’s not entirely sure he’s getting into that party. In fact, usually Pete puts himself in Hell: He might be dancing in a club called Heaven, but he knows the doorman in Hell personally. The road to his house is paved with good intentions in Hum Hallelujah (which is, of course, traditionally what the road to Hell is paved with); “we’re just Hell’s neighbors” in America’s Suitehearts (if we’re not in Hell, we’re right next door, and that could be Heaven but I don’t think so). To get on St. Peter’s list, you need to lower your standards, says Rat-a-Tat. This is what Pete Wentz lyrics do, a simple sentence like that is LOADED with meaning. Because after all, his name is Peter, and it could be Peter Wentz’s list he’s referring to there, and it could also be the list to get into Heaven, and it could be that getting on Peter Wentz’s list doesn’t actually take that much (lower your standards, I’m never getting any better than this) and it could be that it’s St. Peter at the gates of Heaven who needs to lower *his* standards (again: I’m never getting any better than this).

(My absolute favorite Heaven/Hell lyric, though, is when Pete throws in Purgatory, that place in Catholicism where you go to do penance for your sins before you’re let into Heaven: On w.a.m.s. Pete writes, “My head’s in Heaven, my soles are in Hell, let’s meet in the Purgatory of my hips.” The glorious beauty of the sex innuendo being the *purgatory*: what you have to get yourself through to get to actual Heaven. ugh, Pete Wentz kills me sometimes with the way he uses words.)

He left his conscience pressed between the pages of the Bible in the drawer, but what did it ever do for him? So asks XO, and the gorgeously ambiguous phrasing of those lines KILLS ME. What’s the antecedent to the “it”? His conscience, sure, that’s what he’s thrown carelessly in the drawer. WITH THE BIBLE. Which could also be the “it”: What did that whole faith thing ever get me anyway?

But he wants it *so badly.* My second favorite lyric from Hum Hallelujah (a song that is nothing but excellent lyrics is “I love you in the same way there’s a chapel in a hospital.” There is SO MUCH packed into that line. SO, SO MUCH. And one of the things in there is the ambiguous irresistibility of faith: Sure, maybe the chapel is a last-ditch effort when nothing else works, or maybe that chapel is the ONLY thing that works and the only thing that matters in the whole place. I love you like that, like I don’t know if you’re all I’ve got left or you’re the only thing that matters, and I don’t know which it is but wow, either way, it would be great if you gave me a sign. Ugh that liiiiiine. “Have you ever wanted to disappear and join a monastery?” asks 20 Dollar Nose Bleed.

“I will never believe in anything again,” says (Coffee’s for Closers), but who really believes that? The temptation of belief creeps up in between the proclamation (”kick drum beating in my chest again,” “preach electric to a microphone stand”), undercutting it in the same way that its over-repetition in the song starts to ring hollow (Pete doth protest too much). The comfort that religious people get from their faith in God, Pete wants that. But he can’t get there. He’s always hedging his bets (“in case God doesn’t show” --Thnks fr th Mmrs). He’s always doubtful of God’s good intentions if He is there (”when the world ends, will God go down with it?” --What a Catch, Donnie).

So he tries to find substitutes for this faith he doesn’t have. “My words are my faith,” says Hum Hallelujah, but then, immediately afterward, “To hell with our good name,” so that’s how much actual trust he thinks you should place in that. “We’re a bull and your ears are a china shop.” Look at what a mess my words can make in there if you let them in; that’s what faith does to you, buddy. His gospel is the gospel of giving up (Arms Race). “Follow the disorganized religion of my head,” says West Coast Smoker. “I can work a miracle,” boasts Uma Thurman. “I’m the holy water you have been without,” says Fourth of July.

But he’s not really what he wants to believe in. “We’re saints just swimming in our sins,” Twin Skeleton’s reminds everyone. “If we pray to the Lord,” goes the outro on w.a.m.s., “does he sing on a stage?” Maybe rock and roll is what he should be believing in? “I’m the last damn kid still kicking who still believes,” claims Save Rock and Roll. “I will defend the faith, going down swinging.”

All of which brings us to MANIA. Religion, faith, belief is ALL OVER MANIA. In fact, the entire album is constructed as a journey toward finding the thing you believe in, the thing you have faith in, and finally settling in to cling tight to it. The first song on the album, Stay Frosty, Royal Milk Tea, is struggling with loss of things to believe in: “All my childhood heroes have fallen off or died.” (Champion later has the same theme: “I’m young enough to still believe, but young enough not to know what to believe in.” The most explicit Pete has ever been about his journey toward faith.) But then, in the second song, Last of the Real Ones, the lyrics have found someone to revolve around, someone to be with forever: “the ultra-kind of love,” that ultimate faith. But it’s not quite there yet. There’s doubt in there. “Tell me I’m the only one even if it’s not true.” “There’s been a million before me.” The bridge is expert Fall-Out-Boy song ambiguity. “I’m done with having dreams, the thing that I believe / you drain the fear from me.” Is that “I believe that you drain the fear from me”? Or is that “I’m done with the thing that I believe”? The song’s phrasing lets it be both at once, both a proclamation of faith and a proclamation of doubt, all at the same time.

But things get better. We eventually get to “Church.” An entire song where the religious imagery is pitched toward love (or blowjobs, like, same thing, maybe, for Pete Wentz). “If YOU were church, I’d get on my knees, confess my love, I’d know where to be, my sanctuary, you’re holy to me,” is the refrain of the whole song. It can’t get any clearer than that. Pete Wentz has found what he wants to believe in, and it’s the YOU (whoever that might be ahem just saying that in “Sunshine Riptide,” the she says “I love you ‘til I don’t,” while the You is the “truest feeling yet”). The other enduring theme in MANIA is fakeness and pretend: fake tears, fake friends, people you’re pretending with and around. That theme shows up in Church, too: “I’ve got a few more fake friends and it’s getting hard to know what’s real.” But in Church the proclamation of faith is in the chorus, which means that no matter how anxious Pete gets himself in the lyrics, he resolves back to the central belief: I’ve got you, I know where I should be. YOU’RE what’s real, right here, forget everyone else.

AND THEN we get Heaven’s Gate. Which revisits Pete’s favorite idea that Heaven is a party he’s going to have to try to crash. But here the song is all about how he’s no longer aimlessly looking for something to believe in; he’s found it: “I’m a missile that’s guided to you.” Maybe he’s gotten it wrong, that he’s chosen the You as his thing to believe in, that the only thing he wants is Your love, but if he’s gotten it wrong, he’s got faith the You is going to get it right and give him the boost he needs into Heaven. “Honey, please come through” and take me along with Your awesomeness, because I’ve decided it’s You I’m going to follow, Your dreams I’m going to make come true, and I’m not going to try to detox from You anymore, I’m just going to go all-in on this whole thing, and in the end, if I don’t make it on the list, will You slip me a wristband?

The album closes out with Young and Menace, with “I’ve lived so much life I think that God is gonna have to kill me twice,” which is such a beautiful bookend to “I read about the afterlife but I never really lived” in Saturday, like, ugh, that always kills me, look how far Pete Wentz has come, and then finally into Bishop’s Knife Trick: “I’m yours, ‘til the earth starts to crumble and the heavens roll away.”

Let’s go back to the places that we never should have left.

Idk, maybe you could read this as: Pete Wentz finally found something to believe in, and it ended up being the person who hasn’t left his side in 20 years, the person he’s never had to pretend with, the person who’s been there through all the fake friends, the person who’s golden and amazing and DEFINITELY going to get it right when Pete doesn’t. I mean, maybe you could read it this way.

#long post #peterick #pete wentz #fall out boy #fob

75 notes · View notes

infcstissumam · 5 years ago

Text

So, as some of you may know, I’ve recently gotten back onto discord with a ghost group, and, well, I’ve been dumping headcanons on there left and right. So, for posperity, I feel this calls for a Discord headcanon dump:

CHARACTER HEADCANONS

To sum up, the difference between Papa II and Papa I in one sentence. Papa I is sour, while Papa II is bitter.

To elaborate a bit on this, Papa I is sour, not by nature, but because of the role he was given. Ever since he filled the role as Papa and undid a lot of changes, Nihil had done under his reign - he was branded as a monster, an asshole, the works. For a time, he tried to fight this, but eventually, he became what they described him as. Nowadays, he's a reclusive man, withdrawn and cold, with acidic wit and a sharper tongue.

Meanwhile, Papa II is, well, I don't know how to describe him briefly. He's hurt, really hurt, he was robbed of a lot of what he was supposed to have, a childhood, adolescence, a loving family, etc. and he's become embittered because of it. Furthermore, he doesn't really let go of his pain, he holds on to it and his grudges... He's just a hot mess is what I'm saying.

A lot of Papa II's ridiculous and 'embarrassing' behaviour during infesstissumam was being driven by spite - I mean, the Ghost project was Nihil's - what greater revenge would it be to make it a complete joke, especially when you consider the Clergy gave him the shortest period possible as an 'opening act' for III.

This backfired, of course, and it helped the Ghost project immensely, casting a shadow III would never be able to overcome regardless of his efforts.

Papa I struggles a lot with his identity because of the labels thrust upon him and his sense of duty to his family and the Church

Papa I is the one who takes himself way too seriously, and this is canon. He's also super competitive.

Papa, I is one of those people that relate heavily to birds, and it's valid! He has a little, not perfect, pop-up aviary on the balcony of his papal apartment where he takes the time to rehabilitate abandoned or mistreated birds, before letting them be adopted out again.

I don't think Papa I had any kids, why? Because having a bloodline of his own would be considered a 'threat' against (Nihil) his brother's own. So, he was never allowed to. He does resent this quite a bit; not that he ever really wanted a family; it's just that he never had a choice either way.

In general, Papa I grinned and bared a lot of unfair treatment for the sake of keeping the peace between him and Nihil.

I agree that Papa II was bitter and envious over the treatment III was given (III was a spoiled, golden child, he had a loving mom, was a favourite in the Church, even as a child, etc.). Still, I don't think it's over money and fame, or so to say, that stuff is inconsequential to him. On a fundamental level, II's secret resentment of III all comes down to being treated as lesser when compared to him. Secondo would never show this to his face, however, because he loves his brother, but that bitter envy is there and always will be.

Papa II is the type to write his s/o love letters but not the kind to send them. He keeps them in a box in his office,

Ghoul's can't be killed on the mortal plane, not really. Yes, their vessels (or bodies) may be destroyed, but the Ghoul or demon itself is stored in the mask. So long as the mask is intact, that Ghoul is alive and ready to be bound to another host vessel. When a ghoul is 'killed', they are either banished back into the mask or into hell, based on where the specific damage occured. (vessel vs. mask)

There are two ways of summoning a ghoul: the first is by summoning them in spirit and binding them to their respective mask, which is then bound via a death ritual to a vessel. The other is by summoning and manifesting the Ghoul in body and spirit via a series of tedious and taxing rituals.

CHURCH HEADCANONS

The Church practises Flanderization when it comes to their ghouls. You see, there are many classifications of ghouls with differing temperaments, appearances, etc. Such as Magma, Ash and Spark. However, for the sake of convenience- or perhaps further dehumanization - the ghouls are grouped and given broad labels like Fire, Earth, Water, Air and Aether.

There's a bunch of geese and other waterfowl that make their home in a decorative pond in the Church's unholy-see. Everyone jokes that they're the real evil in the Church. --The geese cause troubles on purpose. They will chase siblings down the walkways and stand at the door, waiting for their next victim to exit. Unless you're Papa I, in which case they become full babies, much to everyone's horror and reverence

The unholy-see has one central basilica, with adjoining monasteries segregated based on gender and species (the ghouls have their own pad for safety concerns) and other facilities related to being independent of the outside world, like farming and husbandry. Recreation and tourism (they thrive on folks wanting to come to see the quirky satan Vatican)

The monasteries are named after the three Prime-mover's who birthed the Emeritus, Infinitus and Ambrosios line of cambions, although, in the present day, only the Emeritus and Ambrosios have living members. (the Infinitus line were wiped out in the Catholicism-based attacks that drove them from Italy to Sweden in the first place)

While the main basilica bears the name of the archdemon father who sired them.

All buildings present in the unholy-see, from monastary to the farm land and the like, are all connected by the mass of labyrinthian catacombs which hold all of the Church's dead.

the public or first level of the catacombs are internationally recognized because of how well the bodies are preserved, and many see it as a macabre must-have for their bucket list

I think Sister's and sibling's, in general, have the opportunity to rename themselves after they take their vows Some make titles out of it and some choose names from the doctrine or church history, for instance, Meridiana (my oc) chose her name as a tongue in cheek reference to her job.

The thing with the church catacombs is that they're dry and cold, leading to sort of mummies being formed of the corpses interred there, but well-preserved mummies given much of the ancient church architecture is untouched and old traditions for burial are continued!

For instance, the Church doesn't do coffins, when a body is put into their catacombs, it is given it's cubby, or so to speak and is wrapped with several layers of textiles and plant-based fabric, such as cotton.

There numerous notable individuals in the catacombs. Such as the last members of the Infinitus line, the mother's and non-papal serving family of the Papa's and descendants of the demon lines. As well as entirely unrelated celebrity and royal individuals who were followers of the Church and wanted their remains interred in the unholy-see's catacombs

An iconic corpse from the catacombs is:

- Adalgisa Emeritus, Nihil's grand aunt who died as a young girl (~8) from complications related to an infection from a broken bone. Who, despite being laid to rest over 450 years ago, maintains many of her features from life. Including her nose, which has shrivelled up but is still there, her eyelids + lashes, brows and her hair. And provided an excellent window to understand how the deaths of papal-family members were treated at the time.

Although the treatment of her corpse and funerary items has led to much debate in the Church, given she was displayed not as a result of her immediate family's wishes, but from Nihil and One's, who believed her remarkable condition and life should be showcased to those who wanted to learn about the papal family history.

Adalgisa was a catalyst for significant changes in the way the catacombs and dead were laid to rest in the Church.

You see, previously, they were organized by status and ranking with the Church. With the demonic families having their own lavish wing, as did upper Clergy, etc. however, after her death, her father, Cernunnos IV, couldn't palette the idea of his daughter being put away in an empty wing, waiting for her family. He couldn't stand it, and so committed to having a children's wing created so his daughter and other children wouldn't be abandoned in the cold dank waiting for the families they were stolen from, and so they could reunite in the depths, play and be merry. Just like in life

It's actually said in church texts that the Fourth was haunted by nightmares of his daughter's cries echoing in the hallowed walls. But this is 'hear-say' according to the Fourth's second prime-mover.

#. headcanon

55 notes · View notes

unbearablylight · 6 years ago

Text

11/11/11

ok i got tagged in two of these, one from @shit-she-wrote and another from @carrotgirl-1 (thanks to you both!) so time to answer some questions

1. What’s the first story you remember writing?

i was kinda late to the writing game, and the first big venture into creative writing i remember was running a hunger games roleplay blog, so i had to write the updates on those lol there was also a book i started writing in a similar genre around that time, but i don’t remember much about it

2. How has your taste in books changed since childhood?

umm i mean it’s matured somewhat i suppose, but i’ve always enjoyed a good fantasy or mystery

3. Do you see any similarities to your favorite books in your work? If yes, what are they?

i love a found family, so i like to write about those when i can

4. What sort of music inspires you?

to inspire ideas/creativity, i like music that sounds like it could be used in a movie or trailer, kinda big and epic or with emotional shifts. for actually writing, i need music i don’t know or without lyrics, otherwise i’ll start singing along and get distracted

5. Favorite book?

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

6. Favorite mythology (Greek, Norse, etc.)?

greek is the one i know best, so i’d have to say that. but anything with mythological/religious basis interests me

actually if we’re including “religions” (whatever the distinction between religion/mythology may be), christianity/catholicism is what i was raised on, so i know and like to play off of a lot of that usually

7. Dream vacation?

one someone else is paying for lol

um if i’m going with something new, i’ve always wanted to visit japan

i will also always accept a trip to Disney World

8. Favorite writing snack?

i can’t eat, i need both hands on the keyboard lol (something not super messy i suppose, like blueberries)

9. What tea do you drink the most while writing?

i don’t drink tea whoops

10. Do you have a special writing cup, that you drink tea out of specifically when writing to fill you up with inspiration?

i have this very large mickey mouse mug that i would probably use if i was drinking something hot like that, but again, not a tea (or coffee!) drinker

11. Write your favorite quote from your recent wip!!

*~~warnings for sexual language not great for work or minors probably lol~~*

RYVER: Don’t you pretend to be their boyfriend? MAX: Not like this! Usually I just tell them how special they are to me while pounding their brains out. RYVER: Huh. I would’ve pegged you as a bottom. KAT: You would’ve pegged him as a bottom? RYVER: I stand by my word choice.

and on that note, on to round two!

1. How do you pick character names?

through a long struggle. i hate naming things. honestly it depends on what i’m working on, so sometimes it’s just what sounds good, sometimes it’s to fit a personality, sometimes it’s just keysmashing until something vaguely pronounceable appears

2. Which OC would you like to meet irl?

probably Toph from where things may lie unseen for ~secret~ (spoiler) reasons

3. Sunset or sunrise?

sunset for the colors, but i do enjoy a good sunrise (tho i detest waking up that early)

4. Would you rather explore the deep space or the deep seas?

*chanting* deep space! deep space!

5. What inspired your latest WIP?

so i’m actually currently revamping an old script of mine, and for the life of me i cannot remember what sparked the initial concept for it. but what made me want to go back and rework it was watching Fleabag (which is amazing btw)

6. Happy endings or sad endings?

a mix? i guess. i’m good with either as long as whatever it is is done well

in my own writing i tend to mix them a bit, just because i think life and stories are never quite that simple (at least the stories i tell) so there’s usually some satisfaction amidst devastation

7. Do you believe in ghosts?

i grew up watching Ghost Whisperer (it was like the first Adult™ show i watched) and now i can’t not believe in ghosts

8. What’s the first line from your favorite WIP?

you’re asking me to choose a favorite child?!

for scripts, it’s probably Small Ponds which starts:

EXT. LAKE KINGFISHER - DAY - 2010

The lake is relatively still in the summer afternoon. A bird arcs out of the sky to skirt over its surface.

currently The Vestige of an Unwonted Wind is my favorite novel wip, since it’s the one i’m working on lol. it starts:

The beginning of the end was gentle, a dipping of the toe into a spring of boiling water.

Which, should you come across a pool of bubbling liquid, do proceed with caution, for it is either very hot water or not water at all, and neither offer a pleasant swim.

9. If you could shapeshift into any animal, which would it be?

ohhh this is so tough. probably into some type of bird so i could fly

10. So if you’re heading to a lovely garden buffet, with every cuisine imaginable, and you had free-flowing drinks and a chocolate fountain and desserts galore, and you’re wearing a nice dress or suit, right, and there’s a line in front of the roasted meats area, but you’re drooling and you just can’t wait to bite into that juicy steak so you go–you go to the seafood section, and then you see this person, this person who’s hogging all the lobster, just smiling at you as they keep piling on lobster after lobster, they can’t hold it anymore, they don’t have enough hands or plates, so you help them out, and after you help them out they smile sweetly and ask if you’d care for some lobster.

Who is this person?

first of all i’m obsessed with this question

second of all, i have absolutely no idea lmao i don’t know if i know anyone this into lobster. is anyone this into lobster? are they okay? do they like need to bring 99 lobster to a troll guarding a bridge in order to pass? are they on a quest? can i join them?

11. What’s your favorite line from your favorite OC?

you’re really testing me here, aren’t you?

hmm Ben and Monique from Small Ponds are the children i never stop thinking about so i’ll do a line from each of them

Monique’s:

Any actress worth her salt makes her presence felt long after she’s gone.

Ben’s (with context, but the last line specifically):

DYLAN: If I’m lurking, what do they think you’re doing? BEN: Trying to seduce you. DYLAN: At a funeral? BEN: There’s worse they think I’ve done.

ok from what i’ve heard, this cycle has gone on for too long so i’m not gonna make questions or tag anyone because i think the people i would tag have done this at least once

however! if you haven’t been tagged and are like aw man i wanna answer some of these cool questions, feel free to pick 11 of them and just say i tagged you. i’ll take the fall, that’s a sacrifice i’m willing to make

#tagged #tag games #long post #thanks again for the tags and cool questions #dang i hate picking faves i never know #especially about stuff i made

2 notes · View notes

torontohypnotherapist · 6 years ago

Photo

NOVEMBER 02 — GEORGE GURDJIEFF QUOTES

WHOSE TALK WAS NO MORE THAN THE FLOW OF ASSOCIATIONS STREAMING FROM THEIR FORMATORY APPARATUS

I cannot say that I had understood much, if any, of the theory of the Gurdjieff system; the work for me at the beginning, fortunately perhaps, was entirely practical; but the effort even to try to understand the system was beginning to have the effect of making my lazy mind work. I was beginning to see the difference between thinking with my feelings and thinking with my mind, and I was beginning to notice the difference between feeling and sensing. Also I noticed a slight, though perceptible growing strength in the solar plexus—a diminution of that acute sinking feeling that, in the face of a rebuff, almost doubled one up at times—an inherited weakness intensified by the war. (Orage said that in some Eastern teachings the solar plexus is said to be the seat of power, or real will.) I began to be able to deal with situations and people more competently.

Orage’s mind stimulated one’s own; it was alive, very different from the minds of the rigid ‘intellectuals’ I had mixed with at the 1917 Club in London, whose talk was no more than the flow of associations streaming from their formatory apparatus. Orage felt as well as thought. And though none of us, and no intellectual, not even my old friend C. K. Ogden, was ever a match for him, Orage could, like Gurdjieff, put a simple person at his ease.

~ CS Nott “The Teachings of Gurdjieff - A Pupil's Journey” ...

ACCUSTOM YOURSELF TO FORGET NOTHING

Accustom yourself to forget nothing, he [Gurdjieff] had told us once. My recollection of that Monte Carlo lunch will endure until memory gives up its ghost. Our table seating seven had center place in the fashionable scene. The Mediterranean sun directly overhead played down like a spotlight on the vast platters of trout, the baskets of bread to be eaten with it and the wine glasses filled not with the conventional white wine that accompanies fish, but with amber brandy — a scandalizing deviation in the eyes of the French beau monde surveying us. The first "idiot toast” sent shivers of shock through our judging audience trying in vain to place us in some recognizable conventional category. I borrowed their eyes, looked at our master through them and saw the aspects of his unique unconventionality.

When we had eaten the pink-fleshed fillets off both sides of the trout, Gurdjieff told us now to go on to the "best part” — the brain and eyes in the head where most of its "active elements” were stored. Very delicately he picked up one of his trout heads and showed us how to suck out its essential matter. Some of us could follow him, some could not. Those who could not passed their fish heads across the table to him at his request. Only parvenus — "jump-up people” as he called them — would waste such activating goodness.

~ Kathryn Hulme “Undiscovered Country” ...

DO I REMEMBER BY SENSATION AS WELL

Fontainebleau Saturday, 20 January 1923

Now I am sitting here. I am totally unable to remember myself and have no idea of it. But I have heard about it; a friend of mine proved to me today that it is possible. Then I thought about it and became convinced that if I could remember myself long enough I would make fewer mistakes and would do more things that are desirable. Now I wish to remember, I try. At moments I remember, but every rustle, every person, every sound distracts my attention, and I forget. Before me is a sheet of paper on which I deliberately wrote it in order that this paper should act for me as a shock for remembering myself. But the paper has proved of no help. So long as my attention is concentrated on this paper I remember. As soon as my attention becomes distracted I look at the paper but cannot remember myself.

I try another way. I repeat to myself—‘I wish to remember myself’. But this does not help either. At moments I notice that I repeat it mechanically, but my attention is not there.

I try in every possible way. For instance, I sit and try to associate certain physical discomforts with self-remembering. For example, my corn aches. But the corn helps only for a short time; later this corn begins to be felt purely mechanically. Still I try all possible means for I have a great desire to succeed in remembering myself.

In order to know how to proceed I would be interested to know who has thought as I have, and who has tried in a similar way? Supposing I have not yet tried in this way. Supposing till now I have always tried directly by mind. I have not yet tried to create in myself associations of another nature as well, associations which are not only those of the thinking center. I want to try; maybe the result will be better; maybe I shall understand more quickly about the possibility of something different. I want to remember—at this moment I remember, I remember by my mind. I ask myself: do I remember by sensation as well? As a matter of fact I find that by sensation I do not remember myself.

~ "Gurdjieff's Early Talks 1914-1931" ...

AS YOU ARE NOW, YOU CAN NEVER HAVE A RELATION WITH GOD

SC: I have an ideal; I have always been a Catholic, and I believe in Jesus Christ, but I no longer see him in the same way. I have the same inclination towards God, but I no longer see him in the same way.

Gurdjieff: Catholicism was very good in the beginning, but then they began to wiseacre and diluted everything. At first, it was better than the Orthodox Church and all the others, but then they allowed it to be infiltrated by the influence of the Maralpleicie religion.

SC: I cannot rediscover my childhood faith.

Gurdjieff: That is not necessary. You have lost the possibility; you are no longer a child, you are already grown up. You must use logic, and not search automatically. To have a direct contact with God is an impossible thing. Billions and billions of nonentities want to have a relationship with Mr. God directly. This is impossible, but you can have a relationship along these lines. Has your inner ideal been changed by what you do here? For example, since you have been coming to our meetings?

SC: Yes.

Gurdjieff: So, maybe you trust the person who is in charge here.

SC: Yes.

Gurdjieff: So, in the meantime he can serve as your master. SC: I’ve thought about that, but I am not completely satisfied. I would like something else.

Gurdjieff: So, make a programme. You don’t know what you want. I only gave you an outline for you to try to understand what you want. Those nearest to you - father, mother, teacher - may serve as an ideal for you in place of God.

Forget the real God. As you are now, you can never have a relation with God. When you have grown, that could be possible, but you are a nonentity among billions of nonentities. In the meantime, take .what is closest to you as an ideal, and in that way, you will pray to God, because the person who is close to you also has an ideal. In turn, this ideal also has an ideal; and so on right up to God. God is far away; there are many stations from here to there. Don’t think about that; your present ideal is your God. Afterwards, it will be possible for you to have another ideal, but your present ideal is your father, your mother, your teacher.

MME DE SALZMANN: God is much too far away; you are too small to have a direct relationship with Him. Only he who is just above you can be god for you. He himself has a god and this god in turn has a god - it is a ladder. There is always something above; each level leads to another. And you receive the response through the same chain.

Gurdjieff: You cannot pray directly to God. You imagine that you pray directly to God, but you are wasting your time. This is psychopathic. Exactly like a monk: he says directly, “God”. He tries to manipulate (Gurdjieff makes various gestures), and sixty years later he dies like a dog, having received nothing. He wanted God directly; no one noticed him, for the law of contact is strict. This law exists everywhere.

MME DE SALZMANn: It must be logical: if there is something above you, there can be a contact; otherwise, nothing.

Gurdjieff: ‘Don’t complicate things’ - remember this expression. I use it often. You will choose your god when you feel that you are being led in the right direction, on the right path; for example, by Mme de Salzmann. Then Mme de Salzmann will be your god. She is not God but she is the first station; you can have contact with God through her. All your prayers, your good manifestations, let them pass through her - not directly to God, through her. And once you have made contact with her, then contact with the next station will take place by itself. She has an ideal; you will have a contact with that ideal.

Then there is a third stage, and afterwards it may happen that your prayer will reach the real God, and the response will come through all these same stations. It is exactly like the telegraph. From your neighbourhood you send a telegram to a village near Lyon. It doesn’t go di rectly to Lyon; it goes to the central post office of your city, then to the post office in Lyon, which sends it to another city, and from there to the village. This is how your telegram reaches your relative: by stages. It is exactly the same thing here - your neighbourhood is not Étoile it is Mme de Salzmann. Give her the telegram; you will make contact through her. I have answered your question. I cannot explain this to you any other way.

~ “G. I. GURDJIEFF — PARIS MEETINGS 1943”

0 notes

topmixtrends · 6 years ago

Link

DEBATES ABOUT RELIGION can get pretty tiresome. Wherever you stand, it often seems like there’s nothing new to say about religion. But then you’ve probably never encountered Jeffrey Kripal. He doesn’t care much about these debates. Like William James a century ago, Kripal calls himself an empiricist of religious experience. He’s fascinated by primal spiritual encounters — the weirder, the better. Kripal studies mystical and anomalous experiences, and he’s one of a growing number of scholars who’ve embraced the “spiritual but not religious” movement.

Kripal, a professor of religious studies at Rice University, mines the backwaters and undercurrents of religion — the kinds of experiences many people would not even call “religious.” He co-wrote a book on UFOs with Whitley Strieber (author of the best-selling Communion about his purported alien abduction). Kripal tracks all manner of mind-bending experiences: precognitive dreams, near-death experiences, ghost stories. He’s a historian of the paranormal and has written extensively on major figures in the field, from Frederic W. H. Myers and Charles Fort to C. G. Jung and Philip K. Dick.

Kripal also has a penchant for being slightly outrageous. When he talks about the history of Christianity, he quickly veers into what he calls the homoerotic — and “very queer” — roots of Catholicism. In fact, his interest in the erotic origins of religion is what launched his academic career — and nearly ended it. Kripal started out as a scholar of Asian mystical traditions, and his first book, Kali’s Child, explored the homoerotic leanings of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. It infuriated Hindu nationalists, who launched a bitter and relentless campaign that eventually drove Kripal away from Hindu scholarship. Around that time, he discovered the Esalen Institute, the mecca of the human potential movement perched on top of a cliff in Big Sur, California. Kripal wrote the definitive history of Esalen and remains heavily invested in its activities; he helps run its Center for Theory & Research, and also chairs Esalen’s Board of Trustees.

Kripal’s book Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions weaves together these various strands of his work. Part memoir, part exegesis, it’s a wide-ranging and subversive reinterpretation of religion. And, I might add, it’s like no other book I’ve read.

STEVE PAULSON: At the beginning of your book, you say “the unvarnished truth is that things have been very trippy.” I might expect to hear that from someone who’s taken a lot of hallucinogens but not from a scholar of religion. Is that a comment about your own life or do you think religion itself is trippy?

JEFFREY KRIPAL: Well, religion is trippy. The only reason we think it’s not trippy is because we’ve grown too accustomed to our own religious worldviews. All we have to do is look at another religion and see that it looks like a psychedelic trip. I mean more than this, though. It’s been especially trippy for me because I’ve written about things that then reflect back and become real in my own life.

Yet most discussions about religion are rather stodgy and church services are rarely trippy. What am I missing?

Nothing. That’s perfectly accurate, but I’m not even interested in that sort of religion after it’s been established and become part of an ideology. I’m interested in the experiential sources of religion — in religion before it becomes religion. I’m interested in anomalous events or extreme experiences that formed the basis of various religious ideas, like the existence of the soul.

Then what kinds of extreme experiences interest you?

I just finished a book, called Changed in a Flash, with a woman in Houston named Elizabeth Krohn. In 1988, Elizabeth was attending the first anniversary of her grandfather’s death at her synagogue. She stepped out of the car with her two-year-old boy and was immediately struck by lightning. What followed was this incredibly elaborate near-death experience that completely changed her and convinced her that the soul is real and immortal. When she was healing from the lightning burns, she began to have all kinds of dreams of things like plane crashes and earthquakes that would then play out in the next day’s news. Those experiences did not fit into her particular religious tradition but led her to a series of beliefs and convictions that she simply wasn’t aware of earlier. She did not think them. They were given to her.

So she had precognitive dreams about things that later happened?

Yes. They showed up on the next day’s news. Eventually, she learned to send herself time-stamped emails immediately after the nightmare so that she had some proof that she actually dreamed it. She was trying to convince herself she was not going crazy, which is all our public culture can do with these things. Here’s my point. If you keep hearing stories from people like Elizabeth, they get weirder and then weirder. They never make sense. That was the case with Elizabeth. I could tell you many other stories — stories of reading minds, of a haunted necklace, of a plant that dies when its owner dies, and so on.

These kinds of paranormal experiences are not usually considered part of religion. We put them in an entirely different category.

And that’s a mistake. The word “paranormal” was coined in 1903 by a French scientist as an attempt to secularize and make “natural” experiences that had always had a religious framework. These experiences happen every day to thousands of people. They’re as common as water. But we live in a culture that suppresses them, in various explicit and implicit ways, so people don’t talk about them. Elizabeth waited 30 years to come out of her closet to talk about these experiences because she was afraid of what her social peers would think. And she was afraid her children would be made fun of at school, so she waited till they were grown up. She simply doesn’t care anymore. She’s ready to tell her story.

When I think of religion, it’s usually about God or sacred scriptures. That’s not what you’re talking about.

No, God and scripture are later developments that come out of these experiences and then get remembered in a community and turned into ideas, beliefs, and texts. For example, if you had a hundred people like Elizabeth who had similar kinds of near-death experiences, you would have stories floating around in the community about how the soul survives bodily death and can know the future. Then you would develop beliefs in the existence of the soul, prophecy, and divination. Of course, that’s exactly what you see in the history of religions. My position is that these beliefs are not crazy, superstitious things that silly people make up. They are the direct outcome of actual experiences. It doesn’t mean the experiences are metaphysically or ontologically true. I don’t think I can determine that as a scholar of religion.

Does this idea of religion go all the way back to your childhood?

Yeah, it does. I grew up in Nebraska in a farming community. I wasn’t particularly religious as a boy, but I grew up Roman Catholic, sort of assuming a lot of things like this. When I hit puberty, I became super pious and ended up in a monastic seminary wanting to be a monk.

How long did you stay in the seminary?

Four years. At the end of the day, my monastic mentors thought — and I agreed with them — that I didn’t actually have a religious vocation. I had an intellectual vocation, and I needed to go to graduate school, not enter the monastery. So that’s what I did.

You’ve written that most of the other men in the seminary were gay and you weren’t.

It was definitely a gay community. Most of the seminarians were closeted young gay men, good men who had turned to the priesthood as a way of creatively sublimating their sexuality into some kind of productive spiritual life. I was highly repressed and wildly neurotic, but I was ultimately straight. I just didn’t fit in.

Was that just a weird quirk of this particular seminary? Or does it reflect something deeper about the nature of religion?

The argument I make in Secret Body is that this kind of sublimated male homoeroticism is orthodox in the history of Christianity because God is always male. And if you are going to be in love with God or marry Jesus — to use the traditional Catholic language — a male homoerotic orientation works very well. If you happen to be a straight man, it makes no sense. It’s an impossible emotional and spiritual orientation to think yourself into.

Why is homoeroticism part of the foundation of Christian history?

I’m not sure I would make that kind of sweeping claim. I would say that Roman Catholicism is an institution controlled by males who are celibate. Many of them are living in all-male or same-sex communities and are promoting the love and worship of a kind of alpha male in the sky — God or Jesus. They’re not worshiping a woman. They’re eating the body and drinking the blood of a divine male. So that privileges or selects for men who have what we today would call “gay genders” or “gay spiritualities.” None of this implies a moral judgment. Quite the contrary, I think gay men are often more spiritually gifted than straight men. I didn’t leave the seminary because I was angry or had experienced anything negative. I left because I didn’t have what it takes. I was not so spiritually-sexually gifted.

What does that say about the life of Jesus? Are you saying there’s something homoerotic in his story?

Yes. Neither Jesus nor Paul was married. Jesus had a beloved disciple who was another man. Paul wanted all his followers, both male and female, to be virgins and marry Christ, which is a very queer, homoerotic notion for men — a kind of spiritual gay marriage. I think the origins of Christianity lie in this kind of sexual spiritual orientation that could not fit into the heterosexual structures of first-century Jewish society. This is one of the things that made it all so radical, so revolutionary.

Are you suggesting that Jesus was gay?

That’s an anachronistic question. The safest thing to say is that he was anything but straight. He was certainly preaching against the heterosexual family and essentially asked his disciples to leave their families. And he asked his closest disciples to castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven. That’s what the famous passage in Matthew says, though of course, it’s almost never read or preached on, mostly because people don’t know what to do with it or simply they don’t want to deal with it.

You went on to graduate school. Why did you end up studying Asian mystical traditions?

I became convinced that there were no heterosexual mystical models in Catholicism or Christianity. There was nowhere in my birth tradition for a straight man to be erotically related to divinity. And Hinduism in particular fascinated me because there were all these female deities with whom human males erotically or spiritually unite. So I was really interested in Hinduism because it seemed to offer heterosexual mystical traditions for straight men.

You’ve written about a profound, transformative experience you had in Calcutta in 1989. Can you describe that experience?

I was studying a tradition called “Shakta Tantra.” The central iconography involves a black or blue goddess standing on her husband, Shiva, who is lying prostrate and is imagined as asleep or in meditation or as dead. She’s often described as erotically engaging him. During Kali Puja, a fall festival dedicated to this particular goddess, I had just been visiting all the temples and was embedded in this beautiful ritual display. I woke up early in the morning and couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. I was lying on my back, exactly like Shiva, and this astonishing erotic energy entered the room or came out of me and started to engage my body. I was perfectly awake, but I was paralyzed. My first assumption was that there was an electrical dysfunction in the wall and that I was being electrocuted. That’s how strong it was. Then I thought I was having a heart attack and was dying. And when both of those didn’t happen, I surrendered to it until it sort of imploded into my chest region. At that point, I had the sensation of leaving my body and floating up to the ceiling in a kind of classic out-of-body experience or near-death experience. When I eventually got back into my body and could move my fingers and feet again, I felt as if this tremendous download had been transmitted into my body and my mind, though I had no idea what it was about. I just had this sense that something profound had happened.

You’ve had a lot of years to think about this experience. Can you explain what happened?

I can’t. Early on in the ’90s I thought my job was to get to some single interpretation of this event, as if there were one correct interpretation. Since then I’ve abandoned that idea. I think the event was, for all practical purposes, infinitely meaningful, and every book I’ve written so far has been an attempt to express that excess or overflow. And that, I now think, was the point of the original experience. Perhaps that was precisely what was downloaded into me then — the future books, all of them, all at once.

Clearly you don’t believe you just had an overactive imagination. Do you think you encountered some transcendent dimension of reality?

Or of myself. I was electrocuted by some incredibly powerful presence that was intelligent and had information in it. I totally believe that. I’m not actually a fan of belief. Belief shuts us down and gives us easy answers. I’m simply describing what happened to me and how I’ve spent my life trying to make sense of it — very imperfectly, I would add.

You spent years studying Hindu mystical traditions, which then became a dangerous line of work when Hindu nationalists targeted your scholarship. Later, you moved in a different direction and connected with the Esalen Institute in California. How did that happen?

Starting around 1997, I was being harassed and targeted by Hindu nationalists and fundamentalists who hated my first book, Kali’s Child, dedicated largely to these ideas we’ve been talking about, applied to an important Hindu saint. I received a lot of threatening emails, and there were horrible things written about me in the Indian newspapers and by major politicians. It was scary and went on for years and years. Eventually, I concluded that I had to leave the field. I was just a young professor without tenure, about 35 years old at that point. I had spent 15 years studying this culture that I loved; it took me years to let go. It was really a death process.

In the summer of 1998, Michael Murphy [the co-founder of the Esalen Institute] called me one night. He had just finished Kali’s Child and was extremely enthused by it, especially for the way it discussed the human body and the material universe as physical expressions of divinity or consciousness. He asked me to come out to Esalen that year. Which I did and then went back the next two years. It gradually dawned on me that if I left the study of Hinduism, I could write a history of Esalen and become an Americanist. The real reason I wrote the Esalen book, then, was professional survival. I was simply trying to stay alive intellectually after I couldn’t go back to India or continue to write on Hindu matters.

Why did Esalen fascinate you?

There were a couple of things. Asian religions played a major role in the founding of Esalen. So I got really fascinated by the American reception of Hindu and Buddhist ideas. The other thing that fascinated me was that Mike and a number of Esalen figures were really interested in parapsychological phenomena and had placed them in a kind of evolutionary context, which I found really interesting as a historical subject.

There is a common stereotype about Esalen that’s not so positive. In his book Fantasyland, Kurt Andersen regards it as a cautionary tale. He writes: “Essentially everything that became known by the 1970s as New Age was invented, developed or popularized at the Esalen Institute.” He says Esalen was “driven by a suspicion of science and reason and an embrace of magical thinking, and also massage, hot baths, sex, and sex in hot baths.” What do you make of that description?

I think it’s silly. You can find whatever you’re looking for at a place like Esalen that’s been around for well over a half a century. You can certainly find the sex, and there are hot tubs, but the Institute simply doesn’t fit into these grotesque stereotypes that Andersen is promoting. Thousands of spiritual, psychological, and somatic techniques have been taught there, many of them very effective, often life-changing. As for the alleged “suspicion of science,” I’ve worked with hundreds of scientists — many of them world-class, and I’ve met them all at Esalen. So those kinds of stereotypes are simply ignorant. There’s a real intellectual current that runs through Esalen, one filled with very serious people with PhDs in everything from neuroscience to cosmology to quantum physics.

One of the most influential intellectuals in Esalen’s early history was Aldous Huxley, who wrote about psychedelics in The Doors of Perception. Why was he so important?

Because he was writing about something he called “human potentialities.” Aldous was very interested in psychical abilities. He was very learned in the world’s mystical traditions, and he himself had had some profound mystical experiences on mescaline. He was one of the intellectual keys to the founding of Esalen, which eventually coined the phrase “the human potential movement” in the mid-1960s. That was right out of Aldous Huxley’s playbook.

One of Huxley’s big ideas is that the mind exists independently of the brain. This cuts against our scientific paradigm, which sees the mind as an emergent property of the brain or the manifestation of all those billions of neurons and synaptic connections. It’s a radically different way of thinking about the mind-brain problem.

Huxley articulated what he called the “Mind at Large” in The Doors of Perception, in 1954. He says the naïve idea is that when you take something like mescaline, this trippy experience is produced by these molecules messing with your synapses. This is not what his experience was at all. It was more like the mescaline shut down his brain, its cognitive processes, and these other forms of mind, which were already there, then rushed in, and he could perceive reality as it really is and not as his brain was filtering it through language and cognitive categories. He argued that the Mind at Large — or what we might call “consciousness” with a capital C — is distributed throughout the natural world, probably throughout the entire universe. The brain is a highly evolved biological filter or translator of this cosmic mind that essentially turns the consciousness into a local particular person.

So in this model, the brain detects consciousness and enables us to experience it but doesn’t actually generate consciousness.

Correct. When the brain dies, what we generally think of as the person probably does go away because this person and its ego are connected to the body and the brain. But consciousness itself is completely unaffected. Just like when you take your smartphone and throw it against the wall: you’re not going to harm the wi-fi signal, but you’ve just made it physically impossible to receive, translate, and personalize it.

I see this debate over materialism as one of the great fault lines in our intellectual life. It’s really the big question about religion and transcendent experience. It shapes how we interpret all kinds of powerful experiences, like near-death experiences, psychedelics, the paranormal. It’s fundamental in terms of how we talk about the nature of consciousness. What is at stake here?

Everything. I think everything hinges on what we think mind or consciousness is. If we think it’s just the brain doing what the brain does, then it’s pretty damn depressing, and we live in a bleak world in which all meaning and all life cease when we cease. But if we live in a different world where everything is somehow embedded in consciousness, and we’re highly evolved transmitters or receivers of this broader cosmic life, then suddenly the universe is a marvelous place, and we live in a naturally ecstatic, evolving conscious cosmos that is waking up to itself. I’m not arguing that everything about mental life is transcendent. I think it’s quite likely that ordinary cognition and sensory perception are entirely brain-dependent.

How do paranormal phenomena fit into these questions about consciousness? When people say they’ve seen a ghost or had a precognitive dream, should we try to determine if they are literally true?

The first thing to do is to recognize that they happen. The conversation gets shut down by the debunkers who want to say such things never happen, or that they’re always fraudulent or mistaken, which clearly is not the case. Once we acknowledge that these things happen, then we can begin to play with models in which they are possible or impossible. What we consider impossible is simply a function of our present models of the natural world. There are things that happen all the time that are impossible given our models, but they’re clearly not impossible, since they do happen. Paranormal phenomena push us to develop new models of the natural world and new models of ourselves. So they’re productive, they’re creative, they’re intellectually stimulating. That’s why I find them so fascinating, not because I “believe” them or can prove them.

You tell one story about Mark Twain, who dreamed that his brother died. Can you describe what happened?

This is one of millions of such stories. What happened is that Twain had this very realistic dream in which his brother died, and he visited the body, which was in a particular suit and in a metal casket. There was a bouquet sitting on his chest with a bundle of white roses and a single red rose in the center. A couple of weeks later his brother was in fact killed in a boiler accident on a steamboat. When Twain visited his brother’s body, he saw exactly what he had seen in the dream: he saw him in a metal casket in that exact suit. The only thing that was missing was the bouquet. As he was sitting there, stunned by the fact that he’d already seen all this, a woman walked in and laid that exact bouquet on his brother’s chest. That’s a classic case, but it’s not unusual.

It sounds like you’re saying these paranormal stories have their own narrative structure. We’re entering the mythic realm and perhaps we need a new kind of narrative to account for these stories.

Right. The way I got into the paranormal was this: I was sitting around symposia at Esalen with a bunch of physicists and neuroscientists who were talking about paranormal phenomena as objective events that could be measured. They spoke as if there is some kind of causal chain that they wanted to find and measure. I grew skeptical of all of that. I kept pointing out that paranormal stories are actually stories. They always have a beginning, middle, and end, and they seem to be aimed toward the production of meaning or comfort or guidance in a person’s life. They’re stories about meaning; they’re not about math. That is why I do not think science is our best approach here. Science is great at math and mechanism, but it’s simply not cut out to explore meaning and subjectivity.

But don’t we have to ask: Did it really happen? Is this real? Isn’t that a foundational question about these stories?

It’s not a question in my mind. Of course, they happen. I’ve witnessed them happening firsthand, and I see no reason why people would be lying about this. I know there are frauds and hoaxes, but I’ve just seen too much, and I’ve read too much. That’s just not even a question for me. I’m not interested in having that debate, because I think it just freezes the conversation. And that’s what the debunkers and deniers want. No, thanks.

A lot of these stories — like Mark Twain’s dream — seem to be triggered by some trauma. Often something cataclysmic has happened or is about to happen.

That’s correct. They’re largely about suffering and illness and death and danger and love. They usually spark between loved ones where one of them is in mortal danger or is dying. That’s why you can’t shove them into a laboratory procedure: they presume real trauma.

They are hard to reproduce in a lab.

They’re impossible to reproduce! At least the robust ones. You can get minor but real statistical significance in a lab, for sure, but you can’t produce these really robust drop-your-jaw cases.

I think a lot of people can accept the possibility of a telepathic dream, but you also write about UFOs and alien abductions, which stretch the limits of credibility. Why are you so interested in UFO stories?

Why draw the line there? I’m essentially an empiricist, and for me something is empirical if it happens to even one person. I see no reason to lop off UFOs. If people report UFOs, then UFOs are part of our empirical world. And we know they are. There was a story in The New York Times last December about fighter jet pilots tracking UFOs on radar. You could watch the radar for yourself. There are UFOs. Now, what they are, we don’t know. That’s another question. As a scholar of religion, I’m extremely skeptical of the interpretations that people give to UFOs and abduction events. I do not buy the stories, though I think they are key to the phenomena.

What stories don’t you accept?

Pretty much all of them. For example, I think some kind of extraterrestrial invasion is simply a Cold War narrative developed in the ’50s and ’60s. I think this story is also, frankly, dangerous. It props up a military complex and a threat mentality, because it’s about extraterrestrials invading American airspace, but there’s not actually a lot of evidence for it. If you watched the UFO radars in the New York Times piece, the objects are not doing anything threatening. The only threat implied in the radar footage is the radar itself, taken from our fighter jets pursuing them. We are the threat. Or if you look at abduction reports, some of them are scary and terrifying, but some of them are also positive and even ecstatic. It’s a really complicated picture that makes any single interpretation look a bit silly or ridiculous.

For believers, there are different theories about what’s happening. Some people think alien spaceships have flown from some distant planet into Earth’s atmosphere. Others say that’s far too literal an interpretation, and they believe it’s happening at a psychic level.

Again, you can find evidence for both of those interpretations. What fascinates me about the UFO is that it doesn’t behave. It violates both of those theories. You can watch radar reports that suggest some kind of object flying in space, but you can also read about UFO encounters or abduction events in which dead loved ones appear and in which the UFO is essentially a soul — some kind of conscious plasma. I don’t know what the correct interpretation is, and I seriously doubt there is a single correct interpretation. I’m simply saying these phenomena happen. They’re real. They’re part of our world. I am also saying that they often carry religious or spiritual dimensions, and that we should be fascinated by them and not mock people who express interest in them or who are changed by them.

Why do you say they have a religious dimension?

The gods have always come from the sky or the heavens. They’ve also always been messing with human beings. The gods are weird beings that come out of the sky and have sex with human beings, grant them new technologies, give them ideas, and warn them about the future, which today includes fears like nuclear warfare and environmental collapse. This is classic religious behavior. Just because it’s framed in modern techno garb, a kind of occult science fiction, doesn’t mean it’s not religious. It just means it’s speaking to us in the only frame that we can hear today.

I have to say I find it astonishing: you are a professor at a highly regarded university and are saying all these things that are way out there. Do you get much pushback?

I get asked that a lot. There’s a double answer. The first answer is that there’s a totem pole in the academy. Physics is on the very top, and the study of religions on the very bottom. Now, the higher you go on this imagined totem pole, the less likely you are going to say these “outrageous” or “impossible” things, because you need to protect your privilege and your authority — that is, your place on the totem pole. But the reverse is also true. The lower you are on that totem pole, the less you have to lose. I sit on the bottom of the pole, in religious studies, a field most people haven’t even heard of, so I have almost nothing to lose. I can say whatever the hell I want, or so it seems, because I am not supposed to know anything worthwhile knowing. But I do.

But what happens when you get together with other religion scholars? Are they snickering behind your back, saying Jeff Kripal has a few screws loose?

That’s where the second answer comes in. You’d have to ask my colleagues what they think of me. I can’t speak for them, but I do know a lot of them are in the closet on this one. I go to many universities to give lectures on this material and afterward, almost always, some colleague will come up and say: “You know, I had this experience — can I tell you about it?” Or: “Wow, I’m really glad you’re saying that.” But, generally speaking, they’re not going to stick their necks out and say it themselves, not yet anyway. So I think there are a lot of intellectuals in the closet on all things paranormal, but they’re fascinated by these things nonetheless, and they actually appreciate someone like me trying to make sense of them. So I keep going.

Your reinterpretation of religion doesn’t fall into any of the usual narratives. It’s certainly not what atheists say about religion, but also not what you hear from Christian theologians arguing for the historical truth of the Resurrection. It’s also not the kind of cultural or sociological analysis of so many contemporary scholars in religious studies. So how should we talk about religion?

In many ways. My way is just one way, not the only way. In my own mind, and this is what Secret Body is really all about, my job is to forge a new comparative way of talking about religion that neither falls into the category of belief or the category of dismissal. I’m really trying to push into a third space where we can take religious experience, anyone’s religious experience, very seriously but not fall into some traditional answer or some traditional non-answer. So that’s what I do. I mean, that’s who I am. I’m a historian of religions, someone who thinks about extreme religious experiences comparatively and historically, ideally across all cultures and all times. No exceptions.

Should we read the story of the Resurrection of Jesus as a ghost story?

The New Testament critic Dale Allison at Princeton Seminary has written a beautiful essay called “Resurrecting Jesus.” Among many other elegant moves, he takes the Resurrection encounters in the Gospels and compares them to encounters that widows and other people have had with dead loved ones in the 20th century, which are available in the parapsychological literature. And they’re remarkably close. People encounter dead loved ones in apparent physical form in the modern world. It’s not that unusual. These are very comforting and very powerful experiences, but few, if any, become world religions. What I take from Dale is that the Resurrection appearances were probably real. They probably happened, but — and this is just as important — they’re not historically unique. They happen all the time. What is unique is that those real experiences eventually formed into a world religion. That is very rare. We can study that, too. This is the kind of new comparativism that I am promoting and trying to develop further. This kind of approach makes Christianity more real and plausible, but it also challenges the tradition’s claim to uniqueness or exclusive truth. So you have to give up your illusions of being special, and you have to acknowledge that all human beings, potentially at least, have these extraordinary capacities.

Steve Paulson is the executive producer of Wisconsin Public Radio’s nationally syndicated show To the Best of Our Knowledge. He’s the author of Atoms and Eden: Conversations on Religion and Science (2010).

The post The Queerness of It All: An Interview with Jeffrey Kripal appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2vJZ6NR

#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

1 note · View note

gaylemccoy972-blog · 7 years ago

Text

When exorcists need help, they call him

(CNN)A small group of nuns and priests met the woman in the chapel of a house one June evening. Though it was warm outside, a palpable chill settled over the room.

Leave her alone, you f***ing priests, the guttural voice shouted. Stop, you whores. You'll be sorry.

You've probably seen this before: a soul corrupted by Satan, a priest waving a crucifix at a snarling woman. Movies and books have mimicked exorcisms so often, they've become clichs.

But this was an actual exorcism - and included a character not normally seen in the traditional drive-out-the-devil script.

Dr. Richard Gallagher is an Ivy League-educated, board-certified psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia University and New York Medical College. He was part of the team that tried to help the woman.

Fighting Satan's minions wasn't part of Gallagher's career plan while he was studying medicine at Yale. He knew about biblical accounts of demonic possession but thought they were an ancient culture's attempt to grapple with mental disorders like epilepsy. He proudly calls himself a man of science.

Yet today, Gallagher has become something else: the go-to guy for a sprawling network of exorcists in the United States. He says demonic possession is real. He's seen the evidence: victims suddenly speaking perfect Latin; sacred objects flying off shelves; people displaying hidden knowledge or secrets about people that they could not have possibly have known.

There was one woman who was like 90 pounds soaking wet. She threw a Lutheran deacon who was about 200 pounds across the room, he says. That's not psychiatry. That's beyond psychiatry.

Gallagher calls himself a consultant on demonic possessions. For the past 25 years, he has helped clergy distinguish between mental illness and what he calls the real thing. He estimates that he's seen more cases of possession than any other physician in the world.

Whenever I need help, I call on him, says the Rev. Gary Thomas, one of the most famous exorcists in the United States. The movie The Rite was based on Thomas' work.

He's so respected in the field, Thomas says. He's not like most therapists, who are either atheists or agnostics.

Gallagher is a big man - 6-foot-5 - who once played semipro basketball in Europe. He has a gruff, no-nonsense demeanor. When he talks about possession, it sounds as if he's describing the growth of algae; his tone is dry, clinical, matter-of-fact.

Possession, he says, is rare - but real.

I spend more time convincing people that they're not possessed than they are, he wrote in an essay for The Washington Post.

Some critics, though, say Gallagher has become possessed by his own delusions. They say all he's witnessed are cheap parlor tricks by people who might need therapy but certainly not exorcism. And, they argue, there's no empirical evidence that proves possession is real.

Still, one of the biggest mysteries about Gallagher's work isn't what he's seen. It's how he's evolved.

How does a man of science get pulled into the world of demonic possession?

His short answer: He met a queen of Satan.

A 'creepy' encounter with evil

She was a middle-age woman who wore flowing dark clothes and black eye shadow. She could be charming and engaging. She was also part of a satanic cult.

She called herself the queen of the cult, but Gallagher would refer to her as Julia, the pseudonym he gave her.

The woman had approached her local priest, convinced she was being attacked by a demon. The priest referred her to an exorcist, who reached out to Gallagher for a mental health evaluation.

Why, though, would a devil worshipper want to be free of the devil?

She was conflicted, Gallagher says. There was a part of her that wanted to be relieved of the possession.

She ended up relieving Gallagher of his doubts. It was one of the first cases he took, and it changed him. Gallagher helped assemble an exorcism team that met Julia in the chapel of a house.

Objects would fly off shelves around her. She somehow knew personal details about Gallagher's life: how his mother had died of ovarian cancer; the fact that two cats in his house went berserk fighting each other the night before one of her sessions.

Julia found a way to reach him even when she wasn't with him, he says.

He was talking on the phone with Julia's priest one night, he says, when both men heard one of the demonic voices that came from Julia during her trances - even though she was nowhere near a phone and thousands of miles away.

He says he was never afraid.

It's creepy, he says. But I believe I'm on the winning side.

How a scientist believes in demons

He also insists that he's on the side of science.

He says he's a stickler for the scientific method, that it teaches people to follow the facts wherever they may lead.

Growing up in a large Irish Catholic family in Long Island, he didn't think much about stories of possession. But when he kept seeing cases like Julia's as a professional, he says, his views had to evolve.

I don't believe in this stuff because I'm Catholic, he says. I try to follow the evidence.

Being Catholic, though, may help.

Gallagher grew up in a home where faith was taken seriously. His younger brother, Mark, says Gallagher was an academic prodigy with a photographic memory who wanted to use his faith to help people.

We had a sensational childhood, Mark Gallagher says. My mother and father were great about always helping neighbors or relatives out. Their mother was a homemaker, and their father was a lawyer who'd fought in World War II. My father used to walk us proudly into church. He taught us to give back.

Gallagher's two ways of giving back - helping the mentally ill as well as the possessed - may seem at odds. But not necessarily for those in the Catholic Church.

Contemporary Catholicism doesn't see faith and science as contradictory. Its leaders insist that possession, miracles and angels exist. But global warming is real, so is evolution, and miracles must be documented with scientific rigor.

Some stories blur the lines between science, spirituality and the supernatural. These stories are from The Other Side.

Where do coincidences come from? Synchronicity is familiar to many people, yet few understand how it works. Are our lives are shaped by unseen hands? Or are we victims of psychological narcissm?

Beyond Goodbye Some people not only share their life but their moment of death with loved ones. Are these shared-death experiences real or a mirage?

Why Bigfoot is getting nervous Monster stories have been around for millennia. Now hunters are hot on the trail, armed with cameras, drones and night-vision goggles. Can they catch one?

Ghost hunters haunted by competition We've heard of ghosts that harass the living. Now people are starting to harass the ghosts. Across America, teams are creeping through people's homes, trying to get rid of their paranormal pests.

Heaven popular, except with the church Popular culture is filled with accounts from people who claim to have near-death experiences. So why doesn't the church talk about heaven anymore?

Bidding farewell from beyond the grave? Although visits by the spirits of the recently departed can be chilling, they are also comforting, say those who've seen these crisis apparitions. Can bonds between loved ones defy death?

One of Gallagher's favorite sources of inspiration is Pope John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio (On Faith and Reason). The Pope writes that there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason.

The church's emphasis on faith and reason can even been seen in the birth of its exorcism ritual.

The Rite of Exorcism was first published in 1614 by Pope Paul V to quell a trend of laypeople and priests hastily performing exorcisms on people they presumed were possessed, such as victims of the bubonic plague, says the Rev. Mike Driscoll, author of Demons, Deliverance, Discernment: Separating Fact from Fiction about the Spirit World.

A line (in the rite) said that the exorcist should be careful to distinguish between demon possession and melancholy, which was a catchall for mental illness, Driscoll says. The church knew back then that there were mental problems. It said the exorcist should not have anything to do with medicine. Leave that to the doctors.

Learn about the true story that inspired the movie The Exorcist

Doctors, perhaps, like Gallagher.

Gallagher says the concept of possession by spirit isn't limited to Catholicism. Muslim, Jewish and other Christian traditions regard possession by spirits - holy or benign - as possible.

This is not quite as esoteric as some people make it out to be, Gallagher says. I know quite a few psychiatrists and mental health professionals who believe in this stuff.

Dr. Mark Albanese is among them. A friend of Gallagher's, Albanese studied medicine at Cornell and has been practicing psychiatry for decades. In a letter to the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine, he defended Gallagher's belief in possession.

He also says there is a growing belief among health professionals that a patient's spiritual dimension should be accounted for in treatment, whether their provider agrees with those beliefs or not. Some psychiatrists have even talked of adding a trance and possession disorder diagnosis to the DSM, the premier diagnostic manual of disorders used by mental health professionals in the US.

There's still so much about the human mind that psychiatrists don't know, Albanese says. Doctors used to be widely skeptical of people who claimed to suffer from multiple personalities, but now it's a legitimate disorder (dissociative identity disorder). Many are still dumbfounded by the power of placebos, a harmless pill or medical procedure that produces healing in some cases.

There's a certain openness to experiences that are happening that are beyond what we can explain by MRI scans, neurobiology or even psychological theories, Albanese says.

Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, arrived at a similar conclusion after he had an unnerving experience with a patient.

Lieberman was asked to examine the videotape of an exorcism that he subsequently dismissed as unconvincing.

Then he met a woman who, he said, freaked me out.

Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says he and a family therapist were asked to examine a young woman who some thought was possessed. He and his colleague tried to treat the woman for several months but gave up because they had no success.

Something happened during the treatment, though, that he still can't explain. After sessions with the woman, he says, he'd go home in the evenings, and the lights in his house would go off by themselves, photographs and artwork would fall or slide off shelves, and he'd experience a piercing headache.

When he mentioned to this to his colleague one day, her response stunned him: She'd been having the exact same experiences.

I had to sort of admit that I didn't really know what was going on, Lieberman says. Because of the bizarre things that occurred, I wouldn't say that (demonic possession) is impossible or categorically rule it out although I have very limited empirical evidence to verify its existence.

The tragic case of the real 'Emily Rose'

If you want to know why so many scientists and doctors like Lieberman are cautious about legitimizing demonic possession, consider one name: Anneliese Michel.

Michel was a victim in one of the most notorious cases of contemporary exorcism. If you have the stomach for it, go online and listen to audiotapes and watch videos of her exorcisms. The images and sounds will burn themselves into your brain. It sounds like somebody dropped a microphone into hell.

Michel was a German Catholic woman who died of starvation in 1976 after 67 exorcisms over a period of nine months. She was diagnosed with epilepsy but believed she was possessed. So did her devout Roman Catholic parents. She reportedly displayed some of the classic signs of possession: abnormal strength, aversion to sacred objects, speaking different languages.

Learn about Anneliese Michel

But authorities later determined that it was Michel's parents and two priests who were responsible for her death. German authorities put them on trial for murder, and they were found guilty of negligent homicide. The 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose was based on Michel's ordeal and the subsequent trial.

One of the leading skeptics of exorcism - and one of Gallagher's chief critics - is Steven Novella, a neurologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine.

He wrote a lengthy blog post dissecting Gallagher's experience with Julia, the satanic priestess. It could be read as a takedown of exorcisms everywhere.

He says Julia probably performed a cold reading on Gallagher. It's an old trick of fortune tellers and mediums in which they use vague, probing statements to make canny guesses about someone. (Fortune teller: I see a recent tragedy in your family. Client: You mean my sister who got hurt in a car accident? How did you know?)

Or take the case of a person speaking an unfamiliar language like Latin during a possession.

A patient might memorize Latin phrases to throw out during one of their possessions, Novella wrote. Were they having a conversation in Latin? Did they understand Latin spoken to them? Or did they just speak Latin?

Learn why Novella thinks exorcisms are fake

Novella says it's noteworthy that no one has filmed any paranormal event such as levitation or sacred objects flying across the room during an exorcism. He's seen exorcism tapes posted online and in documentaries and says they're not scary.

They're boring, he says. Nothing exciting happens. The most you get is some really bad play-acting by the person who is being exorcised.

In an interview, Novella went further and criticized any therapist who believes his patient's delusions.

The worst thing you can do to a patient who is delusional is to confirm their delusions, says Novella, who founded the New England Skeptical Society.

The primary goal of therapy is to reorient them to reality. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. It's only distracting them from addressing what the real problem is.

Driscoll, the Catholic priest who wrote a book about possession, is not a skeptic like Novella. Still, he says, it's not unusual for people on drugs or during psychotic episodes to display abnormal strength.

I have seen it take four grown guys to hold one small woman down, says Driscoll, a chaplain at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa, Illinois. When a person has no fear and is not in their right mind and they don't care about hurting themselves or hurting others, you can see heartbreaking things.

That doesn't mean he thinks possession isn't real. He says the New Testament is full of accounts of Jesus confronting demons.

Do I still believe it happens? Yes, I do, he says. It happened then. I don't know why it would be totally eradicated now.

Gallagher agrees and has answers for skeptics like Novella.

He says demons won't submit to lab studies or allow themselves to be easily recorded by video equipment. They want to sow doubt, not confirm their existence, he says. Nor will the church compromise the privacy of a person suffering from possession just to provide film to skeptics.

Gallagher says he sees his work with the possessed as an extension of his responsibilities as a doctor.

In a passage from a book he is working on about demonic possession in America, he says that it is the duty of a physician to help people in great distress without concern whether they have debatable or controversial conditions.

Gallagher isn't the first psychiatrist to feel such duty. Dr. M. Scott Peck, the late author of The Road Less Traveled, conducted two exorcisms himself - something Gallagher considers unwise and dangerous for any psychiatrist.

I didn't go volunteering for this, he says. I went into this because different people over the last few decades realized that I was open to this sort of thing. The referrals are almost invariably from priests. It's not like someone is walking into my office and I say, 'You must be possessed.'

What happened to Satan's queen

He may not have asked to join the hidden world of exorcism, but he is an integral part of that community today. He's been featured in stories and documentaries about exorcism and is on the governing board of the Rome-based International Association of Exorcists.

It's deepened my faith, he says of the exorcisms he's witnessed. It didn't radically change it, but it validated my faith.

He says he's received thanks from many people he's helped over the years. Some wept, grateful to him for not dismissing them as delusional. As for letting a journalist talk to any of these people, Gallagher says he zealously guards their privacy.

Julia, though, gave him permission to tell her story. But it didn't have a happy ending.

He and a team of exorcists continued to see her, but eventually, she called a halt to the sessions. She was too ambivalent. She relished some of the abilities she displayed during her trances. She was playing both sides.

Exorcism is not some kind of magical incantation, Gallagher says. Normally, a person has to make their own sincere spiritual efforts, too.

About a year after she dropped out, Gallagher says, he heard Julia's voice on the phone again. This time, she had called to tell him she was dying of cancer.

Gallagher says he offered to try to help her with a team of priests while she was still physically able, but her response was terse:

Well, I'll give it some thought.

He says he never heard from her again.

Inevitably, there will be others. His phone will ring. A priest will tell him a story. A team of clergy and nuns will be summoned. And the man of science will enter the hidden world of exorcism again.

See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

The critics, the souls that aren't saved, the creepy encounters - they don't seem to deter him.

Truly informed exorcists don't tend to get discouraged, he says, because they know it is our Lord who delivers the person, not themselves.

Is Gallagher doing God's work, or does he need deliverance from his own delusions?

Perhaps only God - and Satan - knows for sure.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/04/health/exorcism-doctor/index.html

0 notes

bradporter65-blog · 7 years ago