tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16269176958635275382024-03-08T11:14:36.652-08:00God, Christ, and Other Mythological Beingsa guide for the befuddledPaul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-25139080866401507782012-05-09T07:39:00.000-07:002012-05-09T07:39:01.189-07:00Curious Case IX<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What,
then, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> we to make of the life,
teachings, and accomplishments of Corky Ra?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">In a November 2008 interview with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salt Lake Tribune</i>, the President of
Summum, Su Menu, asked, “Why should Ra’s encounters in the 1970s with ‘advanced
beings’ . . . be any more suspect than those of, say, Joseph Smith?” Why, she
seemed to be asking in this rhetorical question, should her mentor’s
revelations be any less valid than those of other founders, especially the
founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">When saying this, Ms. Menu had the local audience--the semi-established Mormon Church--in mind. But it's also fair to ask, Why should Summum Bonum Amen Ra's story of his meetings with his Summa Individuals be any <i>less</i> suspect than the story of the meetings of the Prophet Joseph Smith with his angels? Or, for that matter, than other stories of other reported meetings, including the classic tales of the Apostle (St.) Paul's encounter with the risen Christ?</span></div>
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<br />
<!--EndFragment--></div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-29324977227199215232012-04-30T10:12:00.001-07:002012-04-30T10:12:50.361-07:00The Curious Case VIII<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">There are alternatives to Corky’s story. In place of
the mythological tale of guidance from beyond the world we live in, there are
naturalistic, historical narratives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Recall that before he was visited by his Summum
beings, he said he’d always thought that those who said they had had
visitations from otherworldly beings were “either lying or mentally ill.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Let’s say that Corky himself was lying. One such
narrative, then, might run like this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Corky’s stint as a salesman was coming to an end,
courtesy of natural forces. He’d been a great hawker of wares, but the
terrestrial beings who were driving him to do their bidding noticed that his M.O.
couldn’t be squared with the practicalities of the business world. Down on his
luck and recently divorced, in late 1975 he began telling some of his close
friends that he’d been visited by extraterrestrials. Not much later, he was
selling them on the idea of constructing a warehouse, building a winery, and
going into the mortuary business. By 1977, he’d convinced a critical mass of
investors that they should go in with him on his enterprise, which came to be
known as Summum. Several years later, his old college compadre Ron Zefferer had
contacted him with a deal he couldn’t refuse: in exchange for a large stake in
what was now a corporation, Ron would be chief philosopher. Within a decade,
Ron and another of Corky’s friends, </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Bernie Beichert,
had collaborated on the Kybalion Project to produce the official book of the
corporation. When they took it to the US Patent Office, they were told that it
could only be copyrighted as a derivative work. The two, with Corky’s advice,
went to PR and had them work up an official explanation of why the book was
more than just a copy of the original. This story (see above) seemed to satisfy
the clients who wandered into the weekly philosophy sessions Corky was holding
in his pyramid. By this time, the corporation was exceeding expectations,
though salesman Corky was always thinking of Bigger Things. Then, in 2003, he
had a brazen idea: in order to publicize his organization, he’d try to sell
several Utah towns on the idea of placing a monument bearing what he and his
confidants had been calling the “Seven Aphorisms” in their city parks alongside
the monuments featuring the Ten Commandments. Knowing there wasn’t a glacier’s
chance in a volcano they’d be successful on their initial sortie, they lawyered
up and took their case all the way up the elevator to the Supreme Court, which
ruled against them a year after Corky was being transferred to a far, far
better place with a GPS in his figurative pocket.</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Now let’s say that Corky was crazy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The narrative here is more compact. It starts with his
tour of Vietnam and ends on the couches of his first wife, his interim
girlfriend, and an empathetic shrink. That ringing in his ears? Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder. Those visits with the perfect, blue people? Hallucinations.
All that work on the Summum hobby? Hmm. Maybe compensation for an insecurity
regarding his true identity—caused, no doubt, by being shuttled from state to
state and from name to name by his birth parents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Erik Erikson would have the seen the Corky story as a
treasure trove.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">These explanations are speculative. They don’t always
fit the contours of the case, but they come close. The psychoanalytic narrative
could have some truth in it. If so, one wonders about the converts. Were they
also candidates for professional help? That might be. Many a teched mortal has
converted the masses to discipleship. Max Weber’s sociological theory of
charisma was built to explain such phenomena.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The fraud narrative appears to neglect the fact that
Corky and his entourage dedicated their lives to the Summum cause; he himself
went so far as to have himself mummified. Might he have believed his own
gospel, as have other recipients of angelic visits? That’s at least possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The sticking point of such a kind verdict, however, is
threefold. First, it seems clear that Summum was designed as a moneymaker, if
only for the basic needs of the organization. Second, the piece about the
extraterrestrials was borrowed—okay, cribbed—from the widespread New Age cosmology.
And third, Corky and his crew had fabricated in other instances. They’d
plagiarized. They’d been careless about historical facts. When it came to
counting their members and their accounts, they were creative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Guilty in one, suspect in all.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-19014830256688717432012-04-19T22:24:00.000-07:002012-04-19T22:24:22.148-07:00The Curious Case VII<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">D</span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Let’s look at this curious case historically. Let’s look
at three factors that helped form Corky’s life and teachings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">There is, naturally, the influence of a New Age
spirituality. Its self-help prescriptions (“You too can have the wealth of the
wealthy, the fame of the famous”), crystals (“</span>What looked like a very
large crystal came out of the floor and I looked into it and I saw all the
things that were going to happen”)<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">, dependence on
quantum theory (“Quantum physicists are now faced with the conclusion that
‘reality’ is a product of consciousness.” From <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM</i>), esotericism (“Sealed, Except to the Open Mind”), and
practice of indiscriminately drawing on many of the world’s religions (</span>“Recorded
history is replete with masters, Adam, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, and
Mohammed having been taught by the angelic beings”<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">)—all
these found fertile ground in Corky’s brain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">There’s also his education: construction, business,
and (perhaps) philosophy, not to mention his stint as a non-pragmatic salesman.
These just might have perfectly meshed with the demands of those perfect extraterrestrials.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Consider also the religion of his
post-adolescence. From his mission work for the LDS, Corky would have learned
how to bring in the sheaves—and learned well, if his attainment of a high place
in the missionary hierarchy tells us anything. Of course, he found the
abstemious Mormon life unsuited to his own juices, though he seems to have used
his missionary training to his own end. Like Joseph Smith, he had dates with
angels. Like Smith, too, he translated—if that’s the word—a holy book from a
preexisting text. Like the Mormons, he called his sanctuary a temple, which,
not by chance, he and his fellow enthusiasts built in the shadow of the Salt
Lake Temple. And like them, he gave the head of his “church” the title of President.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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</div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-942201933894896232012-04-12T13:31:00.001-07:002012-04-12T13:31:34.996-07:00Curious Case VI<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">And wouldn’t the insistent Summum Individuals have
ridden their man in Utah to write his own book?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">There’s more. Besides Corky’s requests for a
suspension of disbelief regarding his story, there are the crimes against
history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The major crime concerns the love affair Corky and his
disciples seem to have with Jesus in his Gnostic iteration. Example one. The
web page “Summum and Freemasonry” contains this statement by an anonymous
author: “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">The Seven Aphorisms . . . were also taught by
Jesus . . . The aphorisms were the basis of Gnostic Christianity, and the
teachings of Summum are the same as those of Gnostic Christianity.” Example
two. On the page “Sexual Ecstasy from Ancient Wisdom,” we learn that Jesus
Christ, in The Gospel of Thomas, said, “Anointed in the sacred wetness with the
magical spell of Merh [a liquid used in massage], drinking the Nectars of Gods
and giving your soul to my womb, all your fears vanish.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">The problems with the first example are that our knowledge</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">of the historical
Jesus—what he taught, who he thought he was—has been the subject of scholarly
debate for centuries, even millennia, and that recent scholars can’t agree on
what “Gnosticism” is. Not to speak of the fact that neither Corky nor his
successors give evidence for their bold assertions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">The problem with the second example is that The Gospel of Thomas, a
non-canonical compendium of the purported sayings of Jesus of uncertain date
and origin, has exactly nothing to say about either Merh or the Nectars of the
Gods. </span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">There is another gaffe. Corky himself is reported to
have said before his death: </span>“All religions have founders who had
revelations.”<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Well, no. Many did. Some didn’t. Hinduism and Daoism
come to mind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Finally, there’s the creative mathematics. According
to Blackley, Corky claimed that during the two years of his night classes at
the University of Utah, almost 20,000 people became members. Assuming,
generously, that this period lasted 104 weeks, counting the summers, and that
the room held 240 people, this would have amounted to a conversion rate of 80
percent per session. Corky must have been a charismatic speaker indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">In 2002, Corky was interviewed by Patty Henetz for the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lubbock Avalanche Journal</i>. She
reported that he claimed that since 1975, 250,000 people had “received” the
Summum teachings, though Summum didn’t keep membership rolls. Let’s see. In 27
years, that would be 9,260 per annum, or about 25 per diem. Of course, much
depends on the meaning of the word “received.” The more important point: If
there were no membership rolls, how could Corky have known the extent of his
power of persuasion?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">In that same interview, Corky also estimated that more
than 250,000 bottles of his nectar had been given away to those who had
“undergone a screening process that involves reading about Summum and learning
how to meditate.” So for 23 years—from 1979, when the temple was finished, to
2002—10,870 bottles per annum, or about 30 per day, were given to those who had
been screened. Giving this gift involved not only the cost and time of brewing
the liquor; it required time to screen the applicants for their knowledge of
Summum and their ability to meditate in the Corky way. Generosity, thy name
must be Summum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">CNN, in 2009, interviewed Ron Temu, “a licensed
funeral director and longtime Summum practitioner,” who reported that
approximately 1,500 people had requested mummification. Yet only one, Corky
himself, had been mummified. One can only wonder about the chances of this
happening: out of a population of approximately 1,501, just one, and the
founder at that, had become a mummy awaiting transference. Amazing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Just like his miracles.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-7813321417384499312012-04-03T13:51:00.002-07:002012-04-03T13:51:14.509-07:00The Curious Case V<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">What are Corky Ra and his successors asking the world
to believe?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">First and foremost, Corky wants Summum members,
potential converts, and maybe even skeptics, to believe that he experienced a
series of revelations from Summa Individuals. </span>The entire edifice of his
life’s work—the pyramid, the nectars, the book—is built on his claim that he
was motivated to act by those extraterrestrials who, he maintained, first
appeared to him on that October day in 1975.<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">This is a hard sell for most sentient beings,
including those who have other religious commitments, those who are bewildered
by being faced with many claimants to their religious loyalties, and
secularists who are skeptical of any such claims. A salesman named “Corky” who
was reared in Southern California asks us to believe that, while relaxing on
his girlfriend’s couch, he entered another dimension and met a bevy of
beautiful, blue, hairless humanoids of both genders who told him to build a
nice little temple with a winery, to sell mummification services at $67,000 a
pop—not a misprint; see summum.us’s sister site, summum.org—and to “rewrite” an
old book? Really.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Second, they want us to believe that Corky’s
revelations were on a par with those of other founders of religions, and that
he has every right to be added to a list that includes Moses, Buddha, Christ,
and Mohammed. And not just on a par with them; superior to them, because the
Summa Individuals told him about something none of them knew, the “Principal”
of Creation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Well, no. Jews would consider his claim the height of
chutzpah. Buddhist monks and nuns might feel a kinship with his emphasis on
meditation but would be as aghast as a Buddhist can be at the sexual slant of
his gospel. Muslims would treat him as a false prophet. Nonbelievers would
consider him a charlatan. Christians would pray for him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Third, Corky and his brain trust try to convince us
that his use of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kybalion</i> was not
plagiarism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">But, we might be forgiven if we ask, Why didn’t Corky
just write his own book from scratch? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Anu Aua’s story about Ron Temu seems to be an answer
to this question. Recall that Temu, on reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kybalion,</i> recognized that it </span>“complemented and confirmed
the information he [Temu] received at Corky’s presentations.” He then showed it
to Corky, who found that it “re-affirmed the things he [Corky] had been
initiated into during his divine encounters.” Therefore, Anu Aua goes on, “<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">when Corky was preparing to write a book about the
Summum philosophy, he decided to use <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Kybalion</i> as an outline since this is essentially what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kybalion</i> discussed.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">This apologia assumes that
somehow Summum Bonum Amen “Corky” Ra’s disciple Summum Bonum Anu “Bernie” Aua
knows that, in his own words, “Corky started teaching about the principles . .
. after he was initiated into them by . . . the Summa Individuals.” How can
Bernie be so certain about this? Was he there? Did he have a visit from those
extraterrestrials, confirming Corky’s story? Is he flying by the seat of his
faith? Or is he complicit in what might be a massive case of pilferage?</span><!--EndFragment-->
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><br /></span></div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-27033981034237185002012-03-29T18:24:00.002-07:002012-03-29T18:24:48.334-07:00The Curious Case IV<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It
would seem that Corky Ra has been caught with a hand in the cookie jar of
plagiarism. But the accused deserves his day in court.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Take
the webpage entitled, “SUMMUM and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Kybalion</i>,” which is attributed to Corky under his venerable honorific. Here
we find what amounts to a case for his innocence: “<i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Summum</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"> . . . </span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">rewrites the information found in <i>The Kybalion</i>
in a manner more appropriate for our modern era. It also presents new material
not found in <i>The Kybalion</i>, thus giving a complete and more indepth
outline of an age old philosophy. The US Copyright Office considers <i>Summum </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. . . </span>a ‘derivative work,’ while from
a broader perspective, it is a continuation of a neverending story.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">In addition to this defense, there is, on the webpage “The Pendulum of
Pleasure and Pain,” a transcription of a tape of one of Corky’s informal talks.
Among other things, he says that </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: LucidaSansUnicode; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">“in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Kybalion</i>, there is a little
comment, and you can see the guys that put it in there, they slipped in this
little comment and it doesn’t belong in the book at all. It has been passed
down for tens of thousands of years and these guys did their own interpretation
of it . . . and in one paragraph they say something like, we cannot have any
immorality in society like if you saw some frontal nudity on cable TV and stuff
it would be the worst thing you could do, and to condone anything like that
would be a person not on the path and stuff like that. I thought, ‘Jesus! These
guys really got a lot of balls to put something like that in this kind of
book!’ It came from no where and there are a lot of them in there, and they are
personal opinions from the commentator, and you sort of have to look over them
and look for the deep truth that is in the book that has been passed down for
thousands of years.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: LucidaSansUnicode; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">It appears, then, that Corky’s defense
against the charge of plagiarism can be said to begin with his confession that
he has “rewritten” what he and his brain trust—Su Menu, Bernie Aua, and Ron
Temu—like to call “our little book,” then proceeds to offer a set of arguments:
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: LucidaSansUnicode; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">(1) The truths of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kybalion</i> are nothing new, having been embraced by such ancients
as </span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Adam, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Christ,
and Mohammed, all of whom have been taught by “the angelic beings”; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">(2) The earlier book lacks an account of the
“Principle of Creation,” which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM</i>
supplies;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">(3) The earlier book needed updating to a more
contemporary style; and <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">(4) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Kybalion</i> also contains mistakes consisting of The Three Initiates’
inclusion of their “personal opinions,” which needed to be excised from the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM</i> edition.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-21064989550322685452012-03-19T17:02:00.000-07:002012-03-19T17:02:00.417-07:00The Curious Case, etc. III<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Summum
Bonum Amen Ra’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM: Sealed Except to
the Open Mind </i>finally appeared in 1988, 13 years after his first meeting
with the extraterrestrials. It sets forth the Summum philosophy in 18 chapters,
an Introduction, and, in the e-book version, an Epilogue, all in just 126
pages. As of this writing, it’s available in hardcover, courtesy of Amazon, for
$499.94 (used: $450). It can also be downloaded for $1.62; those who are
neither believers nor rare book collectors can choose to read it on a Kindle, a
computer screen, or an iPad.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Amen
Ra begins with an acknowledgement of one Anu Aua’s aid in editing and
structuring the book and in making the information online-ready. In the
Introduction, he dedicates the book to the Summa Individuals, after which he
advises the seeker that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM</i> is “a
master key which may open the many esoteric doors to Creation.” Continuing on,
the reader learns that “Recorded history is replete with masters, Adam, Moses,
Krishna, Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed having been taught by the angelic
beings.” The Principles set forth in the book, he tells us, “are the basic
underlying foundation of all existence.” Then comes a bold, even presumptuous,
statement: “The student of comparative religion will be able to perceive the
influence of the Eternal Principles in every known religion, whether it be a
dead religion or a living one.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In
the first chapter, “The Summum Philosophy,” we come across such undocumented statements
as: “All nations have borrowed from the inheritance of Egypt” (this explains,
of course, the pyramid and the mummies) and “Even the teachings of the Gnostic
and Early Christians drew their roots from the Summum Principles.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What
are these Summum Principles? They are the seven aphorisms, which are set forth
in Chapter Three:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
1. Psychokinesis: “SUMMUM is MIND; the universe is a mental
creation.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
2. Correspondence: “As above, so below; as below, so above.”
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
3. Vibration: “Nothing rests; everything moves; everything
vibrates.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
4. Opposition: “Everything is dual; everything has an
opposing point. . . .” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
5. Rhythm: “Everything flows out and in; everything has its
season. . . .”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
6. Cause and Effect: “Every cause has its effect; every
effect has its cause. . . .<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
7. Gender: “Gender is in everything; everything has its
masculine and feminine principles. . . .”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Then
there is the Epilogue. In this last part of the book, Corky Ra is referred to
in the third person; on the last page we learn that the author of this end section
is (Summum Bonum) Anu Aua—the same man who had helped Summum Bonum Amen Ra by editing
and giving structure to the book. This Epilogue begins with a statement of the
First Law of Thermodynamics (“Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It
can only change from one form to another”), which is then tied to the concept
of reincarnation, which in turn leads to a mention of Summum’s practice of Mummification
and Transference—all in one short paragraph.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
This
is followed by a story about Ron Temu, a Southern California dockworker and
Corky’s former college buddy who, starting in 1979, began making periodic
pilgrimages to Salt Lake City to hear his old friend make presentations.
“Around 1983,” the story goes, “Ron came across a book he found at the Bodhi
Tree bookstore . . . in West Hollywood . . . called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kybalion</i>, by Three Initiates.” He bought it and read it that
same day. “It complemented and confirmed the information he received at Corky’s
presentations.” Naturally, Ron informed Corky, who, according to Anu Aua, “had
never heard of the book,” though it “re-affirmed the things Corky had been
initiated into during his divine encounters.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A
quick trip to Amazon Books shows that there are many editions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kybalion</i>; it was first published in
1908 and has long been out of copyright. The e-book version can be downloaded
for $1.25. Paperback copies are available for less than $10; there are no
rare-book prices.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A
casual comparison of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kybalion</i>
with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM</i> shows that the older book
is not just a complement to Corky Ra’s. It is a close paraphrase—devilishly so—or,
as someone skeptical of extraterrestrial visits and less polite might say, a
crib.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
first thing a reader notices is the similarity of the chapter titles. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM</i> has 18 chapters, not including
the Introduction and the Epilogue. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Kybalion</i> has 15, with an Introduction but no Epilogue. Of the titles of the
15 chapters, there is almost an exact accord. Some of the Kybalion chapters are
merely modified (e.g., “Hermetic Philosophy” becomes “The Summum Philosophy”; “Seven
Hermetic Principles” becomes “Seven Summum Principles”), while others are
exactly the same (e.g., “The Mental Universe,” “The Divine Paradox” “Vibration”).
Summum has three chapters not in the original: “Creation,” “Psychokinesis,” and
“Meditation.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
phraseology is also similar. Items:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kybalion:</i> They (the Initiates) reserve
their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pearls of wisdom for the few elect</i>.
. . .<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM:</i> These <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pearls of wisdom are for the few</i>. . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kybalion:</i> The Hermetists <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have never sought to be martyrs</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM:</i> Contrary to popular opinion,
these initiates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have never sought to
become martyrs</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kybalion:</i> So it was with the Hermetic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teachings of the Gnostics and Early
Christians</i>, which were lost at the time of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Constantine, whose iron hand smothered philosophy with the blanket of
theology</i>. . . .<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM:</i> Even the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">teachings of the Gnostic and Early Christians</i> drew their roots from
the Summum Principles. Unfortunately, these same teachings were lost <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at the time of Constantine whose iron hand
smothered philosophy with its blanket of theology</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kybalion:</i> [T]he Hermetic Philosophy is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the only Master Key which will open all the
doors of the Occult Teachings!<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM:</i> Yet the Summum Principles are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the only master key which will open all
doors to the knowledge of Creation!<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kybalion:</i> From corpuscle and electron, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">atom and molecule, to worlds and universes,
everything is in vibratory motion</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM:</i> From quark, squark, lepton,
slepton, electron, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">atom, and molecule, to
planets and universes, everything is in vibratory motion</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And on. And on. The seven Aphorisms of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM</i> are almost carbon copies of the seven Principles of Truth
set forth in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kybalion</i>, with a few
tweaks, such as “The All” of The Three Initiates becoming Amen Ra’s “Summum.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-33561674553390056052012-03-16T10:02:00.000-07:002012-03-16T10:03:18.708-07:00The Curious Case of Claude "Corky" Ra II<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
So much for what might pass as Corky’s obituary. What else
can we learn about him?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In 2007, Jared W. Blackley, a writer for the anti-establishment
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salt Lake City Weekly,</i> did a piece on
Corky titled “Ra’s Deal: If You Like Sex, Wine, Pyramids, And Egyptian
Philosophy, Corky Ra Has Your Religion.” Blackley gives a physical description
of his subject: medium build, late 50s, stereotype of the aging hippy, bald in
front, gray hair gathered in a ponytail descending halfway down the back, calm
confidence, soft voice (summum.us features a headshot of Ra with black hair but
without ponytail). For this piece Blackley also interviewed Ken Sanders, one of
Corky’s former colleagues at a printing press and design shop, who recalled
that Corky Nowell was “a salesman who got the firm lots of job contracts but
never quite got the hang of some crucial pragmatics”—for example, he made contracts
for jobs that were impossible to fulfill. Corky, he said, would also come to
work “carrying what he called an unbreakable ‘bonum rock’ of pink quartzite
purportedly from another planet.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Then there are the miracles Corky is said to have performed.
According to sworn affidavits, he’s turned a blue sky into a rainstorm, lit a
candle by staring at it, and impregnated “several fully-clothed women just by
using the energy from the penis of a fully-clothed man standing on the opposite
side of the room.” Most of the women escaped their unwanted state by directing
their energy toward releasing their embryos, though what this “releasing” was
all about is never explained.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
∆<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What does Corky Ra allege happened on that day he was
relaxing on his girlfriend’s couch? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Corky’s account of his revelation appears twice on the Summum
website, once in a written essay, the other in an informal question-and-answer
session on the subject of his first encounter with the Summa Individuals.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
“References to encounters with Beings not of this planet can
be found in all major philosophies and religions dating back to the beginning
of recorded history,” Corky’s essay begins, without giving either examples or
arguments. He then recounts his own encounter, taking care to say that before
the event, he had always supposed that those who’d reported having had personal
revelations were “either lying or mentally ill.” (As a backslidden Mormon, he
might have been thinking of Joseph Smith.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Several months into his meditative regimen, he says, “I
began to notice a ‘ringing’ in my ears.” Then, on October 28, 1975 it happened.
The noise in Corky’s ears “became very intense.” His body began to vibrate; he
opened his eyes and found himself alongside “an enormous pyramid,” made of
something like graphite, half a mile long at the base but without doors.
Everything was quiet, and perfect. Then he noticed another structure, with “a
round, convex shape, like a flattened ball,” a hundred yards in diameter. He
walked through its wall and found himself in a large room full of beautiful,
elegant, divine humanoids of both genders. “They established a high level
telepathic link with my mind, and instantaneously I understood them.” These
Beings were what he came to call the “Summa Individuals,” meaning, he informs
his Latin-deprived readers, the “Highest Individuals.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Then there were the crystals. Once inside the structure, he
was shown a glass-like shaft rising from the floor. “Concepts started streaming
through my mind.” As he looked at the shaft, another shaft came down from the
ceiling and headed towards the back of his head. Later he learned that this
shaft was crystalline, reminding him that communication occurs by way of
crystals, as mentioned in the Bible, the Torah, and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bhagavad Gita</i>. Maybe, Corky thought, these crystals were “a
contemporary Urim and Thummim.” (These were a pair of rocks used as divination
devices; they are first mentioned in the Biblical book of Exodus and were later
said to be used by Joseph Smith, purportedly to help him translate the Golden Plates
he claimed to have discovered in the Hill Cumorah in upstate New York into The
Book of Mormon.) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Corky continued to have these visitations. At first he
resisted the Summa Individual’s demands, he said, but he “came to understand
the nature of the work I was responsible to complete, even though I had no
details of how to accomplish this task. . . . These advanced Beings work with
those ready to take up the labor of universal progression and divine
evolution.” Then he started to tell others of these encounters. His life was
changed; he became “a well-known person,” achieved peace of mind, and came to
understand Creation Itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
At the end of this account, there is a Summum version of an
altar call. To the open-minded who “have evolved far enough to understand,”
etc., he promises: “You too can have the wealth of the wealthy, the fame of the
famous.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Corky’s informal talk in his pyramidal temple tells much the
same story. He expands on his experience with the Summa Individuals—for
example, he reports that they led him to a “piece of energy, what looked like a
very large crystal came out of the floor and I looked into it and I saw all the
things that were going to happen about building the pyramid and making the nectars
[wines].” He anticipates skeptics who might suggest that he got all this sacred
knowledge from books: before meeting the Individuals, claims the former
philosophy student, “I had not read any religious or spiritual books other than
the Bible and the Book of Mormon.” He reports that he struggled with the
Individuals, resisting their demands to spread their gospel, though he finally
succumbed because “there is no room for argument in their presence.” He also
tells us that “they work with lots of people on this planet, in different
states of evolution.” They have names, but they didn’t introduce themselves to
him. They speak telepathically, both among themselves and with humans, but in
concepts, not words.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The questions from his audience keep coming, and Corky
becomes expansive. Again and again he refers to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Egyptian Book of the Dead</i>. He says there are “lots of gods,” but
that “the Creator is not a person, it is a force.” Do the Summa Individuals
ever appear in this pyramid? “They are always sort of hanging around to be
honest with you.” They speak to you. If you’ve committed yourself to do their
bidding, they ride you to perform your appointed task, like an old-style
schoolmaster or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Throughout his descriptions of his purported revelations,
and elsewhere, Corky insists that he is only one of many persons who have had
such experiences. “Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter . . . have reported
mysterious encounters.” “My experience was very similar to Moses and many
others down [to] Joseph Smith.” And “all religions have founders who had
revelations.” If you believe any or all of these founders, he seems to be
saying, you have no standing to doubt the truth of what he’s been taught by the
Summa Individuals.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">D</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">“This is what you have
got to do,” the Summa Individuals instructed him. “This is what your life is
all about. You have to go tell people these concepts and then go build a
pyramid and make this nectar.” Thus spoke Corky Ra in a Q&A session after giving
his informal talk about his first encounter with the extraterrestrials. Blackley
reports that Corky also told him that those visitors from beyond also commissioned
him to publish a book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The pyramid was built
near downtown Salt Lake City, adjacent to an industrial area and less than 200
feet west of the lively, jam-prone I-15 freeway, and two and a half miles from
the LDS Temple as the cab flies. At the time of its construction, the roof was
made of asphalt roofing tiles topped off with a stainless steel cap. The
asphalt was later replaced by an attractive copper-colored metal. The sides of
the pyramid are 40 feet long; its cap juts 26 feet into the empyrean. The
website invites the general public to a Wednesday evening one-hour philosophy
class. Saturdays there are “Evenings with Amen Ra,” when the works of Corky Ra
are read and discussed by those who have some knowledge of the house brand of
meditation. Blackley, writing before Corky was transferred to the mummy state, reported
that the regular Saturday meetings drew as many as 10 to 15 Summum supporters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Inside this temple
there are texts from the Quran, the Hebrew Bible, and The Book of Mormon. As of
February 2009, there were mummies of 50 animals but only of a single
human—Corky himself, who at the time was in the final stages of mummification,
just before being encased in a custom-made $40,000 golden bronze “mummiform,”
the Summum version of a casket.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">In Summum,
mummification, as in ancient Egyptian religion, is life after life. The body is
transformed, but the “essence”—apparently the equivalent of what is commonly
called the soul—of the individual remains. “</span><span style="color: #313131;">In mummification,” the website tells us, “the preserved body serves as a
reference point for your essence, a ‘home base’ if you will that allows
communication of instructions to help guide you to your new destination.” Or,
as Blackley puts it, “the person wandering suddenly finds a Global Positioning
System in his pocket.”</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Then there are the
sacramental nectars. The temple also boasts several wine vats, each one large
enough to fill the flatbed of a good-sized truck. </span>Summum calls the
nectars “publications” because they contain spiritual information and concepts.
They are used in meditation by those who have learned how to meditate in the
patented Summum manner. The instructions are given on a webpage. The Summum
disciple is to start with one or two ounces of nectar. The alcohol in it “acts
as a vehicle for transporting the concepts that are stored as a form of energy
or resonation within the liquid.” Once inside the brain, “the resonations are
released exposing you to the concepts that are held within.” The result? If you
continue to use them, your perception will be changed. (One might wonder: if
Corky’s first wife had had long-term access to this beverage, could that
marriage have been saved?)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
On the Summum webpage called “The Summum Nectar
Publications,” we find Summum’s version of the New Age theory of chemical
reactions: “Crystals will form inside the nectar when it is stored inside the
pyramid.” This version also holds that there are currently just nine of a future
27 different nectars (for example, Transformation, Song of Creation, and Sexual
Ecstasy), each of which bears its own message for those who use it often and consistently
and are sensitive to “deeper values of life.” All in all, the page concludes,
the creation of these publications “is a wonder of transubstantiation,” a
process that gives new meaning to that Catholic doctrine.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not everyone who has used these beverages adheres to their
intended purpose. Ken Sanders, the one who once worked in a printing firm with
Summum Bonum Amen Ra—then in his Corky Nowell incarnation—and who now owns a
Salt Lake City bookshop dedicated to antiquarian tomes (“Ken Sanders Rare
Books: ‘creating chaos out of anarchy for a better tomorrow’”), is reported to
have said about the liquid, “I wished I’d saved a bottle of it. I used to buy
it and take it on camping trips. Even though it wasn’t very good, it was a
great novelty item. A wine made by a UFO-pyramid cult in Utah
is pretty hard to beat.”<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-40636230710258132082012-03-03T15:53:00.001-08:002012-03-03T15:53:52.290-08:00The Curious Case of Claude "Corky" Ra<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What are we to make of the life and
teachings of Claude “Corky” Rex Nowell/King/Nowell, aka Summum Bonum Amen
Ra—Corky Ra, for short?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The public details of Mr. Ra’s life are
copious. From a miscellany of sources—the substantial press he received, a few
television interviews, and a pair of his own testimonies on the website he
inspired—it’s possible to cobble together the main facts of his life and
achievements.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Born in Salt Lake City on November 2, 1944,
he was christened Claude Rex Nowell. After his parents divorced in 1948, his
mother remarried, took her son with her to Southern California, and had his
name legally changed to Claude Rex King. Along the way he picked up the
nickname “Corky.” While still in California, he graduated from Orange Coast
College, a large community college now advertised as having 25,000 members, with
a degree in construction technology.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Corky moved back to Salt Lake City in 1964
at the behest of his birth father, who gave his son a job in his construction
business and insisted that Corky attend the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints; though his father himself wasn’t active in the church, Mr. Nowell
thought his son would benefit financially from a tie to the dominant regional power.
About this time Corky changed his name (legally) back to Claude Rex Nowell.
Maintaining that name for the nonce, he became a Mormon missionary and an elder
in the Church, rising to the position of assistant to the mission president,
“which,” he once informed an audience, “is about the highest rank you can get
to as a missionary.” After a two-year stint on the Central States mission
field, he went on to attend Brigham Young University and then the University of
Utah, from which he graduated, or did not graduate, with majors in business
and, perhaps, philosophy (the sources on these two points are at variance).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In 1970, Corky and one Annette Hall were
wed in an LDS temple. They moved into a home that his father had built for him
in an affluent neighborhood of the Salt Lake Valley at the base of the grand
Mount Olympus. Not long afterwards, he’d lost his interest in the Church, the
couple had had two kids, he began to meditate—at the time he thought of it as “relaxation”—in
the basement den, and he and Annette started to see things “from two totally
unrelated perspectives.” In 1974, the two were divorced and he was doing his
meditations in an apartment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A year later, he says, “<span style="color: #1a1a1a; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: LucidaSansUnicode; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">I was just having a regular old life
like everybody else has. I would go to the clubs in town, and dance, and have a
few drinks, and party and get involved with different people,” one of whom was
a woman named Chris Miller, whose religious pilgrimage has not been preserved
for the ages.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
On October 28, 1975, while sitting on a
couch in Ms. Miller’s apartment, Corky was purportedly visited by
extraterrestrial beings he came to call “Summa Individuals.” This visit led to
his founding of the religion Summum, which he registered with the IRS as a
non-profit organization. On orders from the extraterrestrials, he claimed, he began
to construct a pyramid cum temple in Salt Lake City. Two years later, in 1977,
Summum initiated a student organization at his alma mater, making it possible
for Corky to teach classes for night students; he later claimed that after two
years of these classes, almost 20,000 had become members of Summum. Using donations
and volunteer labor, his pyramid was completed in 1979; it was to serve as a
sanctuary cum classroom, a winery, and a repository for the mummies of Summum
devotees and their pets. In 1980 he changed his name (again legally) to Summum
Bonum Amen Ra, though he was commonly and informally known as Corky Ra. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In 1988, once more claiming orders from the
extraterrestrials, Corky published a book on the philosophy these visitors from
elsewhere had taught him. He called it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SUMMUM:
Sealed Except for the Open Mind</i>. A year later he married a woman named
Grace (neither family name nor religious pedigree is given), whom he had met in
a parking lot after one of his lectures. This wedding took place in another temple—this
one housed in the pyramid; it was officiated by his disciple Summum Bonum
Neffer Menu—Su Menu, aka Sue Parsons—who later succeeded him as president of
the organization.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Six years on, he published an illustrated
booklet, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sexual Ecstasy from Ancient
Wisdom,</i> with the subtitle <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Joys of
Permanent Sexual Ecstasy</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In 1997, Summum reported an American
membership of 150,000.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
But what placed Corky Ra in the public eye
was the litigation. In late 2008 and early 2009, the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pleasant Grove City v. Summum</i> was heard
and decided by the U. S. Supreme Court. This case resulted from Corky’s wish to
place a monument listing Summum’s basic teachings, called the Seven Aphorisms,
alongside monuments of the Ten Commandment in the city park of a small town
near Provo, Utah. On February 25, 2009, the Supreme Court ruled against this
New Age religion. The vote was 9-0.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Summum Bonum Amen “Corky” Ra was
unavailable for comment on this setback. He was suffering a setback of his own,
in his beloved Temple, where he was undergoing the last stages of
mummification. He had died on January 29, 2008 of what Su Menu described as
complications from Vietnam-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a bad
back.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-80112205143275321132011-04-26T15:46:00.001-07:002011-05-09T08:31:08.362-07:00PUSHING THE RESTART BUTTONI have been away.<br />
<br />
My last post was dated January 1. Now, nearly four months later, this blog is back in business.<br />
<br />
The reason for my absence is that I have been facing a question that has haunted me since I started teaching Comparative Religion. It is a “Why” question.<br />
<br />
Why are there patterns in Comparative Religion? Why is it possible to set forth what I call “the structure of religious traditions,” to say nothing of the cosmogonic myths I’ve been describing and the founder myths I plan to describe?<br />
<br />
When I began teaching Comparative Religion, many if not all the books I was reading on the subject avoided the question. The “phenomenologists of religion” (including Gerardus van der Leeuw and Mircea Eliade) were intent on describing the patterns they saw throughout human history. Whether or not it was influenced by Edmund Husserl, the father of philosophical phenomenology, their discipline did not ask causal questions; it was content to study “what appears” (phenomenon=that which appears; ology=the science of).<br />
<br />
But can’t we go beyond describing? Can’t we dig deeper? Shouldn’t we try to figure out why there are these and other patterns in religion? Why, for example, are there Buddha myths as well as Christ myths, to say nothing of the stories spun by Joseph Smith and his disciples?<br />
<br />
I have been doing a fair amount of digging. One obvious explanation is that even in those relatively primitive times, when the world wasn’t yet wired, or before the Age of European Exploration and Colonization, there were such things as borrowing and historical influence. The Austrian Kulturkreis (culture circle) school of anthropology of a century ago taught that we could explain common patterns of human behavior by assuming diffusion from a central point. Instead of assuming an innate predisposition to devise founder myths, their hypothesis would assume that the ability of a community to come up with a founder myth is a matter of cultural influence.<br />
<br />
It is common for Biblical scholars make a similar assumption. Here’s an instance. It is not uncommon for a scholar pondering the creation story of Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 to mention the Ancient Near East context within which it was composed. Invariably, they point to a parallel with the nearby Babylonian story called the <i>Enuma Elish</i>. In doing so, they are ignoring the fact that there have been legions of creation myths throughout human history.<br />
<br />
What about the Christ myths, that is, the stories about Jesus that include such supernatural events as voices from heaven, temptations by Satan, and miracles? Are there parallels in the Buddha myths—or, if not parallels, items for comparison? There are. But in this case can we account for one of them by appealing to cultural influence (which would run from ancient India to the Ancient Near East)?<br />
<br />
I don’t know. But my ignorance on this point makes me look for another explanation.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-25078947868777600972011-01-01T19:29:00.000-08:002011-01-01T19:29:08.579-08:00LUN YU<i>Lun Yü</i>, known to English-speaking readers as the <i>Analects</i> (meaning a gathering of short sayings) is commonly attributed to <i>Kung-fu-tzu</i>, a name that the earliest Jesuit missionaries to China latinized as Confucius.<br />
<br />
Historians of ancient Chinese civilization have concluded that, though the <i>Analects</i> appear to contain a good number of Confucius’ sayings, this short collection was edited by later followers of this highly influential man. These editors included many of the sayings of his disciples, some of whom were not his contemporaries, in the <i>Analects</i>.<br />
<br />
One of the questions about this text, and about Confucius and Confucianism, is whether they belong within the history of religions or within the history of Asian philosophy. World Religion textbooks consistently treat Confucianism, along with Taoism and East Asian Buddhism, as religions of China; encyclopaedias of philosophy often include Confucius as a philosopher. If we recall that both terms, religion and philosophy, are Western concepts, we might simply point out that the Analects as well as Confucius and his followers are what they are.<br />
<br />
If one persists in weighing in on this question, one can easily find reasons for both positions. On the claim that what we are dealing with here is philosophy, we might say that the <i>Analects</i> reads more like Aristotle’s <i>Nichomachean Ethics</i> than like the <i>Laws of Manu</i> or the Pentateuch. For example, note the following saying, attributed to the Master:<br />
<br />
“When natural substance prevails over ornamentation, you get the boorishness of the rustic. When ornamentation prevails over natural substance, you get the pedantry of the scribe. Only when ornament and substance are duly blended do you get the true gentleman.”<br />
<br />
Isn’t this an instance of Aristotle’s doctrine of the Golden Mean? <br />
<br />
As for the counterclaim that the <i>Analects</i> are a religious text, there is, I think, more to be said. Like Manu’s laws and the first five books of the Bible, the <i>Analects</i> contain moral precepts together with their legitimation through a device of appealing to a past event.<br />
<br />
The precepts can be summed up in a pair of sayings:<br />
<br />
“The Master said, To learn and at due times to repeat what one has learned, is that not after all a pleasure?”<br />
<br />
“The Master said, He who rules by moral force is like the North Star, which remains in its place while all the lesser stars do it homage.”<br />
<br />
The first of these concerns personal ethics: it says that the sage, or the gentleman, is devoted to learning from the past. The second is a large part of political philosophy: it says that the good ruler is a gentleman who bases his actions on an imitation of the ancients, who provide the model for correct leadership.<br />
<br />
This emphasis on the past and the ancients is similar to the creation myths we find in the <i>Laws of Manu</i> and the Pentateuch. In all cases the answer to the basic question, “How should I, and we as a people, exist?”, derives from an event that is held to be of a higher order than our own lives.<br />
<br />
But isn’t there a vast difference between the <i>Analects</i>, on the one hand, and both the <i>Laws of Manu</i> and the Pentateuch, on the other? Do not the <i>Analects</i> appeal to a former <i>historical</i> order, while the other two conform themselves to a <i>supernatural</i> order?<br />
<br />
Maybe. But there is evidence in the Analects that the former historical order has a supernatural grounding. Consider this saying:<br />
<br />
“The Master said, A Divine Sage I cannot hope ever to meet; the most I can hope for is to meet a true gentleman.”<br />
<br />
According to one interpretation, a Divine Sage is a mythological figure who has been made historical as a ruler, but has divine attributes and powers. As mythological, he has at least one foot in another and superior world.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-25711442803014749502010-12-13T10:25:00.000-08:002010-12-13T10:25:35.039-08:00TAO TE CHINGThe antique works of the Chinese tradition—the <i>Analects of Confucius</i>, the <i>Mencius</i>, the <i>Chuang Tzu</i>—are collections of the sayings attributed to the eponymous wise men. If anthology is their principle of composition, there is good reason to suspect that sayings and commentaries coming from later in the traditions came to be included in the growing text. <br />
<br />
The <i>Lao Tzu</i>, also known as the <i>Tao Te Ching</i>, is no exception. Like the other ancient texts, it, too, was written in its various iterations on such materials as paper, silk, and strips of bamboo.<br />
<br />
The <i>Tao Te Ching</i>, like <i>The Laws of Manu</i>, is a mix of cosmogonic myth and instruction in correct living, with this difference: the Chinese classic contains several cosmogonies:<br />
<br />
The world had a beginning<br />
And this beginning could be the mother of the world.<br />
<br />
The way begets one; one begets two; two begets three; three begets the myriad creatures.<br />
<br />
There is a thing confusedly formed,<br />
Born before heaven and earth.<br />
Silent and void<br />
It stands alone and does not change,<br />
Goes round and does not weary.<br />
It is capable of being the mother of the world.<br />
I know not its name<br />
So I style it “the way.”<br />
<br />
Hence the way is great; heaven is great; earth is great; and the king is also great. Within the realm there are four things that are great, and the king counts as one.<br />
<br />
Then, having set forth this last hierarchy, the writer concludes:<br />
<br />
Man models himself on earth,<br />
Earth on heaven,<br />
Heaven on the way,<br />
And the way on that which is naturally so.<br />
<br />
Now, if we indeed model ourselves on earth, it follows that we also model ourselves on both “the Way” and “that which is naturally so.” The world has a structure, and in order to achieve liberation, we must attune ourselves, both to that structure and to the nature of things.<br />
<br />
Reading this Chinese classic in its entirety, we come to see that the vision behind it prescribes the behavior not just of the individual, but of the empire as well. The ruler of this utopian empire is the individual king, who must also be a sage, one who blends himself into the quietude of the cosmos.<br />
<br />
“The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects,” says the sage.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-4637978998787930552010-12-03T08:22:00.001-08:002010-12-05T07:58:30.624-08:00LEGITIMATIONI’ve mentioned “legitimation” in several of these blogs: <i>Religious Traditions: Statics</i>; <i>The Laws of Manu</i>; and <i>The Pentateuch</i>. Now is an apt time to expand on this concept.<br />
<br />
Suppose I wrote something in this blog that you doubted. You might write me and say, “How do you know?” In asking this question, you’re asking for me to legitimize my point. You are asking for a legitimation.<br />
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Being something of a scholar, I might have mentioned that my thoughts on the subject of legitimation follow those of Max Weber, specifically, his theory of “the types of legitimate authority” as set forth in his major tome, <i>Economy and Society</i>. It’s a well-known theory, and many thinkers have found it useful for explaining how the human world works. They’ve modified it, but they still acknowledge its explanatory power. Weber remains, as if by coincidence, something of an authority on the issue of legitimation.<br />
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My example shows how legitimation works in ordinary secular life, how it is important and how we make our decisions based on our judgment of how persuasive an argument is.<br />
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In the world of traditional religion, legitimation takes a standard form. Let’s say there’s a mindset common to the traditional religions, great or small. Let’s say that those who share this mindset think about legitimacy assuming three unstated axioms and several corollaries. (The first of these axioms also exists in the minds of most nontraditional, secular people.)<br />
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The first axiom is that <i>there are directives that should guide human behavior and thought</i>. The second, that <i>these directives come from a charter</i>, which consists of myths, whether they be cosmogonic, founder, both, or other, and whether the myths are passed along orally or are set down in writing. The third axiom is that <i>the charter has a source</i>. This source is always something beyond the everyday, the ordinary, the natural. It can be a god or gods, ancestors, heroes, or some impersonal metaphysical reality. <i>Supernatural</i> is a term that comes to mind.<br />
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As for the corollaries, they augment the axioms by clarifying the traits of the charter. They concern the relation between a charter and its source. The first corollary is: <i>The charter partakes of the source</i>. It is, or contains, a mythology (a set of interrelated myths); the mythology concerns the relation between the higher power(s) and the transcendent. A second corollary is that <i>the charter is superior to and thus authoritative for the community that takes it for its own</i>. It belongs to that transcendental, supernatural order that the traditional mind-set assumes to be eternally in place and that the center spends its time interpreting.<br />
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<i>The charter is significant</i>. It tells the community what to do: what the ritual taboos and requirements are; what is moral and what immoral; what the proper human relationships are. Last of all, <i>the charter is univocal</i>. It speaks with a single voice. It contains no contradictions.<br />
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So when a question arises within the community concerning the proper course of action, it knows where to go for answers. It knows that any such course must be legitimized by appealing to the authoritative, significant, univocal charter, which reflects the ultimate source to which it is bound.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-25288087748689268872010-11-26T09:43:00.000-08:002010-11-27T15:02:07.049-08:00THE PENTATEUCHThe Pentateuch (also known to Jews as the Torah, or the Books of Moses, and to Christians as the Old Testament) consists of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.<br />
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Jewish tradition has it that the Torah was revealed to Moses on his expedition on Mount Sinai, which occurred in either 1312 or 1280 BCE. Modern scholarship has come to doubt this tradition. There is no claim within these five books that Moses is their author, and, following the impeccable logic of the philosopher Benedict Baruch Spinoza’s <i>Theologico-Political Treatise</i> (1670), Moses could not have written them, given the indisputable fact that the book of Deuteronomy contains an account of his death.<br />
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No contemporary mention of the Pentateuch/Torah is complete without reference to the Wellhausen hypothesis. In 1883, the German Christian biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen published a tome entitled <i>Prolegomena to the History of Israel</i>, which theorized that the “five books of Moses” consisted of four original strands that had, over a period of half a millennium, been stitched together and interwoven by a succession of editors. These strands, JED and P (the Yahwist—or, in German, the Jahwist; the Elohist, the Deuteronomist, and the Priestly writer) not only had different authors, as shown by their literary styles; J and E had different names for the Holy One, (J[Y]ahweh and Elohim); there are two creation stories (P’s account of God’s six-day work week, J’s story of Adam and Eve); and there are often two versions of the same event, such as the Flood). Etcetera.<br />
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While this hypothesis held sway throughout much of the twentieth century, two alternatives have more recently been proposed. One is the supplementary theory, which says that there was an original book that was supplemented by later additions; another is the fragmentary theory, which suggests that there were simply many fragments, which were continuously edited.<br />
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There’s no need here to decide on the accuracy of these hypotheses. It is enough to say that the finished whole does show multiple authors and editors, and that the process took hundreds of years.<br />
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The Pentateuch consists of a medley of genres. There are laws: page upon page of commandments, dietary and other prescriptions covering every conceivable aspect of the life of the Israelites. There are stories of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is, in Exodus, the story of how those Israelites escaped their Egyptian captors, and of how Moses, their general, climbed a mountain (Sinai, sometimes called Horeb) to receive the laws from the Almighty. And there are those cosmogonic myths.<br />
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Comparing the Pentateuch to the Laws of Manu, we find that both contain legal codes that are intended to guide the lives of the respective communities. But in the case of the Hindu text, that is all--except for the creation myth that legitimizes the laws. The ancient Israelite text has much extra material, including the founder myth regarding Moses. <br />
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We might summarize this comparison in these formulas:<br />
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Content of The Laws of Manu:<br />
Creation myth legitimizes laws<br />
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Content of Pentateuch<br />
Creation myth legitimizes Sabbath observance; founder myth legitimizes lawsPaul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-12445212912131733052010-11-16T15:09:00.000-08:002010-11-16T15:09:48.246-08:00THE LAWS OF MANUAs I’ve already said, the gods of the religious devotees are mythological beings. But returning to the distinction between the God of revelation and the God of reason, recall that “not all the gods ‘reveal’ something to those who venerate them.” To put it differently, the God of revelation is the god who anchors a given religious tradition, in the sense that “he”—there is seldom if ever a “she”—sanctions the teachings and practices of that religion.<br />
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The God of revelation is, then, a mythological god. But before citing examples, let’s revert to another distinction, the one between creation myths and founder myths. Creation myths are stories of how a god, or gods, created the world. Founder myths are stories of how a founder either received a revelation from a god or discovered the truth about life.<br />
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Let’s begin with an example of a creation myths, from ancient India.<br />
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There were various law codes in archaic India, but none achieved the authority of the Law Code of Manu. <br />
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<i>Manava Dharma Sastra</i> is a long treatise consisting of both a creation myth and the religious laws on social demeanor. <br />
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The Creator, Brahma, is said to have composed the law code and recited it to his son—the first human, Manu—who then taught it to his students, including Bhrgu, who recites the entire treatise to an assembly of seers. Like his father, Manu is a mythical rather than a historical being—a kind of Indian Adam. The author of the treatise is anonymous, though the material of the treatise leads one to conclude that he is a Brahmin. In the hierarchical caste system, Brahmins (priests) are at the acme, followed by Ksatriyas (rulers), then Vaisyas (merchants), and finally, Sudras (workers).<br />
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The laws themselves are intricate and detailed, and cover almost every aspect of the lives of the population.<br />
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A sampling:<br />
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For Brahmins: “The knowledge of the Law is prescribed for people who are unattached to wealth or pleasures; and for people who seek to know the Law, scripture is the highest authority.”<br />
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For students: “Even out of sight, he must not refer to his teacher by just his name or mimic his walk, speech, or mannerisms.”<br />
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For males contemplating marriage: “He must not marry a girl who has red hair or an extra limb . . . He should marry a woman . . . who has a pleasant name; who walks like a goose or an elephant; and who has fine body and head hair, small teeth and delicate limbs.”<br />
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For a Brahmin: “Except during a time of adversity, a Brahmin ought to sustain himself by following a livelihood that causes little or no harm to creatures. He should gather wealth just sufficient for his subsistence through irreproachable activities that are specific to him, without fatiguing his body.”<br />
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For reading late obituaries: “When a man hears about the death of a paternal relative or the birth of a son after ten days, he becomes pure by immersing himself in water with his clothes on.” <br />
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Speaking of death, the authority of this Manu’s Code came under severe stress in the twentieth century, when the liberals took exception both to the caste system and to the secondary status of women that it legitimized.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-5669371550944050662010-11-10T15:12:00.000-08:002010-11-16T17:07:23.604-08:00AND THE DECISION IS . . .Missing on Stephen Prothero’s list of writers who think that God is One is John Hick. In fact, nowhere in his book <i>God Is Not One</i> is there even a mention of Hick. <br />
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This is strange. For of all those who were, or could have been, on this list, it is Hick who has given the question the most and the closest attention. Hick it is who gives one of the strongest arguments for what he calls the “hypothesis” that “the response to a transcendent reality has taken the bewildering plurality of forms that history records.” Hick it is who, in 1986-87 gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures. <br />
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Regardless. Even when we compare Prothero’s miniature arguments with Hick’s hypothesis, it seems to me that the burden of proof remains with Hick. I’m more interested in what Hick would have to say about Prothero’s arguments than vice versa.<br />
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Let’s look once more at Prothero’s arguments. The first two, as I said in the last post, are based on analogies. Any such argument must give reasons for thinking that an analogy is spot on; Prothero doesn’t give these reasons.<br />
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The third argument, which pits the wisdom of the ordinary devotee against that of the mystic or the philosopher religion, is similar to what logicians call the fallacious <i>argumentum ad populum</i>, or “appeal to the people.” It needs to be expanded in order to be evaluated.<br />
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As for the fourth argument, which assumes that the God-is-One thesis embraces religious tolerance, is that there wouldn’t be a need to tolerate another religion if it were at base like our own. But, we wonder, what if this assumption isn’t made by many of those who urge mutual tolerance among the religions? Presumably, the argument doesn’t hold.<br />
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Prothero’s fifth argument is as obvious as it is strong. “The characters of these gods,” he says, “differs widely.”<br />
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And that, as I’ll show in the next few posts, is the decisive argument for the proposition that God is <i>not</i> one.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-6825141917738269732010-11-02T15:08:00.000-07:002010-11-02T21:56:00.128-07:00"GOD IS NOT ONE"A nice foil to John Hick’s theory that “God has many names” is Stephen Prothero’s recent book, <i>God Is Not One</i>, which bears the provocative subtitle, <i>The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter</i>.<br />
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The entire title tells it all. We need only to cite the chapters on the eight religions, find why their differences matter, and uncover Prothero’s argument for his contention that God is <i>not</i> one.<br />
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As for the eight chapters, I'll simply enumerate them in the order of what Prothero judges to be their contemporary impact: Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba Religion, Judaism, and Daoism.<br />
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Prothero begins to defend his thesis with a list of those who think God is one and the same in all religions. This includes the aforementioned William Blake, who in 1795 published the illustrated book <i>All Religions Are One</i>. Prothero then quotes Mohandas Gandhi’s statement that “Belief in one God is the cornerstone of all religions” and the Dalai Lama’s affirmation that “the essential message of all religions is very much the same.” Huston Smith’s 1958 book, <i>The World’s Religions</i> is also mentioned. Along the way he cites the books of such fellow-travelers as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Karen Armstrong, and Dan Brown.<br />
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“The most popular metaphor for this view,” Prothero says, “portrays the great religions as different paths up the same mountain.” Half the introductory textbooks in this commodious genre, it seems, use this metaphor to lead students astray. “It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side,” he quotes Huston Smith as saying, “but when the top is reached the trails converge.” The religions have distinct rituals, theologies, and organizational structures, “but beyond these differences, the same goal beckons.”<br />
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There are at least two reasons for this disinformation campaign. One motivation, explains Prothero, is that those who hold this idea are rejecting the missionary view that only <i>their</i> path leads to the peak. The other reason for repeating the “all religions are one” mantra is the hope that it will somehow lead to world peace.<br />
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Prothero has no difficulty with the alternative to the many-paths doctrine, which is to embrace the eighteenth century ideal of religious tolerance. “But the idea of religious unity is wishful thinking nonetheless, and it has not made the world a safer place. In fact, this naïve theological groupthink . . . has made the world more dangerous by blinding us to the clashes of religions that threaten us worldwide.”<br />
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Hidden behind Prothero’s grand rhetoric, there are arguments. Two are based on analogy. (1) “No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same.” And (2) “What is required in any relationship is knowing who the other person really is. And this requirement is only frustrated by the naïve hope that somehow you and your partner are magically the same.”<br />
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Besides these two arguments, there are three others.<br />
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First, the differences in the religions’ doctrines, rituals, mythologies, and laws “may not matter to mystics or philosophers of religion, but they matter to ordinary religious people.” Just as do the religions’ gods.<br />
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Second, if we hold to the idea of religious tolerance, we are assuming essential differences among the religions, because there wouldn’t be a need to tolerate another religion if it were essentially like our own.<br />
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A third argument is that “the characters of these gods differ wildly.” One god (Yahweh, for example) may be personal while another (say, the Tao of Taoism) is impersonal. One may be male, another female. One might be a warrior, another mild-mannered.<br />
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And so on.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-60101913940101626222010-10-23T14:59:00.000-07:002010-11-01T10:19:14.055-07:00"GOD HAS MANY NAMES"When John Hick (1922- ) published a collection of essays entitled <i>God Has Many Names</i> back in 1982, he wasn’t the first writer to adopt the notion that all the religious traditions are, at core, one, and that the differences in religious practices and doctrines are the result of the different locales and cultures in which humans find themselves. There have been others, including the poet and artist William Blake, who, late in the eighteenth century, wrote and illustrated a little book called <i>All Religions Are One</i>.<br />
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But it is Hick who has made the fullest argument for this notion. His grand theory is spelled out in great detail in his 1989 tome, <i>An Interpretation of Religion</i>, which is tellingly subtitled <i>Human Responses to the Transcendent</i>.<br />
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Who is John Hick?<br />
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The first thing he tells us in an autobiographical essay is that as a child, he was taken every Sunday to an Anglican church, where he found the services infinitely boring. <br />
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Many of us, Anglican or otherwise, recognize the sentiment. But none of us have spent our lives moving from a brief fling with theosophy, converting to fundamentalism, joining the Presbyterian Church of England, becoming a conscientious objector, joining an ambulance unit during World War II, writing a few theological books before moving to Birmingham, England where, it seems, there were large Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, and Jewish communities, which provided friends with whom he found common ground. The latter experience led him to see the world religions as just so many responses to the Eternal One, the divine Reality that seeks “to be known and responded to by man, and [seeks] through man’s free responses to create the human animal into (in our Judeo-Christian language) a child of God, or toward a perfected humanity.”<br />
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To be brief, this vision bought him trouble with Christian authorities but later led to his selection to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures that became <i>An Interpretation of Religion</i>.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-32761595586173947622010-10-19T08:47:00.000-07:002010-11-13T18:55:21.147-08:00THE GOD(S) OF THE RELIGIONSLet’s return to the common interpretation of Pascal’s distinction between (1) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and (2) the God of the philosophers, as the contrast between the God of revelation and the God of reason.<br />
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It’s clear that the God of reason is aptly named; for what is that God if not a philosophical entity? What isn’t at all accurate is the interpretation of the God of the Patriarchs as being the God of revelation. If Pascal had thought in those terms, he might better have spoken of the God of Moses, Jesus, and Paul. This is to say that not all the gods “reveal” something to those who venerate them. (Yahweh, the God of the Patriarchs, appeared to all three of them, but these appearances were not revelations in the narrow sense that we say God revealed himself to the founders of Israel and Christianity.) <br />
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Better, then, to speak of the god(s) of the religions, consisting of those who worship and adore their deity. Or to speak of the mythological beings who inhabit the world of myth.<br />
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Recall my earlier definition of myth as “a story about metaphysical beings that provides a model for human behavior,” etc. A myth, whether told in Israelite, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Mormon, or other precincts, typically spells out a narrative of a God, or gods, in relation to human beings.<br />
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These myths typically assume that there are two worlds: the natural world and a supernatural world above and beyond nature. Furthermore, the supernatural realm provides the model for much of human behavior, i.e., the rituals and moral actions that occur within the visible world of nature.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-50226683913217755462010-10-11T10:43:00.000-07:002010-10-11T10:43:36.428-07:00THE GOD OF THE PHILOSOPHERSTo speak of the God of the philosophers, as Blaise Pascal does, is to speak in general terms. It is to assume that the philosophers are all part of what we’ve come to call “the Western tradition.” It’s also to assume that “the philosophers” are in agreement on the question of what God is. <br />
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These assumptions call for scrutiny.<br />
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The question regarding God’s existence, or nonexistence, has no doubt been a major theme in Western philosophy. Both Plato and Aristotle gave reasons to think that some god exists. After Christianity came on the scene, theologians such as Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas set forth arguments for the Judaic and Christian God’s existence. “Pure” philosophers, including Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and, more recently, Charles Hartshorne also entered into the fray.<br />
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But what is less known are philosophical theologians from other traditions. Before Aquinas, using Aristotle, came up with his famous “Five Ways” to prove that God exists, the Islamic thinkers Avicenna and Averroes had found benefit in Aristotle’s thought in order to come to the same conclusion. And in early medieval India, Adi Sankara worked with the pan-Indian concept of karma with the same result.<br />
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What is God? All kinds of metaphysical compliments have been given to a Higher Being. God has been conceived as omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, all good, and so forth—in other words, the sum of all perfections. Nevertheless, not all philosophers would subscribe to these doctrines. Following Alfred North Whitehead, the twentieth-century process theologian Hartshorne held that God is neither omniscient nor omnipotent: he cannot foretell the future of free-willed human agents, and thus he can’t possibly be in a position to cause humans to act in a predetermined way.<br />
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But is this philosophical God the same as the God who is spoken of in many of the religions? Pascal says no. Here we leave the question dangling while we move over to the God, or gods, of those religions.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-47264471680411710972010-10-07T21:01:00.000-07:002010-10-11T09:19:32.609-07:00"GOD(S)"The French mathematician, physicist, inventor, bachelor-about-Paris, and theologian Blaise Pascal (1623-62) cryptically, famously, and immediately after an intense religious experience, stitched into the lining of his coat the aphorism: <i>“Feu. Dieu d’Abraham, Dieu d’Isaac, Dieu d’Jacob, non des philosophes et savants....”</i> <br />
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This is usually translated as “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of the philosophers,” with no mention of either fire or the savants. Nor did Pascal name the philosophers, though a good surmise would be that he was thinking of his older contemporary Rene Descartes as well as such scholastic thinkers as Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas, all of whom devised arguments for the existence of God.<br />
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Whatever Pascal meant by this aphorism, interpreters have cited it to distinguish between the God of revelation and the God of reason, and to favor the former God while censuring the latter.<br />
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If we want to deal with the God questions, we can’t ignore this distinction. But it has limits. It can hardly apply to the Buddhist tradition or those of the Far East, let alone the smaller traditions. Like the concept of religion itself, it is a construct of Western civilization. <br />
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The same can be said for the standard categories used by those born to philosophize.<br />
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Here’s a list of these categories, including the date a recent <i>Webster’s</i> marks as their arrival to our common English vocabulary:<br />
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Atheism (1546 ) <br />
Polytheism (1613) <br />
Monotheism (1660)<br />
Theism (1678) <br />
Deism (1682)<br />
Pantheism (1732)<br />
Panentheism (1828)<br />
Henotheism (1860)<br />
Agnosticism (1869) <br />
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To the contemporary scholar of religion, there’s something ancient about this list; ancient, and too neat. Most of these items are not useful for the comparative study of religion.<br />
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Four are worth keeping. Monotheism (the belief that there is one God) is useful, as is its polar twin, polytheism (belief in a group of Gods, which may or may not have a leader; if so, it becomes henotheism). The other twins, theism (belief in a personal God who both created the universe and continues to intervene in its daily workings) and atheism, (the denial of this belief), make sense, especially within the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.<br />
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The other categories can be consigned to the sterile, dated debates carried on by philosophers of religion.<br />
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<b>Note:</b> Agnosticism (either the statement that one doesn’t know whether or not there is a God, or the claim that it is impossible to know) appears to be a halfway house between theism and atheism, but is often a dodge for the atheist who wants to be accepted in the company of believers.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-77487627632310646422010-09-29T09:09:00.001-07:002010-11-01T10:27:06.133-07:00RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS: DYNAMICSReligious traditions are subject to the dynamics of history. They come into being, they change, they suffer schisms, and they can very well become extinct.<br />
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The beginnings of these traditions occur in at least two ways. One way is for a collection of small, tribal religions to join for a common interest—for example, military protection. Apparently a group of tribes came together in ancient Israel as an amphictyony (a good word to add to your vocabulary). After suffering a series of attacks from neighboring empires, these tribes became what is now known, by Jews and Gentiles alike, as Judaism. The second way is for a founder, a charismatic leader, to establish a new tradition, either accidentally (as in the likely case of Jesus) or on purpose (as in the case of Muhammed).<br />
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Once in play, a religious tradition becomes subject to further change. Traditions expand; they move from one area to another; and within any area, they adapt to the culture of their new hosts. This is especially the case with missionary traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. But after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., Judaism was forced to disperse to other regions of the world.<br />
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As for schisms, every religious tradition suffers them. These are brought about in various ways, including power struggles among the elites and the appearance of secondary charismatic figures, or secondary founders. After the death of Muhammed, there was a struggle within Islam over the question of his successor, creating the schism between Shia and Sunni. Christianity has undergone two major schisms, one between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism (on the question of leadership), the other between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism (brought about largely by the secondary founder Martin Luther’s breakaway from Rome).<br />
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Religious traditions die. No longer is there Egyptian religion, and ancient Greek religions have gone the way of the dodo. They have been supplanted by Islam and Christianity. And there is no reason to believe that the so-called “world religions” will exist into perpetuity, centuries or millennia from now.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-42082708427321054202010-09-24T20:02:00.000-07:002010-11-01T10:23:17.969-07:00RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS: STATICSNow is a good time to talk about religious traditions.<br />
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The phrase “religious traditions” is superior to the word “religions.” It avoids the problem that Wilfred Cantwell Smith warns us about, the problem of reification—making a religion a static, real thing existing outside the mind. Because every historian of a religion thinks of that religion as a living, changing thing, a good way to acknowledge this insight is to speak, not of religions, but of religious traditions.<br />
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Let’s start with a distinction between the <i>statics</i> and the <i>dynamics</i> of religious traditions. There’s a pattern that is common to all religious traditions; I call this the statics of religious traditions. Think of this as like a photo, taken at a specific period in time. But traditions exist within history, which means they are living, changing things. I acknowledge this fact by saying that there is a dynamics of religious traditions. And this is like a moving picture, which chronicles the chief moments within a typical tradition: for example, it is born, it suffers schisms, and it sometimes dies.<br />
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Now let’s focus on the statics of religious traditions. Think first of the indisputable fact that a religious tradition is composed of a community of the faithful. Using the language of the great twentieth century sociologist Edward Shils, any community has both a <i>center</i> and a <i>periphery</i>. (See his collection of essays, <i>Center and Periphery</i>, 1975.) In other words, there are the elite leaders at the center, and there are the followers on the periphery. Now, add to this the fact that not all human beings are members of any given tradition. I call those nonmembers <i>aliens</i> to the given community.<br />
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These, then, are the actors in the drama of a religious tradition. The center consists of those who mediate the teachings and practices of the tradition, both to those who aspire to the center and to those at the near and far peripheries. (One can also change the image of center/periphery from two dimensions to three, thinking of a hierarchy of the faithful.) The center consists of such figures as the shaman, the guru, the priest, the prophet, the bishop, the cardinal, the pope, the preacher, the pastor, the president, etc.<br />
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Both center and periphery are aware of the presence of aliens. Therefore, any religious tradition must develop a “foreign policy” toward those outsiders. The options run from a policy of extermination to that of missionizing, with avoidance as a distinct possibility. Religious wars have abounded in the history of the world; the Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic traditions have busied themselves with spreading their messages beyond their native territories; and the Judaic and Hindu traditions have, for the most part, been content to replenish their membership solely by reproducing themselves.<br />
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Returning to the sociological center of a tradition, let me expand the idea that its members “mediate the teachings and practices of the tradition.” This is to say that the members of the center have the responsibility of interpreting the charter that guides the tradition. (See the influential anthropologist Branislaw Malinowski’s collection of essays, <i>Magic, Science, and Religion</i>, 1948.) This charter consists of a mix of myths and teachings and practices.<br />
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But the charter would be a set of artificial, human preferences if there were nothing beyond it to sanction or legitimize it. This “something” is always an anchor, a source, whether it be Yahweh, the gods of the ten-thousand-world system, God, Allah, or the Self-Existent One.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-66130149950849127722010-09-17T19:27:00.000-07:002010-09-24T20:03:55.251-07:00"RELIGION(S)"Suppose Pilate had asked Jesus, “What’s this I hear about you being the founder of a new religion?”<br />
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We can only imagine such a scenario. Pilate wouldn’t have been able to ask this question. Even if he had, Jesus wouldn’t have known what his interrogator was getting at. The word “religion” wasn’t in their vocabularies; there wasn’t even an Aramaic equivalent. Pilate’s question would have made sense only in a modern context.<br />
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The concepts of “religion” and “religions” came to achieve their contemporary meanings in 1799, when a German theologian named Friedrich Schleiermacher published a book that has been translated as <i>On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers</i>. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith has shown in <i>The Meaning and End of Religion</i> (1963), up until that time “religion” (from the Latin, <i>religio</i>) had a variety of other meanings.<br />
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Smith wasn’t satisfied with tracing a history of the concept and its meanings. He went further. To him, the evolution of “religion” has been a process of reification, that is, making religion an objective systematic entity that exists outside our minds. And this process has included a series of entities called “religions,” such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the like.<br />
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To avoid this reification, Smith suggested that we replace “religion” and “the religions” with “cumulative tradition” and “faith.”<br />
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Smith’s recommendation has been hugely ignored. In an ordinary Religious Studies 101 course, a student will still be treated to chapters on Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, often preceded by ones on preliterate/tribal/primitive and dead religions. It seems that Smith himself wasn’t immune to the reification bug. Shortly after he wrote his controversial book, he became Director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions; after a decade in that post, he moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he founded Dalhousie University’s Department of—you guessed it—Religion.<br />
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Like it or not, we seem to be stuck with these words. But what meaning can we give them?<br />
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Without swimming in the swamp of the discussion of definitions of “religion” and “religions”—how Great Thinkers have defined them, how those definitions have failed, what a definition should be—let me dangle a toe in this quagmire. Let me stipulate a pair of definitions.<br />
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<i>Religion is the activity (1) in which humans seek liberation from whatever they consider the greatest evil, and (2) in which this liberation is legitimized by a mythology.</i><br />
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Religion is about liberation and legitimation. Or, maintaining the mood of alliteration: religion is about soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) and its sanctions.<br />
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<i>Religions are variations on this theme.</i>Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1626917695863527538.post-65862690837642948852010-09-06T14:54:00.000-07:002010-09-09T14:51:47.904-07:00TWO KINDS OF MYTHLet’s now return to the understanding of the word “myth” that I have already stipulated. <i>A myth is a story about supernatural beings, a story that provides a model for human behavior, thus giving meaning and value to life.</i> Recall that in offering this definition, I cited its similarity to the one offered by Mircea Eliade, among the leading comparative religionists of the last century.<br />
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In his book <i>Myth and Reality</i>, published in 1963, Eliade states that “a myth supplies a model for human behavior and, by that very fact, gives meaning and value to life.” But when it comes time to offer an actual definition, this is what he says: “Myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of the ‘beginnings.’”<br />
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Notice that this definition appears to apply only to cosmogonic myths, that is, stories (myths) of the genesis (-gonic) of the cosmos (cosmo-). And the examples Eliade discusses in this and other of his books are generally cosmogonic. But sometimes he seems to refer to another kind of myth. In <i>Cosmos and History</i> (1949), for example, he mentions Jesus’ act of washing the feet of his disciples, after which Jesus instructs them to follow his example. This is almost, but not quite, what can be said to be part of a “founder myth.”<br />
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There is little if any discussion of this type of myth among comparative religionists, let alone historians of religion or other scholars. Yet Eliade’s statement, that myths are models for human behavior, does not preclude the possibility of founder myths—that is, myths about founders of religions.<br />
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My own definition is designed to include both cosmogonic myths and founder myths.<br />
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Throughout human history, there have been multitudes of stories told about both the creation of the world and the founding of new religions. These stories are about supernatural beings; they provide models for human behavior. Ethnographers, including both anthropologists and missionaries, have found multitudes of stories, from ancient Egypt to Australia to Tierra del Fuego, that describe how supernatural beings created the cosmos. And the list of stories about founders of religions contains not only Moses and Jesus but Gautama, Muhammed, Zoroaster, Mahavira, and Joseph Smith—all of whom either embodied a divine revelation or were prophets dispensing a new revelation to their followers.Paul Wiebehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17902799922683321506noreply@blogger.com0