By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

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Apologeticsislying
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By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

Post by Apologeticsislying » Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:44 pm

A paper I wrote this weekend. If I had more time I could have done more, but this, I think, suffices... for now. Much more coming down the pike.... it's only about 16 printed pages, so only 12 pages to read. Not too big... You are more than welcome to print off and share and use as you wish. No copyright on it. The copy and paste took out all the italics, sorry.....
By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?
By Kerry A. Shirts (The Backyard Professor)

A few years ago a dear friend of mine introduced me to video games. I haven’t been the same since. I confess, even in my mildly old age, they are quite fun indeed! My all time favorite is hands down “Skyrim” however. Just a week or so ago I had the chance to call in on a live Twitch feed to “Mormon Talk” and tell them about Skyrim and the one gent simply said video games are a waste of time. They take you away from your family. I disagreed since it is obvious you can play the games with family. Besides, Skyrim shows you and allows you to hold a real and actual priesthood which really does show what true power could be were the priesthood a reality. It can heal, it can thwart evil, it can advance one’s journey in life more safely, it can benefit others as oneself, and it can be quite dangerous in the midst of determined enemies seeking to harm or kill your friends and allies (much like the ancient old wive’s tale of Enoch using the priesthood to move mountains and rivers and destroy his enemies).

So imagine my surprise when I learned something quite amazing in the ancient Islamic spiritual mysticism of a ritual they perform at the Ka’ba in Mecca, a mysticism I don’t and haven’t studied very much, hence my surprise. The Ka’ba is the ancient black sacred central stone which is the goal of the pilgrimages to Mecca, which has very interesting legends and myths surrounding it, which, as “spiritual background” helps us understand a little better the astounding personal experience which Ibn ‘Arabi, one of Islam’s foremost mystics, went through at his visit to the Ka’ba.

We have, as humans, made symbols out of almost everything surrounding us, including our very language and letters we use, these little typed squiggles you are reading right now, in order to communicate. We can’t do without them since we are the symbolic species par excellence. But in order to get to the meaning of the symbols, we tell stories. Lots of stories. These stories are often made into our movies these days. Especially when spiritual experiences occur. These have occurred from the very earliest of times stretching far back into hoary antiquity, right up to right now as I am typing, somewhere in the world. And they happen anywhere in the world where there are human beings to experience them.

We also produce “mysteries” in order to attempt to communicate the meanings of the stories, but we do this through experiences and repeated acts and actions. We experience the stories for ourselves so to speak, what happened to the ancient ancestors as the mythologist Mercea Eliade elaborated on for many years. But one thing we do wrong, entirely wrong is misunderstand that symbols, all of them, have to have a proper context, regardless of what their referent is pointing to, because what they are pointing to is transcendent reality. And the context of a symbol change morph, be enlarged, shrink, and take devious detours and byways when it moves from one culture to another. It can be and can become entirely fluid. It has to be updated, or it loses its meaning as a metaphor for transcendence. Fritz Meier, the author of this article on the Ka’ba says crisply “every symbol is a fraction of a whole.” Just what does that mean though? Lets let him continue and conclude his thought before I launch into several of my own. “Every symbol is a fraction of a whole, and as nothing can be a fraction before its whole exists…the symbol does not exclude the reality but presupposes it as the part presupposes the whole.”(1)

And this explanation gives us the key to grasp why Joseph Campbell argued so strongly against concretizing the metaphors of the stories (the myths) we have been given, being handed down through the millenia. “Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck on its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”(2) And his example of why this is so is one of the finest I have ever seen! “A metaphor is an image that suggests something else. The reference in religion and in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally anything. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the actual menu.”(3) His advice is profound actually – “Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people’s myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts.”(4) He also noted “Myths are metaphorical of spiritual potentiality in every human being.”(5) Ibn ‘Arabi had an experience that made the potential into the actual, for him. It was his communication of that experience that so stunned me, as well as the meaning of his symbolic gesture at the Ka’ba that enhanced the real experience.

Now, because he experienced reality in a very real way, in fact, directly, he actually knew what reality is, does that mean I am now to have to become an Islamic follower/believer and personally visit the Ka’ba myself and do what he did in order to know what is real? Not a bit. His reality is real, there is no mistaking that, but it does not project the need for all others to follow him to attain to the same reality, or to reality as it is either. It was his experience, not mine.

The same with Joseph Smith and his First Vision of God and Jesus. Because he had this vision he knew reality, but that in no wise means all others must have First Visions of the same type as Joseph Smith, or must become Mormons because he set up the Mormon faith. Original experience does not and cannot force individual experience. Just because someone dreams of flying Hostess Twinkies does not mean I must do so or I am evil or stupid or arrogant. Just because someone says their experience shows God to be a certain way does not mean that is the only true way. They can bear their testimony that they are right, and they are! But that does not translate out to the rest of humankind for their own way to truth not even to their own spiritual truth.

If someone says the true symbol for life and eternal life is the snake because it sloughs off its skin, and another says the true symbol of eternal life is the moon because even though it disappears for three days of darkness, it resurrects into a full moon, it would the height of foolishness for the two to go to war over this since they are both correct. But they are mistaking the symbols for the reality of eternal life, when in fact, they are but the symbols, even while being real physical things! To get to the reality of eternal life is vastly more important than worrying about how it is portrayed. But organized religion is struck on the metaphor and has turned it into fact. That is the cause of spiritual miasma in our day in people, because none of the organized religions get us to the goal, transcendence of ourselves. None of them teach what the myths have been doing for millenia, namely, teaching how to become transcendent. Religions have lost the vision of helping individuals link back to the Divine, the very meaning of the word in fact Re – ligio – To link back to. We are to link back to the Divine of which we actually are ourselves. Religions don’t help us in this path anymore, if they ever did at all in the first place. At least not without themselves acting as the intermediary and go-between. But is that good enough for individuals? Lets see.
“But the transcendent is unknowable and unknown. God is transcendent…Meister Eckhart said that the ultimate and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God, leaving your notion of God for an experience of that which transcends all notions. The mystery of life is beyond all human conception. Everything we know is within the terminology of the concepts of being and not being, many and single, true and untrue. We always think in terms of the opposite. But God, the ultimate, is beyond the pair of opposites, that is all there is to it.”(6) This is the key to all the high religions, and fantastically interesting enough all the ancient mystery religions of India, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Britain, the Indo-European and Northern places, and elsewhere. Our source for our living in time, here and now flows from eternity as a river. “It is the basic idea of the god who becomes many in us. “To identify with that divine, immortal aspect of yourself is to identify yourself with divinity.

Now, eternity is beyond all categories of thought. This is an important point in all the great Oriental religions. We want to think of God. God is a thought. God is a name. God is an idea. But its reference is to something that transcends all thinking. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of thought… myth is that field of reference to what is absolutely transcendent.”(7) The image the Zen Masters use is the finger pointing at the moon. Our problem is we end up sucking on the finger for comfort instead of looking and getting at the reality it is pointing at, as Alan Watts says in his book “Out of Your Mind.” This is what the Indian sages called Brahman. And “in relation to Brahman there is neither inside nor outside; sometimes it is called the principle of nonduality because nothing else exists besides it and nothing is excluded from it…thus it can be neither lost nor found…Brahman is the One Reality is all-inclusive.”(8) This is the sense of the ultimate. The category of experience of act is not of words, but adventures, hence stories, which connotes something transcendent of the action here, but we read of the action here. This is how we begin to feel in accord with the universal being.(9)

Ka’ba the black stone:
To the Islamic believers and practitioners, the Ka’ba in Mecca is the center of the world, and as this omphalos, is the singular most sacred space in existence. It is the impetus behind their pilgrimages to this most holy site. And yet, every oriental city, whether Jerusalem, Delphi, Babylon, Rome, was the center of the world, the most sacred spot.(10) For the Muslims, the tradition, of course, goes back to the first man, Adam, who was given a diamond of paradise, and, due to the fall and corruption of man, it turned black and hence we have the black stone of the Ka’ba.(11)

Another take on this myth of a sacred stone (symbolizing Adam also!) is from the Jewish Zohar as elaborated on by Edward F. Edinger:
“This mysterious stone was originally in the throne of God, a precious stone of jewel, and it was cast by him into the abyss in order to form the basis of the world and give birth thereto. It was like a cubical stone or altar, where its extremity was concealed in the depths while its surface or summit rose above the chaos. It was a sure foundation. It was that stone also which served Jacob as a pillow and thereafter for an altar. It was the good stone, the precious stone and the foundation of Zion. The Tablets of the Law were made from it and it is destined for the salvation of the world. It is like the lapis exilis of the German Grail legend for it appears to be a slight stone but it is supposed to have been carried by Aaron when he entered the Holy Place and it was held in the hands of David when he desired to contemplate closely the glory of his master. In a sense it fell from heaven like the stone from the crown of Lucifer. Solomon was also one restored it and built his sanctuary on it. And on this stone was inscribed the Divine Name before it was cast into the abyss… This mystic stone is the central point of the world and where it resides is the Holy of Holies.” (12)
Eliade shows that the Islamic tradition also described how the highest elevation on earth was the Ka’baa because the Pole Star proves that it lies over against the center of heaven.(13) This makes it, of course, the central pillar between the three planes of existence, the Heaven, Earth and Hell, where the axis mundi intersects at earth linking all three in the sacred line, the cosmic mountain on earth needing to be the highest and most central in order to maintain the cosmic balance of the order of things. The Mesopotamian tradition called this navel of the earth the Dur-An-Ki, the link between Heaven and Earth. It’s all the archetypal symbol of the Center we are seeing here.

This “cubic” stone was the plug in the well which stopped the earth from being flooded, and Santillana shows how the well in Mecca which was used to quench the pilgrims thirst from their pilgrimage, was also stopped up by a shard of the stone, in the form of a statue of Hubal, which deity was Saturn, “the holy stone of the Ka’baa had the same role, for it was a cube, and hence originally Saturn… the real thing was a cube, either as Utnapishtim’s Ark or, in other versions, as a stone upon which rests a pillar which reaches from earth to heaven.”(14)

So we get all kinds of interesting legends and ideals held which is designed to enhance the spirituality of the place where true spirituality was to be gained by the pilgrims of this culture. The extra dimensions as it were, of a “sacred” (even if purely humanly invented) history of the symbol with which one is interacting, is a psychological thrust as it were. [Liz Greene & Juliet Sharman-Burke, “The Mythic Journey,” Weiser Books, 2017: 8 – “Myth is the original self-help psychology.”] It is to help change the mentality of the pilgrim into the sacred, the silent, the transcendence beyond even his own imagination. It is purposed to elevate our thinking, a higher realm, a different context, a newer person, a greater scope and magnificence, even though it’s “sacred history” it is purely invented. That is irrelevant, because the experience is actually real. It does change one’s perception which is usually met with amazement of the mystes, the initiate, as we will see Ibn ‘Arabi describe. It is the same enlightened experience for those involved in the ancient Eleusinian mysteries as those of Mithraic, Orphic, the Kabeiroi, Buddhist, Islamic, Zoroastrian, Celtic/Druid, the Egyptian, ancient Hebraic, Christians, Romans, on into the Gothic, Arthurian, and Medieval, Kabbalistic, Zoharian, and Faustian theaters, as Paul Schmitt has described, “The dromenon, the orgia, the sacred mime, the legomena, and above all the teletai (fulfillment) have become the dromenon of man, the ‘event’ in his self, his soul, and his spirit…”(15) Having the sacred center, irrespective of whatever culture enlightenment occurs within, the initiate has a change of person, mentally more than physically, though physically is not ruled out, and especially spiritually with an entire new outlook on him/herself, the other, and all of mankind, including the society, the larger world, and into the cosmos. It is an all encompassing change wrought upon the person from their own psychological center, which has expanded into cosmic proportions, and it is mind blowing to them, of course. So lets take a closer look at this remarkable occurrence of a remarkable man.

Meier discusses the significance of man turning to his heart as the basis for gaining a new insight into what “I” is, and how it relates to all else, rather than to the mind and reason alone. This sacrificum intellectus is not a rejection of the intellect as some may suppose, rather it is interpreted as a rebirth and sometimes even a resurrection in the individual. It is a new perception of all relationships of the personal to the other. It is what happened to the Buddha under the Bo tree (the axis mundi) at his enlightenment, a waking up, a new vision, a stronger seeing of what is real as opposed to what is only perceived in the mind and thought.(16)

This new life was not a subtraction of something already possessed, but an addition to it, not as a substitute for what one had in intellect and reason, but as a growth into another dimension with already owned capacities. It was a second inner growth.(17) Ibn “Arabi journeyed to Mecca in 1201-1202 from his native Spain and there had the culminating event of a lifetime. What disturbs a lot of people is his account is the manner he attempted to describe what occurred. Frankly, it is said by all gurus that it is impossibly to articulate, and therefore, considering that, he did pretty good, and with the help of Meier we can catch the gist of what he was trying to describe he experienced.

Interestingly enough, it is precisely in this era, around 1200 that we have the two great medieval stories of the Quest for the Holy Grail, that of Chretien de Troyes (1190) and the second one by Wolfram von Eschenbach (1220), in Europe, with the story of Parzival of the Cistercian quest La Queste del Saint Graal. The problem of the Grail is the resuscitation of the Waste Land with its sense that the vitality of the people has gone. The meaning of the Grail is, and this is the subject of most myths, “finding the dynamic source of your life so that its trajectory is out of your own [holy or sacred] center and not something put onto you by society.”(18) Geoffrey of Monmouth had just finished his magnum opus The History of the Kings of Britain a few decades earlier, and Robert de Boron wrote about the Grail as the eucharistic cup of Christ involving Joseph of Arimathea.(19) This was also the era of the rise of the famous Troubadours, those harpers and singers of love which turned Europe topsy turvy on its head concerning the true meaning of love and marriage, no longer adulterous and given through society, but as coming from the heart and because of genuine concern and love for the couple.(20) The greatest medieval theologian, if not the greatest ever, Thomas Aquinas, was born 1225, and finished the ultimate work on theology up to that point and for centuries after, Summa Theologiae between 1269 and 1272.(21) This was also the era of the infamous Crusades with racked Europe and tore her heart out as Christianity actually lost so much due to short sightedness and stupidity in war. The Knights Templar were the prominent machine of religion here. This was also the era of the Catharist and Albigensian heresies so dividing and splitting Europe over blood lust and orthodox doctrine and practice.(22) “The earliest influence tending to transform thought and life in medieval Europe may be credited to the Arabs…[who] succeeded in establishing their own civilization and culture in southern Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. The Arabs absorbed the mathematics of the Greeks and Hindus and built cultural centers in Spain and the Near East. They translated the Greek works into Arabic and added commentaries and contributions of their own to mathematics, astronomy, medicine, optics, metreology, and science in general. By about 1100 A. D. Europeans were trading freely with Arabs.”(23) “In the twelfth century the Europeans learned from the Chinese about the compass… The introduction of gunpowder in the thirteenth century produced as its more obvious effects changes in the method of warfare and the design of fortifications.”(24) “Between 1140 and 1220 Gothic architecture has built cathedrals in Sens, Noyons, Senlis, Paris, Laon, Chartres, Reims, Amiens, and Beauvais. The cathedrals were encyclopedias in stone.”(25)
The paradoxical age of spiritual deadness with spiritual revival (Maimonides, the great philosopher and Talmudic and biblical scholar also was here who would influence Aquinas, Scotus, the entire Middle Ages, Judaism, and medieval philosophy also lived in the 12th century[26]) occurring throughout Europe is not to be overlooked for the time when Ibn ‘Arabi took his pilgrimage for greater spirituality in a land far, far away, nor to be overlooked is his smashing success in his personal hero quest.

Ibn ‘Arabi when he arrived at the Ka’ba, was to circle around it several times. Part of the ritual was to get him in tuned with the round of existence, to become one with the revolving heavenly spheres through this earthly holy part of the cosmos, having come from the throne of God itself. Including himself in the life of the universe, its motion was important, so he did so. We know the circling was considered a way to tap into the Holy, to become one with the cosmos. In the early Christian scheme, the Apostles were told by Jesus to pray and during encircling to move and dance and rotate.(27) The impact of the round dance is in this: “All dances were originally sacred.” They were designed for profane means such as acquiring something good, food, honor the dead or give good back to the cosmos, assure it kept running. Dance imitates an archetypal gesture, or it is commemorating an archetypal moment.(28) In the round dance Jesus is the center to which they are dancing. It is the circular movement toward the center that is the goal of the dance, after they have eaten and drunk the ritual meal.

The ancient idea was to gather at the temple of the gods, the mountain, and circle around it and then climb it.(29) The further the symbolism is explored, the more we understand. In antiquity, the Logos is spirit, which is thought and yet deeper than mere thought; it travels the same circle in the consciousness, even at the edge of consciousness, as fire in the cosmos. The logos runs in a circle from opposite to opposite, thus shattering the proposition that opposites exclude one another… this logos which we breathe with the air and whereby we gain our faculty for a thinking that is adequate to it, is subtler than the air, it is pure fire. Through breathing… the logos in us and the logos in the universe are one and the same. For Heraclitus it is the unique synthesis of the most diverse elements.”(30) It is the many becoming the One. The rhythmic relations of the cosmos were brought together on earth through dancing, song, and singing by man, and measured and stated in mathematical proportions and measurement according to the Pythagoreans.(31) The idea of the sacred circling dance is so the spiritual and inner sacrifice [of self] leads to union with God. God here is above all the One.(32) The dancing unites one with God as One. The Corpus Hermeticum indicates this with saying He who would be known and is known (by his own). This “knowing” is a mystical union, it accomplishes the fusion of the mystes and his mystery god.”(33)

An image and actual symbol they used with a real physical thing was a mirror. “The relation of God and man thus seems reversed like in a mirror. The Acts of Andrew says “…as in a glass they behold the secrets of their own nature.” Another source reads “Behold me in yourselves as one of you beholds himself in water or in a mirror. And the Thirteenth Ode of Solomon bears the title Our Mirror Is the Lord.” The theme is by looking into a mirror and seeing himself he sees God, which is himself!(34)

The Ka’ba represents God to the initiate, an important clue for Ibn ‘Arabi’s experience.(35) In relation to the “I” of which we imagine ourselves to be, this separate self in the world, if a person can get beyond all predicates, such as seeing, or feeling, walking, sleeping, etc., from this “I” yet experiencing a quality within himself, then this is called the bridgehead, which gives him a chance to realize that this “I” “is a colorless focus with no other quality than that of being…”(36) I am trying to make this easier to understand.
As Ibn ‘Arabi circled the black stone in the eastern corner of the Ka’ba, he found, “the eagle stone of the youth zealous in devotion, of the silent speaker who neither lives nor dies, the encompassed encompasser who is eloquent and does not speak, who inquires concerning what he knows.”(37)

From here on, I am not going to quote, though I am using Meier’s article which I have referenced. It is easier to try to tell it like a story instead of using so many quotes and footnotes. All this information, unless otherwise stated and sourced, is in Meier’s article. The interpretations are mine, based on other reading I have done of the mystical literature and experiences recorded by others who have become One with the Source of Being or the Source of Existence.

There is an eagle stone in alchemy that sounds like this one. When Ibn ‘Arabi cries out Behold he who yearns to sit with thee and strives to enjoy your friendship, he is seeing the Self who is talking to him. What he is doing is confronting his own wholeness [with the Ground of Being]. As he tries to communicate to this “youth” who is confronting him, and as he begins to converse and ask for more information about who he is talking to, he is told by the youth that his nature, and his form is his very own! He is not Ibn ‘Arabi’s speaking partner, he is Ibn ‘Arabi’s own trans-subjective being! The youth he is seeing and conversing with who is trying to help him see and understand who he is conversing with tells him “I am knowledge, the known and the knower; I am wisdom, the wise man and his wiseness.” It is the spiritual essence itself talking to him as if he were separate from the person having his “vision” or “conversation”. “Thus we have proof that Ibn ‘Arabi met none other than himself at the Ka’ba that he met his alter ego, his transcendent self, the true “I”. This was the beginning for Ibn ‘Arabi to then be given yet a greater expansion of knowledge that this “I” his higher self a far more comprehensive entity is an entity transcending space and time. Therefore, Ibn ‘Arabi comes to realize that his reality is that he transcends space and time, as his fundamental ground and reality. (pp. 156-157 summarized and condensed and simplified by me)
Now, next what he does is really important. His higher self, the only Self there is in reality, of which he is, this higher self then takes him to the edge of his own consciousness. “I shall return in the end to the beginning, just as in describing a circle the leg of the compass returns to the beginning when it reaches the end. This is the end of lifebound up with its beginning and its prenatal eternity fuses with the eternity after death. Existence is only transient [our present life on earth] but there is a lasting enduring vision” (i.e., an eternal life in the spirit which is only obscured by our earthly existence). So man is dualized in his consciousness. He has both an earthly and a transcendent aspect to him. And it is the eternal transcendent part of him that survives the death of the body. That is the long and short of it. However, it is his continued experience with the Ka’ba that is so fascinating. He is beginning to open up to a larger context which his meditation is leading him towards, one step at a time.

What this does is helps us become aware that this new reality which is beyond our ordinary experience of daily life and living that our earthly life loses its claim to exclusive reality. Meier poetically expresses this beautifully so I will quote it. This on page 159.
“The sublunar existence turns out to be a torso whose head is situated beyond death, beyond the three dimensional world of the common man; the hieroglyphs of life begin to yield their meaning to a growing insight. What seemed to be mere surface gains an inner depth; things which were only outwardly discernable become transparent, they lose something of their absoluteness and assume a certain character of illusoriness, of maya, In short, they no longer represent the whole, but become a part of it.” (p. 159)

And here the two anti-Christs for Ibn ‘Arabi are exposed. Now understand, this is not the model of Christian anti-Christs. What they mean is the two problems, the dualism in our everyday minds with how we see reality in our thinking while we are alive here in the world. They are “anti-Christs” because they prevent us from unifying our two modes of thinking into One mode. The first one says only this world is the reality and therefore quit imagining there is a spirit. The other one says there is only the soul, nothing in this world is real or worth bothering about. What the mystic does is recognize both and assimilate both into his life, both the body and the spirit, both living joyfully in this life here and now, yet realizing also that one is a much much greater part of reality, namely the universe. We are to have both aspects, a joined duality into a nonduality since we are the One Ground of Being anyway. Maya is the illusion of separateness which meditation overcomes as one puts his heart into it, It leads us to live a poetic life in its fullness much easier and better. Everything becomes important to both sight, touch, hearing, smelling, in other words experiencing. Our experiencing life magnifies in other words. Everything becomes brighter, we become more sensitive to everything and its needs. What we are in in this life is the visible part of the whole, but we are aware there is yet more to the whole than we know on our daily basis, and accept we are part of it and strive to contemplate it as well. Ibn ‘Arabi found this profound relationship while he was circling the Ka’ba, with the essence of the Ka’ba round which he circles no longer exhausted in its draped walls. The Ka’ba becomes the symbol for his meditation as he circles it. It’s just a building, it’s there, he is here circling it looking at it and meditating, both body and mind moving to and with accord with the sacred object.

Now he hears a call to him. And here, while he is performing the circling, meditating and realizing he just has seen that he is the Self, he is now told to observe now that the building itself is alive and here is how he describes it:

I see the building animated by those who circle round it.
And there is no self animation, except through a physician with
Effective power.
But this is rigid matter, which neither feels nor sees,
Which is without understanding or hearing!
A lord spoke: This is our duty
Imposed on us all our lives by religious dogma.
I answered him: This is what thou sayest. But hear
The discourse of him to whom science has been revealed by the rite!
Thou seest only solid mineral, without life of its own,
Harboring neither benefit or harm.
But for the eye of the heart it contains visibilities
If the eye have no weakness or flaw,
To this eye it is so sublime when it reveals its essence,
That no creature can withstand it. (p. 161)

Up to this point, Ibn ‘Arabi’s relationship to the actual building, the Ka’ba, was that of his body to the mass of the building, naturally. And that of his reason to the abstract concept Ka’ba; but now this abstraction this concept, man, has been transfigured through the experience of the meaning he embodies, and there descends on the Ka’ba the Pentecostal fire of the meaning it represents. Its dead form – And astonishing is a dead man round whom a living man revolves! That’s what he says. This now becomes, through its relation to the faithful who circle around it, the vehicle of a spiritual content. This can’t be logically understood anymore than the youth who was visiting and talking with him can be. Only the heightened perception shows this now. He now has a voice tell him that by kissing the black stone he is kissing the right hand of God. And that’s because the Ka’ba is the essence of God, and the 7 prescribed circuits around it mean the 7 attributes of God. So now we can get to a symbol here. Draw a circle using a compass. The dot in the middle made by the one arm of the compass is the essence of God, while the circumference one cuts in making the circle is the attributes of God. Now, this leaves out the mystic himself doesn’t it? Here is the clincher for our symbol. As his awareness expands out into a more complete and larger circle encompassing a wider view, the symbol takes on added meaning with his inclusion within that meaning.

The understanding, because of his ritualistic moving around the Ka’ba in circles, looking intently at the “thing over there” and how not only he, but that “thing over there” is God also, a part of the overall cosmos, though different in material makeup are part of the organic whole of reality. This is the shocking thing to him. This material black thing over there brought his real Self to be encountered within his heart. This told him that his self might “appropriately be a spark of the Ka’ba’s life, i.e., a part of a greater self, which would be symbolized by the Ka’ba, and this must be so if we bear in mind that by God nothing other is meant than the self of the cosmos, in which all phenomena and hence also the existence of man are contained…” (p. 162). The amazing thing too is that without the interconnectedness of all things, human bodies and buildings, the ground, plants, the stars, water, the air, the campfires, everything, “the cosmos could no more exist than could the individual man without the idea of his person.” It is not the Ka’ba stone that is the outward sign of this, it is Ibn ‘Arabi who is - he is the transcendent witness, the youth, not the Ka’ba, but the cosmos as a whole would have to be the symbol of God.”

And now we begin to grasp even a larger and important truth of his experience which is expanding out in concentric circles engulfing ever widening reality, a unified reality of himself with all else, in a literal way. “Just as Ibn ‘Arabi’s transcendent companion departs from the black stone and circles around the building with him, so after his illumination concerning the Ka’ba, the self of the cosmos departs from its particular abode, the Ka’ba, and the Ka’ba becomes a more special symbol, one namely of God’s throne.” Ibn ‘Arabi hears the words “Thy body is ranked below thine integral heart, and so likewise is the Ka’ba ranked below the encompassing throne.” Here is the image I will describe which the article shows, a splendid visual! “Just as the Ka’ba is an allusion to God’s throne, so is the human body the sign of a transcendent essence, of the integral heart.” (p. 163)
Draw a small square, then a line coming straight down for an inch or two. At the other end draw another small square. Now one inch or so to the right make the exact same drawing. On one side write at the top of the top square God’s Throne, then under the bottom square write Ka’ba. Now to the same figure to the side, at the top of the other square write human heart, follow the line down to the lower square and write below it Body. There is the visual analogy for us to ponder, which is the connection Ibn ‘Arabi had.

Both the Ka’ba and the human heart and body “are to their meaning as the outward to the inward… the road to God leads through the heart, and since it is the circling of the bodies around the symbol (a real building) is to be taken as the representation of this road, it can only refer to the center of man’s being on the heart, as his true Self told him! Yet there is a third transformation going to occur here. Here is how he was prepared, and how we are along with him.

“The Ka’ba is the heart of existence.” What does this mean? This heartness, Ibn ‘Arabi realizes is in common with the human heart. Ibn ‘Arabi enters the Ka’ba with his transcendent companion, who then says to him, “I am the seventh at the stage where spiritual growth and the secrets of existence of the individual, and of the Where are encompassed.” The Ka’ba is the entrance of those having insight, and in it is the repose of those who circle around. So that, only when the circling is finished is its meaning revealed: the seven circlings of the Ka’ba he performed around the Ka’ba (the heart of existence) signify his acquiring the seven divine attributes during his ascent of his consciousness to the sphere of the cosmic self. It is within the Ka’ba that Ibn ‘Arabi converses with the self in its highest degree, and thus sees that this cosmic self is none other than he! Here is where the eternal Atman of himself, of Ibn’Arabi himself, becomes identical, not similar, it becomes identical with the Cosmic principle called the Brahman, and it is here that the human spirit takes root in the spirit of the cosmos, i.e. He is one with the Cosmos. This is called by Ibn ‘Arabi “attribute of communion.” And we can graphically visualize this of which I will now explain. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Draw a circle and at the lower curve within the circle write Cosmic self. Now draw a smaller circle within that circle and at the lower curve of that smaller circle within write human self, and at the center of the smaller circle within a circle write Ka’ba. This is symbolizing how the cosmic self and the human self coincide, meet, and meld into one self at the Ka’ba, which is “the heart of all existence.”

His self stresses as did Socrates of old “Know Thyself!” This is not a phony moralism, or a maybe I will if it’s not too difficult, or takes too much time, because I really do have shopping to do for my cool jacket and my wife wants her high heels at Wal-Mart. Ibn ‘Arabi having been given the thunderous revelation of his reality and the reality of his cosmological aspect is then admonished “Know then the great value of the high nobility I have given you; henceforward, I am the Great [all of this is what Ibn ‘Arabi is now and always has been, as we all are, and just don’t know it yet!] the Sublime, limited by no limit, known neither by master nor servant. Hallowed is the Godhead and removed, so that it cannot be comprehended, and so that it can be ranked with nothing. Thou art the I! And I am I [i.e., thou art thine I, thy self, and I too am I… the sole substance of the I’s] Seek me not in thyself for thou wilt only gain weariness! And not outside thyself… But cease not to seek me, or thou wilt be unhappy. Seek me until thou findest me, then thou wilt be exalted!... thou seest thine own nature.”(p. 165)

And here we get back to one of the most important points I made earlier in the paper. Every symbol is just a fraction of the whole. And it is evident that Ibn ‘Arabi did not invent or fabricate the other half of reality, the spiritual self of the rite, or derive it from some ancient tradition through a rational process, but he experienced it through a transmutation of his own consciousness…”(p. 167)

We are told that later in his life he attacked and argued against the philosophers who believed they could learn the actual nature of the transcendent through reasoned argument alone without the experience. The experience is not arrived it through dialectic discourse but by a process and experience of raising the consciousness to a higher plane, and the experiences are only to be judged from that plane. His argument is not against the intellect, for that is included within the experience, but it is against intellectualism, which “forgets that only a limited sector of reality can be seen from any one vantage point and that the intellect is only one such vantage point.” (p. 167)

Another important point necessary to grasp in all this “With regard to dogma, this means that the interpretations of a religious doctrine can never be final and exclusive, since the spiritual attitude which proclaims them is never exclusive. Thus, if the rite of the circumambulation (going around the building in 7 courses) has received an interpretation in the course of Ibn ‘Arabi’s sacrifice of the intellect and attainment to a mystical life of spirit, even the researches of modern historians of religion will be powerless to deny its validity.”

“Image and meaning are a unit, like existence and being, phenomenon and thing-in-itself. But only the two together, image and meaning, symbol and what it symbolizes constitute the reality which we seek to grasp. All things in the world and their totality are only a fragment of a still greater whole, a symbolon of an inner world, and the rite takes on life only through the participation in the spirit.”(p. 167-`68). We must combine both inward and outward for a total whole reality is the mystic way.

This experience of Ibn ‘Arabi teaches us many things, of which only a few I can touch upon.

First, the authority. By what authority did Ibn ‘Arabi operate under? Indeed! We find absolutely no authority whatsoever in order for him to have the ultimate revelation! What use is authority for religion and spirituality then? That depends on whether we talk of a society, a group, or an individual.

The wise ancient sage Ma-tsu intoned “You have your own treasure house why do you search outside?”(38) Meister Eckhart noted that “God is in all things as being, as activity, as power.”(39) The authority of love whether through commandment in a sacred book or authority of an institution onto a person cannot be the same, nor have the same effect, even when arranging marriages, children, or whathaveyou, as an individual who loves due to “the love being born of the eyes and the heart,” a completely different discourse, and hence authority arises from this situation. Here the individual authority knows,… knows what no outside authority can ever know, what the individual eyes and heart sees, knows, and wants, and loves. It cannot be commanded, that is truly ludicrous. But personal experience demonstrates that is the fullest and only authority an individual needs.(40)

The entire summation of the incredible and astonishing flowering of the medieval romances as well as King Arthur and the Knights of the round table and its actual meaning for our lives is masterfully summed up by Joseph Campbell, perhaps the foremost read mythologist in this literature and its lessons for us ever to grace our earth. Remember, this is the time when Ibn ‘Arabi also had his own personal revelation of reality, occurring in Mecca, in the meantime in Europe what we have is something equally as astonishing!

“In these twelfth and thirteenth-century works and words of Heloise, the Troubadours, Gottfried, and Wolfram, a noble, serious, profoundly significant secularization of the sense of the sacred is to be recognized, wherein the courage of love is the revealing power, opening, as it were, a dimension of union, wonder, and sweet mystery in the world of separate beings, not quenching all thereby in a yonder sea, but augmenting each in its own form and right to regard:
In rejecting absolutely the authority of the Church [any church in any age and time] these lovers and poets returned consciously and conscientiously to an earlier Pre-Christian, native European order of conscience, wherein the immanence of divinity was recognized in nature and its productions.
And there was a new fact involved as well. The recognition that a dissociation of the individual from the body, or group, as one unique himself, who, if he is to realize his vast and true potential, must not follow the paths or ways of any other but must discover for himself his own.(41)
And there is none who exemplify this with great magnificence or solemnity of purpose, character and poise, with his “integral heart” full of love, than Ibn ‘Arabi. No outside authority can tell a person’s heart what to discover and how and when. Only when the person’s heart is ready may that heart in virtue, love, and goodness gain at-one-ment with the Divine, of which, it discovers, it actually is already. It is not a part of Divine Reality, it is that Reality, in Whole, as are all people. There is simply no higher possible revelation to obtain. A social group or institution cannot give you that. Only you can give you that, anymore than God can command you to love him and it will work. Love cannot be commanded. The very idea is absurd.

The power of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, in the era before Ibn ‘Arabi in the early Christian centuries as compared to the later written, redacted, edited, and otherwise changed and warped Gospels in the New Testament, is in the very fact, that, rather than asking to be believed as theologically true historical statements about someone or other in a story, the Gospel of Thomas “challenges us to discover what lies hidden within ourselves.” It “encourages the hearer not so much to believe in Jesus, as John requires, as to seek to know God through one’s own, divinely given capacity, since all are created in God’s image.” “Jesus suggests that we have spiritual resources within us precisely because we were made ‘in the image of God,’ the image of God is hidden within each of us, secretly linking God and all humankind.” “Orthodoxy [of any organized religion, at any time in history] tends to distrust our capacity to make such discrimination and insists on making it for us.”(42)

There is nothing more true than in “Integral heart” and the ability to look within, since Jesus also noted that the Kingdom of God is within you. That is why when the apostles asked for Jesus to show them the Kingdom, he said it is spread upon the earth and men do not see it. To literalize it as an external kingdom with walls and some such is to entirely misunderstand the metaphor. If the Kingdom of God truly is within each of us, then the reality discovered is every bit the Kingdom, since it is truly everything! Who doesn’t remember reading Macrobius’ commentary on Scipio’s dream, itself written in imitation of Plato’s fascinating story of Er the Armenian at the end of the Republic? Not only does he say the number 7 deserves to be called full, interesting in light of the circling ritual taking Ibn ‘Arabi around the Ka’ba 7 times to tie into the 7 attributes of God, but he says the Monad, that is the single, the One, is both male and female as well as both odd and even (the perfect symbol of the uniting of opposites), but this Monad is the beginning and ending of all things (against uniting opposites) and this refers to the Supreme God. And though not number itself it produces innumerable patterns of created things, and in fact, on careful reflection, one realizes the monad refers to the soul.(43)

The mystic sees reality and grasps that he himself is that reality without any other authority whatsoever. There is no need for it, as it is unnecessary for his own vision.(44) The Divine Ground of Being revealing the information to the mystic, regardless of his/her culture, never asks by what authority he/she uses in order to discover the ultimate spiritual and salvific truth it freely and lovingly gives to the inquirer. Authority is, again, not to put too fine a point on it, never considered because it is irrelevant to experiencing the truth. “The mystic is that rare soul whose life soars above dogma [and doctrine] and community, leaving the sober majority behind to its mechanical, if irrelevant religious teachings and practices.”(45)

The mystic and his/her culture
And yet, there again, the mystic experiences what he has absorbed within his culture, and it is within that cultural context with which the mystic communicates his experience. In other words, a Buddhist never speaks of seeing Jesus, nor does a Christian mystic ever speak of the neti, neti theme and Brahman idea of the Vedanta literatures and their descriptions of mystic insights. The communication of the mystic experience is culturally conditioned. Joseph F. Smith says he saw the Celestial Kingdom and all the Mormon personalities involved in the work of the Lord there, exactly as his culture of Mormonism predisposed of him to imagine what is real. He never described being One with the Ground of Reality, but his reality was individuals who kept their individuality, because his Mormonism taught him to think that way. Ibn ‘Arabi had nothing to say of Jesus Christ in his vision of reality at all, let alone any ancient Nephite or Lamanite prophets who are claimed to have existed in the Ancient Americas and are so important to Mormonism in the Book of Mormon. Nephi or Lehi or Alma or anyone in the Book of Mormon is ever seen by any mystics, other than Mormon ones. The experience is real, but the description cannot explain that reality in words, because words are culturally conditioned. They have a limit of revealing truth that cannot go as far as experiencing truth.(46)
The mystic experience teaches us many things. Perhaps the foremost important one is that one has all the authority one needs within themselves to learn for themselves what the “path” is for oneself. Otherwise, you are simply following someone else’s path, and as the lesson of the search for the Holy Grail reveals, even following another’s path in search of your own soul (which is what the Holy Grail is the symbol of) one will not find it. It must be the individual who, with a heart of integrity, finds the at-one-ment with God for himself. It cannot be found any other way, either through teaching, reading another’s interpretation, or believing another’s experience as ultimate reality. Ultimate reality will only be discovered within one’s own heart as it learns to commune with God. And then you cannot say your experience is the only true experience and all others are in apostasy or whatever description you use. It is for you and you alone. One lives out of their own experience with love, loyalty to self, and guilt free compassion for all others.

End Notes
1. Fritz Meier, “The Mystery of the Ka’ba: Symbol and Reality in Islamic Mysticism,” in Joseph Campbell, editor, The Mysteries, Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Princeton/Bollingen paperback, 5th printing, 1990: 166.

2. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, Doubleday, 1988: 56.

3. Ibid., p. 56.

4. Ibid., p. 6.

5. Ibid., p. 22.

6. Ibid., p. 49.

7. Ibid., p. 49.

8. Alan Watts, Become What You Are, Shambala, 2018: 87.

9. Campbell, Ibid., p. 55.

10. Mercea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Princeton/Bollingen, 2nd paperback printing, 1974:14-16.

11. Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, 2nd eds., John Gee, Michael D. Rhodes, Deseret Book/FARMS, 2005: 196. Also in Nibley, One Eternal Round, Deseret/FARMS, 2010: 458.

12. Edward F. Edinger, The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C. G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, Inner City Books, 1995: 249. Jung in his book describes how Adam was the first to have writing and wrote all sorts of learned treatises on all sorts of things, and handed them down for posterity. See his Mysterium Coniunctionis, Princeton/Bollingen, 7th printing, 1989: 397-399, Adam as the first adept. Cf. Arthur E. Waite, The Holy Kabbalah, Citadel Press, no copyright date, pp.262-264. He equates the stone with the stone cut out without hands in Daniel as well.

13. Mercea Eliade, Images and Symbols, Studies in Religious Symbolism, Princeton paperback, 1991: 42.

14. Giorgio Santillana, Hertha von Deschend, Hamlet’s Mill, Gambit, 1969: 219-220.

15. Paul Schmitt, “The Ancient Mysteries in the Society of Their Time, Their Transformation and Most Recent Echoes,” in Joseph Campbell, editor, The Mysteries, p. 115.

16. Meier, “The Mystery of the Ka’ba,”, p. 153.

17. Meier, Ibid., p. 154.

18. An Open Life, Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms, Larson Publications, 1988: 32ff.

19. Roger Sherman Loomis, The Development of Arthurian Romance, Harper Torchbooks, 1964: Chapter 8.

20. Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology, Penguin Books, 1973: Chapter 4.

21. Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003: 328-329.

22. I used the easy timeline for convenience of Norma Lorre Goodrich, The Holy Grail, HarperPerrenial, 1992: xvii-xviii.

23. Morris Kline, Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, Dover, 1985: 200.

24. Kline, Ibid., p. 201. See also James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed, Little Brown and Co., 1985: 49ff.

25. James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed, Little Brown and Co., 1985: 51.

26. Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, Dover, 1956, xv-xxv.

27. Max Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion According to the Acts of St. John,” in Campbell, The Mysteries, p. 174f.

28. Mercea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 28.

29. John M. Lundquist, “What is Reality?” in Donald W. Parry, ed., Temples of the Ancient World, Deseret/FARMS, 1994: 624-625.

30. Walter WIli, “The History of the Spirit in Antiquity,” in Joseph Campbell, editor, Spirit and Nature, Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Princeton/Bollngen, paperback, 1982: 81-82.

31. Wili, Ibid., p. 86.

32. Max Pulver, Ibid, p. 176.

33. Max Pulver, Ibid., p. 189.

34. Max Pulver, Ibid., p. 190.

35. Fritz Meier, “The Mystery of the Ka’ba,” p. 162.

36. Meier, Ibid., p. 152-153.

37. Meier, Ibid., p. 156.

38. Joseph Campbell, The Flight of the Wild Gander, HarperPerennial, 1990: 205.

39. Campbell, Flight of the Wild Gander, p. 208.

40. 40. Campbell, Flight of the Wild Gander, pp. 208ff.

41. Campbell, Flight of the Wild Gander, pp. 221-222.

42. Quotes in the paragraph of Gospel of Thomas in Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief, Random House, 2003: 32, 34, 55, 184.

43. William Harris Stahl, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius, Columbia Univ. Press, 1990: 100-101. Cf. Iamblichus’s “The Theology of Arithmetic,” wherein his elaboration of the number 7 goes on for 13 pages! Among other things he says “Plato composed the soul out of 7 numbers.” In Robin Waterfield, translator, “The Theology of Arithmetic,” Phanes Press, 1988: 87.

44. Gerschom Scholem, On The Kabbalah and its Symbolism, Schocken Books, 1965: 5.

45. Steven T. Katz, editor, Mysticism and Religious Traditions, Oxford University Press, 1983: Editor’s Introduction.

46. Steven Katz, Ibid., pp. 4-51.
The same energy that emerges from the fountain of eternity into time, is the Holy Grail at the center of the universe of the inexhaustible vitality in each of our hearts. The Holy Grail, like the Kingdom of God, is within. -Joseph Campbell-

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Ghost
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Re: By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

Post by Ghost » Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:17 pm

Thanks for sharing. It is an interesting idea that authority bestowed on a player (or even a non-player character) in a video game is "real" in a sense that maybe no authority is in our world outside the game. Within the game's world, it can be truly concrete and binding rather than just something that we accept as a society out of tradition or pragmatism. Well, unless the game is one like in the movie Tron, I guess, in which case an outsider can interfere.

I enjoy reading thoughts like these, in part because these days I'm trying to discover for myself whether I can still find any value in spirituality, seeking transcendent experiences, or even in exploring such things strictly as metaphor.

I find the study of mythology and religious tradition fascinating, and I know firsthand that there's undeniably value for believers. But I currently don't feel able to get beyond wishing (I'd really like to say hoping but I'm afraid that may be too strong a word) that some of those stories and beliefs actually point to something "real." When people define the term "god" to refer to ourselves or the cosmos, for example, I wonder why they feel the need to use the term "god" at all.

At the same time, I can see why someone would be motivated to discover hope in an afterlife through mysticism of one variety or another. If we can sense that there's something divine or eternal beyond our comprehension, that at least opens the door for such hope. I just have a hard time even wanting to take such things seriously anymore. But I still want to want to, if that makes any sense.

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Re: By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

Post by Apologeticsislying » Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:42 pm

I suspect there are a lot of people who have these thoughts as you have expressed. I actually did for quite a while. I honestly don't know what I did to want to get back into studying the mythology, well except seeing how much fun Campbell had with it all. But yeah, I sincerely empathize with you here Ghost.
The same energy that emerges from the fountain of eternity into time, is the Holy Grail at the center of the universe of the inexhaustible vitality in each of our hearts. The Holy Grail, like the Kingdom of God, is within. -Joseph Campbell-

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deacon blues
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Re: By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

Post by deacon blues » Mon Oct 14, 2019 11:43 am

I’m enjoying this thoroughly. As I get older I find that section headings help me keep my place and connect my thoughts in deeper material such as this.
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.

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Re: By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

Post by Hagoth » Mon Oct 14, 2019 4:08 pm

I wonder if this is what Mansur Al-Hallaj was talking about centuries earlier when he said, "There is nothing under my turban but God."

I am fascinated by the varieties and similarities of mystical experiences from different religious backgrounds. I know LDS people who have told me that they have seen Jesus and angels. In one case a man I met claimed that an angel appeared to him and told him to join the church. On the other hand woman I know talked with Jesus in a near-death experience and he told her to relax her devotion to the church, and that she's busying herself with unnecessary burdens that just don't matter - we're all ok just as we are. I don't know what was actually happening with these people, but I respect their experiences in the sense that I recognize that they were for THEM and only them. The authority problem arises when people have spiritual experiences for someone ELSE. That's where I tip my hat and look for the exit.

I liked this observation:
They are “anti-Christs” because they prevent us from unifying our two modes of thinking into One mode. The first one says only this world is the reality and therefore quit imagining there is a spirit. The other one says there is only the soul, nothing in this world is real or worth bothering about. What the mystic does is recognize both and assimilate both into his life, both the body and the spirit, both living joyfully in this life here and now, yet realizing also that one is a much much greater part of reality, namely the universe
It's surprising how people from drastically different religious backgrounds, including very dualistic traditions, can have mystical experiences that point toward non-dualism. You mentioned some of Jesus' statements along these lines. I have a feeling that if we had an accurate record of what Jesus actually said, this might be the central message.

Thanks for posting this!

Next time I go for a walk in the park I will make sure I do 7 complete revolutions.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Re: By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

Post by Apologeticsislying » Mon Oct 14, 2019 7:18 pm

I find it fun and educational for me personally to see what parts of what papers I share people jive with. Thanks for reading it. Yes, the number symbolism is also one of my favorite weaknesses as I could discourse on them for decades. Perhaps I shall do some papers on number symbolism. It is without question staggeringly interesting to see the creativity that goes into it from antiquity right up to today.
Terryl Givens has his book out on the Pearl of Great Price, and I had a little spat with Daniel Peterson about some of Givens writings. I am going to finally write my review of his stuff, focusing me thinks on his book "Crucible of Doubt." But I have been asked also to review Charles Harrell's book "This is My Doctrine" which is one of the books that iced it for me that I can't do group think, and Mormonism might not be for me after all. I am going to try and to both reviews together yet as two separate papers. Ayiyi, the burdens I lay out for myself.... :D Givens is a clever cat, to be sure. I am re-reading what Nibley wrote on rhetoric and finding many gems therein that I now disagree with that I used to agree with! Needless to say, I find Nibley himself is the ultimate rhetorician, which would probably insult him, but he is. His misuse of ideas is astonishing. To think I was trying to be of one mind with him and simply used to accept everything he had written as being accurate. Ayiyi! I have great repentance to perform for mine soul.... :lol:
The same energy that emerges from the fountain of eternity into time, is the Holy Grail at the center of the universe of the inexhaustible vitality in each of our hearts. The Holy Grail, like the Kingdom of God, is within. -Joseph Campbell-

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Re: By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

Post by Hagoth » Tue Oct 15, 2019 10:24 am

Apologeticsislying wrote:
Mon Oct 14, 2019 7:18 pm
But I have been asked also to review Charles Harrell's book "This is My Doctrine" ...
Possibly the most important and least appreciated book about Mormonism.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Re: By What Authority Do You Know the Truth?

Post by Apologeticsislying » Tue Oct 15, 2019 10:46 am

Hagoth wrote:
Tue Oct 15, 2019 10:24 am
Apologeticsislying wrote:
Mon Oct 14, 2019 7:18 pm
But I have been asked also to review Charles Harrell's book "This is My Doctrine" ...
Possibly the most important and least appreciated book about Mormonism.
Oh my! That means I really will double my effort to get a review of it and why it was so important to me and my journey.....
The same energy that emerges from the fountain of eternity into time, is the Holy Grail at the center of the universe of the inexhaustible vitality in each of our hearts. The Holy Grail, like the Kingdom of God, is within. -Joseph Campbell-

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