The Unspeakable Gnostic secret of Personal
ResponsibilityThe gnostic Christ secret is that, once we come fully awake, we are the cosmic self of the Upanishads coming to recognize its nature in incarnate form in space-time and that however lowly, each of us through our free-will are contributing to the water-sheds of becoming that characterize the unfolding history of the universe good or bad. In this sense each of us is the only begotten son of God, incarnated right from the cosmic origin to perform the unique heroic task of bringing the cosmos to fruition through the free intent of our actions as incarnate organisms.
This is the secret 'kingdom' that Jesus discovered and tried to imbue to his closest followers in gnostic twinning terms, and spoke of more indirectly in parable to the synoptic masses. It is the secret of immortal life which gave him the reckless audacity to allow himself to be destroyed on the cross so that all might live. Indeed it is the glorious secret that can sustain us even though the Earth shall one day vanish into the swelling red-giant sun and even though we may escape to another solar system shall sustain us even beyond the ultimate annihilation of the universe, for in our experience of the subject-object nature of complementarity, we are each and every one of us an incarnate reflection of that Elohim of multiplicity and implicit sexuality which spawned the totality in the first place, not merely in the likeness of the divine, but the divine itself in incarnate biological form. This is the ultimate heresy against traditional religion for which Jesus suffered and died.
It means that we can each take responsibility for our actions in participating in bringing the universe to its fruition, however small a part we each individually play in the process. It also teaches us that, as biological organisms, we are part of a cosmic process intimately involving the web of life, the genetic heritage and the whole of biodiversity, not just the masters of a planet to which life is incidental. It also means that we need to reassess our role in the universe and on the planet, not just a spawners of a technological empire based on machines, nor as agents of a God who acts over nature as subservient, but as guardians of a sacred living and genetic heritage of which we are an intimate part and which shall become a flowering expression in the evolutionary future of the divine creative. This means that we should use our technology wisely and that we should cherish the Earth and replenish it as our raison d'etre, not plunder and exploit its resources mercilessly and selfishly as if there were no tomorrow and no offspring, even our own, to consider. If we can do so we can then when the time comes embark gracefully into space not as a cultural carcinoma of exploitation, but as enlightened beings possessing both knowledge and wisdom.
It is the evolution of the emotional brain of the limbic system which has given us our capacity to love beyond the strict boundaries of kin selection. Although the emotional repertoire contains within it all the dimensions of love and hate, of trust and deceit, of jealousy and infatuation, of fear and of anger, it is a palette which makes possible the win-win situation of mutual love and affirmation. The limbic system appears to have been another example of a universal algorithm which extends strict kin and reciprocal altruism into a more general paradigm of emotional social engagement. While this makes for the kin-based love of parent for child it also allows wide-ranging forms of affection which clearly cross species barriers and permit a whole new class of partially symbiotic engagements to occur. The evolution of domestic cats is an example. The evolution of love in humans leaves us capable of both heaven and hell experiences and leads easily to our vision of cosmic war between god and the devil as a projection of our own twin natures.
When Jesus said to love our enemies he was making a basic social extension of the concept of kin altruism to a general love for all beings, not just kin and those with whom we share a mutual benefit. This is something which is never easy and requires social ferment and a social consensus to achieve. The game of cooperation and defection always seeks a balance in which the defectors never cease entirely to exist. Nevertheless it is possible through the power of love to lead to a society of true compassion feeling together in which without repression the exploitative element is healed through an all embracing ethic of social justice which alleviates inequality and deprivation. The liberation from the imprisonments poverty and other forms of deprivationcan come only from a social ethic of true love.
Much of the criminality in modern society derives indirectly from social inequality and the ethic of greed and winner take all possession by intellectual and other property right. This aspect of capitalism is a materialistic error of selfishness, like the error of the selfish gene taken in isolation. The proclaiming of liberty and justice requires a cohesive sense of democracy, not just the fragmented democrcies of corporate boards, and of caring for all Earth's people not just the corporate shareholders. Liberty also means freedom from the oppression of poverty and from the law as expressed in the tyranny of the majority. The best that Christianity has always had to offer is the ethic of true unselfish love accompanied by a sense of egalitarian social justice and compassion. It is these elements which are the perennial truth, not religious dogma about God and morality. They become affirmed again in the epoch of the Tree of Life in newly relevant biological terms. For love is the key to bringing us all together with one heart, and love, more than equanimity alone, is the key to the affirmation of all that we are and can become.
However love is also intrinsically sexual, not merely filial, for it is sexual love that is the union which celebrates and fertilizes the passage of the generations. Chrsitianity has sought to denigrate the sexual aspect as diabolical lust. Reproductive game theory teaches us that sexual evolution is and needs to be a balance between faithfullness and secretive independence. Violent probitions on adultery by stoning in the history of patriarchal religions have aimed to deny such choice selectively to women, while it has always been recognised that men may sew wild oats at will. Although sexual infedility may provoke jealousy, it is also an essential part of the evolutionary paradigm, just as predators, parasites and prey, and animals as well as plants are also essential. Because women make a greater and more forthright reproductive investment than men, it is essential that women have autonomy of decision-making over their reproductive life and that they are not sequestered by men for reproductive or sexual purposes.
The last religious epoch has been characterised by dominion of man over woman as well as of humanity over nature. It is essential that this gender imbalance is reversed and that women and the feminine aspect are empowered and able to fulfill the complementarity that the sexual universe engenders. It is sexual paradox between the genders that has led to the reproductive and social climate of discourse and intrigue that catalysed the expansion of human intellect and the flowering of human culture, not the dominion of man over woman nor the sequestering and repression of women in education, society, and employment. Through the respect of each gender for the freedom and complementary wisdom of the other, our future will also continue to be fertile and enchanting.
Moreover sexuality is an expression of the complementarity which lies at the source of the existential cosmos. The complementarity of subject-object, wave-particle, chaos-order, and female-male are all manifestations of the Tao. Although sexuality only appears a significant way through evolution with the higher life forms, it is forever implicit in the fundamental complementarities. It is thus an emergent property of evolution expressed again in higher animals, as the need to recombine genes intensifies due to the Red-Queen evolutionary race between hosts and parasites. The symmetry-breaking of sexuality into genders is itself a subtle expression of the more fundamental complementarity of wave and particle, in which sperm play a definitively particulate and ova a pivotal wave-theoretic role in the selection processes of fertilization.
Although sexual love is private and often exclusive to the partners, it is the transforming power of erotic love that is for many of us the central expression of the divine, and it is erotic love to which we owe the passage of the generations of life. In Journeys by Heart, A Christology of Erotic Power, Rita Nakashima Brock elaborates in a heart-felt way the relationship between erotic love an the fulfillment of Chtristian desti ny. Alongside loving one's enemies, that is extending the boundaries from self kin and clan to the whole of society, is learning how to extend the full power of erotic love into the selfless love for others that characterizes filial love, without in so doing neutering the power of erotic love, as the Christian forefathers did.
Another controversial aspect of these teachings is the nature of sacramental use. The eucharists of the Tree of Life are those species known to elicit coherent visionary experience, particularly the hallucinogenic teonanactl, peyote, san pedro, ayahuasca and iboga and of course ganga. The Christian eucharist is a Dionysian fest of the flesh and blood of the saviour, his pain and death symbolizing for the communicants by some inverted logic the promise of life in the word made flesh. While it is true that the bread was celebrated by Tammuz and the Vine by Dionysus both in their death and resurrection, the Christian eucharist has taken the Jewish bread and wine of the Sabbath and re-invested it with the violence of human sacrifice. The healing of this violence lies in the healing power of the natural visionary sacraments as manifestations of the evolutionay Tree of Life rather than the Cross of Death. They also provide food for the soul in the same sense that food is other living species consumed for the welfare of the body.
The purpose of the living sacraments however is not just communion with a God in the sky divorced from the sap and dew of natural things. The sacraments are here to teach us that our living relationship of interdependence with the biosphere is not just a matter of body but also of soul. By partaking of the living sacraments, we concede that some aspects of our vision are attained through interdependence with other species rather than the superioroity of splendid isolation and that we are neither minds alone nor in absolute superiority. This admittedly controversial aspect of the Logos which again is right in line with Jesus' very Dionysian aspect.
Although traditional Chrstians and Jews used to the bread and wine only as a sacrement of the fruits of abundance will find this alien or even abhorrent, there is a consistent powerful affirmation of the sacraments emerging from every indigenous culture which has partken of them in sacred use. Moreover most now have established churches in which their use as a sacrament is central to their religious vision, including the Native American Church's use of peyote and the Union Vegetale's use of ayahuasca in Peru and Brazil, both of which occur in a Christian setting in which the sacrament is perceived to be a vehicle of renewal of the spiritual soma.
In pronouncing the liberation from prison of those that are bound, let us also remember that in additionto the prisons of poverty and political repression, the war on drugs is a war against the sacraments, for the sacraments are also banned substances whose consumption renders the user liable to incarceration. The drug trade is driven by illicit demand and while drugs remain illegal the drug trade will flourish to the detriment of the sacraments, which have throughout history been extolled by every previous culture which has used them, as sacred doorways of perception.
Jesus is regarded as the only-begotten Messiah of history by Christians, despite being decryed as a false prophet in the Edomic mold of Balaam by the Jews in the Talmud Sanhedrin. It is important to understand just where the messianic impulse derives from and what its historical roots are. Messiah means 'anointed'. The Jewish mashach is a human benefactor, a king or priest who brings long term future goodness to his people. David and Solomon were anointed by priests as king messiahs. Cyrus was similarly termed anointed by the Jews for granting the rebuilding of the second temple and the restoration of the Jewish state. Other Jewish zealot leaders were also anointed as warrior messiahs. A hundred years after Jesus, Bar Cochbah was anointed by Rabbi Akiva, only to bring the wrath of Rome down on the final embers of Jewish nationalism, cementing the diaspora in place for centuries to come. Critics at the time said "Grass will grow out of your jaw" and they were right. However Rabbi Akiva to our undying blessing, extolled the sacred marriage of the Song of Songs and precipitated its inclusion in Bible. Priestly messiahs also became part of the vision of the Jewish apocalypsists and the Essenes. The Qumran community had kingly and priestly messiahs as officiants and it was the function of the priestly messiah to take on the sins of his people as an atonement offering.
The Christian idea of messiah is fundamentally different, a super-human hero who stands as the only begotten son of God for all time, forming a permanent cross-roads of human destiny - part man, part God just as were Tammuz, Adonis and Dionysus before him, and their human embodiments, the sacred kings. Jesus in his teachings intentionally combined the Jewish ideas with the heroic Gods of the near East as a means of challenging the entire cultural fabric of his time to a complete resynthesis.
Part of this destiny was already woven into the scriptures. In the black verses of Isaiah 61, a shamanistic power passage, the pronouncer short-circuits the religious pathway by declaring themselves to be anointed directly by God to bring justice and ecological renewal in preaching the acceptable year - the fulfillment of the end of days. Jesus read this quotation at the synagogue at Nazareth and claimed the scripture was thus fulfilled. This passage is also pivotal in declaring the nature of the male anointed as bridegroom - a title to which Jesus continued to refer in terms of sacred marriage and tragic passion.
Many of Jesus' sayings go beyond traditional Jewish boundaries into a frankly pagan interpretation of the messiah as divine son, and as the male partner in the sacred marriage - the Bridegroom of the maranatha.
Jesus is ostensibly anointed, not by a male priest but by a woman, variously referred to as Magdalen, a priestess out of whom went seven familiars, or a sinner. Mary of Bethany, who may also have been Magdalen, is described as 'playing that good part' - a clear reference to the sacred marriage. Martha herself may also have been intimately involved, as her conversation with Jesus suggests. The women of Galilee ministered unto him of their substance and all came down to Jerusalem to see him off and preserved his body, embalmed it and it was Magdalen who pronounced the exultation.
Furthermore Jesus, in the last supper, despite Ebionite demural to water, assumed a very different interpretation of the bread and wine, defining it in Dionysian terms as the soma and sangre - the flesh and blood of the son of man, without which "ye have no life in you". He portrayed himself as the true vine, consorted with winebibbers, and turned water into wine at the sacred marriage in Cana in Dionysian tradition on the very day of Dionysus' advent. Jesus thus used both the Judaic motifs of the desert visionary nabi in a similar manner to the Essenes and also the rural, or pagan, fertility motifs of the sacred marriage in a Dionysian style, indicative of the Nabatean Edomite culture prominent at the time, but also celebrated in Israel as the Song of Songs declares.
Just across from the Nabatean border was Macheras, where John the Baptist was beheaded in a dance of the seven veils, the descent of the great Goddess to the death realm, just as Magdalen had seven familiars. The timing of this is indicative. John was beheaded at a banquet after insulting Herod for marrying Herodias, his brothers wife. Herod's generals were present that evening because Herod was being made war on by Nabatea after his previous wife, the princess of Nabatea, had to flee for her life. Notably Nabatea had a Dionysian god Dhu Shara and a Marian fertility and maritime goddess. In also adopting sacred marriage motif, Jesus made a far more complete cross-cultural challenge to the entire flux of near Eastern cultural and religious tradition, bringing to a climax and focus all the threads of the heroic visionary in reconceiving historical destiny, the power of love and the nature of the Godhead.
Such a complex total challenge to all the dimensions of existent culture is bound to be only partly understood at the time and treated with controversy and confusion, because men will not know at first what to make of it. This is the greatness and ingenuity of Jesus' vision. Indeed, he played Zachariah's foolish shepherd to the hilt as a chaos visionary promoting strife and confusion everywhere he went, many times being threatened with being stoned, turning the tables and making blasphemous comments as the divine son. When crucified, he was almost forgotten as a leader of a small band of disciples, all of whom deserted him in his hour of need, and only some years later, as the mythological realities began to strike home, did Christianity take off, partly as a born again religion under the dubious patronage of Paul, after his Arabian sojurn, transcending the gulf between pagan religions and monotheism by assuming both into itself.
Another very important dimension of Jesus' complexity as a shamanistic visionary is the gnostic Christos. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts after sixteen hundred years of seclusion in jars, has shone a new light on the sayings of Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas, which appears to contain older source versions of many of the synoptic sayings, also has a completely different perspective from the orthodox picture of Jesus as the sole and final messiah, claiming to be only begotten son, chosen above all others in a single unique act of God in destiny to bring atonement forgiveness to the whole human race. The entire meaning of the Thomas Gospel is to convey the inner teaching that the Christ state is a natural one we all share as twins, even of Jesus. This is a path of self-discovery to collectively-shared enlightenment just as Buddha also envisioned. Jesus is transformed from a mythical destined hero "Whom do men say that I am?" "You are the Christ" to a teacher inspiring others to Christ nature "I am not your master, but you have become drunk from the bubbling stream that I have measured out". A shamanistic visionary of deep transformative insight "split a piece of wood and you will find me there". The gnostic perspective provides the missing complementary half of Christ nature, which liberates it from being the sole domain of Jesus and liberates Jesus in turn from being an inhuman pagan intermediary of forgiveness from God, no longer a human visonary prophet who other humans can fully emulate, but a unique irreplaceable demi-God, thereby depriving us all of personal power and the responsibility to discover ourselves how to truly cherish the Earth and replenish her.
The natural way out of this dilemma is to renew the tradition by recelebrating the root tradition in the maranatha of the sacred union - liberating the bridegroom and bride again into the human tradition of inspiration.
I am now going to show you the dark, precipitous route to renewal in the maranatha - the bridegroom cometh - the changing of theguard, by pronouncing the sacred marriage of science and spirituality, end the Biblical paradigm of the millennium and open the epoch of the Tree of Life. I am going to unveil to you this radical and shocking apocalyptic route to world sanity, because it is a story which is itself world-transforming. It is both a tale of magic and miracle and cutting-edge scientific research, revealing the innermost workings of the biological universe.
I shall tell you in as short a space as possible the description of reality as it appears through the eyes of the Christos. In doing so I shall be pronouncing the Logos or cosmic words of creation, just as Jesus was attributed to doing. This time it is expressed in the scientific world view, rather than the graphic simplicity of John's "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God". For this to be veritas - the truth - in the modern world, it has to become manifest simultaneously in scientific and spiritual terms. This is a very tall order and it is going to be very challenging, even insulting, yea blasphemous, to both scientifically-minded sceptics and religious believers alike. Both will have immense difficulty comprehending and accepting it, but in the last analysis and first synthesis it shall stand true because, as a description of reality it is vertiably apokalypsis - the unveiling of cosmic existential reality.
This brings us to the abyss which now exists between the scientific and spiritual worlds. There is a second reason science cannot fully address the existential dilemma as it stands. The material perspective in science is incomplete. The objective aspect of reality fails to account for the existential situation. As observers we are each able to experience the universe only because we are subjectively aware. Indeed our personal awareness, sometimes called subjective consciousness, is the only link we have with reality and it is through it and it alone that we infer our knowledge of the objective physical world. In turn this means that states of the brain, although they may be accompanied by conscious experiences, can never be simply equated with them, because no objective brain state is a subjective experience, however avant garde the model.
This is the so-called hard problem in consciousness research. In turn this suggests that the existential universe is, from its very source, a complementarity between subjective and objective aspects, that despite appearing in biological evolution, subjective consciousness gives expression to a fundamental physical complementarity and that religious and spiritual traditions are attempts to discover and realize the nature of this complementary aspect to physical reality in the human stream of subjective consciousness. Such a perspective, for all the dogma of affirmative belief in religion, means that underlying cultural traditions of spirituality may be archetypal aspects of the human stream of consciousness which are existentially cosmological, just as the scientific description of reality contends itself to be for the objective physical universe.
It is a central concept of this logos that the themes of the Fall from integration with nature in Eden, the resulting schism between woman and man, the founding of the patriarchal epoch, the hero messiah as the divine incarnate, redeeming the existential condition and his complementary female goddess-priestess figure Persephone, Inanna, Miriam or Magdalen by many names, the reunion of the sacred marriage, and finally the whole concept of apokalypsis, an end of days awakening to the enormity of the cosmic truth in a knife-edge encounter between the wasting of the inferno and the returning paradiso are all central archetypes of the human stream of consciousness expressing the future shock changes of our fall from nature as gatherer-hunters into a civilization of patriarchal dominion over woman and nature, culminating in our awakening as cosmic humanity which the Logos pronounces.
While this does not mean that the Judeo-Christian God, abstract or anthropomorphic, the pagan Goddess, or the Buddhist still point of the turning world for that matter, exist literally in the dogmatic sense religions state, it does imply that recurring motifs in the spiritual and cultural tradition have a deep basis in the way the subjective aspect of cosmology becomes manifest in consciousness and in human form. This deeper Jungian stream of archetype and synchronicity unites religion, mythology and the ground swell of shamanistic practices world-wide in a framework which is completely consistent with modern wave-particle physics, in the form of indeterminacy and quantum non-locality. This area remains the fundamental mystery still unresolved by modern science at the end of the second millennium so it is central and pivotal in unveiling the nature of existential reality.
At the core of the Christian redemption is the source, Christ nature, for only by the return of the Christ can the destiny of the Christian church be fulfilled. This has always been the promise "Christ died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again" and this is the statement of apocalypsis with which the Bible, and with it the entire Biblical epoch, is completed and fulfilled. The Church is founded on this belief as stewards until the return like a thief in the night. Although the Catholic hierarchy may seek to celebrate ascendancy in perpetuity, celebrating jubilennium upon jubilennium, if Christ simply died and will not come again the validity of the Church as a movement following the only begotten son of God is null and void. Similarly fundamentalists who would seek to force the hour of rapture are in violation of the Christian essence. Neither can any theologist or charismatic visionary fully renew the Church while the only begotten Son of God remains stranded between Earth and Heaven in perpetual catatonic agony. This is the dilemma of Christianity and it can only be resolved from the source by the return of the Bridegroom and along with the groom the forgotten repressed esposa the free unsequestered complementary priestess, the fallen woman, the Magdalen, free incarnate feminine divine, confined to eclipse by a male priesthood by substituting Mary - mother, but never wife, lover, or independent feminine divinity.
Although two thousand years have elapsed since Jesus, and there have been many messianic pretenders, no one has had the perspicacity to fulfill Chrsitian destiny by pronouncing the maranatha and the logos in the original tradition. It is now only ten weeks to the second millennium's end. To fulfill the messianic-apocalyptic bridal unveiling of destiny, Jane and I duly read the black verses of Isaiah 61, read at Nazareth by Jesus, anointing ourselves in partnership in the eyes of the cosmos, in renewing the vow of the sacred marriage of feminine and masculine as promised in Weaving Renwal at San Francisco Cathedral Santa Fe on 31st July 1999, I having already pronounced my part of the bargain in the Genesis CD movie "Sourcing Genesis" some year before. The Santa Fe reading is the original Isaiah 61 reading completed in sacred union of bride and bridegroom and of God and Wisdom and stunningly, given the temporal gulf between tritio-Isaiah and today it is a pronouncement of biodiversity renewal of awesome prophetic power, setting straight the natural restorative meaning of apokalypsis and the end of days:
Although there were few people to witness this event, principally a rather debauched and rowdy wedding reception on the roof of the adjacent hotel, the natural circumstances were very auspicious, massive lightning on the day which rained out the crafts festival being held in the plaza and trapped us for a period in the Catherdral, the Catherdral turning out to be the oldest Marian shrine in the United States bearing the Conquistdora, and finally the utterly synchronous sign on the back of the Catherdral declaring "This is not the End of the Story - Renew"
Adorning this spectre of paradise and its ultimate destruction in the inferno of hell in the countries of Latin America, are two others. From El Salvador - the Savior, famous for its clandestine death squads, to Brazil, christened by its discoverer Cabral Tierra de Vera Cruz - "Land of the True Cross", equally famous for killing every man, woman and child of the millennial movement at Canudos to erase it from the nation's memory and for the anullment of the conviction of Darly Alves da Silva for ordering the asassination of Chico Mendes, environmental campaigner and rubber tapper advocate, the only one among hundreds of such political murders since the 1970s to be effectively brought to trial.
Complementing this macho tradition of vigilante abrogation of justice is the spectre of many forms of Christianity, from the deeply pagan manifestations of Catholicism, with its Marian processions, accompanied by deafening fireworks and idolatrous statues adorned with the gold of the Incas, forming a thin veneer for the undying affection for the ancient virgin sachamama, Mother Earth, anaconda of the founding Ashkanika, still honoured in the syncretic undercurrents of indigenous societies; through the many missionary stations relentlessly converting diverse Indian peoples from their ancient ways into a meek subservience to civilization; to the burgeoning tide of evangelisticas born again in Jesu Cristo, exhorting in the plazas and mercados with loudspeakers, drawing in the trusting and vulnerable with the baptism of rebirth, celebrated in indoctrinations large and small, from two or three gathered in video preaching parlours to en-mass baptisms in football stadiums.
On the Conquista and the Cristo Rey almost everone is in the throes of a Chrstian revival which is blowing in the wind across Latin America. Several of the crew are born again - amicable but committed to spreading the word that Jesus saves. Many people sing religious hymns loudly. Everyone wnats to know what denomination you come from. A woman is studiously leafing through Biblical Apokalypsis beside me as I write. A more intellectual looking man is reading "Hermenutica". Another young man is poring over a Portuguese comic of the New Testament. Direct simplicity of belief conveyed in Jesus saves, Christ loves you. Christ is coming soon! - Jesu salvae. Cristo te ama. Cristo viene pronto! - as scrawled in white paint on the rock faces of the mountain pases out of La Paz. The question that continues to smoulder in my mind as I move through the Amazonas is "Can this ocean of spiritual belief, the historical endowment of the Western cultural tradition to the Garden, corpus Christianity as a social movement of transformative love, be tapped to seed a renewal of humanity's relationship with nature?"
To those that would decry the intrusion into the ecological arena of an old style religion which has rejected evolution, treats nature as abhorrent and diabolical and opts for a naive divine creation of a universe only a few thousand years old, I reply that where the great gardens of Earth's living diversity lie are also populations following major world religions, that saving life's diversity is not just a scientific or even rational question, because the Earth stands before us much like an artist's palette, that because the Church is a river to her people, infiltrating every town and village far into the jungle, given a wind of change to fulfil the destiny of the Tree of Life, she too can become a flood tide for renewal of life's diversity, by appealing to human altruism and love in a way which science never can on logical grounds alone.
There is no logical or scientific way alone to save the ecology of the planet. Indeed, Bertrand Russel has pointed out that science itself preaches that life is meaningless in a universe of utterly immense violent forces and that only the cosmic heat death awaits those intrepid ones who would venture into the black hole of intellectual honesty. This dilemma of science - that it has no net ethical content - means that science can be used equally for healing our planet's ecology or reducing it to a fragile genetically-engineered nightmare - for every commited ecologist there is an unscrupulous corporate genetic engineer. The choices are creative and have to do with love and inspiration not simply scientific logic.
Although the evolutionary process will be with us as long as there is life on Earth and humanity may pass away through accident or misadventure long beforehand, we have gained such powers to alter the living face of the planet that is its now only through our love and creative vision that the planet will in the short term become whole again. This is a creative process of free choice which goes far beyond the rational and scientific. In so far as love and social justice have a meaning they are also the key to the future of life's diversity. Great social movements, the Christian church included, have a key part to play because they can give people the will, love and ethical commitment to share and protect Earth's living resources for the greater good.
Our river journey has now taken an unforseen twist. Upon reaching Manaus, we have decided to turn south down the Rio Madiera towards Port Vehlo and the devastation of Rondonia and Acre by taking the Cristo Rey, a boat which is my very namesake. This will leave open three possibilities to turn East and cross to Rio possibly via the Pantanal, to carry on south up the Rio Madre de Dios - Mother of God and traverse the wild north of Bolivia back into Peru and possibly Manu and to continue on by road to Rio Branco and Xapuri where Chico Mendes was assasinated. As the thunder rolls again and the boat has run argound, turned around and is travelling west. None of us can be sure of the outcome.
If this is the bearer of the logos of reality shouldn't it be accompanied by miraculous portents? Yes and no. To bring off the renewal of the epoch of paradise will be a miracle orders of magnitude beyond anything Jesus himself acheived in his lifetime. On the other hand Jesus himself, was a well-known thaumaturge of the therapeutae. His reputation for miracle thrived on the hypnotic hysterical atmosphere of crowd hysteria and evepoted inthe harsh light of familiarity as the comments about his performance in his own home town of Nazareth illustrate. Comments ranged from "physician heal thyself" to commenting that he could only perform a few simple healings because of the lack of faith of his compatriots. Faith healing is a common shamanistic skill shared by many famous healers throughout history. As for Jesus nature miracles on the waters of Galilee, wait for the lightning to strike!
It just did as I spoke. In Borba, a city on the Rio Madiera with a church sporting San Antonio holding a child. Of course lightning strikes with tenacious frequency at sunset, as all rain-makers of the desert know. The Amazon is no exception. We have been beseiged by thunder and lightning everywhere we have travelled. Take this as a verdant sign of healing rain if you will. Right now it is spring time and the beginning of the rainy season in the Amazon where we are, just south of the equator. The choice for life's diversity is after all yours.
In the last analysis I am pronouncing this Logos, not because I like or pretend to the role, which is dangerous, despite the fact that it comes as a victorious healing of life rather than the Crucifixion's atonement of death, but simply because I can't fairly depart from this incarnation and return to the cosmic source knowing the Earth is in its unique hour of need culminating the whole of evolutionary time leading up to the 'phenomenon of man' as Tehlard de Chardin put it, that despite the enormity of scientific discovery we are entering the space age adrift, steered like a rudderless ark by irrational forces of economic greed, plunging us into a global eco-crisis, through severe lack of foresight, and no respect for the future generations to follow. We all know this situation is insane yet none of us can figure quite what to do about it. We have become disempowered. When one human being can stand and declare the truth of an insane society heading for the precipice of oblivion, it is time to stop and take stock. Judge this communication by its works. Which makes more sense, a world developing towards its own boom and bust decline through institutionalized personal greed, or the vision of the lone ferryman of the Styx, with a tongue like a sharp sword, holding the tiller of fate fast for the Tree of Life?
Central
to revisioning the cultural paradigm is regaining our sense of
genetic continuity in the evolving of life's diversity. The paradigm
of the Fall has led to an epoch of dominion over nature in which
the continuity of life has not been respected as a prime cosmological
sacred responsibility. The tendency to see God as an agent of
order over chaos, and of man over woman, has led to the frank
repression of natural diversity in the form of wilderness in superimposing
a humanly-devised order. It is time to revere nature as sacred
in renewing Earth for the future flowering of all life which shall
follow. There can be nogreater celebration. All the generations
to follw shall call us blessed and hallow our names for this.
The key affirmations of the logos are very different from the assumptions of traditional religion. They espouse cosmology, sexuality, biology, consciousness, evolution and the preservation of life's diversity over cosmic time in a great flowering of life. They embrace gnostic insight and shamanistic illumination using the visionary power plant sacraments rather than traditional forms of worship. They pronounce liberation from poverty, and from corporate exploitation and from the oppression of moral edict and even the law of order. They unveil the epoch of the Tree of Life in the ending of traditional religion in the renewal of the ethic of true love, sacred marriage of woman and man unrestrained by moral confines. An explosive mixture at critical mass, yet poetic, natural justice in the healing of humanity's cosmic future.