How insightful of you Joe. Of course the big difference between Tom
Robbins explanation and mine, is that he is being paid to produce an
entire book, while I am writing free. But Tom does say it well. Read
his words and then sit back and think about them. A jug of hooch will
help the thought process.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/27/14, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> Tom Robbins: From Skinny Legs And All....Dig the last ironic line here...
> Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed
>
>
>
> there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually,
>
>
>
> however, religions became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm
>
>
>
> fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.
>
>
>
> The Reverend Buddy Winkler was correct about Spike Cohen and
>
>
>
> Roland Abu Hadee: they did not glide in numb circles inside a glass
>
>
>
> box of religion. In fact, they, Spike and Abu, wouldn't hesitate to
>
>
>
> directly attribute the success of their relationship to their lack of
>
>
>
> formal religion. Were either of them actively religious, it would have
>
>
>
> been impossible for them to be partners or pals. Dogma and tradition
>
>
>
> would have overruled any natural instinct for brotherhood.
>
>
>
> It was as if Spike and Abu had been granted a sneak preview
>
>
>
> behind the veil, a glimpse in which it was revealed that organized
>
>
>
> religion was a major obstacle to peace and understanding. If so, it
>
>
>
> was a gradual revelation, for it unfolded slowly and separately, a
>
>
>
> barely conscious outgrowth of each man's devotion to humanity and
>
>
>
> rejection of doctrine.
>
>
>
> At best, perhaps, when the fourth veil does slip aside. Spike and
>
>
>
> Abu will be better prepared than most to withstand the shock of this
>
>
>
> tough truth: religion is a paramount contributor to human misery. It
>
> 300
>
>
>
> is not merely the opium of the masses, it is the cyanide.
>
>
>
> Of course, religion's omnipresent defenders are swift to point out
>
>
>
> the comfort it provides for the sick, the weary, and the disappointed.
>
>
>
> Yes, true enough. But the Deity does not dawdle in the comfort zone!
>
>
>
> If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the
>
>
>
> aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in
>
>
>
> deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows
>
>
>
> of lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a
>
>
>
> benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us
>
>
>
> in the "comfort" of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our
>
>
>
> restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment.
>
>
>
> 1 6 7
>
>
>
> Tom Bobbins
>
>
>
> A longing for the Divine is intrinsic in Homo sapiens. (For all we
>
>
>
> know, it is innate in squirrels, dandelions, and diamond rings, as
>
>
>
> well.) We approach the Divine by enlarging our souls and lighting
>
>
>
> up our brains. To expedite those two things may be the mission of
>
>
>
> our existence.
>
>
>
> Well and good. But such activity runs counter to the aspirations of
>
> 301
>
>
>
> commerce and politics. Politics is the science of domination, and
>
>
>
> persons in the process of enlargement and illumination are notoriously
>
>
>
> difficult to control. Therefore, to protect its vested interests,
>
>
>
> politics usurped religion a very long time ago. Kings bought off
>
>
>
> priests with land and adornments. Together, they drained the shady
>
>
>
> ponds and replaced them with fish tanks. The walls of the tanks were
>
>
>
> constructed of ignorance and superstition, held together with fear.
>
>
>
> They called the tanks "synagogues" or "churches" or "mosques."
>
>
>
> After the tanks were in place, nobody talked much about soul
>
>
>
> anymore. Instead, they talked about spirit. Soul is hot and heavy.
>
>
>
> Spirit is cool, abstract, detached. Soul is connected to the earth and
>
>
>
> its waters. Spirit is connected to the sky and its gases. Out of the gases
>
>
>
> springs fire. Firepower. It has been observed that the logical extension
>
>
>
> of all politics is war. Once religion became political, the exercise of it,
>
>
>
> too, could be said to lead sooner or later to war. "War is hell." Thus,
>
>
>
> religious belief propels us straight to hell. History unwaveringly supports
>
>
>
> this view. (Each modem religion has boasted that it and it alone
>
>
>
> is on speaking terms with the Deity, and its adherents have been quite
>
> 302
>
>
>
> willing to die--or kill--to support its presumptuous claims.)
>
>
>
> Not every silty bayou could be drained, of course. The soulfish
>
>
>
> that bubbled and snapped in the few remaining ponds were tagged
>
>
>
> "mystics." They were regarded as mavericks, exotic and inferior. If
>
>
>
> they splashed too high, they were thought to be threatening and in
>
>
>
> need of extermination. The fearful flounders in the tanks, now
>
>
>
> psychologically dependent upon addictive spirit flakes, had forgotten
>
>
>
> that once upon a time they, too, had been mystical.
>
>
>
> Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is,
>
>
>
> mysticism does not lend itself to institutionolization. The moment we
>
>
>
> attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is
>
>
>
> mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.
>
>
>
> Those who witness the dropping of the fourth veil might see
>
>
>
> clearly what Spike Cohen and Roland Abu Hadee dimly suspected:
>
>
>
> that not only is religion divisive and oppressive, it is also a denial of
>
>
>
> all that is divine in people; it is a suffocation of the soul.
>
No comments:
Post a Comment