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T. S. Eliot, for the younger generation among us plus those not raised excessively on English Lit.
I shall omit the details for reasons of keyword searches, but I was startled by some of the scholarly hypotheses described in detail in The Faith Instinct (a book that's of value for such informative surveys of scholarship in fields of inquiry other than biology, rather than for its particular evolutionary hypotheses, which are most likely wrong). They reminded me that one way or another, scholars have denied the historical existence of the putative founders of every one of the earth's major religions.
I suddenly wish it were true; if it were, it would mean that there is a Teaching without Teachers, a way of transformation that is transmitted in slightly variant forms according to historical circumstances, by men and women who have better things to do than found a personality cult of themselves as prophets, and who make up stories to suit the cultures and circumstances of their audiences.
I don't believe that this is actually the case, but I wish.
And perhaps this myth of the non-existence of the Founders points to some other truth about how quickly supplementary practices find their way into originary impulses, as those folks who translate terms badly from the French would put it.
It would be evidence in favor of Jeff Kripal's supposition that our misbegotten species has forever been encountering the harder-to-trigger aspects of its evolutionary inheritance, and that every time someone encounters the further reaches of human nature, they make up hypotheses that exceed the conclusions that can be responsibly reached from the empirical evidence.
May all who celebrate anything at all this week celebrate in joy and in liberation from the chains that bind them.
I shall omit the details for reasons of keyword searches, but I was startled by some of the scholarly hypotheses described in detail in The Faith Instinct (a book that's of value for such informative surveys of scholarship in fields of inquiry other than biology, rather than for its particular evolutionary hypotheses, which are most likely wrong). They reminded me that one way or another, scholars have denied the historical existence of the putative founders of every one of the earth's major religions.
I suddenly wish it were true; if it were, it would mean that there is a Teaching without Teachers, a way of transformation that is transmitted in slightly variant forms according to historical circumstances, by men and women who have better things to do than found a personality cult of themselves as prophets, and who make up stories to suit the cultures and circumstances of their audiences.
I don't believe that this is actually the case, but I wish.
And perhaps this myth of the non-existence of the Founders points to some other truth about how quickly supplementary practices find their way into originary impulses, as those folks who translate terms badly from the French would put it.
It would be evidence in favor of Jeff Kripal's supposition that our misbegotten species has forever been encountering the harder-to-trigger aspects of its evolutionary inheritance, and that every time someone encounters the further reaches of human nature, they make up hypotheses that exceed the conclusions that can be responsibly reached from the empirical evidence.
May all who celebrate anything at all this week celebrate in joy and in liberation from the chains that bind them.
