Читать книгу It's All God, The Flowers and the Fertilizer - Walter JD Starcke - Страница 6

It would be a mistake to claim that in referring to our Judeo-Christian tradition as a myth, I in any way reduce it to the level of fantasy. Its substance is grounded on actual experiences from which, in time, the central meanings or consciousness has been extracted. All of the world’s major religious myths began because some individual had a transcendental experience. Myths close the gap between fact and fiction precisely because they are not just made up stories divorced from reality. We refer to them as myths because in isolating the central meanings, they become symbolic examples of how “the Word” is made flesh. Contrary to common belief, myths have a literal basis in fact whereas allegories are defined as invented stories in which people, things, and events have a singularly symbolic meaning. Myths, like poetry, are attempts to reveal universal and profound truths via as few personalized words as possible. Our Scripture is, therefore, our mythological poetry.

Until those of us who are products of our Western culture review and are reconciled to the Judeo-Christian crucible, which has consciously or subliminally conditioned our present way of life, we won’t discover a meaningful approach to the future. We do not have to accept the interpretations of Scripture we have heard all of our lives; however, I do not believe we can consciously understand how we arrived where we are and become completely free unless we pry open the inner meanings of our traditional myth to see how they have consciously or subconsciously affected us. All those who were conditioned in families that attended church or synagogue regularly and were from infancy inculcated with Scriptural implants may have something to overcome. We all may be burdened with a subconscious that is still crammed full of Biblical distortions, sitting there waiting to be freed from stifling old theology—and ourselves along with them.

Throughout history, interpretations of the Judeo-Christian myth have been filtered by social circumstance and elaborately contorted by institutions in order to fit the viewpoint of a particular sect, or they have been manipulated to benefit an imposed power structure. It is no wonder that many Westerners have rejected our traditional myth in favor of foreign myths because, being unfamiliar, foreign myths seem less overloaded with contorted interpretations that have diluted the truths of our myth.

I happen to believe that many if not all of the stories in the Old Testament and the significant experiences of the man we call Jesus Christ were not purely fiction. In essence, our Judeo/Christian principles—secrets if you will—have the power to transform lives, whether the incidents in the Bible that led to them were literally true or not. It is not my mission to confirm or refute the validity of the Scripture. I do, however, want to show how we can work with them as they currently exist, and find our own spiritually inspired answers that have the power to erase past limitations and animate our lives. What’s more, after over fifty years of studying Scriptures, I am more dazzled than ever. I feel not only that we have barely touched the edge of the mystery they contain, but also that we are just now—finally—beginning to evolve into the consciousness they were intended to create.

I lump the Old and the New Testaments together and call them the Judeo-Christian myth because there is, or should be, a kind of symbiotic understanding between Jews and Christians that every idea in the New Testament is tucked away somewhere in the Old Testament if one can discern its evolution. To me, it is as though Jesus was a divine mechanic who chose various concepts from the Old Testament and knew how to assemble the parts in a way that created a vehicle that would work for him and his followers.

Underlining the inclusive nature of the twenty-first century, I want to express my appreciation for the oriental masters in India and Japan with whom I was led to study in my early years. I am grateful not only for their turning me on to the invaluable inspiration of meditation and for the wisdom they imparted, but also for an extra special bonus they gave me. Through their generosity, I was able to see what each of the world’s most widely accepted spiritual myths have contributed to the world, and, more importantly, being exposed to those other myths made it possible for me to discover what is unique in the Christian myth. By viewing life from different religious perspectives, I was able to see my own Christian roots from a fresh and illuminating viewpoint, freed of dogma, sect, exclusiveness or the misconceptions of my early conditioning. I was then able to see how we are just now only on the edge of the grandeur and the depth of what was revealed through the Master, Jesus the Christ.