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causticusI feel like I need to expand upon one of the points I made in my previous post on why I can never be a Christian. I said:
Having said that, I do believe that humans do indeed suffer from a sort of "default ignorance," owning to most of us being alienated from out higher spiritual nature. Of course this condition is very poorly explained by the Garden of Eden narrative. In fact, I believe the Garden myth actually inverts the truth on the human condition. Knowledge of "good and evil" (or duality in general) is what separates humans from mere beasts. We are endowed with the ability to make decisions using criteria more elaborate than animalistic impulses and whims. We have higher consciousness and sentience.
With humans, this great power falls on a spectrum. Many people go though life barely ever using their powers of higher reasoning. Instead, they merely react to external stimuli. People usually just acquiesce to the commands and suggestions of people much more powerful, dominant and influential than them. And even without direct commands from others, the path of least resistance is for people default to ingrained habits that have accumulated though years of life experience and solidified confirmation bias.
Default Ignorance is the result of people turning away from their inner divine spark and instead giving into their desires for quick and easy material comforts and conveniences. Default Ignorance is just sticking to what we know and refusing to look inward or outward for higher wisdom. IMHO, Plato's dialogues (among many other pieces of wisdom literature) do a much better job at explaining the ignorant state of humanity than the silly Garden Myth can ever do. The cynical side of my mind wants to say that the purpose of that myth was to keep the common rabble away from dabbling with mysticism and magic, which is something organized priesthoods have been scaring away the little people from doing for quite some time. We even see a modern equivalent of this attitude somewhat reflected in the knee-jerk evangelic Protestants have to any and all expressions of spirituality which fall outside the scope of Biblical liberalism; they declare anything deviating from that as being "Satanic" or "Luciferian" or "Demonic"..ect; you get the picture. On an esoteric level, "Lucifer" is just a catch-all term for the various Titanic powers occultists would associate with magic, esoteric mysticism and higher metaphysical inquiry. In actuality, these higher powers are tools. And just like any other tool, this set of tools can be used for both creative or benevolent or destructive or malevolent purposes. By itself, it is neutral.
We could look at the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" as symbol of these higher powers. It is the secret sauce that scared the shit out of muggles and normies. However I'm not going to single out the ancient Jews for demonizing our higher powers. There was a general Iron Age Mediterranean attitude which embraced fatalism and took an antagonistic attitude toward Titanic spiritual powers. The Greek attitude expressed in the Prometheus myth has some thematic similarity (though in a more nuanced manner) to the act of Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Both are presented as beings acts of divine disobedience. For Prometheus, reaching up into the heavens and grabbing onto the higher powers suggested the moral hazard (slippery slope) of "stealing the fire of the gods" and proceeding to torch everything in sight. Ya know, just for the lulz. In the case of Eve, it's subtly implied that the "god" of the Garden of Eden wishes to keep his human creations ignorant. Or maybe it was just a test. Who knows; the "god" of the OT actually seems like a whole plethora of different beings rolled up into one.
Anyway...no, mankind is not cursed with "original sin." All we are "cursed" with are the material bodies our souls are chained to. Another way of looking at this condition is that of a training process rather than a curse. Of course this training process narrative requires the belief in some form of reincarnation. Priesthoods obsessed with controlling people's thoughts and behaviors tended to shy away from accepting reincarnation as valid. Or they developed perverted interpretations of Karma. The latter would function as a sort of backdoor "original sin" whereby a priest could claim a person is cursed by the misdeeds of many previous lifetimes. Of course, from a higher spiritual perspective, no fallible person like a priest has any business pretending to know all about another person's soul business beyond that of a current lifetime.
Because I do not believe that the Hebrew canon as a complete narrative is of a divine source, nor do I believe that ANY of the stories or myths contained within should ever be taken at literal face value as matter-of-fact historical accounts or ontological axioms, I cannot buy into concepts like "original sin" as being real or relevant to the human condition.
Having said that, I do believe that humans do indeed suffer from a sort of "default ignorance," owning to most of us being alienated from out higher spiritual nature. Of course this condition is very poorly explained by the Garden of Eden narrative. In fact, I believe the Garden myth actually inverts the truth on the human condition. Knowledge of "good and evil" (or duality in general) is what separates humans from mere beasts. We are endowed with the ability to make decisions using criteria more elaborate than animalistic impulses and whims. We have higher consciousness and sentience.
With humans, this great power falls on a spectrum. Many people go though life barely ever using their powers of higher reasoning. Instead, they merely react to external stimuli. People usually just acquiesce to the commands and suggestions of people much more powerful, dominant and influential than them. And even without direct commands from others, the path of least resistance is for people default to ingrained habits that have accumulated though years of life experience and solidified confirmation bias.
Default Ignorance is the result of people turning away from their inner divine spark and instead giving into their desires for quick and easy material comforts and conveniences. Default Ignorance is just sticking to what we know and refusing to look inward or outward for higher wisdom. IMHO, Plato's dialogues (among many other pieces of wisdom literature) do a much better job at explaining the ignorant state of humanity than the silly Garden Myth can ever do. The cynical side of my mind wants to say that the purpose of that myth was to keep the common rabble away from dabbling with mysticism and magic, which is something organized priesthoods have been scaring away the little people from doing for quite some time. We even see a modern equivalent of this attitude somewhat reflected in the knee-jerk evangelic Protestants have to any and all expressions of spirituality which fall outside the scope of Biblical liberalism; they declare anything deviating from that as being "Satanic" or "Luciferian" or "Demonic"..ect; you get the picture. On an esoteric level, "Lucifer" is just a catch-all term for the various Titanic powers occultists would associate with magic, esoteric mysticism and higher metaphysical inquiry. In actuality, these higher powers are tools. And just like any other tool, this set of tools can be used for both creative or benevolent or destructive or malevolent purposes. By itself, it is neutral.
We could look at the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" as symbol of these higher powers. It is the secret sauce that scared the shit out of muggles and normies. However I'm not going to single out the ancient Jews for demonizing our higher powers. There was a general Iron Age Mediterranean attitude which embraced fatalism and took an antagonistic attitude toward Titanic spiritual powers. The Greek attitude expressed in the Prometheus myth has some thematic similarity (though in a more nuanced manner) to the act of Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Both are presented as beings acts of divine disobedience. For Prometheus, reaching up into the heavens and grabbing onto the higher powers suggested the moral hazard (slippery slope) of "stealing the fire of the gods" and proceeding to torch everything in sight. Ya know, just for the lulz. In the case of Eve, it's subtly implied that the "god" of the Garden of Eden wishes to keep his human creations ignorant. Or maybe it was just a test. Who knows; the "god" of the OT actually seems like a whole plethora of different beings rolled up into one.
Anyway...no, mankind is not cursed with "original sin." All we are "cursed" with are the material bodies our souls are chained to. Another way of looking at this condition is that of a training process rather than a curse. Of course this training process narrative requires the belief in some form of reincarnation. Priesthoods obsessed with controlling people's thoughts and behaviors tended to shy away from accepting reincarnation as valid. Or they developed perverted interpretations of Karma. The latter would function as a sort of backdoor "original sin" whereby a priest could claim a person is cursed by the misdeeds of many previous lifetimes. Of course, from a higher spiritual perspective, no fallible person like a priest has any business pretending to know all about another person's soul business beyond that of a current lifetime.
