Caustic Ramblings

This is a bit of a follow-up on my last post, in addition to a very-related discussion with violetcabra I was having the other day about the Devotional Method of spirituality and its excesses that became so commonplace during the previous two millennia.

The Devotional Method of the Piscean Age (roughly, 250 BCE - 1900 CE) uses the same basic sales pitch, i.e. "chant this magic word/phrase, and/or do this prayer over and over and you'll be saved!!"

This is basically a semantic hack that has been very effective in bringing spirituality and spiritual life to the unwashed masses; people who are generally too busy/overworked/distracted, and/or lacking in intellectual horsepower to use more intense, mind-oriented, and time-consuming methods of accruing wisdom and merit. To some degree I consider this a genius innovation, but since were are mere fallible humans after all, the leaders of devotional sects often take their pet approach too far and end up crowding out other methods of spiritual practice, and in much worse cases, using violence and coercion to snuff them out of existence with untold amounts of fanatical vigor. One of the most potent ego trips is that of a religious or spiritual leader having mobs of unthinking followers on their knees and treating them as if they are a god incarnate.

We are now in Aquarius -- even if it's just the opening act of Aquarius -- and thus we are afforded the opportunity to look back on Pisces with a more objective and detached set of eyes. And perhaps we could now chalk up the single-minded insistence that simple verbal formulae can cause salvation, as being 'the Great Snake Oil' of the Piscean Age. Ultimately, I would say that this one-size-fits-all spiritual prescription is the product of the aforementioned ego trip of each prophetic figure who founds their own religious group based on the "devotion uber alles" premise, a premise that has been mirrored to at least some degree across all the major traditions of the Piscean Age, where it's in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the more devotional sects of Hinduism (think, 'Hare Krishna!'), and in the Pure Land sects of Mahayana Buddhism.

In summary, I see the "say this magic word/phrase over and over again and you get into heaven, guaranteed!" as a comforting lie at best, and a surefire means of brainwashing the credulous and perpetually-fearful and turning them into mindless followers of an opportunistic, power-hungry religious demagogue (or conclave of them), at worst.

Having said all of that, I do believe prayers and mantra recitation can be a very helpful tool in purifying one's soul and raising one's consciousness level. It's just in the Age of Pisces, this approach has been taken to the extreme, and usually at the detriment of other approaches to spirituality. As JMG likes to say all the time, "the opposite of one bad idea is most often another bad idea." And thus, the solution now in Aquarius is not to shun or avoid devotional practices (no, I think that would be quite stupid and short-sighted), but rather to re-frame Devotion in its proper context among all the other methods of spiritual attainment (see my last post), and keep the good/helpful aspects of Devotion and jettison the neurotic excesses of it that we saw run so rampant during the past 2000 years or so. In short, we could see Devotion as an effective method of taming the worldly ego and reminding us ultra-fallible humans that we are indeed ultra-fallible beings and that there are powers/forces/beings out there much greater and wiser than us, and thus it would be in our best interest to adopt a humble and respectful attitude toward our cosmic parental figures. And by this simple logic, we shall learn to differentiate 'Healthy Veneration' from Devotional Fanaticism.

Perhaps Devotion in the Age of Aquarius will be the simple act of each individual venerating the deities on their own terms.

From the very WIDE net I've cast out in the area of comparative religion studies, in a very Sagittarius-rising kind of way, mind you, I've arrived at a concept I have termed "Complete Tradition." By this I mean, a spiritual/religious umbrella that allows for a plurality of different spiritual paths and approaches to metaphysical inquiry and outward religious expression.

Using the framework of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), we could say that within a Complete Tradition there are 3 basic Spiritual Paths, or simply, Approaches to the Divine:

1. God-communion
2. Self-realization
3. Nature-communion

1. (God-communion) is the path of direct communion with a deity, typically by way of prayer, mantras and various other devotional activities. The devotee calls upon God using personality-representation or Avatar of the Supreme Being. Hindus worshiping Krishna as the last avatar of Vishnu (Hindu Godhead), is one famous example. The even more famous example would be worshipping Jesus Christ as the incarnation of Yahweh* on Earth. And of course, there's Muslims with Allah. You get the picture. In the Hindu tradition, this devotional path is called Bhakti Yoga, or simply Bhakti. Sometimes Karma Yoga can be combined with this. Worship often has a communal expression and in general this path is suited for people of an emotional or earthly nature; the sort of people who require a group atmosphere and the peer-reinforcement that comes along with that territory. This type of religion can eventually degrade into blind faith, dogma-attachment and even fanaticism. The Age of Pisces (which we are now departing) saw Bhakti religions as the most dominant and widespread. As we enter further into Aquarius, religions that have only allowed for this type of path are either going to shed tons of followers or be forced in one way or another to loosen up on the old dogma and allow for more diverse types of practice and belief.

2. (Self-realization) is another way of connecting with the Absolute Divine, although in a much more individualized manner than the above path. A deity is usually invoked, though this is not totally necessary. The prime Hindu example of this path would be the invocation of Shiva as the representation of Pure Consciousness in its highest form. This path does not at all require any sort of communal religious activity. And thus it's a path well suited to monks, hermits, and renunciates in general. And for those who aren't willing to entirely give up mundane worldly life, this can simply be a path of individual worship or practice for a householder. In essence, it's the perfect path of the "spiritual but not religious" type who might be averse to group activities or rigid dogma. In a more degraded form, the Self-realization path becomes the so-called "Left Hand Path" taken by the casual (or serious) dabbler in the Occult who still believes in a power or powers much higher than the material plane. Whether an occultist, heterodox practitioner, or loner adherent of an established tradition, the Self-realization path is suited toward the person who is considerably more experimental, eclectic, enterprising or intellectual than the average person. Various types of Yoga are geared toward this path. In summary, Self-realization is how the seeker discovers the divinity of their own consciousness and eventually the transcendent Oneness of all reality.

3. (Nature-communion) is what we get when we think of popular conceptions of Paganism, Witchcraft, Shamanism and Native American spirituality. This is a set of myriad and diverse practices and ritual forms used to connect with unseen** forces of nature in a very local context (as in, in your own bio-region here on Earth), typically phenomena like nature spirits/elementals, terrestrial devas, planetary energies, telluric spirits, demons, ghosts, departed souls, ancestor spirits, ect. Or this is simply the exploration of paranormal phenomena.

Of course, any serious (and relatively-unbiased) scholar might conclude that the actual ancient pagan traditions had this path merely as a part of their outer forms, and that within these traditions were metaphysical teachings and spiritual practices that certainly included many aspects of the first two paths. The most famous example of this is the Hellenistic (Greco-Roman) tradition, which like Sanatana Dharma wasn't a singular religion at all, but rather an expansive cultural umbrella containing myriad cults, practices and teachings. In fact this is what ALL pagan traditions really were -- not any specific "ism" but actually that very umbrella. Most Monotheists have difficulty conceptualizing their concept of "paganism" in these broad, nuanced terms. And thus they treat it like a creed they need to denounce, because all they know of religion and spirituality is precisely-written creeds. To use an old cliche here: When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. One of the hallmark practices of Abrahamism was to treat all Nature-communion spirituality as "devil worship," and idolatry, because of the rather ambiguous nature of the countless spiritual entities that are neither angels nor infernal beings. With this rigid type of dualism, any non-human sentient entity with a neutral-leaning alignment generates an immediate "does not compute!" result and thus gets cast into the "demon" bin because it can't be accurately classified within the tone-deaf dualist schema. The more mature way of looking at path#3 is to realistically see it as only being able to go "so far"... in other words, only leading slightly up the mountain, yet serving as a potent entry point to the transcendent paths that go far higher. IMHO, Nature-communion is a good way to introduce skeptical personality types*** to the realm of spirituality. But the seeker must be informed of all the potential pitfalls native to this path.


------

*Yahweh is the Hebrew God of the Torah, originally one among the whole Northwest Semitic pantheon. Eventually, with the rapid spread of Christianity, the Romans ended up passing off this god as universal when they mass-adopted the religion and made it their one-and-only state religion, and thus conflated what was once just a tribal god with The Good/Absolute principle of the Platonic and Gnostic traditions. Several centuries later, Jewish kabbalists would incorporate the Platonic Godhead into their own system in a much more holistic and sensible manner and created a Hebrew metaphysical doctrine far more elaborate (and in line with Perennial tradition) than the confusing hodgepodge known as Christian theology. By the medieval period, the YHWH (Tetragrammaton) of Kabbalah became synonymous with the Platonic, Gnostic and Eastern (Dharmic) concepts of the transcendent God.

**Unseen by those lacking in psychic and clairvoyant faculties. According to most traditions that are inclusive of the third path, these are abilities that a practitioner can develop and augment over time with much practice, determination and instruction from a competent and knowledgeable teacher.

***Skeptical personality types, meaning people who in this context lack faith in divine providence, yet harbor an intellectual curiosity in the paranormal and are thus willing to explore this area in an experimental manner.