The Jesus Figure and Its Esoteric Origin

Most eras thought of the Jesus figure through the esoteric tradition, not through the conceptual system of modern literalism and the workaday ordinary state of consciousness.

'Tradition' as promoted by Evola, Schuon, H. Smith, and Nasr, and a few other luminaries of the 'Tradition' theory, endorse something like esoteric allegorical understanding of fields of knowledge. Do they uncritically assume there was a single historical individual who was the necessary kernel for the eventual Jesus figure? Do they promote mysticism, in their promotion of their 'esoteric knowledge'? If so, what is their conception of mysticism or esotericism -- is it founded on the psychological phenomena of the mystic altered state?

All the no-Jesus researchers agree that there was no Jesus; Jesus was instead a matter of esoteric allegory. But that replaces a misunderstanding by an unknown: what are no-Jesus researchers proposing when they propose that the Jesus figure was a matter of "esoteric allegory"? One simple, materialist answer: "it means annual fertility of crops, which filled the simple-minded ancients with great fear and awe and a deep religious sense of dependency.

An equivalent alternative answer: "it means the sun and astrology/cosmology. The ancients really thought astrology was interesting, and useful for crops, navigation, and prediction."

Those meanings *are* very important, but they omit the most essential spirit of the matter. The answers miss a certain essential quality of what astrology/cosmology and fertility *meant*. Those answers are correct as far as they go, which isn't very far, given that they omit mystic-state, psychological experiencing, which ignited these fields and brought them alive, brought them down to earth below, into the heart of the individual psyche. Theorists of 'Tradition' agree with this view to some extent, which I am trying to identify.

Proponents of "Jesus as visionary plant minister" or "Jesus as visionary plant" say their proposed meaning is a better candidate; that it makes more sense to centralize the amanita cap than the sun as real, ultimate, uber-referent of the Jesus figure. There is some truth to that argument, because the visionary plant is closer to psychological phenomena than the sun is, because the plant produces the phenomena.

However, even more central must be the allegorized psychological phenomena themselves -- the *experience* of the sun-like white-light phenomenon in the psyche; the *experience* of spacetime crucifixion in the psyche. Therefore I agree that the sun doctrine could be a revealed secret, but only weakly, and that visionary plants could be a somewhat more hidden and profound secret, but that the ultimate hidden and revealed, most profound secret must be the experiential intense mystic-state phenomena in the individual psyche.

Perhaps the ultimate unveiled and revealed secret is "the kingship of God", meaning specifically that there's no individual free will in the all-fated cosmos.

There are arguments for and against singling out for honors this particular psychological experience/insight, which is always found among an entire set of mystic-state phenomena such as frozen time -- perhaps a better candidate for ultimate revealed knowledge is "no-free-will/no-separate-self" as a compound set of experiential phenomena and transcendent insights.

A strong factor warranting such a singling out of no-free-will as ultimate revelation is the problems of personal control, government, agency, and rulership directly affected by the assumption of "no individual free will in the cosmos" -- this thematic domain permits a strong focus on what could be called "mystic political allegory" such as whether Caesar or Jesus is the son of god, made man, with epiphany of royal visiting of his kingdom, in the flesh.

'Traditional' thinking ties every allegory domain together -- as a spaghetti network? More likely, as a wheel with one domain serving as the common referent, the hub: the classic phenomena and insights encountered in the intense mystic state. This is my theory of allegory domains -- does the theory of 'Tradition' hold the same view, that all allegory domains or domains of knowledge map together, and that just one domain is most central, and that that most central domain is that of the mystic-state phenomena and resulting insights?

Modernistic thinking conceives of Jesus in the most shallow, literalist way possible, including a supernaturalism that is completely superficial and literalist, and projects that way of thinking back onto the earliest Christians and medieval Christendom. But the lecturer Philip Cary awakened me to the esoteric emphasis of Plato, Plotinus (Neo-Platonism), and Pythagoras, and that combined with my growing recognition of the strong mystic esoteric emphasis in medieval Christianity.

This led me to the wildly unexpected hypothesis that all the ancient through medieval groups, clubs, schools, and cults were forms of philosophical-religious initiation schools -- only in the late modern era was this way of thinking lost and forgotten. This view was then emphatically affirmed by the handful of authors writing about 'Tradition', particularly the book:

Knowledge and the Sacred

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0791401774

Transcendent Unity of Religions

Frithjof Schuon

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0835605876

Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism (Library of Traditional Wisdom Series)

Frithjof Schuon

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0941532275

Revolt Against the Modern World

Julius Evola

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/089281506X

Nasr's book seems to be more readable than Schuon. Then, Ken Wilber's Integral Theory is needed, to recover and bring together the best of 'Tradition' ("integrated" thinking in which religion, philosophy, science, politics are all feverishly munged together) while retaining the benefits of modern, "differentiated" thinking in which science, philosophy, religion, and politics are treated as completely separated, remote, unrelated domains.

'Tradition' in general was heavily influenced by the intense mystic altered state, but it is completely unclear at present the exact *extent* of such experiential influence, including the exact *extent* of visionary plant usage by leading mystics per Dan Merkur, versus the official model of meditation/contemplation.

It's certain that intense mystic-state experiencing was highly influential on Christian thinking, and that visionary plants were a trigger for that experiencing, but the *extent* of each in Christian history (mystic experiencing overall, and specifically plant-induced mystic experiencing) is currently a completely open question. The theorists of 'Tradition' don't seem to put a heavy emphasis on the experiential (intense mystic altered-state) basis of 'Traditional' philosophy-religion-sacred science-gnosis.

Ken Wilber consistently strives to augment his rational theorizing with direct mystic experiencing by advocating "meditation", which he equates with "contemplation" in general as portrayed by the best of conventional Christian mystic studies (as opposed to specifically plant-based meditation per James Arthur or plant-based contemplation per Dan Merkur).

I have to determine whether the theory of 'Tradition' (Nasr, Huston Smith, Schuon) includes an emphasis on mystic-state experiencing in addition to rational or intellectual or "Intellectual" systematic castle-building and lofty-sounding but still inert theorizing. Does 'Traditional' Intellectual activity include a strong component of transcendent intense *experiencing* -- if not, what makes their touted "Intellectual" activity really any different than mere modern "intellectual" activity, lower-cased?

Many schools agree that one doesn't "know" or "understand" the Jesus figure in a truly relevant and important sense unless such knowing and understanding takes place in some sort of elevated mode of consciousness. Some books portray Jesus, Paul, the apostles, and/or Hellenistic religion primarily as a matter of such a "shamanistic" visionary state of consciousness.

Some books repudiate the historicity of Jesus as a single individual person, and advocate a wholly mystic figure -- but here there is an interesting division between models of "mysticism" or especially of the even vaguer concept of "esotericism".

Suppose there was no single individual Historical Jesus figure, but the Jesus figure was, for the best of the pre-moderns, a wholly allegorical "esoteric" figure. What does such "esotericism" amount to, specifically? Here, the explanations fail to converge -- though the situation isn't as extremely divergent as the embarrassing plethora of proposed versions of the Historical Jesus; there may be more uniformity regarding the nature of esotericism than about the life of the historical Jesus.

Consider the permutations of combinations of various Historical Jesus theories with various models of esotericism:

o Was there a single historical Jesus as the kernel for the later compound Jesus figure? [yes or no]

o Was Jesus, or the Jesus figure, primarily -- or very importantly -- an esoteric mystic? [yes or no]

o Is esotericism-mysticism (or per Schuon, 'Tradition') predominantly a matter of one or more episodes of an intense mystic altered state of consciousness? [yes or no]

o If esotericism/mysticism is a function of mystic state of consciousness, is this state produced most classically by contemplation/meditation, or by visionary plants? [contemplation or plants] -- This is the amusing question among supposedly radical theorists, separating the men from the boys, of whether Jesus *used* visionary plants, or whether Jesus *was* visionary plants (among other themes).

Various authors and books propose various combinations of answers to these questions, forming various scenarios or worldviews. (My view is: no, yes, yes, plants.)

I want to update the

Taxonomy of Christ Views

http://www.egodeath.com/christviewstaxonomy.htm

to reflect the key differing positions about the *nature of* esotericism/mysticism/'Tradition'.

Acharya's "Jesus as sun" theory portrays a generally simple and straightforward model of godmen as astrotheology symbols, comparable to the basic simplicity and materialist, non-psychological, relatively literalist symbolism of the "annual fertility cycle" model of mystery-religions. Actually, the Jesus figure meant various non-psychological referents *and*, more profoundly, psychological referents as well.

It is contrary to ancient thinking or 'Tradition', a contraction in terms, to say that the Jesus figure did not symbolize psychological altered-state mystic phenomena, but symbolized the sun. For the ancients, Jesus symbolized the sun, but the sun in turn symbolized psychological altered-state mystic phenomena, such as white-light perceptual feedback, a classic and universal phenomenon of the mystic altered state.

"The sun shines on everyone" -- esoterically, that means that every mystic potentially experiences white light. 'Tradition' swirls this way, always returning to connect each allegorical symbol-domain to the highest common denominator, which is the phenomena of the mystic altered state.

Jesus meant the sun, for some percentage of ancient esotericists, and Jesus meant the amanita cap, for some percentage, and the sun meant the underside of the amanita cap, and everything meant everything to some extent... but finally and ultimately, these mean mystic-state phenomena, such as the white-light experience. The best of esoteric thinking reserves a central role for psychological mystic experiencing, as ultimate uber-referent.

Every "Jesus as X" model is correct, as *part* of the meaning-system constituting the Jesus figure -- but is there a center, a peak, a core? A strong candidate is the phenomena of the mystic state, such as white light and the overwhelmingly *felt* psychobody sensation of being timelessly frozen or "crucified" in spacetime.

The Jesus figure was designed to mean as many valued things as possible, but the mystic-state psychological phenomena surely deserve the place of honor as the central, highest, and deepest allegory-domain, while the mere literal sun or the mere literal ruler considered as profane desacralized functionary, is but base material to be connected into the system of allegory.

Schuonesque 'Tradition' (esoteric/mystic allegory-based thinking) doesn't care much about the literal sun or a ruler as desacralized functionary; those are almost incidental. The sun is only to be considered divine and sacred insofar as it is considered as participant in allegorical conception, and allegorical conception is all centered around and inspired by psychological phenomena of the mystic altered state.

Naturally, modern Tradition-bereft thinking tends to assemble an oxymoronic combination such as "esoteric philosophy" where the term 'philosophy' is thought of as modern isolated desacralized rationalist "philosophy" -- "low philosophy" as opposed to "high philosophy", high religion, high science, etc. So the confused expression "esoteric philosophy", when spoken by a modern, ends up meaning "high low-philosophy", or "sacred desacralized-philosophy".

We moderns have isolated, compartmentalized, and debased versions of 'philosophy', 'religion', and 'science', whereas the ancients and medievals (nonmoderns) tended to have more like one thing that could be called 'Philosophy', 'Religion', 'Science', 'Wisdom'. Modernity has not 'Wisdom', and hardly even 'wisdom' in the lower-case version.

Such 'Traditional' thought-systems were so firmly established that possibly only a modicum of scattered instances of intense mystic-state experiencing were required to keep such thinking in place. Eventually, for reasons speculated in these books about 'Tradition', modern, rational, reductionist, uninspired thinking as opposed to ancient/'Traditional' venerable "intellectual" thinking fully took over (resisted by Romanticism, but finally overcome in the mid 20th Century).

I don't know what the 'Tradition' theory proposes about the earlier presence or later loss of mystic consciousness as an "altered state of consciousness". I propose that the loss of access to the intense mystic altered state occurred as part of the loss of 'Traditional' thinking. 'Traditional' thinking is visionary, mystic, experiential, allegorical, inspired, mythic.

It's hard to reconcile Ken Wilber's "stages of collective progressive evolution of consciousness" view with the Schuon/Nasr/Huston Smith/Evola 'Tradition' hypothesis, which holds that modern thinking is spiritually degenerated compared to previous 'Traditional' thinking.

Wilber's characterization of "mythic thinking" fails to appreciate the full presence of gnostic esoteric enlightenment routinely present in Hellenistic initiation. Wilber fails to grasp the nature of Hellenistic religion-philosophy, particularly the initiation and mystic-experiencing aspect; he understands the concepts of Plotinus' neo-Platonist theorizing and assumes that Plotinus is an advocate of meditation/contemplation rather than initiation.

Wilber literally has no theory or commentary on Hellenistic mystery-religion initiation; his complex schemes are evidently blind to this topic, implying that this topic breaks his paradigm of the progressive evolution of collective psychospiritual consciousness. He has no index entry for 'initiation'. His treatment of Jesus and (non-treatment of) Hellenistic mystery-religion in Up From Eden is completely weak and amateurish, the opposite of Wilber's normally high quality.

Themes needing more emphasis are the experiential encounter with fatedness/Necessity, intense mystic *experiencing*, Jesus and the cross as descriptive template of specific mystic initiation experiences, the psychological nature of these experiences -- they are intense experiences that can be externally portrayed/enacted, but are essentially matters of internal, individual, visionary, psychological, dynamic phenomena.

The Jesus figure as seen through 'Tradition' is naturally more esoteric, mystical, and meaning-centered, rather than modern literal liberal or modern literal supernaturalist. If we assert that Jesus wasn't a single historical figure serving as a kernel for later mythic accretions, we have yet to comprehend how the ancients (or pre-moderns altogether) thought of the Jesus figure.

The best of the ancients thought of the Jesus figure in a 'Traditional' way; that is, a 'perennial philosophy', allegorical, mystic-experiential, mythically emphasized way.

Ken Wilber is largely concerned to refute the view that ancient thinking was superior to modern thinking, being closer to some unity consciousness before the Fall in Eden. Wilber strives to portray stages of progress in collective thinking through history; he appears to accuse the 'Tradition' theorists such as Nasr of committing the "pre-trans fallacy" of mistakenly portraying ancient pre-egoic thinking as highly evolved trans-egoic (transcendent) thinking.

Wilber has by now put forth so many views, we can use Wilber to correct Wilber: in fact, some aspects of pre-modern thinking *were* superior to modern thinking and commonly informed by higher, mystic consciousness beyond the reach of modern ordinary-state consciousness.

A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality

Ken Wilber

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1570628556

Per Wilber's later, more complex and subtle and qualified Integral Theory, we ought to selectively take those aspects of pre-modern thought -- some of which *were* transcendent above some aspects of modern egoic consciousness/thinking -- and combine them with the best and most healthy and precious of modern thinking, such as respect for individual freedom and personal responsible agency.

This does not mean wholly rolling back the clock and reverting from modernity to antiquated thinking, as Evola or Islam or fundamentalism might sometimes call for. It means selectively recovering the esoteric initiation allegorical visionary aspects of 'Traditional' thinking, while retaining the benefits of modern thinking.

Scholars should recover the mystic-initiation experiential meaning of the Jesus figure while rejecting the hypothesis that there was a single historical individual who was the kernel for the Jesus figure -- while retaining all possible benefits of the Jesus figure for modernity. Some aspects of modern individualism may be supported by some aspects of the Jesus figure: these aspects should be retained while discarding the assumption of a single underlying historical Jesus figure.

This approach is surely more profitable than another futile hundred years of flogging the horse of harmful literalist, official Christianity, and is more likely to convince people to repudiate the literalist historical Jesus assumption. Lecturing about the harms of Christianity leads from an empty, false version of Christianity, to an empty, false version of atheism.

Recovering the esoteric understanding of the Jesus figure is a viable strategy for comprehending the ancients and overthrowing the false, debased official version of Christianity.

Scorched-earth debunking of Christianity, without gaining a comprehension of the original, esoteric meaning of the Jesus figure, has accomplished *something*; it is *some* movement toward truth, relative to the worst of supernaturalist literalist Christianity, but exoteric religion remains a threat as long as we fail to recover and make available true religion, which is the best aspects of 'Traditional' high philosophy, high religion, high science -- what Freke & Gandy call 'Gnosticism' in the general sense as opposed to 'Literalism'.

The lie is that there was a single historical Jesus figure.

The scorched-earth modern atheists (Doherty, Acharya) then claim that the truth is, there was no single historical Jesus figure, and that therefore Christianity is altogether false, lies, untruth -- that is a story as simple as literalist Christian thinking itself, and is somewhat popular, as a permanent shadow part of the debased literalist form of Christian thinking.

Such simplistic wholesale negation of "Christianity" can be seen as an inherent limb of literalist Christianity, rather than something that actually stands to seriously oppose Christianity. The simplistic wholesale negation of Christianity is not worth calling "the truth" about the Jesus figure.

There is another, better, and more viable candidate for "the truth about Jesus", that is a deeper and more serious threat to literalist Christianity: the positive, definite, content-filled mystic-experiencing and esoteric-gnosis Jesus described by Freke & Gandy in one version in the book "Jesus and the Goddess" -- a way of thinking about the Jesus figure that accords with the 'Tradition' model identified by Nasr and Huston Smith and Schuon, although I suppose that like Wilber, these 'Tradition' theorists uncritically assume there was a single historical Jesus who was the kernel for the later Jesus figure with all its accumulating heap of mythic accretions.

'Heresy', in the sense of 'true esoteric mystic religion' -- is a much more serious threat and viable alternative to literalist Christianity than is mere atheism. Atheism (defined as being oblivious to esoteric mystic insight and experiencing), while attaining a certain level of popularity, doesn't threaten the very heart of literalist Christianity, unlike the perennial Philosophy, which beats Christianity at its own game, on the field of religion or transcendent experiencing and transcendent knowledge.

We do not need to lose the benefits of modern consciousness, values, and conventions, when recovering the 'Tradition' of esoteric mystic insight and experiencing.

_____________________

jamesjomeara wrote:

>No good will come from associating this research project of developing a cybernetic self-control theory of ego transcendence with 'Tradition' as promoted by Evola, Schuon, H. Smith, and Nasr, and other luminaries of the 'Tradition' theory since they do not have a defensible or useful account of what is "esoteric" and what is "exoteric," merely using the terms to promote their own prejudices in disguise.

>>Do they uncritically assume there was a single historical individual who was the necessary kernel for the eventual Jesus figure?

>Yes, along with any other archaic historical view you choose. Actually, Traditionalists don't "sully" their minds or pages with many historical "facts" at all, even when surveying "the modern world." Ever notice that neither Guenon nor Schuon ever quotes a living contemporary author---ever?

I've read Smith, and some of Nasr's least Sufi-emphasizing book. I learned of 'esoteric/exoteric' through Wilber and others -- I would like to read Wilber's take on the theory of 'tradition' as well as on the 'esoteric/exoteric' distinction . I have read little Schuon or Guenon. I have noticed them being hard to pin down on just what the heck their touted 'initiation' model is, or how *specifically* one enters their touted superior mode of thought that is superior to ratiocination.

I've been surveying esoteric studies to look for the percentage emphasis on *experience*. The first thing to note is that every writing uses different terminology and characterizations of what I call 'the intense mystic altered state of consciousness', which I technically characterize as 'loose cognition' or 'loose cognitive association binding of mental construct association matrixes'.

Synonyms include: experience, gnosis, intuition, feeling, active imagination, visualization, vision-logic, and many other wide-ranging wordings, contrasted against what's far clearer, purely rational knowledge or ordinary ratiocination (the mode of thinking characteristic of the ordinary state of consciousness).

Although the verbal formulations vary for the mystic state, all writers about transcendent knowledge agree that there are basically two types of cognition: ordinary, familiar reasoning, and elevated, rarer, non-ordinary mental activity. Some talk of levels of consciousness, but the basic distinction remains, between ordinary and nonordinary thinking.

There is full agreement in the conception of the ordinary mode of thinking, but the conception of nonordinary thinking is much more vague and diverse. Most books give heavy lip service to nonordinary thinking in that they greatly praise it, but are completely vague about how it comes about, and they often give it great praise but then launch into a thousand pages of ordinary-state description of complex esoteric symbolic systems, never returning to the topic of nonordinary experiencing.

>>what is their conception of mysticism or esotericism -- is it founded on the psychological phenomena of the mystic altered state?

>"What's the point of "secret" knowledge if it only told you what you could find out using reason and evidence?"

Deliberate secrecy indicates ignorance, confusion, and/or deception. There is no reason or justification for deliberate secrecy about the mystic state or the principles it reveals, other than sociopolitical battles.

Higher knowledge is naturally hidden in the mind until exposed and revealed through the intense mystic altered state. Given this important, essential area of experience or observational data, reason and evidence are fully relevant to learning from the mystic state, understanding the mystic state, and understanding transcendent knowledge.

The only really significant secret is simply this, the core of the theory I'm systematizing:

Taking visionary plants loosens cognitive associations, leading to experiential insights, causing the mental worldmodel to switch to a no-free-will/no-separate-self model.

>The idea that esoteric schools, and even the knowledge that they existed, were both lost in the rise of modern thought, is that's a long way from the full-blown Traditionalist idea of Yugas and world-ages, and the inevitable degeneration of mankind by race-mixing and women's lib, the need for a Strong Man to rise and take power and save us from the curse of democracy, and so on.

>Why try to open that whole can of worms? (See David Fideler: René Guénon and the Signs of Our Times: A Critical Appraisal of The Reign of Quantity." Gnosis 7 (Spring 1988))

I read that issue

http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents07.html

this weekend and studied the theory of 'tradition'. Your comments fit with what I learned. We should value the moderate, reasonable model of 'tradition', toward the end of the spectrum represented by Huston Smith, and implied by the best aspects of Nasr's least-Sufi book Knowledge and the Sacred. Among the theorists of 'tradition', the extreme view predominates: the extreme, unreasonable model of 'tradition' lacks balance, nuance, and qualification.

The theory of 'tradition' does contribute *some* valuable points, as stated in Gnosis #7. One must be highly selective, as Wilber would advocate when he describes his basic stategy as every theory is correct, when appropriately qualified and fit together.

>>Once you use Ken Wilber to get rid of all that's wrong with the 'Traditionalist' theory, you're left with Ken Wilber's theory -- not with what's known as 'Tradition'.

>>Does 'Traditional' Intellectual activity include a strong component of transcendent intense *experiencing* -- if not, what makes their touted "Intellectual" activity really any different than mere modern "intellectual" activity, lower-cased?

>"modern intellectual activity" uses reason and evidence. "Traditional intellectual activity" as exemplified by Schuon and Co. uses ad hoc hypotheses, abuse and ostracism to enshrine his personal views as "Tradition." As for "intense experiencing," don't count on it. Certainly no drugs.

>to illustrate the process of Traditionalist esoteric thought, one fact you won't glean from [advocates] is that Guenon and Schuon became bitter enemies, falling out over the question of whether Catholicism was still a "valid initiation" ... Guenon said yes, Schuon no. This was all done by intellectual intuition, of course, and had nothing to do with Guenon being a French Catholic, Schuon a German Protestant who had just founded his own, really-valid, only possible valid Sufi sect. And yet they disagreed? Obviously, then, one must be the Devil, and so mutual anathemas ensued.

What the heck *is* their "initiation" model? What exactly *is* initiation, per their theory? My model of authentic, classic esoteric initiation is clear and simple, explicit and directly expressed and summarizable: the teaching of perennial principles, in conjunction with a series of visionary-plant sessions. If their model disagrees with mine, then what exactly is their model? Here, such scholars are never forthcoming, or else, when pressed, the best they come up with is visualization and meditation.

If asked how visualization and meditation could be key methods of access to the purported lofty mode of cognition beyond ordinary-state ratiocination, when visualization and meditation (and Jungian so-called "active imagination") are obviously so little effective, the mumbling 'tradition' advocates will say that you're not doing it right, and need to hire a professional spiritual teacher for a long time.

>>I propose that the loss of access to the intense mystic altered state occurred as part of the loss of 'Traditional' thinking. 'Traditional' thinking is visionary, mystic, experiential, allegorical, inspired, mythic.

>Really, the only connection between your research project and the Traditionalists is a sort of vague analogy. Both of you propose that, as David Lynch might say, "religious traditions are not what they seem."

Yes.

>You propose that religions were originally, essentially, about psychoactive experiences.

Yes. And to some extent, among some practitioners and mystic theologians, these religions in later eras were also about and derived from psychoactive experiences, but the entheogenic aspect was suppressed in the official histories.

>This was initially hidden, and presented only in code;

In many cases the entheogenic basis of religion was hidden and encoded, to some extent, in early times. Estimating the extent requires further research. Some icons we still have portray visionary plants more or less explicitly, such as a literal Amanita cap halo.

>later, the secret was lost or suppressed,

"... to some extent"! This is where recent entheogen scholarship is headed, whether deliberately or not: as we scour for more clues, we find them in many eras, many religions, many groups of people. It's all a matter of degree -- just as simplistic 'tradition' theorists talk of esoteric knowledge being entirely lost in modernity -- though the 20th century provided excellent access to esoteric knowledge, in many ways.

Beware of the simplistic division into temporally early presence of entheogens and temporally late absense of entheogens. Entheogens have always been present, informing the religions, in certain ways and to some extent, even in the 1700s in the U.S. Try pointing to a culture that knows not entheogens -- it can't be done.

Even if modernity is a low point of awareness of entheogens, look at how entheogens were highly influential in the Boomer-era religious revolution. Entheogen scholarship covering all eras is a growth industry; there is a scholarly gold rush, such as Entheos journal.

http://www.entheomedia.org

>and the code continued on, either as a deliberate deception, or because most people are stupid enough to believe it literally anyway. To that extent you are suggesting that there is an esoteric core to religious traditions, essentially the same in each, that has always been hidden and is today mostly lost.

I'd say:

There is an esoteric core to religious traditions, essentially the same in each, that has typically been largely hidden, and was mostly or largely lost during late modernity.

>However, you have entirely different ideas compared to 'tradition' theorists about what the esoteric core was (drugs, vs, at best, some sort of meditation, contemplation, or Jungian "active imagination", which you consider mostly a placebo), why it was hidden, why it was lost, who has the secret now (science and stoners,

The esoteric core is not drugs; it is drugs integrated with study of the perennial philosophy. In particular, the esoteric core of religion and philosophy is the use of visionary plants (or chemicals) to loosen cognition, gain experiential insight of no-free-will/no-separate-self, and eventually form and retain the mental worldmodel based on the assumptions and experiential observations of no-free-will/no-separate-self.

To a large extent, Science immediately saw the good sense in the entheogen theory, ever since that theory was formulated. Computer science is strongly entheogen-influenced. However, this demonstrates the relation between de facto use of entheogens (and entheogen-positive views) on the part of individuals, versus the official stance of fields or industries: don't expect any official statements on the part of Science or Computer Science that entheogens are of greatest relevance.

It's not yet the view of Science that religion is essentially entheogen-derived. That's a likely conclusion as entheogen scholarship continues. Consider the various motives Science has to portray religion as entheogen-derived or as not entheogen-derived.

>vs. the most reactionary elements of The Roman Church), what to do about it (testable hypotheses vs. Schuonisn dogma)

We can rely on testable hypotheses. Far more than enough tests have been run, so many that no one disputes that entheogens are far more effective than meditation, contemplation, visualization, or "active imagination", at inducing the intense mystic altered state. People strive to spin this fact one way or another, but the fact is not disputed.

>No real purpose is served by calling the Hellenistic culture-amalgam "Tradition" and then switching between this meaning and what Traditionalists are talking about when they say that "Tradition (revealed by Schuon)has been lost" etc.

The 'tradition' theorists have adopted and trainwrecked the term 'tradition', restricting and narrowing its usefulness about as much as the term 'psychedelic'.

>>Recovering the esoteric understanding of the Jesus figure [especially an esoteric-only understanding, not the confused standard combining of esoteric *and* literalist readings] is a viable strategy for comprehending the ancients and overthrowing the false, debased official version of Christianity.

>This would involve entheogenic experiences, theorizing thereon, and popularization thereof, not accepting the empty dogmas that make up "Tradition". ... Once again, we see the clear choice: Gnosticism, entheogens, Integral Theory, history, science, reason...or Traditionalism!

Integral Theory, and Ken Wilber's theorizing in general, is generally right and good. He omits covering the mystery-religion initiations, has no treatment of no-free-will, and buys into Psychology far too much. Psychology speculated too many hypothetical constructs, while assuming ordinary state of consciousness too much and the mystic altered state of consciousness far too little.

Mystery-religion initiation and entheogens break much of Wilber's theorizing about the collective development of consciousness. The first thing to say about ancient consciousness was that it was entheogenic -- that's a concrete, specific assertion, unlike the so-typical hazy, abstruse, and ill-grounded speculations of Psychology about dreams, collective unconscious, superego, repression, and so on.

It's a matter of a compact, specific model, versus other bloated, foggy, vague models. I say enlightenment is the use of visionary plants to loosen cognitive associations to transform to a mental worldmodel based on the axioms and experiencing of no-free-will/no-separate-self . What do the other theorists say enlightenment is, or what mystic consciousness amounts to? Can they specify and summarize their views? They are evasive and vague.

Fortunately, there are some books now that selectively combine aspects of Psychology, minus some of the more arbitrary constructs, and the intense mystic altered state, such as:

The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience [metaphors for transcendent experiencing]

Ralph Metzner

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1579830005

We can anticipate that more books on various subjects will properly emphasize the phenomena of the entheogen-triggered intense mystic altered state, rather than committing the ordinary-state of consciousness fallacy, such as incorrectly emphasizing that myth means vegetative fertility or literal cosmology or items from the collective unconscious or from repressed libido.

Must have better understanding of esoteric Hellenism, to persuade of no-Jesus

Researchers must have a much better and more adequate understanding of esoteric Hellenistic religion, including early esoteric Christianity, to persuade people of the no-Historical Jesus theory.

Atheist anti-Christianity is the same as official Christianity on the key issue of the history of esoteric Christianity.

It's a standard atheist anti-Christianity move that should end, treating Christianity as a single thing lasting 2000 years, without giving special treatment to the early "gnostic" phase (which continued in various esoteric unofficial versions of Christianity). More discerning, serious, and valuable is a study of the history of the harms of exoteric Christianity, together with a study of the history of esoteric Christianity.

Per Freke & Gandy, the esoteric/exoteric divide is a key distinction in retelling the history of Christianity. A history that collapses esoteric Christianity into exoteric and thereby loses and disposes of esoteric Christianity cannot tell a plausible and coherent story. The history of Christianity is largely the history of the conflict between esoteric religion (including esoteric Christianity) and exoteric Christianity.

By treating all of Christian history as the history of exoteric Christianity, an unconvincing cartoon portrayal is put forth as the "solution", "debunking", or "alternative" to the official unconvincing cartoon portrayal. 1-dimensional and grossly incomplete history that omits the most compelling and authentic version of Christianity cannot accomplish its goals, but only ends up reinforcing conventional Christianity.

Conventional exoteric-only atheist scholarship does nothing but reinforce official exoteric Christianity. Official Christendom thrives due to the shallowness of the supposed "alternative" put forth by conventional atheist scholarship, which is nothing but the reflection of the worst and emptiest version of Christianity. Shallow literalist anti-Christianity and shallow literalist Christianity make each other thrive; they are two halves of the same thing.

Atheist anti-Christianity and its telling of history is the same thing as official Christianity; they tell essentially the same story with different details emphasized. In practice, the worst form of Christianity and the worst form of debunking, atheist, anti-Christianity are in full agreement about the most important thing: "pay no attention to esoteric religion and esoteric Christianity".

Doherty and Acharya mention early esoteric Christianity and esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy in a minimalist, utilitarian way. The flavor of their portrayal is that "Christianity is completely bunk and false, being nothing more than a distortion of esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy." But one cannot be said to understand the origin of Christianity with such a failure to deeply study and grasp the essence of esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy.

Saying that Christianity is merely a distortion of esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy, without going into an adequate and compelling study of esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy, amounts to only half a history. They've effectively said that Christianity is not literally true but is instead some vague X, where X is a casually and dismissively treated esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy -- just a carelessly and shallowly treated esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy.

In contrast, Freke & Gandy take seriously esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy and seek to show why it was compelling enough to provide an alternative explanation of the formation of Christianity. If people can't recognize the huge contrast between the treatment of Doherty versus Freke & Gandy, then a key, major dimension of early Christian history is being omitted and no convincing alterative history can result. Acharya falls somewhere in between Doherty and Freke & Gandy.

She's gone into some detail portraying esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy as being astrotheology. Freke & Gandy go further into the esoteric Hellenistic version of Christianity, portraying esoteric early Christianity in an average standardized gnostic form, resulting in a picture that has only a minor overlap with Acharya; they don't portray Jesus as simply the sun in astrotheology.

People should study the disagreement between Doherty, Acharya, and Freke & Gandy regarding the nature of esoteric Christianity. The no-Jesus scholars agree in the negative half of the historical revisionist research: early Christianity was not exoteric, but was esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy. They tell the same story and support each other, as far as that goes.

Where the no-Jesus theory collapses is that there is no agreed-upon story serving as a convincing alternative, of what such an "esoteric Hellenistic religion-philosophy" type of Christianity positively amounted to or involved. "Christianity wasn't about literalist exoteric Jesus; it was actually about X" -- but there is no shared conception of what X amounted to, thus the no-Jesus revisionist history is a failure; it fails to convince, lacking a clear and agreed-upon story of what early Christianity positively did mean, as an alternative to the official literalist exoteric story of what it meant.

The literalist atheist project of exposing the 2000 years of criminal deceit based on a nonexistent Jesus is an entirely different project than understanding and explaining the actual, alternative version of the initial formation of Christianity.

The purely negative expose approach effectively offers a false and unconvincing story because it writes out of history the most important, alternative version or mode of Christianity, esoteric Christianity, which was the original compelling form of Christianity and which later was in constant opposition with official exoteric Christianity.

We've had a hundred years of purely negative expose of Christian history, and it has accomplished nothing but reinforcing and helping out the worst type of Christianity, by falsely asserting that the only alternative to literalist exoteric Christianity is shallow, literalist, unfulfilling exoteric atheism.

Atheist blindness and ignorance of esoteric religion does nothing but bolster the emptiest form of received-view Christianity, because both have reached a steady-state agreement that there are only two possibilities to consider: literalist exoteric religion, and modern ordinary-state atheist rationality.

That false restriction to two unappealing choices causes people in a Christian culture to choose literalist exoteric Christianity, because modern ordinary-state atheist rationality lacks appeal and is unfulfilling to many, and according to the atheist anti-Christians and the literalist Christians, there are only these two possibilities. Bad atheism thus supports bad Christianity; the two are bedfellows.

Atheist negative revisionist history accomplishes nothing but a reinforcement of literalist Christianity: not only does such atheist scholarship pose no threat to received-view Christianity, such atheist scholarship actively reinforces received-view Christianity to the extent that such an atheist worldview is unfulfilling and poses itself as the only possible alternative to the literalist Christian worldview.

The solution to this deadlock of mutually reinforcing false dichotomy is to recover in full detail the history of esoteric religion, including the history of the original esoteric version of Christianity and its Jesus figure.

Doherty doesn't even try to recover such an understanding, Acharya tries but reduces Hellenistic esotericism to an essentially literalist astrotheology (unlike the more complex portrayal of esoteric early Christianity in "Jesus Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism" by David Fideler), and only Freke & Gandy make much significant progress into understanding and revealing the experiential initiation basis of Hellenistic/Gnostic religion-myth-philosophy.

Doherty doesn't disagree with Acharya or Freke & Gandy on the nature of esoteric Hellenism; he just doesn't go into any detail at all. As soon as Acharya and Freke & Gandy go into positive detail of the nature and content of esoteric Hellenism, the no-Jesus research falls to pieces in disagreement: there is little agreement, just minor overlap, between the "original esoteric meaning of Jesus" as portrayed by Acharya versus by Freke & Gandy; they agree that astrotheology is involved, but Acharya limits the meaning to that and does so in a remarkably literalist way, where Jesus is a symbol representing the literal sun.

Per Freke & Gandy, mystic altered state experience was woven into the study of the subject matter studied by the gnostic esotericists, and the sun is itself merely a symbol pointing to something else, something properly considered to be in the realm of high spiritual psychology rather than in the physical realm of outer space. Acharya puts forth materialist symbolism (Jesus = the sun) and incorrectly labels it "esotericism", thus missing the compelling essence.

She portrays literalist astrology as religiously compelling, but such a conception of astrology and religion falls well short of a convincing, adequate explanation.

Doherty doesn't try to explain the positive content of esoteric Christianity, and therefore doesn't fail either; Acharya tries and fails to penetrate to the inner essence of esoteric religion; Freke and Gandy try and succeed -- their model and type of approach to positive explanation of esoteric Christianity and its original versions of the Jesus figure is the right model to develop; it has the right, compelling spirit, grasping basically and essentially what the esoteric Jesus meant and amounted to in earliest Christianity.

In the negative phase of the no-Jesus research project, all three agree on their history; in the positive phase which is forming an alternative conception of the earliest Jesus, Doherty is mute and would accomplish his goals by integrating the esoteric comprehension of Freke & Gandy, while Acharya would accomplish her goals by amplifying and integrating her treatment of mystic altered state experiencing in line with Freke & Gandy, and by taking a less literalist view of astrology as being itself but a symbolic allegorization of psychological revelations and events, and by broadening her understanding of the range of Hellenistic esoteric themes beyond just astrotheology.

Acharya's work in astrotheology might provide some details lacking in Freke & Gandy, but ultimately both thematic domains are needed, as allusions to mystic-state psychological insights and experiences: astrotheology from Acharya and gnostic allegory from Freke & Gandy; we need more multiplicity of thematic domains, all mapped to mystic-state psychological insights and experiences as well as treated in more literalist isolation.

Insofar as the task is an alternative history of the formation of early Christianity, these domains must include not only astrotheology, not only sociopolitical rebellion and anti-Caesar cult, not only gnostic themes, but all these thematic domains and others from the Hellenistic super-syncretistic era, interpenetrating.

References:

Jesus Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism

David Fideler

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0835606961

Knowledge and the Sacred

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0791401774

The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?: How the Pagan Mysteries of Osiris-Dionysus Were Rewritten as the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609807986

The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus

Earl Doherty

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0968601405

Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians

Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400045940

Encyclopedia of Spirituality: Essential Teachings to Transform Your Life

Timothy Freke

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0806999055

The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold

Acharya S

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932813747

The Dark Side of Christian History

Helen Ellerbe

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0964487349

Early Christians unanimous about Jesus historicity -- which view though?

There was no heated on-going battle regarding the existence of Jesus, because everyone believed the same thing about Jesus. But the latter assertion is ambiguous: did everyone believe that Jesus was a historical figure, or that he was not a historical figure? The latter is the case, as argued in van Eysinga's 1930 book "Does Jesus Live, or Has He Only Lived?", which focuses on this very point.

Does Jesus Live, or Has He Only Lived? A Study of the Doctrine of Historicity

van den Bergh van Eysinga

http://www.egodeath.com/eysingadoesjesuslive.htm

1930

There was no debate about the historicity of Jesus in the modern sense, because no one in early Christianity actually held the view that Jesus was historical in the modern sense.

Mythic-Jesus readership allergic to positively reconceiving Christianity

The mythic-Jesus readership mob is allergic and close-minded to positively reconceiving Christianity, even if the books supposedly being discussed propose a positive alternative version of Christianity that needs to be discussed and would help overthrow the bunk, received *version* of Christianity.

Because of the popular refusal to discuss or acknowledge the proposed positive alternative views of ancient initiation religion, the current received version of Christianity remains