Paul/Saul of Tarsus

(Nota bene; Mea culpa. the article on Saul/Paul as a conman [dated June 14th] should have been posted to coincide with the lengthy build-up about psychedelic experiences, but I was 'moved by the spirit' and jumped he proverbial gun by a few months. My bad. Please proceed...)

“Imagine for a moment that your friend writes you a 20-page letter, passionately wanting to share his excitement about a new teacher. This letter has only one topic: your friend’s teacher. But by the end his letter – after all 20 pages of it – you still don’t know one thing about his teacher.”

“Paul presents his theology in just this way. For those of us not lost in (a) delusional world, it might seem impossible to imagine how Paul could avoid telling even one story or parable, or fail to note even one physical trait or personal quality of Jesus, but Paul’s lack of interest or curiosity about the life of this Jesus, does fit a pattern of paranoid delusion.”

 

“…no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.” David Hume

 

“When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived…” David Hume

 

“I must make it clear to you, my friends, that the gospel you heard me preach is no human invention. I did not take it over from any man; no man taught it to me; I received it through revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:11-12)

 

“I must remind you of the gospel that I preached to you: the gospel which you received… First and foremost, I handed on to you the facts which had been imparted to me: That Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures; and that he was buried; that he was raised to like in the third day, according to the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter) and afterwards to the Twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:1-5)

 

It seems evident that if Paul/Saul of Tarsus hadn’t had his ‘experience’ on the Road to Damascus the proliferation of the new sect of Judaism centered on the mythic Jesus of Nazareth might never have happened. Paul/Saul’s life-changing experience – indeed, world-changing experience – was claimed by him to be a revelation from god; one brilliant, blinding vision - the beginning of nearly 30 years of such visions - which set him on the path to proselytizing the new Faith. As all who are familiar with general psychology and/or those who have experienced the effects of psychotropic substances can testify, such ‘experiences’ generally are short-hand for psychotic breaks and hallucinations.

 

So, the question arises: Was Paul/Saul schizophrenic? Was he schizotypal; prone to episodes of visions, hallucinations and psychic breaks? We will never know for certain. However, the early Christian sect/cult may very well have been established on the loony back of Paul and those afflicted with Schizotypal Personality Disorder or STPD. 

 

In psychology, ‘schizotypy’ is a theoretical concept that posits a continuum of personality characteristics and experiences, ranging from normal dissociative, imaginative states to extreme states of mind related to psychosis, especially schizophrenia. In other words, schizotypal folks see and hear things that the rest of us don’t experience unless we’re dosed with psychedelic substances.

 

Since ‘revelations’ such as what Paul/Saul experienced are not considered part of normative behavior and since attributing his Damascus Road Experience to the actions of a deity is mighty far-fetched, we can safely conclude, as reasonable people, that Paul/Saul might well have been afflicted with STPD, Schizotypal Personality Disorder. Believers would scoff and deny that assertion, of course; personal revelation appears to be the keystone which supports the arch of their Belief in god. Nevertheless, STPD offers a more reasonable answer to the reasonable than ‘god did it’.

 

The quote that prefaced this section is from an anonymous friend of Dr. Richard Carrier, who used that quote in a lecture to explain, by proxy, the behavior of Paul as revealed in his epistles to his various congregations; the Galatians, the Romans, the Corinthians, the Philippians, the Thessalonians, etc. Point of fact, Paul/Saul never met Jesus or knew anything about the guy except by his ‘revelations’. Paul/Saul didn’t begin his ‘ministry’ until 40 or 50 CE; a decade after the purported death and resurrection of Jesus. His only association to Jesus of Nazareth was through what might be considered a psychotic break from reality.

 

Now, take a moment to re-read that preface again… 

 

It may be assumed that the phrase ‘paranoid delusion’ in the quote might be replaced with ‘STPD, Schizotypal Personality Disorder’. 

When compared against the authentic Pauline epistles, that evaluation rings quite true. Paul/Saul never refers to the purported earthly life of the Man from Nazareth, his parables, his sayings or his teachings. In fact, Paul/Saul derived his knowledge of the new Faith from the Talmud and other scriptures prevalent and popular at the time – the New Testament Gospels themselves wouldn’t be written until after he had begun his ministry. 

 

Paul’s disparate congregations seemed also to have had several congregants who might have been similarly afflicted with STPD, for Paul/Saul references their own ‘revelations’ and visions of the Savior as evidence of the truth of the new Faith. That’s quite a leap of logic but ‘Faith’ is notorious for side-stepping rational thought. In fact, Paul/Saul encouraged his followers to side-step logic and to share their own revelations, dreams and visions with him. This is typical cultish behavior; followers – particularly adepts and initiates are encouraged to have ‘episodes’ and ‘revelations’ which support the communal ethos. Such encouragement inevitably prompts ‘revelatory’ episodes within cult-members who are more than eager to comply with the wishes of the cult-leader in order to solidify their commitment and adherence to the tenets of the cult.

 

The Church, however, once it was more formally organized, long after Paul/Saul’s proselytizing and martyrdom, proclaimed from Rome that no more ‘unauthorized’ revelations, prophetic dreams or visions would be considered as valid. The new Faith had outgrown its cult status and become a religion. (To quote Frank Zappa, “The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.”) Seems the church ‘Fathers’, once established as a formal religion, had had it with every Tom, Dick and Ruth professing secret messages from incorporeal deities. Such ‘revelations’ were deemed heretical and denounced.

 

But, back in the early days, Paul went so far as to rank the members of the nascent ‘church’ by whether or not they had had ‘revelations’ from god. Apostles were ranked first as they’d purportedly been in the presence of Jesus. (Paul figured that his ‘Road to Damascus Experience’- his ‘revelation’ - was to be considered direct personal contact with the ‘Lord’, and so ranked himself as an Apostle. (Paul/Saul’s ranking was as follows: 1. apostles, 2. prophets, 3. teachers, 4. exorcists (ones with ‘power’) 5. charismatic healers, then, 6. a hodge-podge category of aides, administrators and speakers in tongues.) Once, again, we can hearken back to the prevailing structure of the mystery cults of the period which ranked their adherents and initiates.

 

It has been shown that Paul/Saul chose to rely on ‘revelations’ rather than written accounts. In fact, Paul dismissed written testimony and ‘human traditions’ and chose personal revelation of the only means of understanding and recounting the teachings of the Lord, the Son of Man. Ain’t that curious? He is on record gainsaying written testimony and giving credence to his own visions, hallucinations and dreams and those of trusted followers. His adherents in Galatia would brook no departure from this bizarre creed and were alarmed when accusations were made that Paul had relied on Oral tradition! Paul/Saul forcefully reminded them that he would do no such thing. He respected only the direct, personal revelations (hallucinations, visions, dreams) of the risen Jesus. 

 

And that is what the Church is based on…

And Now: A Dream!

The Atheist Experience 24.34

Posted Aug 27, 2020

 

I had a Dream…

Therefore; the Supernatural is real.

 

Caller to the show insists that the dream (retold below) is evidence of the supernatural.

 

“The Dream started off; I appeared on this earth – which the Bible says is perishable.

I appeared on this earth and I started turning to my side and I made a 360 turn.

When I made my way back to where I started, I appeared in a very beautiful place. There were a bunch of giant trees.

(Now, this is this dream. I don’t think of my dreams as something greater than ‘just a dream’…. But…

I ran when I arrived to this new place. I ran directly in a straight… line… And on my left there was a trench. And across that trench, it was blurry. I could not see what was there.

So, I ran in a straight line which was parallel with this trench. (It was a very deep trench.) And when I turned back round to where I started, I saw a man. At my left. Who had a… A man dressed in a black suit. And he had (a) very specific face, I was like focused in on his face… for a brief few seconds.

Then there was a black horse in front of him. Now, this man…um… and the horse were matched in colors; they had black colors.

He ducked down and he pointed his finger up in the air and he started spinning his hand in a circle. As he spun his hand in a circle, the horse began to follow the movements of his hand and obey his every little tricks that he would do… Then…uh… when the man stood up, the horse stood up and kept spinning as the man kept signaling.

And when the man ducked back down, the horse kept spinning while being ducked down close to the ground.

When the man stuck his palm out, the horse stopped. 

Now… this… this needs to be heard in entirely and in detail for you to understand why I find it compelling.”

 

[Interruption by Host]

 

“The… When I saw what I was looking at, something caught my eye.

Deep in the forest of these trees, there was a white horse running in the distance from the left to the right and he kept… he was running very fast. And I was like “Where is this horse going; what is this horse doing?” He stopped. The horse ran to my right and stopped exactly where I appeared in that place. Then he ran directly towards me and I stuck my hand out and he stopped.”

 

[Host interrupts]

 

Dreamer: “The dream needs to speak for itself…”

 

Host: “No, it doesn’t.” (terminates call)

 

Of course, it’s not only the Faithful in Christianity who have ‘personal revelation’. In Hinduism, the feeling that one has encountered the ‘true self’ is expressed in the idea that ātman (the individual self) and Brahman (the cosmic self: literally, the breath [brah] of the universe) are one and the same. This should be considered as tantamount to a Christian Believer being filled with the ‘Holy Spirit’.

 

Am I asserting that no such thing as the supernatural exists? No. I’m not. (I am but I’m not willing to argue that point here…) Such ‘experiences’ might well be rooted in the supernatural, however unlikely. I only assert that such visions, hallucinations or ‘revelations’ are experienced when one is under the influence of mind-altering chemicals as well as under emotional duress and physical stress willingly undergone by the ascetics and many saints. The studies at Johns-Hopkins referenced above provide a step to understanding and quantifying experiences such as this.

 

Pardon if I have rambled on a bit long on this. In part, it is to rationalize and understand my own psychedelic experiences but it is also, more importantly, to address the fervency with which ‘Believers’ place value in their ‘personal revelations’. As stated before, ‘Believers’ invariably fall back on citing their revelations (godly epiphanies) when justifying their adherence to their Faith; faith based on a vague, warm-and-cuddly, totally awesome feeling. It is akin to building their heavenly condo over a sink hole.

 

IMHO

Revelations: Mysticism and other stuff

The term "mysticism" has Ancient Greek origins with various historically determined meanings. Derived from the Greek word μύω múō, meaning "to close" or "to conceal", mysticism referred to the biblical, liturgical, spiritual, and contemplative dimensions of early and medieval Christianity.

 

The term ‘mystic’ is derived from the Greek noun mystes, which originally designated an initiate of a secret cult or mystery religion.

 

The philosopher, Williams James, offered ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’. He asserted that there were seven criteria: 

1. Ineffability. 

2. A Noetic Quality. states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect.  

3. Transiency. 

4. Passivity. 

5. Unity of opposites (a sense of Oneness, Wholeness or Completeness). 

6. Timelessness 

7. A feeling that one has somehow encountered “the true self”.

 

Sound familiar? To those who have had intense psychedelic experiences, it probably should.

 

Never having experienced a hallucination before (or any departure from normal brain function), the fundamentalist, orthodox Believer will naturally leap to the conclusion that their schizotypal, fugue-state ‘vision’ is one that has revealed the supernatural to them; something beyond the normal scope of their experience. They leap to the assumption and the immediate acceptance of their hallucination as a revelation; an experience of the nature of ‘god’.  

 

Consider the number of saints and holy people of the Christian Faith who are renowned for their revelations, their visions of the transcendent, the ‘Almighty’. The 19th century mystic, St. Faustina, for example; her apparitions of Jesus Christ inspired the Roman Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy and earned her the title of "Secretary of Divine Mercy". Throughout her life, she reported having visions of Jesus and conversations with him. 

 

Sure, schizophrenia is a problem unless your ‘episodes’ are with Jesus, then, it’s a blessing and a gift.

 

St. Teresa of Avila, was a 16th century, Spanish mystic and ascetic who saw visions of Hell. In 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that Jesus Christ had presented himself to her in bodily form, though invisible. (That’s quite a trick; physical yet invisible!) Her visions lasted nearly continuously for more than two years. In another vision, a seraph (an angel!) drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing her an ineffable spiritual and bodily pain.

 

Theresa testified; ‘I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.’ 

 

No, nothing sexual or masochistic about all that thrusting of a spear into her moaning body. Naw…

 

Consider that each of these people may have been schizotypal personalities who experienced a brain abnormality falsely interpreted as a revelation of the supernatural. None of these people could be examined in modern MRI machines, of course, so no data can ever be gotten to provide evidence that St Paul or the other visionaries were schizophrenic or schizotypal. However, other assessments can be and should be made by qualified neuroscientists.  For instance, according to neurologists and psychiatrists who took an interest in her symptomatology, St. Teresa Avila, known for her ‘raptures’ (which sometimes involved levitation) may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. 

 

Pardon this further indulgence but there is a point to be made by all this: much of the Christian Faith was built upon the visions and revelations of god and the supernatural. St. Paul, for instance, with his visions of Jesus and his infamous Road to Damascus episode was a cornerstone of the early church. 

 

Note, too that visions were often seen by ‘ascetics’; those who practice extreme self-denial or self-mortification for religious reasons. Indeed, the Catholic Church has an entire category of ascetics who lived and prayed atop columns; ‘stylites’. (No kidding.) ‘Simeon Stylites’, was an ascetic who stood in stress position atop a column in Syria where he starved himself. Simeon is venerated as a saint by the Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic Churches. He is known formally as ‘Simeon Stylites the Elder’ in order to distinguish him from ‘Simeon Stylites the Younger’, ‘Simeon Stylites III’, and ‘Symeon Stylites of Lesbos’, all adherents to this bizarre form of asceticism.

 

(Sort of a franchise.)

 

Not to brag, but I, myself, have had a couple of ‘visions’; one I have already related of a vision of the solar system while I was on a mystery substance. Another was unprovoked by psychotropic chemical when I was about 19. I had a dream – a prophetic vision, in the parlance of the Holy – in which a glorious, beautiful world was revealed; one of massive ziggurats and temples bathed in a warm, golden light. No visions of the torments of hell or the glory of heaven but it was a lovely, captivating dream that filled me with a sense of peace and what I very well might have considered the presence of the divine. If I’d only seen the Sacred Heart like St. Gertrude the Great in the 14th century or been pierced by the spear of an angel, I might be considered for sainthood; or committed to a loony bin. Or maybe not; St. Gertrude, after all saw both St. John the Evangelist and Jesus in a single day.

 

By the time I’d had that prophetic vision of the golden ziggurats and temples, I’d already experienced the effects of LSD and cannabis. I understood completely that my revelatory dream was nothing more than that; a dream. Perhaps the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelations are nothing more than the dreams of schizotypal people; dreamers who thought they’d tapped into the supernatural. Perhaps the bizarre and entrancing poetry of their visions should be seen not as experiences of the supernatural but rather simply as dreams of an abnormal brain; or a brain acting abnormally under the physical and emotional stress of asceticism or drugs coupled with the profound delusions of there being a ‘god’.