[MD] False Messiah

[david buchanan]

SA asked dmb:
Here it states "...a timeless myth encoding perennial teachings now appeared 
to be a historical account of a once-only event in time.  ...sooner or later 
it would be interpreted as historical fact." Isn't it a historical fact?  
...If your point here isn't within my question, maybe it has to do with the 
'once-only event in time'. Because I do have a problem with that 
understanding of the event of Christ.  I don't think the event of Christ is 
reserved for that historical person only.  I believe that's why Zen or Chan 
took off in China.  The focus upon what somebody did long ago, takes away 
from
the experience that any human being could have any time, any place. ...This 
is what I was referring to.  Maybe you explain further.

dmb replies:
I think you have the right idea. The point of the quote in question 
(reproduced below) is not to deny the existence of an historical person, but 
rather to criticize the misinterpretation of the myth, to criticized the 
confusion of myth and history. And its not that history is true and myth is 
not true, but rather they are different kinds of truth and mistaking one for 
the other causes all kinds of confusion and misunderstanding. In that 
respect, the quote in question is more or less consistant with all the other 
quotes offered that day. "This myth came to be interpreted as historical 
fact and Literalist Christianity was the product", as it says in "Jesus and 
the Lost Goddess". Or, as Joe Campbell puts it, "Our theology, therefore, 
begins from the point of view of waking consciousness and Aristotelian 
logic; whereas, on another level of consciousness - and this, the level to 
which all religions must finally refer - the ultimate mystery transcends the 
laws of dualistic logic, causality and space-time."

As I understand it, this sort of confusion is made possible, at least in 
part, because sometimes there are actual, historical people who live life in 
such a way that they closely resemble mythic heros. In time, some of these 
figures become legends, become mythologized. Whatever may have been missing 
in their actual life is added later by storytellers and such. Whatever flaws 
they may have had are soon forgotten, etc. Campbell is convinced that Paul's 
conversion on the road to Damascus was basically a realization that Christ's 
life could be read as the hero of a mystery cult, like Orpheus and countless 
others, who were known at the time. By contrast with the historical "only 
begotten son" idea, there are said to be many Buddhas or even that all 
beings have a Buddha nature. Not too long ago I took a trip to check out a 
Buddhist graduate school in San Fransisco. They opened the meeting my 
chanting "all the names of the KNOWN Buddhas". It was set to some nice sitar 
music and went on for ten or fifteen minutes. And I like the implied on that 
there are also UNKNOWN Buddhas. See, the problem with an historical 
interpretation is not just that there is then only one, unique son of God, 
but also that God is a supernatural force that intervenes in human history, 
that human history is a cosmic battle of good and evil, that life on earth 
is nasty and low, corrupt and demonic, that every human being is born with 
original sin, that spirituality is all about avoid eternal toruture in the 
lake of fire and other such theological nightmares.

And of course the saddest thing about this persistant misinterpretation is 
that the Western religions tend to prevent a correct interpretation and 
thereby forestalls a healthy spiritual life among the faithful. It actually 
retards or prevents psycho-spiritual development.

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