I listened to a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris in Vancouver on June 23, 2018, where Harris asked this seemingly simple question (which had been previously asked of Peterson): "Was Jesus literally resurrected?" Peterson said it would take him 40 hours to answer that question. Harris offered his own succinct answer: "Almost certainly not."
It sounds like a pretty woowoo thing to say, really smacking of the "New Age." But this seems to be the skeleton in the closet that even physicists don't want to admit. But some have.
Over the past several months I've explored the nature of the human ego as it relates to spirituality in many of the major religious and spiritual traditions, as well as in science. As I noted in a series of posts, it seems that a recurrent theme throughout many of them is the idea of sacrificing ego, overcoming ego, transcending ego, even experiencing a kind of "death" of the ego, so as to realize the true nature of the self, of reality, and of God. We might ask then, what good is the ego? Is it all bad? Do we want to destroy our ego? Is that true spirituality?
A friend recently shared a video clip with me from an event on June 23, 2018, which was a public conversation and debate between psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson and philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, moderated by biologist Bret Weinstein. It's an interesting discussion between a theist (Peterson) and an atheist (Harris) on the nature of God, which I think begins to get at the heart of the issue from both sides.
Many religious people believe that the spirit or soul is the ego-self, our personality, the person we think we are in our heads, our psychological "self," with all our memories and experiences and relationships, etc. But none of this existed at our birth.
The word mystical is derived from the Greek mystikos meaning "secret," and muo meaning "concealed." Why all the mystery? Why is it concealed? Why do people keep it a secret? This seems like shady business. But is it?
Many ancient texts, including the Bible, note that seeing God brings death to the person. But then we also read of some who claim they saw God and lived to tell about it. What's going on? Which is it?
On my morning run I listened to this podcast with host Michael Taft of Deconstructing Yourself talking with Buddhist teacher Culadasa (John Yates), author of The Mind Illuminated. It was a great discussion of the deepest realizations that come through meditation, from a Buddhist point of view.
The ideas we have about God are not God. Any idea, thought, or concept never was and never will be God. They may be helpful symbols that point to God, metaphors, analogies, allegories, images, but they are not God as God is. They will inevitably conflict with one another and be fallible, as every symbol eventually fails at actually being the thing it is supposed to represent. The symbol is never the thing-in-itself.
If this "self" is the source of our Fall, of our problems, of our separation from God, of our illusions of reality, of errors, sins, and delusions, then it can become very easy to begin to dislike this "self." It can turn into forms of self-hatred.