Preachers of Ignorance

The revelations that founded an ancient religious tradition are historical: they take place in time, and insofar as they are intelligible to us, have a literary "form." They have a context, they are determined by events. Transcendent as a prophet's visions may be, they are transfigured versions of the real world the prophet sees, and they are expressed in the language the prophet speaks.

Human truths are not like mathematical ones. They are so complex as to be inseparable from their historical setting, and they can only be understood through historical means. Any attempt to separate the eternal from the temporal results, not in abstractions, but in platitudes — usually moral ABC's.

Thus the great and foundational revelations of our faiths are meaningfully accessible to us today only through their historical documents. There is no alternative way to the original inspiration. Without the text, all is lost. Paleolithic and Neolithic religion, despite the great light shed on it by a rich archaeological and artistic record, and the parallels that can be drawn with contemporary archaic societies, are lost to us. Lascaux and Willendorf can only be understood in the most general terms, and only a fool or a knave would claim to possess their esoteric secrets. The same is true of scriptural truth: it requires learning, it cannot be simply intuited.

Nor can it be seriously maintained that an authentic connection to a spiritual tradition can be accessed through prayer, meditation, medication, inspiration, ecstasy, or any other text-free means. Though such activities may be rich in personal results, and may enhance scriptural knowledge already possessed, of themselves they impart nothing of value as regards any religious tradition. 

Americans in particular are susceptible to self-delusion on this head. The American genius for fresh insights and new beginnings is here frequently misapplied. The Zen masters many Americans admire as examples of spontaneous religious insight are nothing of the kind. Their apparent disregard of tradition is the outcome of the most scrupulous study of a long and literary heritage. Nor were Moses, Isaiah or Jesus naive exponents of native crazy-wisdom. Nor was Whitman for that matter, to cite the most successful of the American prophet-bards. And, to bring matters home, even an individual of great faith, moral distinction and mystical gifts, with no better access to the tradition than a middling acquaintance with an adequate translation, will have little of value to say in relation to the tradition.

George Fox, despite a remarkable familiarity with the King James Version, was otherwise rather an ignorant man, and his religious writings are only interesting as explications of his particular style of Quakerism: their value as regards Christian tradition is slight, and as regards the tradition of prophecy, which he claimed to continue — negligible. Ibn Arabi, who was unquestionably a great mystic, despite being on the most intimate terms with Allah, offers few observations on Biblical tradition that are not shallow, because Mohammed dismissed the Old and New Testaments as "forgeries" and set them inaccessibly outside the Islamic canon. On the other hand, Aquinas, a man of vast learning as well as tremendous literary, philosophical and mystical insight, demonstrates throughout his writings a precise grasp of Old Testament concepts that is rarely if ever met even today in scholars of Judaism and Early Christianity. He may fairly regarded as a profound continuator of the most ancient Hebrew prophetic tradition.

All this by way of repulsing the claims, universally encountered among "believers," that emotional piety, by itself, is somehow superior to a clear and intellectual understanding of the texts.  Though a purely academic grasp of the texts yields a severely limited connection with the tradition, a purely pietistic approach yields no connection at all. Without a real grasp of the written tradition, piety is not religion at all, it is just sentimentality directed  towards religion. 
  
An esoteric chain of transmission is likewise inadequate to connect us to the great religious traditions of the past. The claims of the Buddhist and Catholic Churches to primordial holiness and insight, passed on from generation to generationi,  are simply wishful thinking, Traditions may last relatively unchanged for even hundreds of years, but only on the condition that no great changes occur in the physical circumstances of those who continue them. Changes in technological level, contact with other cultures, not to mention wars, plagues and spontaneous innovations, all disrupt, often irrevocably, the flow of tradition. A little exposure to Paul, Aquinas and Descartes, or for that matter a comparison of the Dhammapada with the Heart Sutra, will explode the myth of unbroken tradition. The notion that an oral and personal tradition is likely to preserve the essentials more scrupulously than the literary succession is untenable. If it were true, a recapitulation of the original beliefs would at some point in the course of a millennium resurface in the literary record.  

The situation may be observed over a far shorter period, and in a more pertinent area, in regard to the Hebrew Prophets, who operated as a kind of guild in the time of the Books of Kings, and whose flow of inspiration, in traditional form, ceased with the exile to Babylon. The chain of esoteric transmission was there indisputably broken, in the midst of  the most august religious tradition of the west. Thereafter the transmission of prophecy was taken up again, but this time in a literary tradition, by authors who evinced both the indirectness and the authenticity of their inspiration by writing an Apocalyptic literature, like the Books of Enoch, which the authors ascribed to persons who lived in primordial times. The presupposition of Apocalyptic literature is that the ancients must be gone to for esoteric initiation: the access to those ancients, and the outcome of it, is entirely literary. The society as a whole of post-prophetic Israel shared this opinion: they no longer looked to, or even looked for, prophets, but attended to the teachings of persons expert in the religious literature. Nor did Jesus owe anything to an esoteric transmission. Jesus' credibility did not depend on his miracles and exorcisms, which merely placed him in the ranks of wonder-workers, who were little better than popular entertainers. Nor did he or his followers claim his and John's actual connection Essenes — which the New Testament is at some pains to conceal. It was his teaching, his compelling insights into scripture, that made him a considerable figure. Esoteric transmission is not sufficiently durable to survive history. Written tradition patently is.

All this is not to say that one needs only the skills of a philologist to draw nigh unto the God of the Bible. Though such skills are prerequisite for any authoritative teaching, they are in themselves far from adequate. Even if one possessed the Q source in full, and had the Aramaic to read it, one would at first be confronted only by a possibly fascinating but probably unappealing Jesus whose ideas, as he presented them, were rarely applicable in the modern world.

Much of what he has to say would only be of value to fill in details of his historical context: the circumstances and beliefs that defined him and his contemporaries.Some of the ideas most important to him, such as his teaching on divorce, would strike us as quaint at best. But amid much context one would surely find some archetypal and trans-historical content of his teaching, the images and philosophic insights which still speak to us with vivid reality,as in the Sermon on the Mount.
 
But supposing we correctly identify the passages that can speak to us. It will take poetic power to translate them into a form that can, without injury to the original meaning, be immediately understood. In selections then, Isaiah or Jesus can still speak directly to us, and this is the utmost that scholarship can perform: it makes possible a vivid, real, but one-sided contact with the tradition. The prophet speaks, and where possible, we hear .

A possibility for genuine dialogue with the tradition comes through figurative or metaphoric reapplication of verses, revalorizing them with a meaning they did not originally contain, but which is a legitimate expansion of their original sense and intent. And this is a miracle no purely academic skill can perform. As an example, consider this passage in Isaiah 24, which describes a deadly heat visited on the land in recompense for the people's sins, 

The land is bleaching under the sun, pales as if sick with sorrow,
the world wears out, dries up, discolors,
noble, commoner, all fade under the heat.

It isn’t just the time of year — it’s the time of reckoning!
The land was desecrated under its inhabitants! 
They broke God’s holy law, they twisted the statutes,
till the Eternal Covenant, the promise that the rains would fall
in season, the agreement between heaven and earth, was annulled.
 
That’s what kindled this heat! Do you dare expect you’ll see clouds again?
That’s why hot haze eats at earth like a curse. 
The guilty with their land are drubbed under sunlight.
That’s why the world burns all punishing summer, why so
few still walk these streets of endless August.


which the KJV renders thus:

4) The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughtie people of the earth doe languish. 5) The earth also is defiled vnder the inhabitants thereof: because they haue transgressed the lawes, changed the ordinance, broken the euerlasting couenant. 6)
Therefore hath the curse deuoured the earth, and they that dwell therin are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left. Isaiah 24

 (The KJV is literal to the point of opaqueness: to make the verses intelligible I had to weave the commmentary into the translation. At this distance in time, one cannot always translate word-for-word; one must translate idea-by-idea.)

This was by no means a foretelling of global warming, yet if one were to apply it to the impending eco-catastrophe it would be so appropriate to the original sense and intention of Isaiah's words that it would be fair to say that here Isaiah lives and speaks anew. This is genuine dialogue with scripture, and evidence that God can still speak to us.

A third possibility exists. We can simply project our ideas onto the text, without much regard for the original meaning. Here the tradition does not address us, neither do we converse with it. Rather, we speak one sidedly to it. Though of course this is merely play: such clever quotation of scripture does not allow us to peer through the lens of tradition, but merely to admire our own reflection on its surface.

Scholarship is of course not a prerequisite of faith or a good and living religious practice. But those who presume to preach the word of God had best have done their homework first. Neither robes and pompous titles, nor the arrogant humility of the "sharers of feelings," nor the desire of the congregation for flattering psychological pap excuse ignorant exposition of the word of God. But just such profanation is nowadays the rule. And this preaching of ignorance is the first object my ministry attacks.

Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself

 Jewish and Christian Civil Rights activists in the 60's

This is is my first online sermon, and by it I hope to validate my claim the scriptures are meaningful in the modern world only when they are read with both spiritual purpose and a grasp of the historical and philological fine detail.  

The commandment to love one's neighbor may constitute the Biblical tradition's greatest claim to moral authority. And indeed, formulation of this principle in Scripture is the strongest assertion of its validity. If its being in the Bible doesn't make it so, one would be hard put to say what does. For there is no scientific justification for any moral principle, except the principle of "survival of the fittest," which is can only be called moral in a metaphorical sense.

The silence of secular Liberalism in the face of Fascism in the early twentieth century demonstrated that no purely rational argument can be made for any moral law. And the moral anarchy of Twenty-First century Americans — a mixture of cowardice and selfishness, protected from without by the police and from within by anti-depressants, is likewise a very adequate indictment of a world that has "outgrown" God and acknowledges no moral imperative beyond one's own wishes. 

But what does loving one's neighbor really mean? Out of context, the line seems no more than an exhortation to be vaguely and generally nice — which is fine advice for little girls, but hardly a moral agenda that will see us through life in the modern world. 

The passage is best known from Matthew 22, where a Pharisee asks Jesus 
 
36) Master, which is the great Commandement in the Law? 37) Iesus sayd vnto him, Thou shalt loue the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soule, and with all thy minde. 38) This is the first and great Commandement. 39) And the second is like vnto it, Thou shalt loue thy neighbour as thy selfe. 40) On these two Commandements hang all the Law and the Prophets. 


Mark 12 gives an alternative version, with further details that feel very authentic.

28) And one of the Scribes came, and hauing heard them reasoning together, and perceiuing that he had answered them well, asked him which is the first commandement of all. 29) And Iesus answered him, The first of al the commandements is, Heare, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord: 30) And thou shalt loue the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soule, and with all thy minde, and with all thy strength: This is the first commandement. 31) And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt loue thy neighbour as thy selfe: there is none other commandement greater then these. 32) And the Scribe said vnto him, Well master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God, and there is none other but he. 33) And to loue him with all the heart, and with all the vnderstanding, and with all the soule, and with all the strength, and to loue his neighbour as himselfe, is more then all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. 34) And when Iesus saw that he answered discreetly, hee saide vnto him, Thou art not far from the kingdome of God. And no man after that durst aske him any question.


In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) , Jesus gives the injunction to love one's neighbor a  more extreme interpretation
 
43) Yee haue heard, that it hath beene said, Thou shalt loue thy neighbour, and hate thine enemie: 44) But I say vnto you, Loue your enemies, blesse them that curse you, doe good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully vse you, and persecute you: 45) That yee may be the children of your father which is in heauen: for he maketh his sunne to rise on the euill and on the good, and sendeth raine on the iust, and on the vniust. 46) For if yee loue them which loue you, what reward haue yee? Doe not euen the Publicanes the same? 47) And if yee salute your brethren only, what do you more then others? Doe not euen the Publicanes so? 48) Be yee therefore perfect, euen as your father, which is in heauen, is perfect.

One must be on guard in using Matthew's account, since it has an anti-Jewish coloring which would have made Jesus sputter. The Jewish scriptural injunction to love one's neighbor (which we will consider below) does not contain any suggestion that one should hate one's enemies, and the remark about "saluting your brethren only," that is, only acknowledging by a greeting the existence and humanity of persons who are of your own race, is a common Greek slur against the Jews as unduly exclusive —that is, an attack on the Jewish unwillingness to fully assimilate their identity into polytheistic Hellenism.

(After these observations regarding the bias of the Gospels, which tend to make Christians quite uncomfortable, one may wonder why we are to the trouble of searching for truth in such muddied waters? Because the truth there is great. The Gospel authors preserve a great many sayings which ring true as words of Jesus, who was a rabbi and a messiah. His uncompromising morality, his boundless and tragic idealism, his sense of God's immanence, his youthful energy, his belief in the impossible, and his gift for the startling epigram — to experience these is worth the trouble of sifting through the Gospels.)   

We will omit from a  consideration of Luke's (10: 25-37) version of the saying, since there it is subordinate to an invidious comparison between the Jew learned in the law (a "lawyer" in the King James version) and the "good Samaritan."  The idea is that though the Samaritans did not recognize the validity of Jewish oral law, they were morally superior to Jews who did. The fact that Jesus himself recognized Jewish law as everlastingly valid is something Luke was at pains to minimize.

Likewise we will omit Paul's references to loving one's neighbor (Galatians 5, Romans 13.) Paul uses the term "love" to describe the whole character and activity of one who has achieved Pauline gnosis. And though that's a fascinating and worthwhile subject of study, it has little to do with this saying of Jesus.

Similarly we will pass over the reference to loving one's neighbor in James 2, since it is there used to refute to Paul's formulation. For James the Just, as for Paul, love is a "law of freedom" (nomon tes eleutherias,) but James says love in action is obedience to Jewish law, and that its guidance makes one truly free — while for Paul, freedom means freedom from the strictures of the Torah.

Assessing our evidence, we see from the Gospels that Jesus gave special importance to the command to love one's neighbor, without however greatly clarifying how it was to be practically pursued and realized in detail. Neither Paul nor James explain the matter even in passing: clearly, none of them thought it in need of explanation.

The implication is that the actual verses, in context, were sufficiently clear and well-known. Let us look now at the passage from Leviticus 19:

14) Thou shalt not curse the deafe, nor put a stumbling blocke before the blind, but shalt feare thy God: I am the Lord. 15) Ye shall doe no vnrighteousnes in iudgement; thou shalt not respect the person of the poore, nor honour the person of the mightie: but in righteousnesse shalt thou iudge thy neighbour. 

16) Thou shalt not goe vp and downe as a tale-bearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the Lord. 17) Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sinne vpon him. 18)Thou shalt not auenge nor beare any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt loue thy neighbor as thy selfe: I am the Lord.

The chapter as a whole focuses on proper consideration for others, a consideration which depends only on their humanity. Neither their physical nor their economic state is to be regarded. Rather advanced morality for the late Bronze age! And indeed, a morality that has so far proved to demanding for the modern world.

Verses 16 to 18, which most concern us here, are translated with opaque literalness by the KJV, and are worth re-translating for the sake of clarity. I make the translation with full accuracy, but idea by idea rather than word by word:

16) If you have a grievance against someone else, don't speak against them behind their back: malicious gossip and slander may have results as serious as murder. And don't just keep it in, cherishing hatred in your heart.  17) Tell the other person to their face. Once they know, they will either make amends, or the sin will upon them alone. 18) Don't try and get even, don't silently resent. Love others well enough to expect well of them: at least give them the chance to put things right. This is the word of God.

The passage is not about "love" as we use the term. "Thou shalt love" (w'ahavta) here means  to show respect and good-will. And that's about what we should expect from a passage that describes in detail how to verbalize resentment and assert one's injured dignity.

Sentimental piety in the style of the nineteenth century is not to be met with here, or anywhere else in the book of Leviticus or the sayings of Jesus. The actual work of treating people decently even when they have angered you is much harder than just pretending to like them.

But that's the teaching of the rabbis, and, presented with somewhat more intensity, that's the teaching of Jesus. It is, as Jesus said, "the Law and the Prophets."

Why the Bible?

 During the thousand years during which the Bible was composed, a great number of important religious, moral and metaphysical questions were either resolved or formulated so adequately as to define further discussion. There is a relatively standard progression in human literary culture, from mythic-epic through a classical historical and philosophical period, and into a first great age of skepticism and disillusion after which the culture's archetypal forms are revalorized to accommodate new ideas.  Until this thousand-year development is completed, one does not have a civilization, secular or religious.

In short, unless we are rooted in a developed tradition, one will have to re-invent the (prayer) wheel. A look at New Age and NeoPagan religion shows just how pathetic and ridiculous a religion born yesterday will be. Admittedly every religious tradition was once in its infancy, but infancy is not the same as infantilization.

I do not claim any special priority for the Biblical tradition. If one possessed Chinese language and culture, one might with equal success become a Taoist or a Mahayana Buddhist.

For the Westerner, however, the Biblical tradition is the only real tradition we have real access to.

How that access works, and how the scriptures may be brought into genuine, adaptive dialogue with us today, is the subject of next week's sermon.

Idolatry

Woodcut of the Golden Calf episode, from the Liber Chronicarum of Hartmann Schedel

The most profound and modern re-understanding of idolatry is to be found in the libretto of Schoenberg's opera Moses und Aron. It's not easy listening, and it isn't easy understanding either.

The idolators of the modern world aren't people who pray to little figurines. They tend to be people who describe themselves as "spiritual" rather than religious. Or people who don't believe in God because the world doesn't seem fair (it isn't). People who want a god who can be manipulated by promises and prayers, or who is limited enough to be either good or evil. 

In Schoenberg's opera, the Israelites sing this as they turn to golden calf:

Rejoice O Israel!

Gods, images such as the eyes long to see,

gods, lords of the senses!

Ye gods, whose dear visiblity

and presence vouch for certainties!

Your limits and measurability

demand nothing counter to our feelings.

Gods perceptible.

gods wholly comprehensible:

happiness rewards virtue, 

justice punishes evil,

how clear the consequences of our actions!

Gods, show yourselves, your power!

Rejoice O Israel, be glad.

Bright and colorful is the present,

dull and gloomy was Moses' eternity!

Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, act two  scene two 

Stumbling Block

Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD. Lev. 19:14


The Bible is itself a stumbling block to many. Often the scriptures are only known through the ignorant interpretations of bigoted persons. A very dramatic case in point is the matter of homosexuality, which the liberalization of marriage law has brought so much to the fore.

On one side, there are the liberal apologists who maintain that that the Bible doesn't mean what it very explicitly says. And here the  conservatives seem to have the moral high ground, since the Bible does say what it says, was at some pains to write it down, and most likely means it. Further, and fairly, the conservatives assert that one cannot "pick and choose" which Biblical injunctions are to be taken seriously,  consulting only personal taste and social convenience.

If one counters that the compilation of the Bible was nothing but picking and choosing, editing this, emphasizing that, reinterpreting something else — that's all quite true, but once the scriptures meet the light of historical criticism, they seem to lose all their magic. They appear a farrago of history literature and religious speculation with no particular claim to our reverence. And the fact that that they have a special and central role in our civilization is nothing but an appeal to authority — the weakest of arguments. In any case, when the Bible is viewed like this, as literature, there is no particular reason left for caring what it says.

Are these our only choices? Bible as stern moral rule book or Bible as primitive experimental novel?

The Bible is an inspired document. The spirit of God does speak through it. Through it, thorough the medium of human beings, limited by their time and knowledge. Some of its ideas, like the injunction to be considerate to the blind and deaf, are so far in advance of the morality of the Bronze Age, (and so far from "givens" even today), that they make a good argument for the Bible's divine inspiration.

Some matters, like the homophobic pronouncements in Leviticus, are simply an expression of the primitive human fear and distrust of whatever is different of unusual. The unusual is always regarded with awe in archaic societies, and declared either holy or accursed — that is, boundaries are put around it. Now human beings have always recognized the numinous, dangerous and transformative quality of sex, and this is why marriage is considered a sacrament. An anxiety at the power of sex is the underlying source for the vehemence of the Biblical strictures regarding sexual behavior. Sociological and historical factors gave the thinking its luckless cast.

So the famous prohibitions of homosexuality in Leviticus have meaning for us today primarily as a historical document of certain archaic attitudes towards sex, which were characteristic of the Middle East more than two thousand years ago. One would be hard put to explain these passages in a way that would put them into a more compelling or appealing light.

This is the point where liberal apologists, if they really know their Bible, trot out the love of David and Jonathan, and perhaps the androgynous description of the original human in Genesis chapter one ("male and female created he them.")

Well, that's really less than candid. The Bible is, by our standards, despite a few appealing inconsistencies, a document with small but real homophobic content. It was composed over a thousand year period beginning in twelve hundred BC. Need one point out that there are many things in it that are hopelessly out of date? that the historical context requires as much translation as the language for it to be comprehensible to us?   

Those who take the Bible literally, to enjoin moral attitudes that mainly express primitive fear of sex —  can't be said to understand the Bronze Age context but rather to recreate it. As if the techniques of Method Acting were applied to Biblical history. The results are as quaint, at best.  

And much the same can be said of those who despise the Bible because it doesn't match the moral views of Boston in 2013. The live in a world with no sense of the past, just as the fundamentalists live in one without a present.

"Picking and choosing" among the Bible's verses, on the basis of personal taste, is not intellectually respectable. Understanding the language, context and motivation of every line, distinguishing between what is limited by time and place and what stands out above the stream of history and has transcendent meaning, is demanding.


Not all of theology is easy. But this much should be:

The Bible has many wonderful things to offer. Dating tips are not among them.

 

Who We Are, What We Believe

We honor the succession of Hebrew prophets, from Moses through Isaiah to Jesus and John, regarding these last as apocalyptic King and Priest in the Essene tradition.  We do not hold with the Pauline theology of Christ. We regard Jesus as a great prophet and a royal descendant of David, but a mortal man. And we see in his entirely human nature a promise of what human beings can be. Though we do not accept Paul's view of Jesus nor the Gospels insofar as they are influenced by his formal theology of redemptive suffering, we consider the Pauline writings inspired.

We follow in the tradition of the the Essenes and Ebionite Church of James the Just. We consider Tabor's "The Jesus Dynasty" the standard historical record, and base our worship especially on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Q, the Didache, Isaiah and Zachariah. We accept the Bible as the basic body of scripture, a wunderkammer  of history, lore, edification and revelation, though we read it critically, and understand it historically before accepting its content dogmatically.
 
Our basic religious service involves sitting meditation to blow bright the coals of mental acuity and spiritual attentiveness.Liturgy consists of readings from the Bible: we make use of the 1611 King James Bible, with its language of unsurpassed resonance. There is brief spiritual explication of the text we read, with questions and discussion: not a sermon passively heard. We all share in turn our experiences of the past week as they relate to our search of spiritual meaning in our daily lives. We consider the study of the scriptures a duty for all believers, and consider unbiased historical treatments, philosophical writings like those of Aquinas and Schelling, and traditional expansions such as the Mishna, as canonical. We embrace the richness of the entire Western scriptural tradition, including its art and music.

 We have no building, no paid clergy, no tithes, due or fees. We meet in living rooms, like friends — which is what we are. We consider this "poverty" a fixed principle, the very root of Essene practice.
 
As this is not for money, so it is not for everyone. We are building a community of persons with a similar commitment to living a spiritual life in the Western Scriptural Tradition. There is an interview process before one may attend, and a period of attendance as a hearer, participating only partially, before one becomes a member. We believe in being  open to the public, but not at the mercy of the public. Whoever we accept in spiritual fellowship we open our hearts and homes to: thus we exercise discretion without intending offence to any.

 We honor the diversity of spiritual gifts. We respect most highly those who contribute the most to our shared spiritual life. We are meritocratic, and we do not consider strong personal charisma an especially valuable spiritual trait. As Paul teaches in Romans 12:

Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another; Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; 

Though we have no hierarchy, we do have structure. Decisions affecting organization are made by consensus, which is practical since the group will not have more than thirteen members before forming a new and affiliated group.

Finally, we call ourselves mystical and apocalyptic because mystical experience means seeing the world in its eternal aspect: beyond time. It is indeed the "End of Days." And the attainment of mystical experience is our goal.

Although we do not propound a literal belief in scriptural mythology of the apocalypse, much of it is made literal before our eyes, as frozen mountains melt and nuclear conflagration becomes every year more probable. In such times the apocalyptic preaching of Jesus, John and the Essenes has much to say to us.