04.29.06
That’s it: confuse the public
Armstrong’s book is a real puzzle. She can’t be that dumb, and isn’t.
But to equate Yahweh, nibbana, brahman, and the ‘Way’ is simply incorrect thinking. To be kind. The rest of the quote has as many other errors.
Is there any way to correct this nonsense spreading in thousands of readers?
I note in passing that the powers that be wouldn’t even reprint Jaspers’ original text, or let my text have any publicity at all (they are really scared of the eonic effect).
Armstrong’s book serves the public (propaganda) interest: keep the public totally confused.
Armstrong also contends that sages, from the Old Testament prophets to the Buddha to Confucius were less interested in theological speculation than in remaking the inner life of the individual. Only by achieving what the Greeks called ekstasis, a “stepping out” of the self-bound consciousness, could men and women apprehend a higher reality, whether it be the Yahweh of the Hebrews, the nibbana (nirvana) of the Buddhists, the brahman of the Hindus or the “Way” of the Taoists.
“It was not a question of discovering your belief in God’ first and then living a compassionate life,” she writes. “The practice of disciplined sympathy would itself yield intimations of transcendence.”
Finding the common threads in these widely disparate traditions leads Armstrong, whose erudition is truly impressive, to present a formidable mass of detail. She seems equally at home describing the elaborate sacrifices of India’s ancient Aryans, the turbulent history of China during the Warring States period, the nuances of prophetic utterance during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews and Plato’s abstruse doctrine of the “forms.”
But despite her organizational and writing skills, the 469 pages here are heavy going. At times, Armstrong strains to link the purported similarities among traditions, particularly when the Greek tradition is involved.
The Greek form of paganism would not last, of course, and philosophical rationalism cannot be considered religious except in the most tenuous metaphorical sense. But Armstrong sees Socrates, who went calmly to his death, as someone who transcended the ego in a way similar to, say, Buddha, and Greek tragedy as a profound lesson in compassion.
Maybe so. But it’s harder to buy the notion that Alexander the Great and his Greek army, in trying to conquer all the known world, “pitted themselves against the ultimate as bravely as the yogins had struggled to break through the limits of the human psyche.” If the whole enterprise wasn’t in reality a plain old ego trip, I don’t know what is.
Yet the book is eminently worth reading. Few people are better qualified to explain that what so often divides us ought to unite us instead.