reflection/memoir: dear tom

8/14/2019 Reflection/Memoir: Dear Tom

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David Pendery

Dear Tom,

By David Pendery

Dear Tom,

Since I returned to school I have spent a lot of time

studying an interest that has long simmered just below the

surface of my consciousness: religion. It began two years

ago when I took a "Philosophies of Religions" course in

junior college. At that time I convinced myself that I was

simply satisfying a humanities requirement toward my

degree, but the truth is I was ready to look into religion

and spiritualism with new eyes. But first I had to explore

my (then current) views. I wrote this piece at that time,

Tom:

Maybe

Maybe we atheists feel that we have an advantage in

life because we are cool and remote, above the fray of

religious fervor, dogmatism, narrow-mindedness and

ritual. Free from these liabilities, we rely on reason,

and dispassion, rather than passion, steers our lives

and choices.


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life because we are never reduced to submitting to a God

known, unknown, or unknowable; named, unnamed, or

unnameablebegging for mercy, praying for forgiveness, or

seeking guidance. In short, maybe we atheists feel

guiltless, unfettered, and confident in ourselves.


life because we are more aware. We have made our life

discoveries on our own, and our interpretations and

assessments are free from the emotion and pat answers of

religion and pseudo-spiritualism.

Maybe we atheists are self-assured, uncompromising,

realistic, and unflappable.

Or maybe we atheists are just outside looking in,

faces at the window

That's where I stood, TomI felt like my plate was

empty. Yet, somehow I knew there was an unperceived, or

unappreciated, feast right in front of me. So I took a

second look at the world's religions. That required a leap

of faith on my part, but I was ready for such a leap.Remember my "don Juan" phase, Tom? The key concept in

Castaneda's philosophy is to break free of the attention

you lavish on the everyday world and your own affairs, in

order to access a whole spectrum of other experiences. As

you remember, Tom, he called these experiences "separate

realities. I myself had only nominal success peering into

these alternate realities, but the idea always seemed sound

to me. Recently my assumption was given some support by

none other than William James. You probably remember this

passage:


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[O]ur normal waking consciousness, rational

consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of

consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by

the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of

consciousness entirely different. We may go through life

without suspecting their existence; but apply the

requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all

their completeness, definite types of mentality which

probably somewhere have their field of application and

adaptation.

In years past, I attempted to access these other

realities by searching for waking awareness during my

dreams, as don Juan urged. Attempting to look at ones

hands in ones dreams is one of the most useful meditative

techniques I have ever discovered. Nowadays its called

lucid dreaming, and I still believe it is a key to

enlarged appreciation of everyday life, and those alternate

realities. As don Juan said:

The first truth about awarenessis that the world out

there is not really as we think it is. We think it is a

world of objects and its not[W]hat man senses is such

a small portion of [the world; reality] that its

ridiculous to put much stock in our perceptions.

My newfound interest in religion is a shift in my

attentiona shift in my "personal center of energy" as James

put it. My former study of Castaneda prepared me for my

current explorations, Tom. I am waking up to a new

consciousness, or a new appreciation for whole new areas


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and explanations of human existence and behavior. They are

called religion.

Yours,

Chris

Dear Chris,

I must say I was a little amused with your letter. Whowould have guessed old Christhe inveterate atheistwould be

toying with religious conversion? And so now you're reading

every ecclesiastical and philosophical treatise you can get

your hands on. Good enough, Chris, but keep your eyes on

the road and your hands on the wheel.

Sigmund Freud asked, In what does the peculiar value

of religious ideas lie? His answer was less than salutary.

Religion is simply a store of ideasborn from mans need

to make his helplessness tolerable and built up from the

material of memories of the helplessness of his own

childhood and the childhood of the human race. Does this

apply to your current interest in religion, Chris?

You asked if I remember your "don Juan" phase, Chris.

Of course I do. I also remember your self-actualization

phase, your Eastern phase, your Timothy Leary phase, andyour Aldous Huxley phase. Need I remind you of Screwtape's

words to his nephew


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A moderated religion is as good for us [Devils] as no

religion at alland more amusing.

So take care against watered down, secular

spiritualities; you have indulged in them before. Yet, I

worry that I am prodding you into a full-blown conversion.

Before you attempt such a thing, Chris. I think you should

examine your sources.

James was, in a sense, a sham. He hems himself in with

all sorts of inconsistencies. Throughout "The Varieties of

Religious Experience," one senses the ramblings of a man

who doesn't reallyknow what he's talking about. He was not

religious, and his method of constantly reducing religion

and spirituality to so much psychology, emotions and

"centers of energy" is tepid. Castaneda, on the other hand,

wrote of a universe of energy fields, and aligning

[oneself] with[external energy] emanations. This is new

age gobbledygook at its worst.

James writes that ineffable mysticism is the very

substance of religious experience, yet then he quietly

slips in the fact that "my own constitution shuts me out

from [the] enjoyment [of mystical states] almost entirely,

and I can speak of them only at second hand." The old

conniver had dismissed second-hand religious experience as

profit[ing] us little earlier in the book, but now he

figures he is above his own criticism.

A few sentences after the example you cite James

claims that "One must have musical ears to know the value

of a symphony." True enough! But Jamess descriptions of

religious experience, while compelling and brilliantly


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exposited, come from someone with a tin ear for the music.

He ignores that the real pleasure lies in the music itself:

The Lord is my strength and song

Psalm 118:14

James was a rank rationalist, Chris, excising God from

religion, and denuding the very idea of the divine ("any

object godlike" indeed!).

Yours,

Tom

Dear Tom,

I was surprised at your attack of James. I mean,

excising the concept of God from religion is probably

exactlywhat religion needs!

Until recently, Tom, I had formulated no particular

idea of God or the specifics of what such an entity could

or would accomplish in the universe. Yet, I could very much

feel and understand the idea of religious experience. After

all, most everyone feels that there must be some purpose or

object to humanitys existence. Identifying and

personifying that purpose are difficult and abstract to the

extreme; but getting to the realities of how we feel about,

communicate with, and connect to the larger object is


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fairly down-to-earth. This is essentially what James

attempted to do, and admirably in my view.

Additionally, attempting to concretely identify

conceptions of God and his methods can be arrogant. Don

Juan said, As long as you feel that you are the most

important thing in the world you cannot really appreciate

the world around you. Humanity has always conceived

anthropocentric (that is, egoistic) descriptions of God,

and thus we have set ourselves apart from divinity. Jamess

antidote to anthropomorphisms inherent vanity is to say up

front that humanitys conceptions of God have always beenimperfectly and vaguely described. Thus, at a personal

(egocentric) level, our anthropomorphic views are not truly

influential. Nonetheless, life is so permeated, through

and throughby [a] sense of [Gods] existence, that we can

attempt to understand religious experience as if God

exists. James wisely excises anthropomorphism (codified and

solidified in theologies) from religious experience. Yet,

the experiences remain, and they are the true doors of

perception and awareness.

I mentioned Jamess view of the unseen and unknown

aspects of existence in my last letter, and as you know he

deeply explores this idea. You may call him a rank

rationalist, Tom, but thoughts such as this one are useful

and, I think you would agree, uncannily perceptive:

Were oneto characterize the life of religion in the

broadest and most general terms possible, one might say

that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen

order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously

adjusting ourselves thereto.


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This is the crux of my current feelings, Tom. In

observing the capacities and propensities of humans, I now

believe that there is an unseen order (consisting of both

good and evil), which is the stuff and sinew of humanitys

purpose. Perhaps I am idealistic when I place the greater

importance of our purpose as being connected to the good,

the compassionate, the just, the constructive, and the

truthful. But we must also harmoniously adjust ourselves

to the evil force in the world. We must, in short, be

prepared to face anything, including evil. Castaneda alsowrote of adjusting oneself to larger forces, though he

never labeled them as values such as good or evil. Rather,

don Juans descriptions were quite abstract and mystical.

The forces that are available for us to align ourselves

with (with the requisite stimulus James wrote of) are the

infinite other realities, and are given the name the

Eagles emanations by don Juan (no doubt you scoff at such

incarnations). Through constant repetition of our routine

lives, we cement our connection to only a small band of the

emanations and thus limit our understanding and experience.

Until we learn to shift our attention and awareness to the

unperceived universe at large, we are forever limited in

the way we perceive the world and thus any associated

values (including religious experience)

[T]he world we all knowis only a descriptiona description

that had been pounded into [us] from the moment [we were]

born.


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David Pendery

So I have a wholesale conversion on my hands, do I?

Well, have you examined your change of heart in light of

Varieties, Chris? If you do, you may be in for a shock.

James, for all his apparently respectful attitude toward

religion, is in fact condescending to the whole business.

But you have got me on one point: You are right in that by

excising God (or more specifically, tracts about God) from

religion, James focuses on the animating energy that makes

religion tick. That focus in turn may lead one to God.

You have been rather vague about the nature of your

conversion and beliefs, Chris, and in this respect you areright up Jamess alley. Although James claims vague

religious experiences possess a reality that warrants our

attention, he is back-handedly dismissive of their worth.

When James writes of the absolute determinability of

ones outlook when under the influence of the

abstractions of religious belief, I somehow feel he meant

that we are all a bunch of malleable idiots, ready for

mindless conversion. He then passingly refers to religious

experience as dumb intuition, with no possibility of

rational support (or, conversely, undermining).

Given your hedging about consciousness, reality, God

and creation, I am not so sure that James might be correct,

Chris. But no offense is intended. For that, simply read

some more James. According to him, your religious

experiences are quasi-sensible realities; your belief inGod is merely your overactive ontological imagination

giving birth to something like that of an hallucination.


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Such respect for the worlds religious traditions,

Chris! They are so many hallucinations which we may

address as if they exist.

Of course, James is careful throughout Varieties to

qualify everything he writes with his claim of simon-pure

objectivity, and thus his observations are free of any

judgmentsgood or bad, considered or foolish, valid or

ridiculous. In a sense, James is committing the cardinal

sin of scientific observation and research: he adorns (by

his own admission) the most subjective material in a cloak

of objectivity. Jamess religion is a secular religionacontradiction in terms.

Neither does Castaneda allow for God, which is perhaps

a characteristic of such encompassing mystical

philosophies. As James wrote, [M]ysticsmis too private

(and also too various) in its utterances to be able to

claim universal authority. Still, Chris, I am interested

in your beliefs. Just how do your conceptions of God, only

hinted at in your letters, fit into your current views?

Yours,

Tom

Dear Tom,

You always were the quick one, the skeptic ready to

probe an idea, searching for its validity. And perhaps

youre right: perhaps James spends too much time describing


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only the surface of religious experience. After all, the

magnificence of Jesus behavior in John 8:3-11

He said to her, Woman, where are your accusers? Has no

man condemned you?

She answered, No one, Lord!

And Jesus said, I do not condemn you either. Go on your

way and from now on sin no more.

does not simply result in a shift if my personal

centers of energy. The awe I feel is not the same organic

thrill that we feel in a forest in twilight, or in a

mountain gorge. The way I feel when I read the above

passage is different from any other feelings in my common

storehouse of emotions. Rather, I believe I am witnessing

humanitys messiah, and that this realization influences me

in ways that James seems to overlook. The results that

ensue from my realization that Jesus is a perfectly loving

and forgiving Lord are good fruits indeed,but the

cohesive philosophy (or theology) that surrounds Jesus and

his teachings are important rational works as well.

Further, I sense that Jesus was indeed a divine beingnot

simply godlike, but a god indeedand thus is greater than

Jamess pragmatic, objective observations and conclusions.

And so there you have it, Tom. I am a Christian. I am

a bad Christian, for as I wrote you before, I have no

conception of God to connect to Jesus (as his Father).

Yet, I accept several other of the underpinnings of

Christianity: that Christ is humanitys Messiah; that

humanity is sinful and must atone and change; and that one

must be unstintingly tolerant and generous to all people.


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These beliefs are not feeling at the expense of reason,

nor translations of a text into another tongue. They are

rational conclusions about life as I have witnessed it.

James wrote The more concrete objects of most mens

religion, the deities whom they worship, are known to them

only in idea, and I feel that in this respect too, he is

rather dry and chalky. Seeing a childs birth, reveling in

the fantastic and evolving complexity of life, or communing

with and drawing strength from the divinethese are more

than ideas, and may be viewed as true manifestations of God

and divinity. And so Jamess conclusion that Not God, butlife, more life, a larger, richer more satisfying life, is,

in the last analysis, the end of religion, while close to

the truth, dodges a key (admittedly sometimes difficult to

quantify) element of religious experience.

Look at me Tom! You have me criticizing James. But I

hope I have given you some insight into my current

conversion.

Yours,

Chris

Dear Chris,You have indeed given me insight into your views. Yet,

I sense there is more. The tone of your letters suggests as

much. But that has always been true of your letters, Chris.


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Your exploration of Christianity does not surprise me.

Christ always stuck up for the underdog, and that suits

you. As well, Christs ignominious ending (if it was an

ending), squares with your tendency to view life

pessimistically. Your morbid state of mind also puts you in

Jamess camp, as you know. He went on and on about the

deadly-serious sick soul, and that poor souls

inclination toward religious explanations and solutions to

lifes vicissitudes. The sick soul, according to James, has

access to a more profound and well-rounded grasp of lifes

mysteries. Yet, is this really true, Chris? Are Thecompletest religionsthose in which the pessimistic

elements are best developed.? I hope that I am not making

a sort of false appeal to authority when I ask you to

recall Hemingways discerning words:

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us,

but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes

in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with

a higher grade of manure.

We have both noted the rich connection to lifes

animating spirit that those who make jokes in life

possess. Don Juans message was always infused with

laughter and spirit:

[T]here are examples of people, sorcerers or average

men, whoget peace, harmony, laughter, knowledge,

directly from the spirit.


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Jamess focus on the serious and melancholy as

conduits to more profound awareness, to deeper initiations

into the religious and spiritual, is heavy-handed at times.

Remember how we laughed at don Juans delightful

insouciance:

You take yourself too seriously,You are too damn

important in your own mind. That must be changed! Your

are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be

annoyed with everything. Youre so damn important that

you can afford to leave if things dont go your way. I

suppose you think that shows you have character. Thats

nonsense! Youre weak, and conceited!

Dont forget to laugh, Chris.

Your citation from John shows that Christianity can be

a very optimistic and forgiving creed. I have always

believed this myself, though I cant believe that Christ

was a god indeed as you write. In any case, I want to

hear that you are not weighted with the unease that there

is something wrong about us that Jamess identified as

one of religions universal precepts.

Yours,

Tom


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Dear Tom,

In answer to the question at the close of your last

letter: Yes and no.

Isnt that just like me, Tom!!

The unease that James wrote about, the wrongness

that takes a moral character, is not truly the source of

my current explorations. Yet, there is certainly something

wrong in my life. My wrongness is connected to things

James said earlier in his book, and has parallels in

Castaneda as well. The wrongness is indeed the morbidity

that you noted in your last letter. The wrongness issadness and depression, Tom.

My sadness is rooted in a constant feeling of

isolation that has pervaded my life since I was a child.

The feeling appears so prosaic, so mundane, when put in

writing. Perhaps this poem I wrote as an adolescent will

shed some light:

all loneliness it seems

springs from one source

cold, sweet, eternal

and when you have tasted of that deep well

you become part of a long tradition

I know of no one

who has never drank, or lapped, or sipped

of that source

and relinquished innocence

to become part of the vastness

that the springs of loneliness flow to and feed


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kindness, he said, and knowledge without sobriety are

useless.

And further,

In the life of warriors it is extremely natural to be

sad for no overt reason.

But my sadness and isolation did not point me toward a

reexamination of my beliefs, through some inherent quality

they possess. They were not the conduits or concomitants to

deeper religious experience as James and Castaneda suggest,

but rather, because they had become so prevalent in my

life, they pointed to a Jamesian wrongness that needed

attention. (In fact, Jamess wrongness points toward a

religious conception of sin, rather than simply personal

isolation or disquiet). Christianity provided the key to

understanding my own isolation and depression, Tom. This

passage from the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas guides me:

Jesus said, If you bring forth what is within you, what

you bring forth will save you.

If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you

do not bring forth will destroy you.

That is what I am doing, Tom: reaching inside myself,

just as we did when we studied Castaneda those years ago;

examining the experiences of my life in a new context, just

as James examined experience; seeking to connect myself to

the MORE of James, and the separate realities of

Castaneda. Religious study fits all of these aims. If the


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whole edifice collapses, so be it. I guess I will then have

to look up another alley, go through another phase.

But I wont forget to laugh, Tom.

Yours,

Chris

reflection/memoir: dear tom

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