God and the myth we created of the Parent (part 2)

In part 1 we saw that the way we established an image of God in our mind was based on the same premise as that of the idea of the parent. The parallels pointing to what looked like a preordained conclusion. Just as the helpless child looks to a being, seemingly all powerful, for protection, for need, and seeing that that being has ultimate control, learns love as a form of manipulation, so too do we develop a relationship with the omnipotent being of myth we learn to call our creator.

However, we also saw that these parallels can be very misleading, and by unconsciously applying the human analogy to God, seeing him as merely the parent writ large, and therefore to be assimilated in the same way, is to completely fail to understand the real nature of God.

Further, we have seen how our earliest ancestors came to honour the earth itself as ‘mother’, a practice that was later to lapse into idolatry, then worship, finally sacrifice, until it became utterly debased, incorporating barbaric practices. Still, this obviously began with attributing to the earth aspects of motherhood which were self evident. All life came from the earth, everything was born from the seed of the sun and the fruit of the earth. A new mythic paradigm of the parent was born. In the brain of our earliest ancestor the idea of the earth as mother was neurologically wired to that of goddess, begetter, protector. The two became synonymous. Eventually, with the passing of time, all these energies of nature, in their outward form, be it mountains, trees, rivers, came to be seen as gods in their own right, some minor, others more important, but each still containing in itself some aspect of the original idea of the parent. Customs evolved, which in due course became laws, then decrees, and finally oppressive regimes, executing the debased and barbaric practices they believed were instigated by the ‘parent’ god, but which of course they invented themselves.

The god protected its tribe, destroyed that same tribe’s enemies, and also saw to the wellbeing of its people, ensuring crops never failed, and so on. . Therefore God now was protector, warrior, and provider. Its role as parent was complete. This included an internal form of control, which applied both to society and the individual. The gods might dispensed justice on anyone in the tribe who broke the law, while at the same time manifesting as guilt in the individual soul. God now became conscience.

The story of the mythology of the ancient world is obviously too vast for this series of articles. (There are some excellent books on this subject, I would particularly recommend Frazer (op cit), and Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.)

However, from ancient totem gods to modern sophisticated versions of worship, this embedded notion of God as parent has largely remained constant. The created myth became the receptacle for the projected outpouring of all humanities darkest dreams and fantasies, its undesirable urges and yearnings, its repressed fears and guilt. It is true that at some stage in human development the female principle as supreme creator was replaced with that of the male. There are various theories for this, such as the move from nomadic to agrarian society, but we don’t have room to go into them here. However, the only thing this changed was that those same fantasies were now projected onto the male form, where before the female absorbed them. The word ‘pater’, of Indo-European origin, in its various forms has come to represent God, as well as meaning father. For example, modern day religions such as Christianity and Islam still speak of God as ‘father’. A Course in Miracles uses this form too, but I feel it does so in a way to deconstruct it and allow us see the real meaning behind it.

Religions of the World

Hinduism is the oldest extant religion in the world today. It is vastly complex, and probably comes closest to understanding the real origin of things. The energies such as Shiva or Kali, for example, never quite lost their mythic origins, or developed full human personalities in the way their Greek counterparts did. Buddhism developed, or evolved out of Hinduism, not dissimilar to the way Christianity evolved from Judaism some time later. The Buddha’s message, despite its enormous psychological complexity, was really very simple, that is to ‘stay awake’. The Buddha declared, ‘from our thought all the world arises’, That’s not to say everything is merely an illusion, or nothing, but rather that we create our reality, and much of what we create is an ‘idea about reality’. Buddhism doesn’t so much teach that there is no God, as the west sometimes understands it, but rather that the ‘idea of God’ simply masks a greater reality, that which is permanent, unchanging. It is with this true reality, lying behind all masks and illusions, that the enlightened soul (he who has seen through and shed all his illusions) reunites, be it in Nirvana, or the Pure Land; themselves metaphors. It teaches, we must learn to distinguish between the false, which is just an idea about reality, and reality itself. The idea is but a finger pointing at the moon. Its easy to see the finger, but harder to know the moon.

However, specifically in the western world, the story that became our ‘idea of God’, male, authoritarian, austere, as spoken of in part 1, can be traced to two distinctive strands, namely, the Greco-Roman, lineage, and the Judaeo-Christian one.

The Greek pantheon is replete with every aspect of the human psyche. The erstwhile energies of nature have now been given names, personalities, wives and lovers, and all kinds of adventures with which to pass the time. The Greeks worshipped a mixture of sky gods and earth gods, but ruling over them all was the ‘father’ of the gods, Zeus. Included in their company was a fairly watered down aspect of the divine feminine, Aphrodite (Roman Venus), as well as aspects of the personality, anger Ares (Mars), struggle Hephaistus (Vulcan) and jealousy Hera (Juno). In many ways to the Greeks the ‘other’ was the female. They seemed to have a great reverence women, and for the older mother-centred religion, as well as a great distrust and fear of it. For despite the hegemony of the anthropomorphic gods, there is always a sense running through Greek mythology that the older gods, which they called the Erinyes, might burst onto the scene and threaten the new regime at any time. Interestingly enough, these energies were attached to guilt, specifically familial, or what was known as ‘blood guilt’, and according to Aeschylus and other writers, would exact deadly revenge, particularly for the killing of a parent. I think this is a very old soul memory, one of disconnecting with our Origin, rather than any battle of the sexes.

The Romans came to absorb and then supplant Greek culture, adopting the Greek religion, although perhaps only the outer symbols of it. The Greek pantheon lived on, only now with Latinised names, and often subjugated to Roman nationalistic ideals. And perhaps, with the deep psychological timbre of the Greek mind absent too. By this time the original understanding of mother earth had long been lost, perhaps associated with excesses in Egypt and Persia, more so the debased cults of Cybele, and its kind. Added to this, Maenad or Bacchanalian rites were associated with excessive frenzy, madness, and a kind of unnatural excitement, attributes associated with the female at the time. Of course, we have to be careful as this line of discourse probably originated with those who ruled society then, and who wished to propagate just such a view of women. A male or phallocentric God had now become firmly established, and along with it, a society that followed its dictates, that is prioritized war, political needs and expediencies above needs of common people. A society whose model, by the way, we still live in. It’s almost as if the energy of the female had to be contained. Myth and fable were used to this end, but here too the energy is always in danger of breaking loose, take the story of Cupid and Psyche, for example.

The other strand is the Judaeo-Christian one. In the early books of the Bible God is spoken of in the plural. Some say this was the Elohim, another interpretation is that it was God and his Creation, or God and his Son that created the world. This changed as a new image of God began to emerge, reflecting the Israelites position as slaves and struggle to establish their home land. Here a more puissant God was required. From then on the God of the Bible adopts Zeus-like qualities, fiery, xenophobic, authoritarian. Although it must be said not exclusively (see the Psalms for a different picture). ‘Paternal’ is a word that very much sums up this deity.

Christianity, in its original form, is a correction of this autocratic way of knowing God. Jesus introduced something quite radical in human history, something quite subversive in its day, although it may not seem so now. That’s because the religion that grew up around the figure of Jesus has become of the primary established religion of the world, and just as oppressive as what went before it. But in his day Jesus fell out of favour with the Jewish authorities because he challenged so many aspects of the law, for example, the good Samaritan, strict adherence to ritual and so on. Jesus even goes as far as to declare that he had come to set aside the law and bring a new concept, “Love God and love your neighbour as yourself”. However, to most people this new concept was interpreted as meaning go on worshiping the old form, the autocratic imitation of ourselves that we invented. And, to love your neighbour meant to change him, to convert him in other words to the new doctrine. Christianity, as a result, has become a meddlesome sort of religion.

What Jesus established was in fact Universal Love and Oneness, as well as doing away with the psychological need for the idea of God. However, his followers instead established a new religion. Like the Buddha before him, Jesus’ message, while simple, has never really been understood, because it calls for thinking from the heart centre, and not the head. What people thought of as ‘God’ was merely their own invention, an image, an ideation, like the finger pointing at the moon. Jesus set about changing this by raising the consciousness of the world, from the human level to the God level, or what is known as Christ consciousness. At this consciousness, which is pure love, you recognise God as Love, and realize that your neighbour really is yourself.

Failing to understand Jesus’ message, the reaction was, first to attack him, and later to deify him. This has been said before, but its worth repeating, Jesus became the great exception rather than the great example. It was simply more comfortable to stitch Jesus into the fabric of the old religion, and carry on, sort of, as before. Rome remained the dominant political power, and quickly, and every efficiently, absorbed Christianity, just as they had absorbed Greek culture earlier. And, just as in the Greek case, they really only adopted its outer form, failing utterly to understand Jesus’ true message.

We speak today of Judaeo-Christian, but in many ways Judaism became the ‘other’ to Christianity, something to be shunned, shut out. For centuries Jesus’ earthly origin was quietly set aside and not spoken of, and Jews were outcast the world over. Indeed much of what know of as Christianity, especially Catholicism is more Greek than Jewish. Tales of hell and damnation have a certain Greek flavour, Dante’s inferno is merely a reworking of Grecian Homer with a Christian twist. Women were again marginalised while idolised at the same time. And Jesus was even given Dionysus’ mythic virgin birth. When reform was needed a window of opportunity opened, but instead of rediscovering the real message of Jesus, Protestantism merely resurrected the old God of the Israelites, the God of fire and brimstone. The window was quickly shut.

The child that humanity is, born of Sun and Earth, of the seed of paternal fire and the labour of orgiastic intent, eventually grew up and rebelled against the forces she saw oppressing her. She tried to get rid of the mad idea she had created by pretending it didn’t exist. The child sought meaning elsewhere, in science, materialism, and various forms of political expression. But humanity carried the old ‘idea’ with it still, and transferred what it once gave to the church, and the God of the church, to these new entities. New leaders and movements assumed the role of parent, seamlessly. Some decided there was no God. Life was just an accident, we are merely an animal, more intelligent than a cow, but essentially the same. But this ideology has left humanity empty and hollow. Others felt betrayed, their prayers remained unanswered, their hopes dashed, they lived in an existentialist vacuum, believing that the parent had run away and abandoned them. With Nietzsche we declared God is dead.

Today there are some people who want to turn back the clock, they think if we go back to a time when there was certainty then we can right all wrongs. Of course this ‘certainty’ only exists in their minds. They believe God is angry with the world because people are sinful, or because we stopped believing in him, and this is the cause of all these wars and disasters. The anger they see is their own, and it stems from fear. The conclusions they’ve drawn are their own which they’ve projected onto God. He sees the world the way they see it, he demands petty revenge because unconsciously they are expressing the need for punishment. Their solution is infantile. Indeed we can hear the whining voice of the child in their exhortations.

Then, on the other hand, there are those who embrace the new age theory. These people are well meaning, but often they are reacting to those who seek to turn the clock back. When you react, you simply embody the same energy as that to which you are reacting, except that you express it in a different manner. Also, these people often see God as some kind of ‘warm fuzzy feeling’, and interpret good writers of this genre as saying you don’t really have to take responsibility for anything. This is a kind of cop out too.

If I’m feeling angry with someone I can acknowledge that to myself. It doesn’t mean I hate the person, or that I’m going to do them harm. It’s only a thought, and I can change the thought. Better still I can ask myself what is it in me that’s causing the anger, and address that. Of course I can choose to stay in the anger. But I can only do this by going unconscious to the real motive behind it. We can never be truly angry and be awake. Because if I’m to remain angry with you, that means I’m holding you in blame for some perceived wrong I feel you did, and in that moment I’m not taking ownership of my anger. Instead I’m projecting it onto you. I’ve become unconscious around it. I’m back in my helpless self.

A Course in Miracles tells us that guilt demands sacrifice and its call is always answered. We go unconscious around guilt. To go unconscious simply means to forget, to conveniently forget that we’ve done something and to hide it from ourselves. But a part of us still remembers and demands punishment, for what we think we’ve done, and because we think we’ve done wrong. It is not God who wants to punish us, we do.

By the thoughts we think we beget feeling, from this flows action, sometimes, other times inaction. But it always brings into being our world. This happens on a personal level, and at a collective level. We do this whether we’ve given our power away or not, but when we have we tend to create a lot of unhappiness. The new born child must surrender his power. The adult has a choice. We can create an image of God that is benign, helpful to us, or we can create one that is oppressive. In both cases they’re images. False images. But behind our creating there is something that is more powerful than we can ever imagine, creating us creating. And its power is our power. But once we step outside of it we’re then thinking about it. We give it a name, a history, a reality that mirrors our own. And so it becomes our image of All That IS, and not the real thing.

So, if our projections are our feelings, anger, confusion, upset, indifference, arising from particular thoughts, for example, that we’re not good enough, then . . . what about love? Is that too not another feeling? Another creation? The answer is no. Love is an absolute, it exists regardless of your thoughts about it. Of course there is a ‘feeling’ which we call love, but this is not really love. And here lies one of the biggest mistakes of 21th century thinking. We didn’t create love because LOVE CREATED US. Love is real. In fact it is the only thing that is real.

The third and final part of this will appear next week.