Staring at the Sun

Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irvin D. Yalom ISBN 0787996688

I picked this up at the library because of my interest in spiritual growth/occult societies. That is, several occult societies purport to develop programs that favor personal growth, and the theme of this book seemed to be tangentially relevant to that.

While the book didnt give me exactly what I was looking for (rituals incorporating the facing of death for the purposes of affirming growth, for example), it did reaffirm some truths that I hold about the subject of death.

For example, it strongly reaffirms the idea of treating death as an ally (as in Carlos Castaneda's reports of Don Juan in (I think) "Tales of Power", in that having death as a constant companion will teach one to live better. This idea can also be found in the wonderful book "The book of Skulls" by Robert Silverberg, in which part of the immortality teachings of a monastic order hidden in the Sonoran desert consists of meditating on the presence of the skull beneathe the skin.

The book was a rather easy read, full of short patient anecdotes, and low on complexity, but in the end I tossed it about halfway through simply because it was quite repetitive. For me, however, it did fulfil one of my criteria for a useful book - it stimulated several trains of thought.

It also provided me with a quote to ponder, from "Zorba the Greek":

"Leave Death nothing but a burnt-out castle"

In other words, have a great party in life, and then youre not saving anything up that will only be given, in time, to Death.

It also reiterated ideas I have on the survival of the soul after death, giving it the name "rippling", which I hadnt come across before. While the idea is something I picked up years ago, he placed it in the context of using the idea to alleviate death fears. In my terms, the "soul" is the sum of our ideas, and "life after death" can be achieved by sending those ideas out to others (as I'm doing now, to you). Inasmuch as the ideas live on, so do we. Yalom is a secularist, and believes that this idea substitutes for the afterlife of the major religions, and in that, I basically agree.

This book would probably be useful for those with death anxiety, particularly atheists and agnostics who havent worked out the ideas for themselves yet.

Overall rating, 6/10 (readability/usefulness/thought-provoking)

The Bible

While the existence of a God is a tricky question, it becomes less tricky to decide about the Bible. Currently, I'm reading a book entitled: "Misquoting Jesus", which is written by a diehard born-again evangelical who went to bible college and ended up being totally convinced that its the work of man.
Probably a good place to start is to recognize that many bible verses do not exist in early copies of the bible books in question, leading anyone with half a mind to conclude that they were added later.
But overall, the book is a great place to start if you want to learn how scholars deal with these texts.

(7/10) - for readability, and as a source of information on how the Bible is written, together with tidbits to throw at biblethumpers

The crucifixion of the crucifixion of truth

Well, having examined the book, and checked its sources, its clear that the authors appear to have the only sources available for their quotes - quite suspicious. Furthermore, when you look at the books where the quotes should be, the quotes are missing. Skip.

The First Question of religion

I guess the first question regarding religion would be the question as to whether there exists a God or not. There is a first obvious answer, and that is that it is not possible to decide one way or another. Obviously, if there were an easy answer, there wouldnt still be a debate. Most people have come down to saying that Science cant prove or disprove God, and some even say that it shouldnt try.

But the closer I look at this question, the clearer it becomes to me that not only is the existence of God unprovable either way, but that it seems that the question is designed to be unprovable. What I mean by that, is that you get wierd things like the ability of meditation to give you experiences that are consistent with seeing God - boundlessness, a feeling of infinite love, ecstasy and so on - but this can be explained by science as the deadening of several brain areas that deal with defining the me/universe boundary, and so on. So you have a spiritual experience that can hypothetically be explained by science, but it seems coincidental that the brain on meditation would give this effect, and not simply send you to sleep, say, or give you horrible feelings. Why does it just "happen" to give you spiritual experiences? Most things are like this - they give god-answers, which can be explained, just enough to disprove the god-proof, but never enough to dismiss them entirely. Faith, it seems, will always be required, as proof will never be found. Yet there will always remain enough grounds for faith. Curious coincidence that. Just curious enough.

The Crucifixion of Truth

"The Crucifixion of Truth" is a curious book, which puts forward a well-researched thesis that parts of the Bible have been forged, as shown through earlier versions of several parts of the Bible that are available, either in the Vatican Archives or elsewhere. I've only just begun this book, but with chapters entitled "What Virgin", "An Ancient Document feared by the Church" and "Why the Church Banned the Bible", it looks very promising!