2/18. Saving Paradise, Parker and Brock. Preliminary review.
So you are never going to see the Sistine Chapel, in this example. This analogy. You will never see a picture. But I have just recommended to you a description by two very well intended very bright Scholars that describe it. The best description I know of. Brilliant. But I know of two major flaws in these well-intended Scholars that even they are unaware of. Do I tell you? I do.
If I know they have severe color blindness, and severe astigmatism, I tell you, and I try and help you understand how that impacts their otherwise useful work.
The brilliant work of similarly afflicted psychiatrist dr. George vaillant, spiritual evolution, summarizes for us the indisputable studies of the last decade highlighting The crucial existence and value of the previously denigrated and ignored third brain, the mammalian brain, the limbic system, what I understand to be the soul. This research summarized by him in very real terms gives us our soul in material location. This is profoundly useful. Such a cruel irony that one writing about the soul is limbic system crippled, limbic system, Soul, the only thing that can grasp the essentials of soul. But if this is understood his work is tremendously valuable.
And similarly Brock and Parker. They write of the quest of the Soul, Paradise, Heaven on Earth. And I find their scholarship tremendously helpful. And also a terrible Minefield, terribly crippled by the fact that they cannot see the essence about which they write, Affairs of the Soul, but they write from that which they have, highly developed cerebral cortex, that anatomically cannot grasp the soul.
I'll share ways that the book, their work, is profoundly helpful to me. And it may be of no use to those who have done and or read the scholarship of others of this last four thousand years of religious development, culminating in so-called Christianity of the last two thousand years.
You may laugh, retch, disconnect at this point, take your pick, but so far I know of no one beside myself, zero credit to me, that is grasping where Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad and others were unknowingly pointing toward, almost reaching, go in the case of Jesus may be reaching, and definitely living. Joy, one of the Myriad alternative states of consciousness, is Paradise, stimulated or discouraged by external factors but never an external Factor , state, or condition, it is only a personal internal phenomenon enabled by our DNA and crippled by the time we are three or four in all but one in a million in the cultures of the last 7000 years. The formula for activating it, and it can be inhabited every breath, is: for Joy, serve those poor souls, in solidarity. Not only are you welcome to disagree, this is all a waste of your time if you don't task yourself with deciding whether what is being stated here is worth reading any further.
For me the work of Brock and Parker is monumentally important.
They are showing me what I had little if any idea of, there have been historical figures in the last 2 thousand years of the otherwise malignant cancerous organism called Christianity, individuals that in fact have been close to showing us Paradise, as were Jesus and the others I mentioned above, founders of other religious traditions. This is profoundly useful to me and I will be digging in and writing of it soon I hope.
And actually, it may be that people considering themselves Christians as a group for the first Thousand Years we're largely not far off. This is going to take more work on my part to understand, completing a detailed annotation of saving paradise, and then digging deeper, this because of the color blindness and astigmatism, cerebral cortex dominance, Soul crippling, of Parker and Brock. But for certain a large group of early Christians we're much more on the path or close to it than I had any idea and this is quite encouraging. Why? Salvation of Christianity? No one with a soul, no credit to them, could care less about Christianity, or about any other religion per se. They care about those who are examples of the soul in charge. And what they want, and what I want, and what is needed, what we are dying for, is examples, and in the two respects I just mentioned Parker and Brock have brought to me many more examples than I realized existed, within Christianity, and before. A tremendous contribution to us.
There are brief passages throughout this book but particularly in the last two chapters that are cerebrally brilliant, and terribly useful distillations of key issues in human development, cultural development, political development, developments within America that have great pertinence to what's going on today, not only in Christianity, but especially in Christianity. Breathtaking glimmers of Brilliance, cerebral though they may be.
And in contrast to the examples of souls striving for life over the last four thousand years, striving for freedom from dominance and decimation by their own personal head and Flash, and the head and flesh, cerebral cortex and hypothalamus, of others and systems in general, government Etc. In contrast to these examples they also provide a brilliant and tremendously useful look at the inexpressibly evil corrupting factors, maybe no discredit to themselves, that have attacked, perverted, killed, ended, stopped the hopeful shoots that have emerged from time to time throughout history and especially within Christianity, the focus of this book. How extraordinarily useful and important to be brought Closer by Parker and Brock to seeing these examples and hopefully moving toward an understanding of these corrupting factors and how they work.
And certainly there are other tremendous benefits of the work of these two but this will suffice for this preliminary review.
They establish with historical Clarity and Authority is that for the first Thousand Years starting with Jesus Christianity was about establishing Paradise on Earth. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.
As to the analogy, severe color blindness, severe astigmatism, in Parker and Brock? By the way, just for emphasis, if someone has color blindness, to mention it, to someone whose work you otherwise recommend, is that a slender? It is not.
They are highly religious, extremely degreed preachers, theologians, and each comes from from long family histories of that as I understand it. That is not a slander or a denigration. It is said that the fish are the last ones to discover water. It seems that the water they know is religion. To them the problem has been religion, but the answer is proper religion. These are not fundamentalists. They are extremely accomplished cerebral Scholars, but it is as though they cannot imagine that religion is not the answer. And it is not. A larva becomes a butterfly, fulfilling its DNA, not because of some religion. As does a seed. Does the environment matter? Tremendously. But in nurturing that is within, not imposing from without which is always crippling.
As cerebrally dominant soul atrophied limbic system crippled, they absolutely cannot grasp the substance, the nature, of what the little bit of good religion is grasping toward, dominance of the Soul, the soul in charge of head and flesh of the individual and the group.
If you know, and you do not do, you do not know. Anonymous. From a cerebral perspective, they brilliantly and in such useful instances reveal how the White supremacists and the like, unwitting though they might be, pervert their own perceptions such that whatever they do is good and whatever anyone else does is not. And they express this in specific useful ways far better than I just summarized. And yet these poor souls, Parker and Brock, are exactly there. They are so much of the unintended perversion of what the great religious exemplars tried to show us, and they don't see it. Their academic elitism. Their American Supremacy. Their intellectual Supremacy. Their material Supremacy. And on and on and on. It's heartbreaking. Why? Why heartbreaking? Because we need work of the caliber of theirs without these hidden landmines! Yes, they're doing the best they can, and what a tremendous contribution to me.
I'm quite sure, though I need to read the text carefully, I'm quite sure that either it is certain to Brock and Parker, or they are extremely biased toward, a view that paradise is not as I say and more importantly Jesus says, the kingdom of God is within you) totally and only an individual's psychological State, influenced by external factors but never of them or determined by them, if as I say that is correct, it may well be that Parker and Brock are exactly of the opposite view, that paradise, Heaven, yes on Earth, of this life not some afterlife, they are right about that, is primarily if not entirely external circumstances both of natural environment made healthy, and physical community made loving.
And our greatest example and teacher in history, the man Jesus, not the blue eyed white guy, the brown-skinned Palestinian guy, they distort, obscure, corrupt that man by never distinguishing in all their work that I could see, never distinguishing the real man, and the roughly 20% of the verses attributed to him in the four gospels, they never distinguish between that real man and the fiction written largely by John but also appearing elsewhere in the New Testament. They comment in their notes that Dominic crossan early on in Courage their work. And then they quickly add that others checked their scholarship. But not Crossing. I suspect this is the reason. It is shocking that they seem to have totally ignored the work of the Jesus seminar that has helped us determine those 20% of the verses attributed to Jesus that Jesus likely actually said.
Jesus said, in vain do they worship me, preaching as Commandments the doctrines of men. For 2,000 years the so-called Church, and then relentlessly, relentlessly, without exception that I see, done again by these two otherwise fine and certainly well-intended authors!!!! Teaching as Commandments the doctrines of men!!! As mentioned in the point above, not only do they totally ignore the indisputable scholarship that in the gospel only 20% of the verses were actually spoken by Jesus, maybe another 30% by people that got him, not only did they totally ignore that, but no where in the book do they bring Christianity back to his simple teachings!!! He said, do unto others all things whatsoever that you would have them do unto you, on this hangs all the law and the prophets! and of the other 20% of the words in the gospel attributed to him that he actually spoke, all of them contribute to this and none of them diverge. For 2,000 years, including this book, we have had his teaching, we have had his religion of do unto others all things whatsoever, and for two thousand years including this book we have looked for the answer every place but where he told us to find it!!!!!
I expect to continue and complete at high priority my personal annotation of the written text, saving Paradise, mining it for the positive and negative aspects just briefly pointed to above. This will be a tremendous value to me. Whether any of my further results will be shared in a more detailed review remains to be seen. It's quite possible that my duty to you, as someone who has been highly recommending this book as I have, this summary may have to suffice in my duty of warning to you. People with individual questions if they have done their homework my detailed annotation would put me in a position to provide some specific replies.
James
