This Has Nothing to Do With God (Except Everything, Really)

I need to start this post by making one thing vitally clear: this is not a blog post about religion. It is about mythology. Mythology, according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary comes from the Greeks and is defined as a. an allegorical narrative: MYTH, PARABLE b. a body of myths: as the myths dealing with the gods, demigods, and the legendary heroes of a particular people in stories that involve supernatural elements. whereas religion, according to the same tome, is defined as the personal commitment to and serving of God or a god with worshipful devotion, conduct in accord with divine commands esp. as found in accepted sacred writings or declared by authoritative teachers.

Okay, so the distinction isn’t exactly a clear cut line, I’ll agree, but it’s important to know the difference. I found this out the hard way recently while, on Facebook one late evening, I was having a conversation that started out with about four people and wound up with just me and another talking about… well I thought we were discussing mythology. Apparently she thought we were discussing religion. And somehow between the two of us I managed to offend her to a crazy degree. Which, of course, was never my intent.

It is a very fine line, though. Because if a religion doesn’t happen to be the one you follow, it’s pretty much a mythology to you. But if I tell you your religion is a myth, you will defend it, even though, quite literally, all religions are myths. They are all stories about gods that involve the supernatural. It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re true. We’re not arguing here. I’m not trying to upset anyone. I’m trying to bring everyone together, in fact.

This was actually the point I was trying to make the other night.

If you start to study archetypes (and these, as I’ve said before, go back at least as far as Plato), you begin to see patterns in the collective unconscious that enter your psyche before you’re born. These patterns show up in many places such as our dreams and our fables but the one place they show up more than anywhere else is in our religions. The commonality between religions around the globe that sprouted up thousands of miles away from one another and hundreds of years apart is staggering.

Just take a look at some of the staples of good religious stories (and again, when I say story, I am not saying the story isn’t true… I’m using it as a catch all for each religion). Virgin births abound in many religions, Christ being one of the last. Buddha had three temptations five hundred years before Jesus did. The death and resurrection is pretty much a universal theme not only in every religion across the board but it’s also an integral part of the Hero’s Journey. Almost all of our stories, modern and ancient, contain a version of some sort of death and resurrection.

When I look at all of this does it make me want to be an atheist? No. It makes me see the world a different way. It makes me see that if all of these myths (and let’s just for the sake of convenience call them myths–the Buddha Myth, the Hindu Myth, the Christ Myth, the Tao Myth–each one of them are all telling us the same thing. If you look at them long enough you will see differences on top, but underneath they all point the same direction.

They all point inward.

Even the ones that, on the surface, don’t seem like they should. Jesus said, “Neither shall they say Lo here or lo there for behold the kingdom of God is within you.”(Luke 17:21). The Buddhists say you can’t find nirvana until you have found liberation from your self. Nirvana is the Buddha nature within all of us. The Hindus believe that the spirit–the true “self” (called the ātman)–is eternal. The goal of life is to realize that one’s ātman is identical to Brahman, the supreme soul. Whoever becomes fully aware of the ātman as the innermost core of one’s own self realizes an identity with Brahman and thereby reaches liberation. For Taoists, they seek “the way” which is natural, spontaneous, eternal, nameless, and indescribable. It is at once the beginning of all things and the way in which all things pursue their course. The Tao also is something that individuals can find immanent themselves.

And so it goes. With all religions it’s the same basic mythology. The trappings are different, the gods or God is different, but ultimately the direction you are being pointed is inward.

The problem is, much of the rest; much of what we are taking as literal isn’t meant to be taken literally at all. Like all mythologies religion deals heavily in archetype and metaphor. The symbols are there to help lead you in the right direction, not for you to dwell on and accept as fact. They are tools to put your mind in states that will bring you toward that place called God. If that’s what you call it. Or Nirvana. Or the Universal Power. Or the Tao.

If people realized this, and understood that (and I think it was Joseph Campbell who said this) touching all religions is like touching different parts of an elephant while blindfolded, there would be a lot less bloodshed on this planet. There would be a lot less misunderstanding. I think things would make a lot more sense.

What does this mean to you and your writing? After all, this is a writing blog.

It means your writing is pretty damn important. You can move people’s minds. You can change them. And if you have the power to change people’s minds, you can change the world.

Michael out.