What is Religion Anyway? An e-Dialogue with Robert Stacy

Robert Stacy in New York

On Oct 15, 2019, at 9:34 AM, Robert wrote:

Buono Martedi, Verdi,

Lying in bed this morning, and needing to take a break from the usual lustful phantasies, I veered away (in an effort to resuscitate my elderly intellect) to the subject of religion. The following therefore is a mini-essay from the top of my head, now transcribed from the top of my head:

In pondering religion one must of course first free it from the trappings on myth and folklore, from all anthropomorphizing, and from all hokum; the fathers in Heaven, the heroic saviors walking upon the water, the promises of eternal life for the forgiven, and so forth. What one is thereafter left with is the bottomless, sublime and magical mystery of Being.

And since Stacy's First Law states that all of life is paradox, ambivalence, and ambiguity, it follows that, with respect to being, there's no there there----and yet there is. This is a transcendent reality for which there is no understanding, and is in fact transcendentally meaningless, and thus sublime; a mystery that moves us beyond our intellects (to an emotional place) in the presence of music, art, the churning ocean, the setting sun, and great love we sometimes feel for one another. The being of reality and the reality of being.  Om, &c.

Anything more requires more thought, so perhaps I should go back to bed.

On Oct 15, 2019, at 11:39 AM, William wrote:

Dearest Robert,

Where I part with this is the leap from "beyond the intellect" to emotion and sensory images such as music and sunsets. I have observed that many people think this way, and one of my unwritten chapters is a wrestling with a woman's loss of interest in religion because it didn't move her emotionally any more, as if it were ratings-driven show biz, rather than a signification what-is or nothing. 

To me, "beyond intellect" is not emotion, which seems rather more like below intellect. Maybe I'm misreading the word or just am just a strange personality type. Anyway, I associate being moved by emotion with an accelerated heart rate, excitement, but apprehend the apprehension of the divine as calmer than calm, either drawing away from or seeing through (the two may be equivalent) physical images such as music, sunset, or the sea. 

I once went to an art event that included a slide show of supposed "images of God" where sunsets and such were much in evidence, but I was unmoved. Garish kitsch predominated. Again, maybe I misread the term "emotional place."  For me, the eternal seems more likely to be found in a quiet intuitive place, the radical absence of adrenaline. "A still, small voice." OM. But I know that some churches do purvey singing, shouting, and fainting as experiences of God.

I just  finished documenting  the sources of my 52nd essay and am staring at an unread Blogging for Dummies book on the TV tray in front of my recliner. I have made a commitment to take a break from the fun part of wrestling with religion, from the joy of writing, and create a Wrestling with Religion blog with a year's worth of weekly screeds in the can. Whether that's a cinema or a plumbing metaphor is yet to be determined. After all, blog and bog are only one letter apart.

Ton ami, Vert

On October 15, 2019, at 2:10 pm, William wrote:

On second thought maybe not intuitive, which is also of something created. Maybe, in terms of faculties, it is none of the above.

On Oct 15, 2019, at 2:38 PM, Robert wrote:

Yes, good. Intuitive. I did not use emotional to mean the pulling of heart-strings or the beauty of sunsets.

I think that when we two talk of intellect we're talking about different things. I mean, in this context at least,  intellect as the application of logic, reason, analysis, and factuality; providing explanations as stand-ins for reasons; for describing the cosmos as being about laws and principles, and that it was somehow created.

When I talk about the transcendence of art, music, of sunsets, rising moons, and the vast, churning ocean, I am not talking about how swell it was of God to create these things. I mean that we are by-passing the intellect and apprehending such things directly by way of sensate experience. And that this, and not logic or reason or factuality, taps us intuitively into the bottomless, mysterious, and sublime transcendence of Being. Anything else for now would constitute a lecture or, god forbid, a sermon.

Meanwhile, I'm prepared to accept that you are a person who doesn't easily apprehend these things; that your intellect is tightly screwed-down at the expense of sensate possibilities. In which case your long-held interest in 'eastern' religions is all the more interesting.

But all is well in its variegated way. 

On Oct 15, 2019, at 3:38 PM, William wrote:

Well taken. I'd say intellect is about thinking in categories, dividing with names. I imagine that rather than shifting over to sensation for a soft window, my eastern thing is about wishing to break through intellect to the non-dual reality it hides and falsifies. It doesn't occur to me to see a sunset (a named thing) as non-duality but many may travel that road.

On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 3:43 PM William wrote:

But talk about kitsch--much of Asian religious art. And I love it.

On Tue, Oct. 15 at 4:31 PM, Robert wrote:

Perhaps a coffee table book on Asian Kitsch is in order.

Not to mention Cosmic Kitsch.

Incidentally, after these exchanges I started to re-read The Genius and the Goddess. Three pages and I thought, enough already. Too damn heavy. I'm ready for a well-written, side-splitting farce. (Rather like life itself.)

On Oct 16, 2019, at 9:25 AM, Robert wrote:

So I suppose one might say in conclusion---or at least what I'm saying---is that religious practice and/or observance is a celebration of the insoluble mystery of Being. It can cloak itself in worshipped anthropomorphic deities or, with pantheism, the worship symbols of nature; sun, moon, various animals, &c. But at the end of the day it's about the eternal and transcendent mystery of Being and Reality.

Of course all celebrations end, but I suppose one might say that the beat goes on.

On Oct 16, 2019, at 9:49 AM, William wrote:

Sounds good to me. 

William and Robert in Auburn, Alabama, 1962