Soul Matters: Book Three: Towering Confusion

The rest of that evening with Manuel was a practice run on the trail through the unconscious, the Nature realm, up to the archway. This visualization was the technique Manuel taught Phil so he could tap into various reality-states. In each state, there was an indigenous power available, such as memory recall, healing, and the Force-energy state Phil used to rescue the fallen angels.

The meditation included walking along an envisioned trail through a forest. Along the trail were markers Phil could use to bring himself to each reality-state while in waking consciousness – the consensus reality. Separating each state was a curtain of invisible energy.

The trail eventually forked, and off the right-hand path was a stone staircase. Each step down the stairs was a specific energy state in the realm of Force energy – the ch’i field that connected all life in the Universe in a web. Again, off to the side of the stairs were markers or place-holders for Phil to use to re-connect to the energy-states during his ‘normal’ life.

At the bottom of the stairs was a stone archway. Silvery energy filled the arch, and various symbols decorated the arch’s face. Phil had yet to pass through the silvery energy curtain because Manuel said he wasn’t ready. Beyond was the realm of Spirit. Somewhere over there was the Physically Manifesting level of Spirit, but Phil had no idea where.

Manuel also said that what they were doing now -- reviewing what Phil already knew -- was necessary practice, but Phil figured the angel really didn’t want to move forwards until the angel was better equipped to face his own past.

They finished this practice round, and the mediation ended. Phil returned to his body and went to bed.

During lunch the next day, Phil sat at his desk with his take-out Thai food as he continued his computer search on biblical commentary.

His secretary interrupted him with, “The pastor of your church is on line one.”

Phil picked up the phone to a somber, “This is Pastor Jones.”

“What can I do for you?” was Phil’s automatic response. Surely, though, the man didn’t need a new home owner’s policy.

“It’s more about what I can do for you, Phil,” Pastor Jones intoned. “Your colleague and friend, Ron Dobson, indicated to me you may be in need of some guidance.”

Phil cleared his computer screen and brought his attention to the pastor, while looking longingly at his Thai food, and responded, “It’s thoughtful of you both. How would you have me interpret the J text in the Pentateuch?”

There was a long pause before the pastor answered, “We don’t engage in reductionistic violence to the Word of God, Phil. We accept scripture as a literal prophecy of God’s Purpose. And a literal fulfillment of those prophecies is required in order for His purpose to be true.”

“That’s a circular argument,” Phil pointed out, munching some noodles. “And it misses the point of my question. J’s Yahweh, as well as J’s treatment of Yahweh, is scandalous at the least and blasphemous at worst. How am I to account for it?”

Another long pause ensued before the pastor said, “The important, and relevant themes of the Old Testament are only two: the covenant God confirmed by oath with the Israelites, and the prophecies defining Jesus as the Messiah.”

“I see,” Phil smiled. “And any attempt to identify and put into context any of the biblical writings is -- what?”

“God was the Author of the Bible, Phil,” the pastor said, his tone ponderous, even accusatory. “To deny this fact is to put your soul in jeopardy.”

“But which God?” Phil asked, smiling to himself. “El Shaddai, Yahweh, the Elohim, Adonai, the Father, the Paraclete, or Jesus himself? It seems to me J was using Yahweh as a literary devise to illustrate the principle of unbounded vitality, which was the Blessing he bestowed on his people.”

Another long pause, “This wasn’t one of your concerns when you were working with Dr. Loreen, Phil. I guided the thrust of her counseling with you, and she told me of your unfortunate break with reality to the point where you were having conversations with an angel. She also determined this entity probably did exist, but was demonic.”

Phil stopped smiling, but recovered quickly enough to say, “How is she doing with her own psychotic break?”

“I don’t think it was a psychotic break,” the pastor replied in a ponderous way. “It was a demon protecting its turf -- you. Consequently, Phil, you must return to us so we may purge this evil from you.”

Phil paused for a long moment. He was not sure how far to push Pastor Jones. Push too far, and the guys with white coats might show up. But Phil’s hippie iconoclasm demanded retribution: ‘How dare this pompous ass? How dare he presume he could just waltz in and take charge of my soul!’

‘Soul,’ Phil’s mind seized on the word. There was something about the soul. Then he remembered the argument he used with Ron and with Dr. Loreen. It was worth one more try.

Phil cleared his throat, “I’ve found no evidence for the soul, pastor. It seems the Jews didn’t believe in an afterlife until Isaiah. Then, with Ezekiel, the Jews adopted the Zoroastrian afterlife. Finally, with Daniel, the whole idea of judgment enters the picture. From what I can tell, the immortal soul is just another immortality project invented by man as he ran from his own certain death.”

That now-rehearsed argument pleased his inner teenager, but the adult in Phil harbored a sense of impending doom for throwing the gauntlet at the pastor’s feet.

Pastor Jones took up the gauntlet, “There are absolutes a true Christian must agree to, regardless of how you decide to interpret the Bible. Good and evil are absolutes. The inerrancy of God’s Holy Word is absolute. The sacred covenant God has secured by oath with the spiritual seed of David is absolute. You, therefore, have a choice. It’s either God’s way, or the path of social disintegration. Choose wisely. We will pray for you.”

Then the pastor hung up, not affording Phil the opportunity for rebuttal. On the other hand, he was relieved the pastor hadn’t pursued the topic of Phil’s mental instability. He might have to deal with puzzled and disapproving looks from those who discovered his apostasy, which was fine. But dealing with the latter-day reincarnation of the Inquisition -- institutionalized for insanity -- that was a chilling thought.

Phil tried to banish the conversation from his mind while he finished his Thai food. He struggled also to keep his focus on his work for the rest of the day. On his way home, he worried Pastor Jones may have subverted Betty to his cause. He forestalled that encounter by detouring to Sandy’s house.

He caught Sandy as he was entering his one story 1950s style home. Tall, broad-shouldered, stringy graying blond hair, Sandy looked like he stepped off a Viking ship. Except he drove a jeep and he wore khaki shorts and a red tank top.

“Been a while, Phil. How’s the board I sold you?”

Phil smiled and nodded he liked the surfboard and sheepishly hauled in his symbolic sacrifice to Odin -- a half-rack of beer.

The house was laid out in a straightforward design. They crossed the living room to the rectangular kitchen. To the left was a hall with bedrooms and a bathroom. At the kitchen back door was a spacious fenced yard with a concrete patio and lawn. They secured beers and headed out to sit in lawn chairs. The sun was gone, and the air was cooling, but it was still warm enough to break a sweat if they ran around the yard. Which they didn’t. Phil was too concerned about the new adventure he was embarking on to think about exercise or anything else. At some level, he just wanted all of it to stop.

As they settled into aged lawn chairs, Sandy observed, “You must be back with Manuel. What is it this time?”

Phil gave a brief report to Sandy’s amusement and concluded, “If I’m the best they can come up with to help out, they’re in serious trouble.”

“You under-estimate yourself, Phil. You always have.”

Since they knew each other from high school, after which Sandy spent a number of years in a Jesuit seminary. As such, his opinion carried some weight.

Phil dodged the compliment, though, and said, “They are using the word ‘faith’ in a way I don’t fully get. Like it’s a verb rather than a noun.”

“Mystics from all traditions do that.”

“And?”

“And there are stages to faith marking the developmental stages involved with maturing in Spirit. But tell me more about Jehovah.”

“I don’t know much more. All the fundamentalists in the world -- Jew, Christian and Muslim -- have somehow combined their fanaticism to create him.”

“Weird. Understandable, but weird. It’s almost like he is the containment field for their internecine warfare. They all pray to him and justify killing each other in his name. It’s a wonderful paradox. I can see why he became the archetype for fundamentalism, but it would drive them nuts if they knew what they did.”

Sandy rose to replace the beer he gulped down. When he re-entered the patio, Phil said, “I knew Jews await a Messiah, and Christians await the Second Coming, but what about Muslims?”

“Shi’ites have an apocalyptic myth, but Sunnis are content to make the Sharia the law of the world.”

“Sharia is the Muslim religious law, like Mosaic law for the Jews.”

“Yeah. It’s actually a pretty well thought-out set of rules for society, and they also have four law schools interpreting it differently. As a result, there’s remarkable diversity in it as well.”

Phil wasn't interested in that and went on, “Even so, the fundamentalists in each religion are completely ethnocentric with their idea of the elect and the damned. So, I get the theology is what ties them together, but the differences?”

“Mostly tribal. If you read the Koran, you’ll find that Mohammed was really good to women and would have never approved of honor killing or genital mutilation. But you have it right about the saved and damned theology, and that’s the paradox. Somehow Jehovah is insuring each dream.”

“Yeah. And somehow faith is Jehovah’s undoing,” Phil said with a question in his voice. He wanted to get the conversation back on topic.

Sandy nodded his head and slugged back some beer before he responded to the prompt. “One theologian breaks faith down into seven steps in a developmental hierarchy. The zero state is infancy where a child learns to trust his environment. The first stage is arrived at by age 5 and is still pretty primitive as the child tries to protect himself from monsters, night terrors and whatnot. The second stage is mythic, black-and-white, God in Heaven keeping score and so on. The third stage is conventional, usually during adolescence, and it’s mostly conformity with the dominant culture’s myths. The fourth stage is like the dark night of the soul wherein the young adult starts taking responsibility for his belief-system. The fifth stage is where things start getting interesting, as now the adult begins working with paradox and the meaning behind symbols. The sixth stage brings one home safely to Enlightenment as the mature seeker sees the universal nature of Spirit.”

“I take it you discussed these stages when you were at seminary.”

“In detail. The analysis we learned is disputed by many theologians, especially fundamentalists who are wary of any symbolic reading of Scripture, or anything else for that matter.”

Phil smiled at the comment, but had a question, “How do you get from one stage to the next?”

“That’s the ‘verb’ part of it. The action of faith is testing hypotheses. You do whatever your spiritual advisor suggests and if it works, your faith is strengthened so that you can take on bigger and bigger tests.”

Phil nodded, “Manuel said faith is like an exhale. You have faith there’s going to be more air for your next inhale.”

“Good analogy.”

“So you achieve these levels by building your faith. Like building muscle.”

“Again, good analogy. By corollary, lack of faith isn’t all that bad. It’s like I lack the muscle to lift 500 pounds. The spiritual charlatans, though, use the idea of faith to guilt-trip people into giving them all their money and adoration. They promise people a jump to higher spiritual levels without having to do the work to develop their spiritual muscles.”

Phil stood to go. “It’s starting to make sense, which is kind of scary all by itself.”

“Well, keep the faith!”

“Oh, one more thing,” Phil caught himself and sat back down. “The Tower of Babel.”

“An enigma,” Sandy said. “How could a ziggurat threaten the Elohim?”

“I’m trying to reconcile that with what Manuel said.”

“You have to begin with the idea of the One who has become Many,” Sandy began. “The ideal, of course, is the Many remember they are part of the One. What happened, though, was the Many got lost in their separateness. Different tribes, different languages, different local gods -- it was the next step in the evolutionary chain, but it was also a mess.”

“Manuel said it was the birth of the ego.”

“And that would threaten the Elohim. Or rather, the ego would make it harder for the Elohim to connect with mankind.”

Phil considered this and replied, “The whole incident, as it’s recounted in the Bible, is a metaphor about this change.”

“Yes,” Sandy nodded. “And remember the story is contemporaneous to Gilgamesh. He represents the onset of the fear of death. Before him, everybody knew, or at least believed, that when they died, they returned to the One.”

“After Gilgamesh, the ego would be fighting for its life. It didn't know it would return to the One.”

“With that in mind,” Sandy went on, “you can see the ziggurat as the ego attempting to climb into heaven by material means.”

“While the Elohim sit on the outskirts of town, abandoned by the people.”

“Put it that way, and it’s kinda sad,” Sandy said and rose to get another beer.

Sandy returned and plopped down with a smile and said, “You might be interested in how the word Jehovah came about.”

“Okay.”

“In the bible it was originally just the letters YHWH, because the name of God couldn’t be spoken. So, what they did was put the symbols for Adonai over those letters. Adonai means ‘lord,’ and the Hebrews used that word when reading scripture. When the English translation came about, the translators dropped those symbols for Adonai into YHWH and came up with Jehovah.”

“So his name is a translation error?”

“Yep.” Sandy said chuckling.

Phil rose, shaking his head, and left for home.

Betty was her chatty self during dinner and didn’t object when he retired to the study to meditate. With warm relief, he finally stepped into Manuel’s patio.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the angel said and moved to sit on the marble bench. “We’ve got a lot to cover before we go to Babylon.”

Phil imagined himself dressed in jeans and T-shirt and sat next to the angel’s bright presence, “What do I need to know?”

“Lots,” Manuel smiled. “Let’s start with the true Fall of Man -- the repression of the body, emotions, and mind by that wondrous structure the ego.”

“How did they all get repressed?” Phil asked.

“The uroboric, or body-self phase was about food. The emotional-sexual stage was about progeny. The mental-linguistic phase was about concrete ideas,” Manuel reminded him. “The ego strip-mined each for power: food for wealth; sensuality for sexual gratification; and ideas for immortality projects. In so doing, those who are now stuck in the ego have forsaken true serenity, true bliss, and the eternal Now.”

Phil followed this assessment, because his last adventure with Manuel was intimately bound to those themes. Nodding his understanding Phil waited.

“With the real fall of man complete, there was a split between ego-self and spiritual-self. The ego seized the reins of consciousness and is pathologically pursuing its false gods – sex, money, power, and so on. And it’s at this point in mankind’s history, ironically enough, that fundamentalists begin their version of history.”

“4000 BC.”

“Right. And they’ve nurtured the pathology introduced then to this very day. Sinful man trying to get God’s grace through some form of sacrifice. Rather than children of God growing into adulthood and reconnection with the Divine.”

“Okay,” Phil said, “but now what? How is the split healed?”

“Harness the ego in service of transcendence,” Manuel replied. “It’s easy to say, and we thought it wouldn’t be all that big a deal for humans to accomplish. Yet angels have been trying to engineer this outcome for thousands of years. Every time we think we’ve pulled it off, the fundamentalists warp our successes to serve their ends -- which is to keep everybody stuck in their egos chasing the illusion of salvation. It’s been very frustrating.”

“The Tower of Babel was one such attempt.” Phil prompted the angel away from his momentary self-pity and back on task.

“Yes. As you saw, it was my idea,” Manuel grimaced, which showed up as darkening colors in his aura. “The tower was supposed to represent the ego itself. It was a stairway to and from heaven. I figured if humans could conceptualize the ego, they could escape the ego. If you can see it, you can’t be it. After all, they had done the same thing with the body. By escaping an exclusive identification with the body, they were able to use the body the way they wanted. They should be able to do the same thing with the ego. My logic on this was faultless. It still is. Those who have risen above the ego can use it to reach some level of transcendence.”

“Why didn’t it work back then?”

“The ego developed a life of its own,” Manuel said. “It refused to become a servant of the Divine-within. In fact, the fundamentalists firmly believe there is no immanent Goddess at all, because the flesh is evil by definition. The affair at the Tower of Babel became the template for all later failures on our part to coerce the ego into its true function.”

“Wow,” Phil remarked. “And the other angels hold you responsible.”

“Don’t remind me,” Manuel muttered. Then, in a brighter voice, “Let’s go see folly-in-action.”

He waved his hand, and the magic-wall to his right blurred. The picture emerged of a walled city still undergoing an expansion. It sat beside a slow moving river.

“Babylon,” Manuel said. “Let’s go.”

Now dressed in desert robes and headdresses, they walked a dusty trail towards the city. As they walked, Manuel told him, “Babylon is near the present-day city of Baghdad. In ancient times it was Ur or Uruk. As such, this place goes through a lot of different kings and empires. But what the locals have started building is called a ziggurat. It’s a tower, shaped like a pyramid with terraces or steps. The tower they’ve started building in Babylon will be seven stories high with a small shrine on top for the Goddess. The locals are also starting with the assumption this tower will be like other ziggurats -- a way for the gods to come to earth. The Babylonians call it, Etemenanki, which translated means the tower is the foundation of heaven and earth. Of particular note, the word ‘Babylon’ means the ‘gate of the gods’ to the locals. The Jews redefined it to mean ‘confusion.’ As you may have gathered from your reading, the Jews didn’t like cities nor city-dwellers. They remained pastoral in spirit for a long time.”

“Even though J was an aristocrat who lived in a city,” Phil commented.

“I told you she had a flair for irony,” Manuel said as they approached the gates of the city. Phil could see the city was a series of mud-brick buildings laid out in a long rectangle. It wasn’t much of a city, but this was 4000 BC.

Manuel’s charm allowed them passage, and they walked the streets filled with merchants, workers, markets, and the press of animals and men.

“Have you put it together that Cain’s offering was refused because Yahweh preferred shepherds over farmers?” Manuel asked. “And Cain was banished to create cities?”

“No,” Phil answered. “I hadn’t put it together. But you’re right. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of the wickedness inherent in city-living.”

“And Lot was living in a tent outside the city,” Manuel added. “One of the reasons he was spared.”

They walked towards the opposite side of the city and ran into the workmen who were building the tower. Priests and priestesses were at the head of the lines of cart-drawn bricks, and they were blessing the bricks before they were placed on the tower.

The men who took the large bricks to the tower were taller than the other workmen, and Manuel explained, “The last of the Nephilim. At this point and at my urging, they’ve convinced the locals to put a temple to the Goddess at the top of the ziggurat.”

Raphael appeared beside them as they walked. His robe was light blue, and his serene bronze face showed interest in the activities around them.

“It hasn’t started yet,” Manuel said to the other angel. “But it will soon.”

“What will happen soon?” Phil wanted to know.

Raphael answered, “The rebellion that cements the fall of man.”

Indeed, a mob rounded a far corner and headed across the central plaza where the ziggurat was under construction. One priest left his duties of blessing the construction and approached the mob.

They stopped a few paces from each other and one of the men in the mob challenged, “We heard you intend to put a shrine to Inanna at the top of the tower.”

“Yes,” the priest told him. “We must honor the earth and the sky. We cannot exclude either.”

“We want you to put a shrine to Baal up there,” the man told him. “He has protected us from the floods. He has stayed the anger of the earth. He has brought rains to our crops. He has tamed the waters of the world. Inanna has her own building over there.” The man pointed towards a building at the end of a narrow city street. He continued, “We will have Baal.”

The priest thought about this for a moment before answering, “He can share the space with Inanna.”

“No,” the man shook his head vigorously. “Then he would be no more than Dumuzi. Baal needs his own temple so we may care for him and show him our gratitude.”

The priest nodded his head in understanding, “We can build him his own temple, if you wish, after we finish this tower.”

“It must be now,” the man said. “It must be Baal at the top of this tower. He deserves nothing less.”

They continued to haggle over this for a while. The priest counter-offered a number of proposals, but the mob was insistent.

Manuel clarified the details, “Inanna was the ancient Mother Earth figure of this area. Dumuzi was her son-consort who dies every year and is reborn. Baal, as the man said, is one of the new sky-gods to whom the locals attribute victory over the flooding. The current ruler of Babylon is a Baal supporter. He’s the one who staged this rebellion.”

“What was the Goddess manifestation of Inanna?” Phil asked.

“Well,” Manuel began, “by this time, Inanna has been combined with Ishtar and Ashtarte. The way the myth goes, Inanna attempted to conquer death by visiting the underworld. It didn’t work out, and for her to leave the underworld, she had to provide a replacement. Sort of like the Demeter-Persephone deal in Greek mythology. Inanna provided her son Dumuzi for a six-month trip to the underworld each year. As a result, the myth allows man a way to accept death, afterlife, and the intercession of the Goddess on his behalf.”

Phil never heard of this type of myth before. It did have an elegant beauty to it. Inanna attempted the impossible on behalf of her ‘children,’ then ‘sacrifices’ her son-consort to appease death. Still, there is life after death, otherwise Dumuzi wouldn’t be able to come back at all. The myth was an elegant way to aid mankind in accepting death -- rather than running from it. Those fighting for Baal, in effect, were fighting for immutable death, which would demand the ego to concern itself with immortality projects in order to survive after death. It would also condemn men to their own devices and close the door to aid from the Divine Feminine.

The mob was becoming louder, Phil noticed. The commotion brought others to the tower. Very quickly, the plaza was filled with shouting men and women.

“Now it begins,” Raphael said. “Is there any reason to stay here and watch the fight?”

“I don’t think so,” Manuel said heavily.

Phil looked at the two angels and asked, “Then why did we come here in the first place? You could have just told me about it, or shown me this sequence on your magic wall?”

Manuel turned to him with a puzzled look on his radiant face. His blond curls bobbed as he shook his head and remarked, “I thought you had out-grown your stupid phase.”

Phil shrugged, “Apparently not. We come here to watch a minor skirmish over pagan gods. How does it rate either a mention in the Bible, or cause for your supposed woundedness?”

The three of them were moving back from the growing hostilities in the plaza. As they entered a side street, Manuel said, “It’s J’s ironic twists that landed it in the Bible.”

Phil frowned. He couldn’t detect any irony.

Raphael said to Manuel, “He can’t get past seeing the Bible as a religious text. I picked that up when I laid hands on him.”

Manuel turned back to Phil, “I told you to read J as a children’s tale, but one with something for adults woven into the story. Yahweh didn’t cause confusion among men. They did it to themselves. The whole episode about the Tower of Babel is reversed, understated, and ironic.”

Raphael added, “Man’s confusion persists to this day. Had Manuel’s plan worked, Western man could have connected the transcendent God of the Greeks, which was the one the Hebrew Priests adopted, to the restored Goddess. Mother Earth would have been revered; the Divine within each living thing would have been recognized; things would have been markedly different. Man would strive for the God Above, but he would receive comfort on that arduous journey from the Goddess Within.”

The scope of the tragedy began to dawn on Phil as the sounds of the consequences of the confusion escalated into the forerunner of religious warfare.

“The last of the Nephilim die here today,” Manuel said to no one in particular. It seemed he was reminding himself about the ending of an age.

The comment took Phil’s mind onto a different track, “Where do they go after death?”

“The Nephilim? They have their own compound, but not on the PMS level,” Manuel answered absently.

Phil wanted to know more, but he refrained from pushing the angel. Manuel’s mood was turning morose as the fighting heated up in the plaza.

“They turned the Bible into an idol,” Manuel said, shaking his head. “Such a masterpiece of literature.”

Phil frowned again. He knew Manuel must be referring to J, not the whole Bible, but still, how could this be relevant to why they had come here?

Raphael must have caught the question, as he wasn’t sharing Manuel’s mood. The bronze angel said in reply to Phil’s question, “All the records of archaic Judaism are lost to you, but Gevurah knew the old tales. She retold the ancient story -- from Yahweh fighting with Leviathan, to the molding of Adam from clay, to Moses whom Yahweh buried himself. She told this story, with the unpredictable Yahweh as her main character, as a Socratic puzzle to help, or prod, her contemporaries to examine their beliefs.”

“It was literary fiction?” Phil exclaimed. “With Yahweh as the main character?”

“Yes,” Raphael said. “She did a masterful job, too. The power of her writing still captivates millions.”

Manuel added, “And they still miss her ironic point. Including you.”

Phil took the accusation rather well and responded, “It’s hard to walk away from centuries of momentum.”

“Especially,” Raphael added, “when each of your lives of late required you accept the Bible in the idolatrous way which became the norm.”

The fighting was beginning to spill into the side-streets, and Phil became nervous.

“Shouldn’t we get out of here?”

“They can’t hurt us,” Manuel said. “Most of them can’t even see us. But there is no point in staying either -- except for you to know by experience the depth of this tragedy.”

Phil grimaced and said, “I’m beginning to know it, but a lot of what you’re saying is bouncing off my mind.”

“Bouncing off your entrenched beliefs would be more accurate,” Manuel commented in an icy voice.

“Okay. True enough. I’ve never considered Genesis to be a Kafka-esque novel. It might take me a while to get used to the idea.”

“Hopefully, not a long while,” Manuel countered. “You can’t go up against Jehovah and prevail if you think he is a real representation of the biblical God.”

Startled by the comment, Phil said, “He is an authentic mask of God. Isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but so is Kali, or Typhon, or any number of Top Gods who inhabit the different levels of human development,” Manuel said in a dismissive voice. “You need to break out of your enchantment and your terror of these archetypes. They need to be what they are and no more.”