Keith Cleversley and His Pea Brain

Archive for the ‘The Gnosis of Myth’ Category

Introduction

There are numerous debates surrounding the story of Noah’s Ark.  Many are working feverishly to prove that it could have actually been a historical event, while others remain steadfastly convinced that it was a mythological tale intended to teach the universal truths about the human experience rather than document a historical event.  Instead of throwing another hat into the ring, the intention of this article is to present the historical facts, allowing the truth to reveal itself.  It’s surprisingly easy to believe in something as adults that was taught to us in our youth and presented as fact, and it’s equally easy for us to believe something as fact when we have only a few details regarding it.

In other words: on the surface, Noah’s Ark doesn’t seem that unbelievable when we casually look at the general idea of the story.  Humans had become so evil that god needed to start over.  So, he enlisted a man named Noah to build a giant ark and put two of every animal on it in order to survive the deluge that God caused in order to wipe out life on planet Earth, so it could start again. Without looking too closely at this story, it doesn’t seem entirely impossible.  But, when we actually start to take a look up close, it becomes clear that the laws of physics would have made this an impossible event.

When we argue smaller details and overlook the bigger picture, it can be easy to get caught up in very misleading arguments.  For example:  When we spend our energy arguing over whether or not Noah could have actually built a wooden boat 450 feet long, or whether he took 30 million species or just 260 species, we overlook the much larger impossibilities such as the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that life on planet Earth was wiped out at any point in history, and especially from a worldwide flood, and that it began anew on Mount Ararat about 4,000 years ago and then spread to the rest of the world. Yet that kind of obfuscation is the exact tactic that has been used in these kinds of arguments throughout history, and often purposely, in order to cloud essential issues.

In fact, as you will soon see, the story of Noah’s Ark has its roots in a mythological tale that came long before, in a story called “The Epic of Gilgamesh”. I explain this in detail in my “GNOSIS OF MYTH: Epic of Gilgamesh” article.  Besides that, though, let’s arm you with the basic scientific knowledge that will empower you to take back a religious tradition that’s literally been highjacked by a power hungry elite bent on maintaining control over a populace.  The power of mythological stories are lost when such severe mistakes in reading happen (intentionally or not), and at this point many, including scholars feel that the only way to validate the stories and the whole of the Old Testament is by proving that it is based on historical events.

As has happened with every mythological tale since the first mythological tale was recorded, humans like to embellish.  The Epic of Gilgamesh, the original Noah’s Ark story (which came long before the Noah’s Ark story most are familiar with, and was likely used as a basis for the Noah’s Ark story in the Old Testament), was based on a real historical king named Gilgamesh.  But the historical Gilgamesh was not really two-thirds god and one-third human, nor did he battle gods or visit their Garden of Paradise.

But that’s not really the point of the Epic of Gilgamesh; its intent is to describe the Hero’s Journey as an allegory for the human journey we take from being asleep in our lives to awakening to our greater purpose.  It talks about our fall from grace and our birth into this linear, imperfect reality where we all share one inescapable common experience; we’re mortal and will face death.  It’s the original story of nonduality. It single-handedly created an archetype simply by making universal truths within our subconscious minds visible and relatable.  And to me, being able to identify and share in that experience is where the power of mythology lies; not in whether or not they can be proven to be historical events.

So, speaking of historical events, these are simply the facts we have to work with when examining the tale of Noah’s Ark:

The age of Noah

Noah would have been 600 years old when he built the boat, and according to the Old Testament timeline, he lived 350 years after the flood.  Not only has no human in history ever lived to be 950 years old, imagine building a boat when one is 600 years old, with a 98 year old son helping you.  This is some of the clearest evidence that the story was not meant to be historical fact, but was another mythology in a world steeped in mythological stories.  Many apologists and literalists argue that before the time of Noah, humans lived much longer lives, but again, there is absolutely no evidence to support that theory.

Size & Technology of the Ark

The ark is described as having three decks, a roof, and a door. The ark would be 300 cubits long and 30 cubits wide by 50 cubits high.  At 450 feet long, it would have been almost as big as a modern supertanker.  The catch is that the writers of this story weren’t engineers, and didn’t realize that it would be physically impossible to build a boat this size only of wood.  Furthermore, the only way modern engineers know how to build a boat of that size is to use metal framing as a key element.  At the time Noah’s Ark would have been built, there was no such technology.

As Tom Vosner, an expert on ancient boats explains, the ark would not have been able to hold its shape, and would simply have sunk like a stone into the ocean.

Number of Animals

Noah had just seven days to gather the estimated 30 million species of animals on earth. Even at 50 pairs of animals it would have taken him 30 years to complete this task.  Also, there would be no way to cram 2 of each animal into the ark.  Even with a fleet of arks, there wouldn’t be enough room.  And that’s not accounting for microscopic plant and animal life, the fact that the food required to feed these animals would have taken another fleet of boats, the fact that there’s no way to prevent any of the animals from eating each other, and the list goes on.

Sometimes the argument is that there were actually only 260 pairs of animals in total, due to comments in Genesis 7:2 and two other passages where Noah’s ark is mentioned.  In these places the verse specifies that “seven pairs of clean animals” were to be taken.  But it takes a misreading of the verse to come to the above conclusion.  Since “clean” animals were used as sacrifices as well as food, there needed to be be more of them on the ark than just the one pair of each.  The command was to take seven pairs of those animals instead of one (like all the others), not to take only clean animals. The Old Testament god seemed to like birds as well; he also commanded that, unlike unclean animals that only get one pair of every kind, birds, to “keep their kind alive” got a whopping seven pairs each, too!

If there WERE only 260 pairs of animals, the argument goes, the ark could have been much smaller.  But this argument not only directly contradicts Genesis 6:15, where the dimensions of 300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits tall for the ark are given, it also contradicts Genesis 6:19 which states; “And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.”

Moses must have been under a bit of pressure:  Not only did he have to herd 30,000,000 species into his ark at a pace of 50 pairs per second, roll call must have been an astounding feat. When I was checking in animal 24,000,000, I probably would have forgotten all about animal 50, and with 300,000 pages of animals to sift through…what a clerical nightmare.  Even if Moses kept the names of 100 species per page (perhaps he was also incredible skilled with a pen), that’s 300,000 pages of animal names he had to keep track of.  Since ancient papyrus weighs far more than an average sheet of modern paper (.15 ounces per page), he would have been lugging around well over 2,500 pounds of paper on his clipboard!

Worldwide Flood Signature

The Bible claims it rained until the entire world was covered in water.  There would be a very clear signature of such a massive flood, but geologists have not only found no evidence supporting that theory, they have found overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  A geologist (Ian Plimer) who’s actually searched the world over for this signature has clearly concluded that there is no evidence for the great flood at all.  He considered the sediment layers in Australia from 4000 years ago, at the time when the great flood was supposed to have happened, and he found no evidence of any massive flooding or the erosion it would have caused at that point in time (Plimer 1994).

Some say that perhaps it was only the known world that was flooded, and not the entire world, which would account for the lack of evidence in Australia.  Now, surely, the god who made the world with his own hand would know that the area around the Black Sea wasn’t the whole world.  Regardless, why would this all-powerful god have flooded only a small area of the world? Again, though, it only takes a cursory look at the actual text of the scripture to see what was actually said. In Genesis 7:4, God states: “I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.”  And later, in Genesis 7:19-23 we see: “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.  And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.  And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”

These passages do not indicate that the all-powerful God was only flooding a small part of the world.  They indicate that God was flooding the ENTIRE world, and that he killed every living being in that world other than those that were on the ark.  In light of these passages, to suggests that God only flooded the known world would indicate that he was only the God of a small part of the world!

Amount of Water

Water is a non-renewable resource.  To reach the top of the Himalayas, there would have to be more water than there is on, in, or above the planet earth, even if all the ice in the world were to melt. In fact, as Ian Plimer explains, we know how much water Earth has in total.  It’s definitely not enough to flood the continents.

Forty days and forty nights of rainstorms isn’t enough to cover the world either way, no matter how hard it was raining.

So, apologists look to even more far-fetched examples: the Bible talks about “deep springs” (which conveniently, no one in Biblical times was able to disprove).  The only problem with this is that these alleged geysers would have to spew so much water that they would have spewed enormous amounts of sulfur at the same time, creating an atmosphere that would have destroyed any living creature on Earth.  At minimum, any living creature that relied on oxygen surely would have perished. Furthermore, Genesis does not talk about water coming out of the ground. It only talks about rain as the cause of the flood, and indeed, this is one of the reasons that Biblical apologists use to refute the claim that the Flood story in Genesis is based on the Flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Even if there were enough water, the atmosphere would have been so thick following such geyser eruptions that there would be no way to breathe the air, and there would be so much pressure from that water our lungs would have simply been crushed.  Just like divers who can only go so deep under the water’s surface before they would be crushed, the same is true if there were tons of water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere

And then…Biblical apologists suggest that the flood was caused by ice from space.  The only problem with this is that there would be geological evidence of such an event.  Beyond that, though, an event of such magnitude would be so cataclysmic, that it would have destroyed all life on earth simply because of its impact. Scientists estimate that a comet/meteor with enough water in it to cover the earth would be about 1000 miles wide.  That’s 200 miles wider than the state of Texas, half the width of Australia!

Furthermore, the friction and the impact of such an event would have global repercussions.  The entire atmosphere of the Earth would rise to 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, vaporizing the flood waters and destroying any ark that might have been floating on top of those waters.  Life would be wiped out almost instantly, and it would continue as waves of devastation across the whole of the planet.  There would have been no ark, there would have been no life at all.

What I think is one of the obvious things that no one has touched upon is if there was such a great deluge, any historical evidence from prior to the flood would have been wiped out and (literally) billions (yes, billions) of years of evolution would have not only had to restart spontaneously and all at once, it would have had to have started from a single place on top of Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark allegedly landed.

That great mystery of how life began…it would have had to begin all over again, completely from scratch, and if any of us have learned anything about evolution on planet Earth, whether or not we believe that it was guided by an intelligent hand, this is about 3.5 billion years too few to completely re-evolve and repopulate the entire Earth.  But again, that’s not even accounting for the fact that the entire planet would have been a veritable wasteland, devoid of life, perhaps not actually capable of sustaining life anymore, at least not for many more thousands of years than the time since the story took place.

It becomes obvious, when one takes more than a cursory look, how absolutely absurd this becomes.  And, one that can of worms is opened, an entirely new set of questions occurs, such as why there is immense historical evidence that still exists, worldwide from before the flood, and there’s not a shred of evidence that any of that history was under any kind of floodwaters for 150 days.  In a desperate grasping of straws by apologists, it’s been pointed out that papyrus documents would have dissolved under the floodwaters, especially under the conditions that would have existed if such a deluge occurred, and that the oldest papyrus scroll happens to be dated to about 2985 BCE, right around the time when the flood was said to have occurred.  This is as red a red herring as I’ve perhaps ever seen.

It’s also interesting to note that at the time in history when the story of Noah’s Ark unfolds (circa 3000 BCE according to Biblical apologists), science has evidence of plenty of life all over the world, not just in the middle east.  Please look to our TIMELINE OF RELIGIONS (created by A. Szostek) on Entheology for a fun and detailed overview of what else was going on besides Noah allegedly building his ark.  The Indus Valley Civilization was flourishing in Northwestern India, Stonehenge was being built, the Cult of Dionysus was emerging in Greece, and countless other verifiable historical events.  None of these things would have been possible if the worldwide deluge as described in the story of Noah’s Ark actually had wiped out all but a very small amount of life on the planet.

Sightings of the Ark

Supposedly, Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat, which is located in Eastern Turkey.  And this is where the animals were let out of the ark to repopulate the world.  The problem with even this part of the story (suspending our disbelief for the fact that we couldn’t even have gotten to the point where Noah’s Ark is seaworthy) is that the geological and archaeological records do not support the idea that the entire world was populated from a single mountaintop in Turkey.  Overwhelming evidence shows a very clear path of humans out of Africa, many tens of thousands of years before the story of Noah’s Ark was supposed to have taken place.

If the entire planet was repopulated from the 30 million species that were impossible to fit on to an impossible ark, there would be some sort of evidence of this massive historical event taking place.  There would be a “clean slate” upon which we could see a clear path of migrations of people, plants and animals from Ararat to the rest of the world.  There’s not a shred of evidence that this occurred.  Although, after a 40 day and 40 night rain storm and a subsequent 150 day flood, there would be some very hungry animals on that ark, and at least a few of the species would have been eaten the moment they stepped off the ark until the world somehow magically repopulated its entire 30 million species in a few short years. Many species would have ended up in the belly of predators!

Timeline of the Story

Most scholars agree that the story of Noah’s Ark was written down in the 6th century BCE by using clues in the language the account was written in.  Scholars also agree that Jewish priests, in exile in Babylon (today’s Iraq), were the scribes who wrote the account.  This fact brings up the single-most important evidence regarding Noah’s Ark; a mythological tale known as “The Epic of Gilgamesh” that was mentioned at the top of this article.  Not only does this story have a flood tale that is uncannily like the story of Noah’s Ark, all evidence shows that it was written long before the story of Noah’s Ark.

Furthermore, if we look at a map of humans at that time in history, it becomes vividly clear that those Jewish scribes would have been intimately familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh.

As discussed in the ”GNOSIS OF MYTH: Epic of Gilgamesh” article, the authors of the Flood story in Genesis would have been intimately familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh, and would have had a vested interest in creating their own uniquely Jewish myths based on this powerful story.  The land of Israel was of particular interest to ancient powers because it was a crossroads between Africa (especially Egypt) and Asia (especially Mesopotamia). “Armies would want garrisons along this route to provide a supply line.  Merchants would pass through selling and buying their wares…With the entire ancient world constantly passing through this region, it was also a strategic location in terms of communication” (Walton & Hill 2004).  This means that the people of Israel were constantly being exposed to other cultures and their mythologies.

Israel also faced many upheavals from other cultures during the period of the writing of Genesis. In 722 BCE, Israel was conquered by the Assyrians.  During this century, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal had a very complete version of the Epic of Gilgamesh in his library, indicating that the myth was still very much in circulation at this time.  When Israel was conquered, many Assyrians moved to Israel, bringing with them their gods, many of which were installed in the Temple of Jerusalem!  So, it is clear that the myth of Gilgamesh would have been widely known in Israel during this period.

Then, in 598, the Assyrians, and Jerusalem along with it, were conquered by Babylon.  The Jews attempted to rebel against their new leaders, at which point the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar moved the nobility and upper class of Jerusalem to Babylon in exile in order to keep an eye on them.  The Temple of Jerusalem was then destroyed.

The Priestly writer of the Genesis Flood story probably ended up in Babylon in this way.  Prior to the Babylonian Exile, Judaism was a monotheistic religion with an invisible god and fairly diffuse practices.  Some Jews were happy to worship Yahweh along with other gods, such as Ashera and Baal, while others felt that this was wrong.  Some practiced circumcision, while others did not. There was no set ‘law’ that dictated how to be Jewish.  However, the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the priestly class necessitation the creation of a stable Jewish identity. If this had not been done, it would have been very easy for the Jewish people to convert to the religions of the foreigners that now surrounded them.

Therefore, practices such as circumcision and strict monotheism became NECESSARY aspects of Jewish identity. It was at this time that the Torah was also canonized, forming a concrete scripture for the Jewish people. This scripture borrowed from many neighboring religions, adding a Jewish twist to the myths of others in order to create a scripture that was uniquely Jewish but that also appealed to Jews who were attracted to the powerful myths of the conquering cultures. Thus, the flood story is clearly a borrowing from the Epic of Gilgamesh, designed to create a Jewish sense of identity in a confusing and fractured world.

A Plausible Theory

Now, there is a flood theory which offers some support for the concept of a massive regional flood that would have inspired both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the later Genesis flood story.  Indeed, many other cultures have flood stories as well.  For example, Irish legends speak of Queen Cesair and her court, who sailed seven years to avoid drowning when oceans overwhelmed Ireland.  In fact, European explorers in the Americas were startled by legends of the indigenous tribes that sounded very similar to the story of Noah.

One theory, posited by Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman, suggests that there was a catastrophic flood around 7000 BCE in which the Black Sea overflowed its banks.  Archaeological evidence does seem to support this theory, and the flood would have been large enough to cover much of the middle east.  According to the theory, during the Ice Age, the Black Sea was an isolated freshwater lake.  Toward the end of the Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago, the Earth began to warm up.  Vast sheets of ice began to melt, and so oceans and seas grew deeper.  Around 7,000 years ago, the Mediterranean Sea swelled and water pushed north through Turkey. The water was funneled through the narrow Bosporus Strait, and hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagra Falls.  The sea would have risen six inches a day, flooding coastal farms rapidly.  This event would have been catastrophic, and would no doubt have been mythologized by survivors in a story such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (National Geographic 1999).

The Most Plausible Explanation

A mere 150 years ago, an incredible discovery was made in the mountains of Ninevah, in Iraq. This was the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Without question, this single discovery literally rewrites the books on religious traditions, especially the Christian tradition.  It reveals that Noah’s Ark was actually taken from a much earlier mythological tale.  Not surprisingly, just as happened with the Nag Hammadi Library, it has largely been dismissed, ignored, and outright denied, simply because it doesn’t the fit the paradigm that’s been overlaid onto what originally was a beautiful, mystical-based religious tradition, rich in mythological stories that continue to speak the same truths that are relevant to every one of us and our quest to find our own personal god and meaning in our lives.

History has repeatedly shown that the Christian Bible has an unparalleled flair for exaggeration and drama.  It’s shown that other religious traditions not only existed long before Judaism came to be (See “Jesus and Buddha” by for an unparalleled comparison of Buddhism and Christianity), but that countless elements of these earlier traditions are interspersed throughout the pages of the Bible.  The example of Noah’s Ark is perhaps one of the easiest bodies of evidence to show that much of the Bible is based on earlier mythologies, and not on actual historical events.  It puts to rest the continued debate of whether at least some of the stories of the Old Testament were meant to be a historical record or a powerful teaching tool of mythological proportions.  Again, this isn’t to say that mythological tales aren’t based on truths, many are based in fact, but are embellished and presented in a way that makes them larger than life, full of heroes and fantastical places and creatures, making them easy to remember and capable of holding our interest generation after generation.

So, by treating the mythological tale of Noah’s Ark as a historical event, it prevents us from understanding and grasping the true meaning of this beautiful allegory.  After all, this is the very essence and purpose of mythological tales; they speak to universal truths of the human experience that cannot be explained in any other way.  Myths truly are the transcendental link between the human and the Divine, and when we try to read them literally, that powerful message is lost completely.  The very essence of mythological tales is to help us understand and accept the human condition as well as our mutual search to find god and to find god within ourselves.

Joseph Campbell was a pioneer who empowered each one of us to discover the true meaning within stories like Noah’s Ark and the power of the metaphors contained within them. We all have the power to take back the religious traditions that disconnected every one of us from our own source of power and our direct and very personal connection with the Divine.  Mythological tales are about you, about me, and about every human that has ever lived.  The heroes aren’t anything more than an allegory of our own mutual human struggle, the fantastical creatures are the hurdles we need to overcome in our lives, and the fantastical places represent the landscape of our own minds; the stages upon which those struggles are played out.

Introduction

The Western world has done a fantastic job of masking our disconnection to god, to each other and to this sacred planet of ours.  As has often been stated by modern scholars, ”book” religions have further become an incredibly effective inoculation against discovering our true nature, as science and materialism has made it even more difficult for any one of us to escape the mind-numbing indoctrination of the Western world. But our mutual quiet desperation, the deep soul-encroaching emptiness that those of us courageous enough to allow ourselves to feel; it truly exists through no fault of our own:  It’s been planted deep within each one of us long before we were born because of the loss of our connection to the sacredness of life.

The great news is that there’s more than a small hope to find a way out of the darkness.  There’s a well-worn path that many have taken before us, and one we do not have to take alone.  It’s a path that every ancient mythological tale spoke of, and what Joseph Campbell called “The Hero’s Journey”.  Although few of us have been taught this; mythological stories actually exist for one beautiful, life-changing reason; to provide us with a roadmap to our own spirituality and self-discovery, a guide for the difficult path of remembering our own true nature.  Myths literally are the transcendental link between the human and the Divine.  They speak about god and our search to find god within ourselves, not unlike the plants of shamanistic cultures called “teacher plants” or “entheogens”; the definition of which means “to find god within.”

And, we don’t need to be some larger-than-life adventurer armed with a magical sword to fight a fire-breathing dragon; we simply need to be armed with the courage to take those first steps into the deep, dark abyss of our own lives.  In fact, in one of Joseph Campbell’s personally-meaningful quotes to those who find the strength and determination to embark on our own epic journey of self-discovery, he so lucidly says; “And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

That very sentiment brings up a key point:  Most of the Western world has been led to believe that mythologies are nothing more than fairy tales, that they’re ancient stories told in a time of primitive thinking where actual monsters abounded in the imagination of their authors.  To say something is a myth often means that it’s a lie, that it’s something based on fantasy.  But, nothing could be further from the truth:  Every ancient myth is a metaphor describing where our mutual spiritual evolution and salvation truly exists.  They provide us with the keys we need to live in accord rather than in conflict with nature, with god, and with each other.

How We Lost Our Way

So wait just a second! – Could we really have collectively fallen this far from grace as a species?  Could the ancient minds, most of which were illiterate, be more “tuned in” and have a deeper understanding and grasp of the meanings of myths more than most of us at least in the Western world do today?

Without question, that truly is a resounding; “Yes!”

It can be difficult to fathom, but there is no escaping that truth. Researchers generally agree that the planetary takeover began in the late Bronze Age with the invasion of the Indo-European peoples.  According to leading scholars, these nomads effectively unseated and systematically began to obliterate the spiritual, life-affirming cultures that inhabited and lived in harmony with this planet.  The invasions are well-documented, and a growing number of scholars are admitting this difficult reality:  Humans, at one time in history, as evidenced in vivid detail by Riane Reisler in “The Chalice and the Blade” or Merlin Stone in “When God Was a Woman”, lived in harmony with the planet instead of in opposition to and in conflict with it.

Early humans couldn’t help but intrinsically understand that we’re an intrinsic part of nature, that we are all connected, that we are not only a manifestation of the Divine, but that all of Nature is part of that same Divine consciousness.  They implicitly understood that destroy nature is to destroy ourselves and that to destroy each other is to destroy god.  That yearning, that desire for connection is no different than the yearning we all feel within the deepest fibers of our beings today.  The ego-dissolving experiences of our mutual human ancestors, our intrinsic understanding of our intricate and inextricable connection to Mother Nature, the Divine and others is why I will forever remain convinced that so many of us find ourselves in a state of quiet panic or loud denial.

Perhaps what’s equally as difficult to wrap ones head around is the other key element in our mutual fall from grace; it’s when the metaphor of mythologies began to be taken as fact.  In fact, as of this writing, the only wars that exist on this planet are ones waged by those who’ve mistaken that mythological metaphor as fact.  The Roman Catholic Church is one of the most serious offenders, partly for the simple mathematical statistic of the body count of those who’ve been murdered in the name of their “all-loving” god.  There’s no denying that the Christian and Muslim god is and was a warrior god, invented by an oppressed people, and based on mythological tales that came before. And despite the original intent of the Christian mythology, it has literally been vastly reduced in its scope and meaning and hijacked over time by power hungry leaders and politicians.  There’s immense debate over who did what when, but there are some indisputable facts such as the Council of Nicaea in 325AD where decisions were made arbitrarily decided what Christianity was going to look like, giving the pagan Holy Roman Catholic Church an entirely new, but deeply misguided and misleading face.

This event was called the Council of Nicaea, and the result of this gathering of men in power with a very specific, spelled out agenda: They decided to change verses of the Bible to suit a history they preferred; one that would put their personal beliefs as a nation and individuals at the forefront.  They eliminated verses as well as books from the Bible that they didn’t feel fit that changed vision.  They changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday.  They changed the date of Jesus’ birthday to December 25th, which joust so happens to be the Winter Solstice, where night is born back into the light of day.  They also introduced Easter; a pagan worship called “The Feast of Ishtar”.  Lastly, the declaration was made that the Church of Rome would become the “Universal Church of the Holy Roman Empire” although the pagan church called the “Holy Roman Catholic Church” existed several hundred years before there was a Jesus.

This is an immense agenda for men who didn’t even claim to be divinely inspired when changing the rules of the religion.  It also came from men who never could have fathomed or imagined a world as vast as ours is today, nor one where where we’re all connected electronically at the press of a button or click of a mouse.  I hope I forever remain convinced that the truth will always eventually win out in the end.  Why?  Because the tradition that began way back in Rome has become so deeply embedded in the Western human experience that few even know to question the history they’ve been presented with.  I dream of a day where more than 7% of the people who base their entire spiritual lives on a book they’ve never read, actually read it.  To me, it took a single reading of the Bible to realize that something was horribly awry, that I had been mislead.  My all-powerful, all-loving god was quite the opposite; he was a jealous, vindictive, brutal, easily-angered god who didn’t think twice about selling women as property.  He ordered executions, destroyed entire cultures on a whim, and was responsible for a host of other atrocities that seem very, very human, and not very mystical or loving at all.

The response I’ve received to the above query is always the same; “God works in mysterious ways” or also spoken as; “We couldn’t know the mind of god.”

Huh? That exact sentiment is where the key disconnect and untruth of Western religious teaching truly reveals itself: Of course we could know the mind of god!  Why? – Because each one of us is a Divine manifestation of that Divine presence and energy.  Forgetting that simple fact, in easily-verifiable historical terms: Viewing ourselves as separate from god, from each other, and from nature is where we all went so collectively awry as a people.

Equally as important though, is that the version of the Christian Bible I trusted others to present me with was very different than the one I was reading.  Knowing that the Earth wasn’t actually created in 7 days, that the planet was far older than the few thousand years, that many of the stories contained within were contradictory…it gave me a whole new perspective, and eventually, a whole new appreciation for the true, and virtually lost, Christian tradition.  From the sacred scriptures I’ve read, it’s obvious that Jesus was actually a non-dualist, that he was a mystic who was clearly building upon earlier non-dualist traditions that came before him.  Who he became in the collective consciousness and Sunday church and often stands in direct contradiction to the actual words of the Bible itself.

There are actually far more gospels than the few that those in power decided to continue to include in the Christian Bible.  Why is the Gospel of Thomas any less valid than the four that were chosen to constitute the New Testament in the Christian Bible?  Why, whenever I tell others that the Gospel of Thomas even exists, I get a blank stare or talking point arguments and dismissals?  The simple truth is that scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas are equally as valid as Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, if not more so, partly because the “Gnostic Gospels” as they’ve been called, as well as the whole of the Nag Hammadi library have been altered far less over the course of history than the books that were arbitrarily decided would constitute the “true” New Testament.

Some try to argue the age of the gospels is what makes one more valid than the other.  But the fatal flaw in that argument is that no one could ever know the exact date of when the FIRST version of any gospel was written.  Oral traditions became written traditions that were copied and recopied over the course of tens to hundreds of years.  We know how much a simple story changes in a classroom by the time the story is passed from the first student to the last.  Furthermore, who are we to decide that Matthew’s gospel is any more valid than Thomas’ gospel, or Judas’ or Mary Magdalene’s?  Doesn’t it make sense, if one is going to base their entire life on a book-based religion, to have the full collection of books from that religious system, rather than the 4 that were cherry-picked, likely arbitrarily by Irenaeus or other very biased leaders?

As a single example of the many I’ve documented throughout my writing, there’s only a single mention of a virgin birth anywhere in the Bible.  It’s only in the New Testament and is mentioned only by Luke.  It just so happens that Luke was a Greek, and it’s the Greek’s who had a long tradition of virgin births in their mythology.  Since mythologies were mutable until Roman Catholicism made its appearance in the world, it makes complete sense that he would superimpose his culture and religion over the top of the Gospels he was writing.  But, if a number of disciples (remember, there were far more gospels that we’ve been taught there were) were there to witness or to recount historical events, doesn’t it seem incredibly likely that more than just one of them might think to mention perhaps one of the single-most important events of the Christian tradition?

What makes far more sense is that the stories of the Bible were never meant to be taken literally, just like no other religious system in history was meant to take their mythologies as factual events.  Mythologies have always been mutable for the simple reason that they describe a universal journey that speaks to the human psyche.  When our early ancestors were hunters and gatherers, the mythological tales reflected that culture of existence.  When our early ancestors moved towards a planting culture, the subject of the mythologies changed to reflect that culture as well.  But it’s the message and the journey that remained the same; it was simply dressed in different clothing, played out on different stages.

But literalism of mythological tales; the taking of metaphor as fact; it’s a large part of the reason the angry, non-dualist tradition of Roman Catholicism has spent a bloody and brutal 2,000 years separating virtually everyone born in the Western world from our spirituality, from each other and from nature.  The Bible no longer was interpreted as the non-dualist mythology that it was likely originally intended; it began to be taken as literal truth that supposedly documented actual historical events.  We’re not taught that truth because to even suggest that as a possibility until very recently, would easily get someone killed, imprisoned, or tortured.  In fact, it’s only very recently that we have a female perspective on human and religious history, and some of the most enlightening research I’ve discovered has come from the half of the human race (female) that’s been eliminated as the Mother Goddesses of this planet, of which we’re all the children of.

It’s also key to remain mindful that religion and religious practice wasn’t something that we did on a Sunday for an hour or two in order to fulfill some imagined duty ensuring our eternal bliss.  It was life, and life was religion.  Ancient humans as it turns out weren’t as primitive as we’ve been led to believe, at least in relation to their connection with god, with each other, and with this planet.  None of those who came before us would have dreamed of destroying other humans or this planet in the capacity all of us do today, whether we’re actively killing enemies in war, drive cars that consume gasoline and tout leather seats, or pour the bulk of our money into material possessions or weapons of war.

Yes, we need to exist within the society we’ve inherited by getting jobs, consuming goods, and working towards our dream house and family.  It’s difficult to make any other choice and most couldn’t actually imagine making any other choice.  But that shouldn’t ever be an excuse to not try to discover ourselves, to reconnect with the sacred, to remember who we were before we entered these fragile and fleeting frames.  Denial is a powerful weapon of personal destruction, and an even more powerful tool to keep us disconnected from our true nature.  But it can also be a powerful ally simply because of how intrinsic it is to a state of harmony within ourselves.

Reclaiming the Sacred

Because of the power that’s hidden within the words of myths, one of my most passionate missions on this planet to to help others realize that mythologies are as relevant to us today as they were to the ancient peoples who wrote them.  Why?  Although many of us do our best to deny it (often at any cost), it only takes one look at the world we live in to know that we have collectively lost our way.  And, since so many are living in a dream state that most never awaken from, it’s up to each one of us who are awake (or in the process of awakening) to take the first steps onto the path of reconnection to the sacred, to each other and to this wondrous planet of ours.  Truly the best we can do for this planet, for each other or to create a connection with the Divine is to shine as brightly as we can.  If we accomplish that, then we can shine in the hope that it might rub off on those around us.

But in the Western world, we’ve been conditioned from a very young age and, for many of us; since birth, to believe the mythology that we’ve inherited is fact.  Despite very lucid and intelligent arguments to the contrary, experts like Joseph Campbell (who devoted his entire life to the interpretation of world myths) saw a striking similarity between every myth ever written that it was beyond uncanny.  He also deconstructed Western belief into the original parts upon which it was based, revealing, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the Christian Bible can be traced back to much earlier traditions.  Everything from the Genesis account, to the Garden of Eden, to Noah’s Flood, to the End of the World; these mythological tales existed long before there was an Old Testament.  Seeing the Christian Bible as a series of narratives that freely use the metaphors and symbolism drawn from a common cultural pool in order to assert a specific theology about God [see the Speaking the Language of Canaan article] could be the first key leap in reclaiming a religious tradition that was stripped of its spiritual significance thousands of years ago.

Imagine how powerful the Christian Bible would be if it was returned to its place in history as an evolution of earlier mythologies.  Imagine the power if it was restored to its place as a non-dualist tradition, as a book that drew from a long history of powerful mythological tales that not only reveal a single truth about the human condition, but puts us back in alignment with the Divine.  It’s truly just a rethinking away for anyone who chooses to remember that mythologies are metaphors for universal truths, relevant even more today than ever before.

I understand that re-wiring our brains to think of the religious tradition that most of us in the Western world inherited at birth can often feel like an insurmountable task.  But, the freedom that comes from understanding the message as a mythological tale is far more powerful than anything we could hope to learn when we instead take the events of the Bible as fact.  I’ve devoted a number of articles to explaining and deciphering specific aspects of the Bible, not only showing where the stories in the Bible likely came from, but how the powerful messages contained within those stories, when read and understood the way they were originally intended, truly are.

And to me, there is a no more beautiful and powerful story of non-duality, of humans birthing into the human experience than the Garden of Eden story.  It’s been twisted into a battle between good and evil, between man and nature, between man and god, between animals and man, when the truth of the message of that mythological tale helps illuminate our way to the Divine, not put us in conflict with it.  But the true power and essence of this mythological tale reveals itself when we look to its original intent.  The original intent of this story, as has been agreed-upon by scholars far more versed in the Bible than me, is addressed in my “Gnosis of the Garden of Eden” article elsewhere on this website.  The Garden of Eden describes one of the most beautiful experiences we can know as humans; that of knowing nonduality, entering into a world of opposites, linear time, and nonduality, but with the inevitable power of reintegrating into that non-dual consciousness at the moment of our deaths.

What’s equally as difficult to overcome though, is how deeply we’ve been conditioned to view ourselves as separate from each other.  Our tribal connections have been lost.  And this is one of the key messages of mythological tales, of ancient religions: We are all a manifestation of the Divine.  When a Hindu tips his/her hands towards another person in greeting, it’s an acknowledgment of the Divine in the other person.  But, whenever I’ve attended workshops and conferences that require attendant participation, it’s amazing to see how uneasy people are to be in that moment with the other.

For example, I attended a Sufi Whirling workshop during my seeking of a meditation practice I could take with me wherever I traveled.  Much of that workshop involved holding hands, chanting, grunting and simple movement as we held hands.  What a beautiful and powerful experience it can be when we allow our egos to dissolve just enough to be in that moment with our sacred Selves and the Sacred Other!  But we’ve been so conditioned to be afraid, to be self-conscious, to feel silly, to fear that ego-dissolution experience (key to the shamanic tradition and the psychedelic experience), that it can make it difficult to impossible to experience the true power of those moments.  Most in the Western world have never been taught to explore ego-dissolving activities that give us that direct connection to the Divine, which personally, is one of the key spiritual experiences we could know as a human.

And these are all part of the powerful, subconscious built-in life-hacking tools of Western religion.  We’re not taught to be in accord with god, with nature or with each other.  Everyone who’s not like us is an enemy.  Nature is something to be overcome.  God is something separate from us.  All of these deeply-ingrained beliefs that we inherited can’t do anything but manifest in that unease when we’re in a room together dancing.  When we can simply remember that each one of us a divine manifestation of god and of the sacred, doors open that we can’t possibly imagine otherwise, as life swiftly moves to once again be in accord with nature, with god, with others and with our own Selves.  Awakening into this remembering can be one of the most powerful experiences we can have as a human, but it takes great courage, it takes ego-dissolution, and it takes a determination to embark on what can be the most difficult path any of us could ever choose.

But, as I mentioned earlier; we do not have to take that journey alone.  Little do most of us know that there are roadmaps to our spiritual evolution right under our collective noses.  Mythologies have always been there for us, in books and stories and in dreams, repeatedly pointing out that well-worn path of self-discovery and of telling through metaphor, of the experience of non-duality; of that oneness with the Divine Consciousness.

Mythologies do actually exist to to illuminate the way for us by communicating that which is often impossible to communicate by any other means.  They’re not easy to interpret, nor does understanding of myths come without sacrifice.  As my mom said to me when I first began my personal path of transformation; “What would you like me to do?  I’ve lived an entire life based on those things that I’ve been taught were true.  To go against that now would mean I’d have to turn my entire world upside down.  The people who are around me, who love me and have been there for me; they wouldn’t know what to make of any of what I’d have to say to them.  As a result, I’d be isolated and alone.  Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not strong enough to live in that kind of a world, especially at my age.”

In actuality, it’s difficult to live in that world at ANY age.

My mom spoke the exact reason why so many of us settle for a life that brings us tangible joys, allowing us, in essence, to be part of a religion were we find connection, solace, and help in getting through our days.  I would never venture to say that organized religion hasn’t offered tremendous benefits to those who’ve participated in it.  I don’t doubt that it has.  But it doesn’t mean that it helps bring one in accord with the timeless nature of a non-dual existence.  I convinced myself I knew joy for quite a number of years.  Even when I realized something was desperately wrong with my world, I was tempted, especially after I began the very difficult path of self-discovery, to simply quit, to sink back into the blissful ignorance I knew, intimately, and an ignorance that I was sure would still bring me comfort, perhaps for the rest of my life.

I didn’t see anything wrong with that, and began to find numerous justifications for continuing to exist in that state of separateness, of isolation.  I personally know the terror of digging myself out of the spiritual hole I allowed myself to unwittingly be shoved into, only to find that I was in a deep, dark tunnel.  But with discipline and determination, there’s an archetypal light at the end of that tunnel that’s more brilliant, more beautiful, and more love-infused than any we may ever have imagined.  As Joseph Campbell once said; “If only a portion of that lost totality could be dredged up into the light of day, we should experience a marvelous expansion of our powers, a vivid renewal of life.”

And, despite my fears that I was alone on that difficult path, I soon realized that a completely different kind of nurturing energy began to find its way to me.  It turns out that I wasn’t t alone, that there were many others on the same path as me, working to rewire years of indoctrination after much of what we had thought was the truth shattered before our eyes.  There was immense comfort in that and of realizing that when we’re on a path towards the Divine, that entire universe conspires with us to make our dream of awakening into the non-dual a reality.

We have a roadmap so clearly laid out before us.  All we need to do is to make the decision for ourselves and for everyone else, to step onto it.

Taking the Archetypal Journey

As that unified collective whole, we need to regain what we’ve lost; our connection to the Divine, to each other and to this sacred planet of ours.  One of the keys to this reclamation couldn’t be closer to each one of us.  The Western world has successfully convinced us to let go of our fairy tales as “myths” are now associated with “untrue fantasies.” As stated earlier, nothing could be further from the truth, and I personally feel that never before in history have the messages within the metaphor of mythologies been more relevant and poignant than they are today.

And, an ambassador for reclaiming these truths was Joseph Campbell.  He spent most of his life illuminating the road map to our mutual evolutionary spiritual paths.  And it wasn’t one that he had anything to do with constructing; it’s the very same path that heroes throughout history have already traveled time and time again.  He spent his life trying to help us all masterfully interpret the myths as they were originally intended, not as we’ve been mistakenly taught them to mean, as he weaved the world’s myths into a cohesive pattern to make a few key facts become vividly clear:

Mythologies, many of which became the basis of modern religions, were roadmaps for each of us to follow; guideposts that were intended to help us on our mutual human spiritual journeys. In his own words, he says, ”Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.  It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation.”

Campbell proved, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that things truly went horribly awry for us as a collective whole the moment these myths started to be taken as fact.  As a result, arguing whether the entire Old Testament was written by the historical Moses (fundamentalists cling to this belief) or that it was written by several authors (scholarly belief) is no longer of interest to me.  The bottom line is that Old Testament is uncannily like other mythologies I’ve researched, and uncannily like ones that came often long before it.  Arguing who wrote what serves the sole purpose of diverting our attention from the core issue, which is illuminating our spiritual path within the time frame of the single lifetime we’ve been given.  The truth that emerges when one takes even a cursory amount of time to discover the message of the myths rather than seeking the scientific fact of the myths: Our worlds are instantly transformed, the Deep Dark Night of the Soul becomes mute, and we are instantaneously catapulted onto a path few get the opportunity to be terrified by or duly rewarded for having the determination and perseverance to trek. The rewards are more than any words could hope to convey other than perhaps, the numerous mythologies that speak to that very experience.

Where to begin?  How to get started?  How to recognize we’re on the proper path?

I used to ask myself these very questions until I realized that once we begin on the path to reawakening and re-remembering what we’ve collectively forgotten, the path illuminate itself. Spending my time feverishly taking notes turned into a simple understanding that matters of the heart and soul don’t require notes; they require simply allowing oneself to be in the moment, to simply remember who we were before we entered this human frame.

My quest for the “perfect” system of enlightenment led me all over the world.  It led me down a number of dark alleys and dead ends, but those only served to illuminate my path even more vividly.  I studied Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism, Christianity, Yoga, Qigong, Tai Chi, Shamanism, I worked with spiritual gurus in India and South America and Mexico, I worked with teacher plants and entheogens as well as a number of other systems, rituals and beliefs.  In the end, something that became as clear as the message and metaphor of myths was this:  Virtually every true tradition I found had the exact same purpose and led to the exact same place:  Discovering our natural non-dual state.

And I also discovered that anyone who has the courage to take an honest look at themselves is by default, on a spiritual journey of self-discovery.  It’s really what we choose to do with that realization.  Most, even after having that realization are not unlike my mother; it’s difficult, uncomfortable and downright painful to give up a world of conditioning and indoctrination that we’ve built our entire lives around.  Perhaps it doesn’t make sense to allow the worlds we’ve spent our lifetimes building come crashing down in the name of spiritual realization.  That is certainly not for me to decide but I can offer this one reassurance:

Nothing has ever been more enriching, more meaningful, or more transformational than making the decision to explore the spiritual path that was laid out before me.  It took an emotionally abusive relationship of almost 5 years to allow the world I had constructed around myself to get “bad enough” before I took action out of desperation, when I crawled from the wreckage to seek help.  It took a few missteps, but help eventually arrived in the form of a mentor (who refuses to be called my mentor) who didn’t illuminate the path I chose to take, inasmuch as he provided the safety railings so I didn’t inadvertently careen off a cliff along the way.

My path is one that will take more than a single lifetime to explore, discover and internalize.  But something that has been of infinite guidance along that path has been the mythologies that have personally spoken to me.  For anyone who’s interested in a taste of the message of myth as well as how powerful it can be for the transformation of consciousness, look no further than “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell.  There’s a reason it became as wildly successful as it did in 1987; it spoke to those universal truths, that universal longing that which we’ve lost as a collective whole, that desire to reconnect with god, with nature and with each other.

The Divine truly exists within each one of us.  We truly are wholly and completely connected to each other, to god, and to this wondrous and sacred planet of ours.  It simply takes the courage and determination to work towards undoing all of the conditioning from the religious systems the Western world has inherited, or at least approach it with an open enough mind where healing can begin.  I wish you all the best on your personal journey to realization and spiritual awareness.  Hopefully something in my words, books, research and essays will resonate with you, and perhaps prompt you to look to the shoulders of the giants I continue to stand upon in my own personal journey.

The section of my website called “The Gnosis of Myth” is devoted to exploring the meaning and message within the metaphor of myth, and perhaps to help you on your own quest for truth as I will be seeking long after I take my last breath.  Look to the “Gnosis of the Garden of Eden” article to explore and explain the true meaning behind that quintessential tale of non-duality or “Gnosis of Creation Myths” to explore the universal meaning behind every creation myth (including the one in Genesis most are familiar with), as well as many others that I’m adding as quickly as time and my pen permits.  We’ve lost something critical to our human experience, but all truly is not lost as the path is not only well-worn, it’s there in front of each and every one of us.

If you have some favorite books on nonduality, please add them in the Comments section below.  To me, any mythological tale is the epitome of the expression of nonduality, including ancient and sacred texts such as a Rig Veda, the Book of the Dead, the Bible, and several others.  I adore the poetry of Rumi and could never get enough of Joseph Campbell’s writings, especially the aforementioned series called “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers.  To me, there is no better introduction to the concept of nonduality than that series.

- Keith Cleversley

———- ———- ———-

DEFINITION OF NONDUALITY: Many have asked for a definition of nonduality. A distillation of the 50+ definitions into one that is personally meaningful to me would be this: “It’s knowing, at the very core of or humanity that we’re all a single connected consciousness and that every single living being on this planet, human or otherwise, is both a manifestation of and an expression of the Divine.  It’s the experience of the release from linear time and pairs of opposites into a state of consciousness where there only unity and love with oneself, each other, and the Divine.”

Or, as Wei Wu Wei succinctly said; “I Am but there is no me.”

In a more academic sense, the word itself means “not two.”  It’s the perfect expression of unity.  When we apply that to spirituality, to me it means “oneness with god.”  The Upanishads were among the first to write about it and called it “advaita” which literally translates into “non-dual.”  According to a famous philosopher and expert on non-duality called David Loy, when you realize that the nature of your mind and the Universe are nondual, you are enlightened. Or, one of my favorite expressions of nonduality reminds of some of the greatest Zen teachings.  Tim Gerchmez said; “Would you mind terribly if I threw nonduality to the wind for a moment, and just said that I love you?”

Rumi, to me, basked in the glow of nonduality, so I highly recommend “The Way of Passion” by Andrew Harvey for an entire book of definitions regarding nonduality.  From everyone I’ve spoken with and from my own personal experience with the timelessness of nonduality, to me, it’s the highest expression of love that humans are capable of experiencing.  We begin our lives in the oneness of the womb, in a perfect state of nondual existence with our personal Mother Goddess.  Genesis and the Garden of Eden is the perfect expression of this state of existence, as god, human, plant and animal were one within the Garden of Eden.