The Prevailing Manichaean World View

While looking for a word to describe a dualistic way of viewing things, I remembered the word manichaean and thought I'd investigate the origin of the term. I was surprised to learn that it was a syncretic religion and had once been a rival to Christianity. This is a quote from Wikipedia:

Manichaeism was a major religious movement that was founded by the Iranian prophet Mani c. 216–276 AD) in the Sasanian Empire.

Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian gnostic and religious movements. 

Manichaeism was quickly successful and spread far through the Aramaic-Syriac speaking regions. It thrived between the 3rd and 7th centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was briefly the main rival to Christianity in the competition to replace classical paganism. Manichaeism survived longer in the east than in the west, and it appears to have finally faded away after the 14th century in southern China, contemporary to the decline in China of the Church of the East during the Ming Dynasty. While most of Manichaeism's original writings have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived. 

An adherent of Manichaeism is called, especially in older sources, a Manichee, or more recently Manichaean.

it's interesting that St. Augustine was a Manichaean for nine years before he converted to Christianity. Here is a brief article about Augustine and Manichaeism:

AUGUSTINE AND MANICHAEISM

(by Gillian Clark, from the introduction to her Cambridge Latin edition of Confessions, Books I-IV)

Augustine encountered Manichaean teaching soon after the impact of the Hortensius, and remained an adherent for nine years. His subsequent attacks on Manichaeism are a major source of information, but of course they are polemic against the system, not exposition of it. In the Confessions he is concerned with the effect of Manichaeism on his own relationship with God. Instead of explaining what he believed as a Manichaean and why, he denounces the aspects of his belief which, in the light of Platonist philosophy and the preaching of Ambrose, he had come to see as its major confusions. But it is now possible to give a general account of western Manichaeism which does not depend chiefly on Christian polemic. 

Several Manichaean texts have been discovered this century: the Coptic texts from Medinet Medi in the Fayyum include a book of psalms, and the Greek Mani codex, a tiny papyrus volume, is an anthology on the birth and early life of Mani. Mani, born in 216 in southern Mesopotamia, was brought up in an ascetic Judaeo-Christian sect which he left in his mid-twenties. He believed himself to be the Paraclete, the Advocate who, as Jesus promised to his followers (John 14:26), would lead them into all truth. Revelations from his divine twin taught him the doctrines and the organisation of Manichaeism, and instructed him to travel and preach. His teaching spread eastward and westward, adapting to existing religious beliefs and practices: some of the most important Manichaean texts, written in various Central Asian languages, were found at Turfan in China. 

In the Roman empire, Manichaeism was regarded by Christians as heretical and by the state as a dangerous import from the rival power, Persia (Iran). In Persia there was religious toleration until the death of Shapur I (c. 272), but under his successor Zoroastrianism became the most influential religion, and Mani was imprisoned and died after torture. His death was commemorated in the festival of the Bema, which western Manichaeans celebrated rather than Easter.
Mani's claim to a new revelation was not a new phenomenon in the west. Jesus had told his followers (John 16:12-13): "I still have many things to tell you, but you cannot handle them now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all truth." He had said that the Paraclete was "the spirit of truth which the world cannot receive, because it neither sees nor knows it; but you know it, because it remains with you and is in you" (John 14:17). Several religious leaders had convinced their followers that they had the truth, the gnosis (knowledge), which most people could not see. 

The knowledge took the form of a deeper understanding of what is really happening in human lives. Gnostics believed that the physical world is of no value: it is the temporary, illusory stage for a struggle of spiritual powers, and all that matters is the release of the divine spirit within us from the contamination of the material body and its return to its true home. They produced complex mythologies of angels and demons to explain the workings of the universe. They refused to accept the affirmation of Genesis that God made the world, "and God saw all the things that God had made, and they were very good" (Genesis 1:31). Consequently, they also refused to accept the Incarnation, the union of God and human in a human body, and taught that Christ was a divine spirit in the appearance of a human body, and that his death on the cross was an appearance of death. 

Gnosticism recurs through the history of Christianity, but Gnostic sects tended to fragment. Mani combined impressive teaching, reinforced by hymns and splendidly produced books, with effective organisation. He taught that Good and Evil are equal powers, and both have always existed. Each has a kingdom, Good the kingdom of Light and Evil the kingdom of Darkness. Darkness invaded Light, and fragments of light are still entrapped in the darkness; this world was created in order to free them. Jesus of Light, who is pure spirit, shows humans how the light may be freed, and the Suffering Jesus is the Light which is entrapped in this world. The human soul is a fragment of Light which has fallen from its home, the kingdom of heaven, and is trapped in the body. It can escape by disciplining the body and with the help of saving powers. 

There were two kinds of Manichaeans, the Elect Saints and the Hearers. The Elect, who formed the nucleus of a Manichaean cell, were committed to a missionary life of poverty and celibacy. They were strict vegetarians, drank no wine, and were forbidden even to harvest or prepare food, because Mani had a revelation that it is a kind of murder to damage plants by harvesting. The sect survived because the Hearers incurred the sin of preparing food, and were released from sin by the prayers of the Elect who ate it: Mani taught that fragments of the divine which were trapped in plants could be released when ingested by the pure body of the Elect. The Hearers were also allowed a wife or concubine, but were taught to avoid procreation because it entraps more divine spirits in matter. Manichaean cells, like Christian churches, were kept in touch with one another by a hierarchy analogous to the Christian clergy, so when Augustine left Carthage for Rome he was able to stay with another Hearer and meet some of the Elect (5.10.18-19). 

Manichaeism offered Augustine a way to accommodate his conflicts: he could pursue his career, and retain his partner, while purging his sins through his service to the pure Elect (4.1.1); and he could blame those sins on his lower, alien nature, which like the material world had been made by the power of evil, but which his true self would eventually shed (5.10.18). Manichaeism also responded to his need, instilled by his childhood, for the name of Christ, and his initial distaste for the Christian scriptures (3.4.8-6.10). He could regard the Bible as a crude and contaminated attempt at the truth, whereas the Manichaean scriptures offered both the name of Christ and what seemed to be a profound understanding of the universe and of human life (3.6.10).

It would seem that Manichaeism influenced the Christianity of the time as the latter religion seemed obsessed with dualism: God versus Satan, Good versus Evil, Mother versus Whore, Matter versus Spirit, Heaven versus Hell and so on. There was a decided tendency to deny shades of grey. This influence persists it would seem in current views about topics as diverse as gay marriage and Adolph Hitler. The pressure is on to take a side. In the West, it wasn't so long ago that opposition to gay marriage was culturally dominant. That's now changing. Before World War 2, Hitler was lauded by many outside of Germany and the few would have shared the current, dominant cultural position that he was a despotic maniac. Nowadays, if you don't dismiss Hitler as an evil tyrant who master-minded the attempted extermination of the Jews, then you're a Fascist. There is no middle ground. Similarly with gay marriage, if you oppose it, for whatever reason, then you're likely to branded a homophobe.

The adjective manichaean has come to refer to a world view where distinct notions of good and evil prevail. Many people in many different contexts seem to adhere to such a view. Those contexts include religion (of course), politics, team sports etc. Admittedly, in some situations there seems to be no middle ground. For example, did American astronauts walk on the Moon in 1969 and in the early 70s? Even here it's preferable to simply survey the evidence and put forward the PROs and CONs. Being selective about what evidence is admitted however, can skew the decision-making process. Evidence from all known sources needs to be acknowledged and considered. Evidence can fall into both the PRO and CON category. For example, evidence suggesting that the photographs and videos of the landings were fake don't necessary mean the landings were faked. It could be that the landings took place but photographic and film equipment could not capture the events and so had to be "recreated" on Earth. It could also be that the landings never happened and the photographic and film evidence was simply faked to make it look as if they had.

Incidentally, one of the world's leading authorities on Manichaeism is Jason BeDuhn. Here is a link to his Wikipedia entry and to his entry on the University of Arizona website. Here are links to his Manichaean works:

Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 1, Conversion and Apostasy, 373-388 C.E

Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 2, Making a "Catholic" Self, 388-401 C.E.

The Manichaean Body: In Discipline and Ritual

Darwinism

It's a poorly kept secret that eugenics was enjoyed widespread support amongst intellectuals and politicians in the decades before World War II. It got a bad name due its enthusiastic support by the Nazi Party in Germany. After the war, it never went away but was simply euphemistically rebranded using terms like human biodiversity (HBD). Here is a description of HBD from Forward:

“Human biodiversity” appropriates scientific authority by posing as an empirical, rational discourse on the genetically proven physical and mental variation between humans. It uses the language of genetics to underscore, for example, the prevalence of Mongolians in sumo wrestling, the IQ scores of black people or the inbreeding patterns of Ashkenazi Jews. The refrain of HBD bloggers and forum commenters is that the (gene-driven, according to them) dissimilarities they outline are “non-negligible” or “non-trivial” and have, accordingly, social policy implications. Though it has a rational, policy-wonk zing to it, that’s just Internet forum-ese for “you’re genetically distinct from us and should be treated differently.”

Having recently read The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin by Benjamin Wiker, I've realised that the rise of Darwinism in the nineteenth century fuelled the eugenics craze of the twentieth century. To quote from the book:

As biographer Janet Browne notes: in the decades following the publication of the Origin, Darwin’s defenders came to occupy influential niches in British and American intellectual life. Together, these men would also control the scientific media of the day, especially the important journals, and channel their other writings through a series of carefully chosen publishers—Murray, Macmillan, Youmans, and Appleton. Towards the end they were everywhere, in the Houses of Parliament, the Anglican Church, the universities, government offices, colonial service, the aristocracy, the navy, the law, and medical practice; in Britain and overseas. As a group that worked as a group, they were impressive. Their ascendancy proved decisive, both for themselves and for Darwin.

The triumph of Darwinism had major implications for the twentieth century but it was just one approach to what powers evolution, "a reductionist, materialist approach". To quote again from the book:

The truth of the matter is this: the methodical exclusion of divine causation was an assumption deriving from the particular secular Enlightenment goal of systematically excluding the divine as a matter of human progress. Darwin shared that vision and hence that goal, and it determined the way that he defined evolution. That was the problem with Darwin’s theory, and that is the problem with Darwinism. Darwinism is not a synonym for evolution. Darwinism is a particular approach to the evidence for evolution, a reductionist, materialist approach that excludes the Divine on principle. Evolution is a complex and difficult thing we are still trying to understand. 

Edgar Cayce

Having just completed (except for some of the appended case studies) THERE IS A RIVER by Thomas Sugrue, I am now aware that the trance diagnosis and treatment of people's physical problems displayed by Edgar Cayce was not a phenomenon unique to him. It came into prominence in the late 18th century. To quote from the book:

In the eighteenth century, before the discoveries of Mesmer and de Puysegur, a pioneer named Maxwell said, “There is no disease which is not curable by a spirit of life without help of a physician . . . The universal remedy is nothing but the spirit of life increased in a suitable subject.” Mesmer found a means of stimulating this natural healing force and called the process “magnetism.” In 1784 de Puysegur, attempting to magnetize Victor, the shepherd boy, discovered hypnotism: Victor, falling into a deep trance, began to speak and diagnosed the ailment of the person next to him. During the next generation persons with similar sensitiveness were found in France, Germany, and England. They were studied carefully; the best men of science gave them their attention and wrote books about them. Somnambulism became fashionable. People went by preference to a somnambulist rather than to a physician, and the results apparently were as efficacious as they were amazing. The somnambulists seemed infallible in diagnosis, and the remedies they suggested were simple and, according to the evidence, helpful.

Predictably the medical mafia, even though enjoying nowhere near the terrifying monopoly on human health that it holds today, managed to debunk, discredit and finally destroy this burgeoning threat. To quote further:

As the books on somnambulism rolled off the presses, orthodox medicine rallied to the opposition. Mesmer was condemned as a fraud, and the diverse phenomena discovered by other investigators were damned along with him. The hope for a new system of diagnosing physical ills—a system already inherent in man and magically sure—began to fade.

I managed to get a hold of a book by Richard Harte called HYPNOTISM AND THE DOCTORS, published in 1902, that deals with Mesmer and Puysegur. I also managed to find MAGIC STAFF: An Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis To quote from the Wikipedia article about Davis:

He had little education, though probably much more than he and his friends pretended. In 1843 he heard lectures in Poughkeepsie on animal magnetism, as the phenomena of hypnotism was then termed, and found that he had remarkable clairvoyant powers. In the following year he had, he said, spiritual messages telling him of his life work. He eventually became known as "the Poughkeepsie Seer".

Both these books should be interesting reads. All this has rekindled my interest in hypnotism which I dabbled with earlier in the year when I was having trouble remembering my dreams. I used an hypnotic suggestion method outlined in a book and had immediate success. The technique can be used to facilitate lucid dreaming.

I prepared a self-hypnosis walk-through to improve my dream recall and activate lucid dreaming. It's a bit rough but it's a start. I played it through once tonight so we'll see if there are any immediate results. However, it will definitely need refining, possibly using Garage Band.

Interview with Don Stevens

The first book that I ever read that was written by Meher Baba was God Speaks (link to Part 1, link to Part 2) but the first book about him that I ever read was Listen Humanity by Don Stevens. Though an accomplished author, Don was also very personable and articulate as can be seen in this recent (14th April 2007) upload to the MeherBabaArchives YouTube channel:

There is great information about Don Stevens on Meher Baba's Life & Travels website. Don died in London on April 26th 2011, having being born in Nevada in 1919. It was interesting to hear him mention that after deciding to leave the oil industry, he considered training as a Jungian psychotherapist. Of course, Baba made it quite clear to Don that his involvement in the oil industry was needed to expiate his karmic dues and he did not want him to leave it.

Returning to that first book about Baba that I read, I came across Listen Humanity in a little bookstore in a small town (Nowra I think) south of Sydney. At the time, I was with my second wife Sylvia who shared in a number of serendipitous discoveries relating to Meher Baba. It must have been late 1993 or early 1994. It was Sylvia who found the book, bought it and wrote the date and a comment inside it. The physical book is in Jakarta, while I'm currently in Brisbane.