Ask HN: Books that gave you different perspective on religion
I'm reading The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann now and it's giving me very different perspective on prophecy. Dune also changed my thoughts about religion a lot.
This is intended to be an accurate account of a Buddhist monk's travels from China to India and back in the mid-seventh century. The Tang emperor was so impressed with the account, he asked the monk (Xuangzang) to create this historical record.
In addition to accurately describing the imports, exports, geography, and culture, it also goes on at length about dealing with "naga kings" (dragons inhabiting lakes), saints flying around with supernatural power, reincarnation, reputed temple miracles, collected stories of Buddhist enlightenment or attainment, and so on.
It's a similar experience to reading the Illiad or the Odyssey, in that it gives you a perspective on how people give credibility to the fantastic, when there is no evidence.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32753262/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33360561/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9282169/
One theory is the barrier between the conscious and subconscious mind weakens, and the subconscious begins to project into the conscious mind. That may account for visions and a variety of strange experiences. But to the perceiver, these may appear very real.
Shinzen Young says he went through a period of hallucinating giant insects that he could even touch.
So to say there's no evidence isn't entirely true for firsthand subjects, as the experiences may be as real as the rest of their perceptions. The difference with mental illness apparently lies in knowing the experiences are out-of-the-ordinary though.
The disciple summoned all his past good deeds and willed that the naga king die. That very day, the naga kind developed a headache, and died in the night. As the disciple was sleeping, he too died that night and was reincarnated as the naga king. Because of the slight, he began to cause storms to flood the kingdom.
The local king came to the lake and threatened the new dragon saying he would drain the lake and deprive the dragon of its home. The dragon was cowed and the weather became pleasant again, and the dragon made offerings to the king thereafter, except every once in a while he'd have a temper tantrum and need to be threatened again.
Xuangzang did not experience these things. He was told this story by others as an explanation for the climate changes experienced by the local tribe (kingdom).
I don't think we're talking about transcendental experiences here, nor panpsychism, nor hallucinations. I think we're talking about complete confabulations constructed to explain the ordinary world.
Another example was the tale of a king who, needing to leave his country for a diplomatic mission, left is brother in charge as regent. His brother, expecting court intrigue, supposedly had himself castrated that very night. He placed his bits in a box and gave them to the king to take with him on the journey. He bid the king that he should not open the box until his return.
When the king returned one of the other advisors to the court accused the brother of having an affair with the king's wife. The king summoned his brother to execute him. As the brother entered the court, he begged only that the king examine the contents of the box, and take that as explanation and proof of his innocence.
The king, seeing the bits in the box, forgave his brother. After a time, because of the brother's holiness, his genitals grew back.
I got a laugh out of this story, as it's clear to me that the brother had someone else castrated and claimed the bits in the box were his. But the story is presented as "this totally happened."
So I don't think we're talking about the same kinds of things at all.
I would also add, in no particular order:
- wisdom of the desert (merton's translation of the sayings of the desert fathers)
- pilgrim at tinker creek; annie dillard
- goatwalking, jim corbett
- Impostors of God: Inquiries into our favorite Idols, william stringfellow
- the new testament, trans. by david bentley hart
- the sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel
- zen flesh, zen bones
- moral man, immoral society -- neibuhr
- principia discordia
- the poetry and sermons of john donne
- many other poets.
"The Book of Mormon", Smith
_A Case for the Book of Mormon_, Callister https://www.amazon.com/s?k=a+case+for+the+book+of+mormon&cri...
A good overview is The Kundalini Guide [1]. Some of the stuff defies explanation from a western perspective, but the strange stuff is mentioned throughout history and across traditions, so..?
There are also a few academic papers on kundalini now. Just search on nih.
Finally, after 20 years of trying different schools I'm now having the most success with the free lessons on AYP [2] if you want something practical.
That's the best way IMO since without understanding enlightenment as a real phenomenon, people can get quite confused. And what's the point in just reading a travel guide when you can visit for yourself?
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kundalini-Guide-Companion-Journey-C...
"The Sparrow"
"Lord of Light"
"The Immortal"
"Hyperion"
"The Last Question"
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
"Stranger in a Strange Land"
"The City and the Stars"
"Childhood's End"
"Anathem"
"Eifelheim"
"A Case of Conscience"
"VALIS" trilogy
"The Book of Strange New Things"
"Behold The Man"
"The God Engines"
"Book of the New Sun"
"The Parable of the Sower"
"The Dosadi Experiment"
"Grass"
"Project Pope"
"Calculating God"
"Factoring Humanity"
"Jesus on Mars"
"Surface Detail
The religion I fall into has lots of stories where starting from first person/prophet everyone was making the same prophecy about the last one. I sometimes wondered how it works from an external non-religious but still curious view because religion doesn't have answer to this line of questioning (except God) and demands belief.
Your question just made me realise that prophecy is a thing people have wrote about which is new for me.
Isaiah 58 absolutely crackles with this.
https://onbeing.org/programs/walter-brueggemann-the-propheti...
https://www.amazon.com/Alphabet-That-Changed-World-Conscious...
Seeing the process of starting a religion laid so bare is helpful in understanding successful operators of the past like Paul the Apostle, Muhammad, Smith, etc.
It's such an obvious legacy behavior of homo sapiens. But then, we wouldn't have survived without it, would we?
Religion seems absurd because they don't mesh well in our societies anymore, but countries and enterprises, for example, may seem an absurd and harmful notion to people of another time and place.
- "Letters from the Desert" by Carlo Carretto
- "Being the Body" by Charles Colson
- "Fire in Our Hearts" by Mike Farrant
- "Total Freedom" by Jiddu Krishnamurti
- "Muhammad - a Prophet for Our Time" by Karen Armstrong
Its a thick book which kinda illuminated for me how many of these types of things humans have come up with and how over time one set of them influences the next.
The Dazzle Of Day by Molly Gloss. A downbeat beautiful meditation on a spaceship crewed by Quakers.
Early Theological Writings, Hegel. Specifically 'The spirit of Christianity and it's Fate'.
As people are intimidately related to mystical experience it makes for a rather weak read once you spot his refusal to examine cross-cultural accounts of experiences - especially if you're aware of the kundalini literature/have had experiences yourself (see my other comment).
...or would we?
We did and still do rid ourselves of old religious bonds but we do not seem to have become more free for that, the opposite seems to be true. The 'god-shaped hole' which is left after leaving those 'old religions' did not get filled with objectivity and reason. It seems to have become a fertile bed for even more dogmatic ideologies which have many of the downsides of religion but offer none of the upsides. Many of these 'ersatz-religions' are distinctly anti-western, some go even further by being anti-human. There is no salvation to be found among them, man was born in sin and repentance will not save him. There is no heaven awaiting those who try to follow the 'correct' path, only a different version of hell.
What all this has taught me is that religion did not appear out of a vacuum but out of necessity. To keep society as sane as possible there is a need for a higher authority - whether real or imagined - which (or who) stands above all us mortals, even above the most mighty of kings and the most powerful of warlords. It is to that higher authority and his set of commandments that even those highest rulers need to be subservient to so as to keep them from usurping the power to do as they please without recourse. This can only work if enough people consider the will of the higher authority to overrule that of their 'earthly' rulers so the message needs to be spread and someone needs to get that ball rolling - a prophet, so to say.
Maybe a time will come when we as a species can live together without the need for a higher being to keep us from violating the commandments but that time has not yet arrived so: choose your god(s) but choose them wisely. You do not need to believe in the actual existence of the deity/deities in question but you - being rational - should be able to reason yourself into a position where acting as if he/they exist(s) is the better choice. You do not have to follow mortal leaders who claim they know what your god wants but you can listen to what the wiser among them have to say and find your own way towards a fulfilling life.