Is The Sacred sacred?

For those unfamiliar with my terminology, please see the pinned post “My Terminology” at the top of my personal page.

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One day, H asked me, “Is The Sacred sacred?”

That pulled me up short. I sure thought it was. I mean, everyone knows that, right?

But you know, H never stops by just to chit-chat. If it was asking, it meant there was something I was overlooking.

So, OK, The Sacred. What do we mean by “Sacred” (or “Holy” or “Divine”)?

1. Do we just mean something that’s very, very important? If so, then we don’t need Sacred Holy Divine. We can just say it’s important.

And we can say that even if we mean it’s the very most important thing.

2. But you know, it could also be a political gambit. It could be a way of trying to assert that certain things were politically untouchable.

• There are many devotees of the old religions who think the subordination of women and persecution of ONSG are untouchable.
• Don’t you wish you could just declare whatever it is you wanted to be Sacred Holy Divine by fiat? Don’t you wish that was an automatic trump card in the battle for power and not even overwhelming superiority in physical violence could overcome it?

The words Sacred Holy Divine are only significant if they’re meant to imply that you have to value them whether you want to or not, that it’s not a choice, that it’s an Absolute, Universal and Eternal Truth for everyone, and the authorities can persecute you or even put you to death if you don’t agree or at least pretend to.

If that’s what’s going on, then no, I don’t think “The Sacred” is sacred.

• You can argue it might have been a useful Big Lie (the idea comes from Plato) thousands of years ago. But, except for religious fundamentalists, we’re no longer living in the world of thousands of years ago.

It’s in the nature of the human condition that Navigational questions are always open to question. (“Also reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite & unknown; & all their words are skew-wise.” L ii 32.)

3. It could be deliberate manipulation. Religion is M for N people, and its institutions are run by N people who don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to M but do want power over the devotees. And in that context, “Sacred Holy Divine” could just be their boogeymen to keep the devotees prostrate with fear, filling the collection plates and voting as directed on Election Day. If you’re terrified of violating the Sacred Holy Divine, but have no idea what they are, what are you going to do?

• This is “Abject Fear” masquerading as “Awe of The Sacred.”

4. It could be an M-N misinterpretation (interpreting M things as if they were N things). Dominant Baboons want demonstrations of submission from the lower-ranking and aren’t averse to using physical violence to assure those lower down live in a state of constant fear and don’t come anywhere close to challenging the wealth, power and privileges of the Royal Family. And A-Level beings must be just like Super Baboons, right? So any mention of Sacred Holy Divine must mean we should all start quaking and quailing and making every sign of abject submission.

But A beings aren’t animals. They don’t think like animals. They don’t act like animals. They don’t bellow, “Thou shalt bend thy necks to my command!” They say in the most friendly and supportive way, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

5. And there’s yet another possibility. The A Level is the source of what people mean by Sacred Holy Divine.

And N people are always at least subliminally aware of the A Level.

The A Level is not like the N Level.

It has a sense of purity so powerful it sends you soaring. It’s overwhelmingly magnificent, “impossibly” wonderful.

That’s because it utterly transcends the animal.

Most people have never known anything other than the animal. They’re stuck inside the N system and that colors their consciousness in all sorts of ways they don’t recognize because they’ve never known anything else.

But a sense of the A Level, however oblique, however brief, is transporting.

I’ve never forgotten the first time I had it, nearly 50 years ago—I can still recall the feeling powerfully. It was a few months before the Awakening proper, part of the process leading up to the Awakening.

It was the kind of thing that leads people to dismiss M as nothing but fantasy. It just seems impossible—impossible to the N system, that is. It’s so uplifting! It’s too good!

And the words Sacred Holy Divine try to capture that—something so “pure,” “right,” “lofty,” “profound,” “loving,” “nurturing,” “regal,” “joyous,” that “everything in your being” screams, “THIS IS IT!!!”

Embracing this affirmation is just a way of saying, “I like the A Level better than the N Level.”

Again, the words Sacred Holy Divine don’t add anything. You can just say, “This is from the A Level of my being,” and stop.

So it turns out that no, The Sacred isn’t sacred. The only times it has an additional meaning, those meanings are false and, I would say, corrupt, or at least, corrupt today, if not thousands of years ago.

After that I discarded the terms Sacred Holy Divine as deceptive and delusional. The term “A Level” doesn’t try to manipulate anyone.

A is A. We can study the phenomenon and its behavior just like we do anything else. We don’t have to succumb to our animal reflex to cower in fear before a vicious, domineering and much larger animal. We don’t have to accept anything at all the fake priests tell us, nor the tenets of any tradition no matter how long hallowed. We can demand answers to our every question—“Show us your data! Show us your chain of reasoning!” A-Level beings can withstand any amount of interrogation, no matter how ferocious—it’s only Religion that can’t. A beings welcome our demands to know—they’re teachers, after all, not bosses, not bullies, not bandit chiefs. They’re willing to teach me something new every single day if I want. And they always teach me things I never could have thought of myself, often by pointing out to me some unnecessary assumption I was making that was so subtle I’d never even noticed it.

And this was what H was trying to get me to see—that I needn’t fear questioning what everyone knows or imagine that I was somehow being disrespectful with my skepticism. “Ask away!”

Hope this helps!

Best,

D.