CAMERADO CHRONICLES  PART ONE                                                APPENDIX B                                       undated letter to Ben and Jeff Ben, Here’s the passage that I’ve been meaning to send you for ages re: the original, pre-Christian meaning of the “Word of God” —the Greek Logos.  This comes from a book called Christ the Eternal Tao, written by an Eastern Orthodox monk.  Other than its Biblian insistence on equating the Word of God with the existence of one solitary person, one divine incarnation only –Jesus as the Messiah, in Jewish terms—I find to be remarkably right on the money, in terms of its extrapolation of what a true Christotheistic religion would be like. “The Logos of Heraclitus [of Ephesus, ca. 540-480 BC}, according to one textbook of Greek philosophy, ‘is the first principle of knowledge: understanding of the world involves understanding of the structure or pattern of the world, a pattern concealed from the eyes of ordinary men {only because of selective attention, I hasten to add].  The Logos is also the first principle of existence, that unity of the world which sustains it as a process.  This unity lies beneath the surface, for it is a unity of diverse and conflicting opposites, in whose strife the Logos maintains a continual balance…The Logos maintains the equilibrium of the universe at every moment.’  Although Heraclitus taught that ‘all things change, and nothing remains at rest,’ he knew the Logos to be itself stable, the measured pattern of flow. “At about the same time that Heraclitus lived in Greece, there lived in China the philosopher Lao Tzu (‘Old Master’).  Lao Tzu wrote of the same universal Pattern or Ordering Principle that Heraclitus styled the Logos.  ‘I do not know its name,” he said, “but characterize it as the Way (Tao)” –the Tao being a symbol basic to Chinese thought, as the Logos was to ancient Greek thought.  For Lao Tzu, the Way was precisely what its adopted name signified, in its full metaphysical sense: the Way, Path or Pattern of Heaven, the Course that all things follow.  The Way is the Uncreated Cause of all things.  It is the Way that creates, and it is the Way that ‘nourishes, develops, cares for, shelters, comforts and protects’ the creation, balancing the strife of opposites   by itself not contending “….Of all the ancient philosophers, Lao Tzu came the closest to assimilating the essence of reality and describing that Tao or Logos.  His Tao Te Ching represents the epitome of what a human being can know through intuition, through the apprehension of the universal Principle and Pattern manifested in the created order. {I consider both of these statements debatable, but surely the Tao Te  Ching belongs in that class of first-hand written accounts of the unity we call Logos/Tao.} “Six centuries after Heraclitus and Lao Tzu, there lived on the Greek island of Patmos an old, white-haired hermit named John.  While exiled in a cave on the island, he dictated to his disciple Prochorus what he had received from direct revelation from the heavenly realm, from Divine vision {snicker, snicker], and thus spoke to the world words that it never thought to hear: ‘In the beginning was the Logos, And the Logos was with God, And the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; And without Him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, And the darkness comprehended it not… He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, And the world knew him not…. And the Logos became flesh, And dwelt among us, And we beheld His glory.’ “This was that very Logos of which Heraclitus had said the people “always prove to be uncomprehending”; this was the very Tao that Lao Tzu had said “no one in the world is able to understand.”  It is not without reason that sensitive Chinese translators of St. John’s Gospel, knowing that “Tao” meant to the Chinese what “Logos” meant to the Greeks, have rendered the first line of the Gospel to read: ‘In the beginning was the Tao.’” And of course, translators of the Gospel of John into English have always rendered it “In the beginning was the Word.” So, in using the concept “Word of God” in the Chronicles, I am merely illustrating a connection that has already been made between ancient Greek mysticism (Logos), Chinese mysticism (Tao) and the Christian mystic tradition, which releases the concept of the Word from attachment to the personage of Jesus of Nazareth and frees it to become something more compatible with the previous concepts.  This is epitomized in the Quaker tradition, which says, “Yes, Jesus is the Word of God, but so are you.”  And we haven’t even gotten to the point where this will be tied in with the concepts of Indian mysticism, through the teachings of the Upanishads about Atman and Brahman and the experiential teachings of the Buddha.   The error of attaching the Word/Logos/Tao to one person, I contend –and am attempting to address to the Biblian Christians in the Chronicles’ audience, because it essentially means “the historical account of the life and teachings of one person” as presented, sometimes auspiciously, if not suspiciously, in the Bible— is merely an extension of the Jewish error of waiting for the Messiah to arrive in the form of one person.  And that is what I hope to address to the Jews in the audience. In The Last Temptation of Christ (also written by an Eastern Orthodox Christian), Judas Iscariot has a fleeting notion that the “Messiah” everyone is waiting for, often impatiently, is a state of mind/heart that he seemed to be witnessing in the transformation of his acquaintance Jesus of Nazareth from timid carpenter to bold teacher and healer of the sick (physically and spiritually).  But he quickly abandons this notion, because he is attached to the idea that the Messiah will be a Zealot, a military leader who will embolden the people and lead them to deliverance from the Romans.  Here he is symbolizing what the Christian tradition teaches (correct me if they’re wrong) was the predominant expectation of the nation of Israel at the time.  Had Judas held to this notion, I also contend, he would have been part of the revelation that could usher in the true “Messianic Age” that contemporary Jewish mysticism seems to talk about. There is nothing sinister or repugnant in this error itself, only in the conclusions we tend to make about other people who don’t make the error just like we do.  It is merely a confusion of symbol with substance (which the typed version of the Chronicles is just starting to address):  a confusion that says “because Jesus symbolizes the Word of God, he must be the Word of God –and the one and only Word of God.” (another confusion which comes from the Biblical verse, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."”[John 14:6])  To Jews who convert to Christianity, Jesus comes to symbolize their expectation for the Messiah, so [in their eyes] he must be the Messiah.  I’ve been given personal insight into this by my good friendship with a Jew, Steve Levine, who frequents the ACF coffee house and considers himself a Christian (in fact he’s one of the most fervent Biblical scholars I know through the ACF connection). Here’s another way to illustrate the confusion of symbol with substance:  I am looking at a map of Michigan in my road atlas.  The map is accurate, drawn to scale, everything in it represents a concordant reality in the territory called the state of Michigan.  So when I look at this map, I am looking at Michigan, right?  If I put this map on the ground and stand on it, I am in Michigan.  And my toes are getting wet because they are in Lake Huron. The confusion of symbol with substance is a natural outgrowth of dualistic thought, and is reinforced daily with our use of written and spoken language.  That is why all religious traditions tend to grow a mystical wing to the place of worship, an offshoot tradition that attempts to disentangle us from the attachment to dualistic thought  that our mainstream religions actually tend to reinforce.  We see this in, among others,  the Vedanta (Hindu mysticism), Zen Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism, and Quakerism and other mystic Christian sects.   The purpose of the Chronicles, therefore, in as much as it primarily addresses a Christian audience, is not to reform Christianity, but to, shall we say, build an enlargement on the already existing mystic wing of the Western Orthodox Church, so as to entertain all the guests I hope will be arriving someday, and “Christotheism” is the temporary name on the banner hanging over the construction site.  (And this is not my work alone; it is an ongoing project of many great voices of the past and present; I am just lending one voice, small at this point like the Jewish carpenter’s, but God willing, it will grow.)  But I know it will eventually require more than one name, and more than one addition, for if they are done well, the Chronicles will do the same for the synagogue and the mosque and the temple.  Jeff suggested to me (and I’m paraphrasing) that the Chronicles might not speak as much to you and to him because there is already a liberal tradition in the Jewish faith –the Reconstructionist sect—that is a viable alternative to the ways that are more black-and- white.  Great, I say, that is exactly what I was hoping to find in the Jewish tradition, and through your input and my research, I hope to assess how well this sect addresses the mystic quest to disentangle us from dualistic thought and bring about “the Messianic age.”   Right off the bat, have a question, if you or Jeff are “qualified” to answer: Do the Reconstructionists emphasize external morality as what will bring about “the Messiah,” or the way that we think?  (And it’s not fair of me to offer you only two choices so feel free to choose a third.)  Because everything in my studies and my contemplation points to the idea that right action is a product of right thought, and our obsession with reforming our actions (ie. the emphasis on the cleansing of sins in the Christian church) is addressing the symptoms, not the disease.  Being a good Jew, in other words, will not make you a liberated Jew, but being a liberated Jew will make you good.   If the Reconstructionist sect teaches this already, hallelujah! and more power to them.  One problem with the liberal traditions of Christianity, at least, is that they seem to feel less “spiritual,” their beliefs less fervent; my experience with “New Age” movements like Science of Mind and Unitarianism concurs with this.  They just get kinda PC and flaky; in refusing to confuse symbol with substance, the New Age seems to jettison both the symbol and the substance.  I am almost afraid to go to my first Quaker meeting and find out that is the vibe there too.  So the secondary purpose of the Chronicles –and projects of fiction like P&K-- is to galvanize the various contemporary mystic movements into something with a little more weight, something we can sink our spiritual teeth into so to speak.  Alan Watts, in outlining the complementary but distinct purposes of religion and metaphysics (mystic experiential exploration, which he wrote is related to religion as dance is to music), said that one cannot mix religious and metaphysical language without hopeless confusion.  In the Chronicles, and in P. and K., I hope to find out that it can be done after all.  As I mentioned before, I don’t think there is anything else that can save us from ourselves.