Not In His Image - John Lash

I've a bit of an addiction dillema because there's so much free stuff on the net I want to read including this book immediately but then I have to trade that against dynamic content like the latest interviews that are a steady flow in my data stream. I save an awful lot of stuff and store it on a separate notebook quietly hoping for a coronal mass ejection from the sun that will zap the internet (and your iTablet) leaving me with a few weeks of catching up on so much good stuff. It was all so much easier prior to the internet but it was also inferior.

John Lash's work is most exciting for me because of the Nag Hammadi codices which explicitly state that non human and non terrestrial mind parasites are a threat to the human condition. They promote HAL over nature and it's hard not to think they've been winning for quite some time.

Here are some reviews:

When Lash invites us to embrace the "high strangeness" of what he calls the "ET/Archon" hypothesis "with the Gnostic theory of alien intrusion" -- "the stranger it gets, the more sense it makes," he insists -- he passes wholly through the looking glass. 

-Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review by Jonathan Kirsch, December 3, 2006

"John Lash's Not In His Image presents a fascinating view of meanings in a sacred history long--and wrongly--suppressed. It demands profound correction of what Western civilization has been taught to call religion. It is a book that should be read by everyone."

--Barbara G. Walker, author of The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Feminist Fairy Tales, and others.

"This remarkable book introduces a Gnostic approach to Sophia-Gaia, the feminine wisdom principle embodied by the earth, vividly soliciting us to embrace Her revival for our survival. When the human race revered the fertility of the earth, the perennial philosophy of human kindness and good sense, as embodied in the common laws of indigenous people the world over, was equally prominent in ancient Europe. Gyncentric societies did not know the taint of sexual apartheid; mystery cults were participatory, experiential and peaceful. The erudition and mindfulness of the Pagan world have been hugely underestimated, since the onslaught of patriarchy, symbolized by the flood, destroyed a much larger civilization than we have been lead to believe. Initiated in antediluvian times with the arrival of misogynic sky gods, it took the three monotheistic religions to achieve the undoing of the sophisticated way of life of our forebears. In Gnostic terms, evil came from outside of the matrix of the earth, from another dimension or parallel universe. Entities of this parallel dimension managed to insinuate themselves into our world. It may come as a shock to many, that the Gnostics held Yahweh to be such an entity, facilitating the promotion of the perpetrator-victim ethos of Salvationism, held to be an abomination and a fateful error. John Lash presents the stark contrast between the tenets of retribution and exploitation - of the feminine ­, and the ethos of illuminism, with its emphasis on personal experience and communion with nature, within the framework of a vast body of knowledge, reaching from the classic authors of antiquity to present-day proponents of eco-science and eco-spirituality. A fascinating read."

--Susanne G. Seiler, Gaia Media News. Basel, Switzerland

"Sometimes a book changes the world. Not In His Image is such a book. It is clear, stimulating, well-researched, and sure to outrage the experts. Take it from a scientist: the 'experts' are often wrong. In fact, a hallmark of breakthroughs is that they are usually well-researched and outrage 'experts.' Science shows the importance of trusting clear thinking about direct evidence. This book is full of both. Get it. Improve not just your own life, but civilization's chances for survival." 

--Roger Payne, Ph.D., MacArthur Fellow, president of Ocean Alliance, author of Among Whales

"John Lamb Lash's Not in His Image is a rare achievement, combining impeccable scholarship with remarkable visionary insight. In a breathtaking tour de force, the author provides a profound analysis of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their connections to the patriarchal system. He identifies the deep roots of the intrinsic problems of these three religions-- perpetrator-victim emphasis and salvationist ideology--and points out their relationship to the alienation and agony of modern humanity. This book is a must for everybody who is trying to understand the psychospiritual currents underlying the present global crisis." 

--Stanislav Grof, M.D., author of Psychology of the Future and The Cosmic Game

"Not In His Image is a brilliantly subversive and provocative work of scholarship and passion that overturns everything you ever believed about Christianity. The gnostic mysteries have found a new and eloquent champion in John Lash." 

--Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods.

"An extraordinary and profound book. Not In His Image a blessing, and a warning that we must cease taking the terrible advice of Christianity … and that we must instead re-inhabit our own joyful, painful, mortal, beautiful bodies and fight for our lives and for the lives of those we love. This book points the way home."

--Derrick Jensen, from the afterword

"What we know about the divine comes by way of three paths--through the spectacle of nature, through the testimony of spiritual seekers, and through our own inner experience, as in meditation and mystical communion. John Lamb Lash seeks to renew our understanding of all three paths, and thus to renew our sense of the divine. In particular, he challenges the otherworldly creeds that have come down to us in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and to recover the earth-based religions that preceded them. Those ecologically wise religions flourished, he reminds us, not only among the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere but also in ancient Europe. By reclaiming this pagan heritage, he argues, we can begin to cure the pathologies of genocide, war, and environmental degradation that afflict the modern world." 

--Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe

"Not In His Image is a stunning book. It should cause quite a furor. Lash's historical and anthropological erudition are breathtaking." 

--Colin Wilson, author of Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals: 100,000 Years of Lost History and The Outsider

"John Lash's heretical book is a precious act of spiritual disobedience that seeks to save the world from Salvationism. Lash opens new ground between myth and ecology, and helps one feel what the planet feels. He proposes direct knowing and moving beyond belief, and advocates animism as a proposition to test. He leaves the future open and in need of human imagination. Humanity is implicated in the future of the living planet, but Lash exercises caution when making suppositions about our role as a species. This book is learned, courageous, and full of insights. Some may find it challenging and even shocking, but it is an important read for those interested in life on earth. It is made for readers to chew on, rather than believe." 

--Jeremy Narby, anthropologist, author of The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge and Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge

Gandhi's First Protest - Lessons & Inspiration For The Occupy Movement

After qualifying as a Barrister in London Gandhi made his way on invitation to British Empire ruled South Africa where he was thrown off the railways for travelling first class. Diagnosing his identity papers as the technical source of the problem he makes his first protest by publicly burning his papers. It was his first act of dissent and typified his non violent approach. Gandhi is an incredible movie for people to watch as the storm clouds gather around the world pitching the forces of darkness and wage slave obedience against humanity. This struggle that has been going on a lot longer and with considerable more deliberation than most people who seek distraction from their entertainment and information stream could possibly begin to handle in one go.

Reality will knock on their door if they persist in ignoring the distortion of the systems currently in place to dehumanise people. They are unstable and face impending collapse.

The Christian Victim-Perpetrator Syndrome

Daniel Pinchbeck writes in a comment on the victim perpetrator complex over at Reality Sandwich a much better contribution than I could:

This idea of unconditional love and unconditional forgiving not only seems like an impossible and non-human ideal, it also seems to me that it feeds into what John Lash calls the "victim - perpetrator bond" that was written into the Bible.

Lash's perspective in his amazing book, Not In His Image, is that the Judeo-Christian tradition was created intentionally as a deviation that took people away from the proper path of spiritual development. Lash writes from a Gnostic perspective, arguing that the Gnostics were the holders of ancient mystery school knowledge, and that they recognized Christianity was designed to imprison humanity in the spell created by the Archons and the Demiurge. Christian constructs such as "love thy neighbour as thyself, "turn the other cheek" and the underlying concept of "original sin" secretly functions to keep people enslaved in a culture based on domination.

This is most obviously the case with "turning the other cheek": This extreme form of masochistic, passive resistance allows the perpetrator of violence to have the upper hand, while the cheek-turner maintains a sense of moral superiority, despite the violence being perpetrated against them and others like them. According to Lash, such extremes of masochistic passivity coupled with idealized moral superiority were written into the Bible code by the Archons and the dominators to prevent the overthrow of the dominator culture by the oppressed, who far outnumber the oppressors, and could potentially make use of the means of violence to address their victimized state.

I remember when I visited the Hopi elder and I asked him what should be done with the CEOs and boardmembers of the coal company that was destroying their land and ruining their culture. "Cut off their heads," he calmly replied. I was shocked by this at first, but then as I thought about it over time, I could see his point of view.

Even Gandhi, who is associated with non-violence  promoted "active non-violence " direct action against the oppressors, and he also said that in situations where "active non-violence  could not be effective, violent resistance was preferable to "passive non-violence " What Harvey seems to advocate in his book is a toothless, passive non-violence that will ensure a personal sense of moral superiority but have no meaningful effect on changing the underlying structure of society, which is based on domination and oppression.

By nature, I support non-violence and pacifism. However, it may be that situations arise where violence - or at least the threat of violence - is the only answer to interrupting a cycle of domination. To cede the capacity for violence to the oppressors is, potentially, to give up any hope of making real change. I find it troubling to think these thoughts, yet I feel these subjects must be examined impartially and scrupulously, so that greater clarity can be attained.

Several people recently brought to my attention the connection between the Tibetan Buddhists, who promote non-violence  and the CIA. Is it possible that the Tibetan Buddhists are given so much cultural cache in the West because of their principled stand of non-violence  which also renders them helpless when facing a militarized regime? If we do away with moral absolutes and deal with the world as it is, we may have to find that there are times when violence is a necessary evil - for instance, against the Nazi regime during World War Two.

On an abstract and absolute level, one can "unconditionally forgive" Nazi torturers, Chinese armies, or corporations that profit off of the desecration of land and people. On the relative level of human actions, however, these malignant forces still need to be dealt with if we ever want to see our world thrive in peace. It may require means other than prayer or Harvey's rather meek brand of "sacred activism" to bring them down.

I am curious to hear others' thoughts on this complex, delicate, and extremely important issue.