The Tao of Christ

Spiritual Amnesia

November 03, 2021 Marshall Davis
The Tao of Christ
Spiritual Amnesia
Show Notes Transcript

I just finished watching a Netflix show in which the main character wakes up to discover that she cannot remember the last few months of her life. She has amnesia. Amnesia is a very rare condition in real life, but it is a common theme in films. Some of the best movies on the subject are The Bourne Identity, Total Recall, and Paycheck. Two of those are based on stories by one of my favorite authors Philip K Dick. Other films on the topic are The Majestic, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento. There are a lot of books on the theme also. This fascination with amnesia makes you wonder why it is so popular.

I think it is popular because at some level we recognize that this is our condition. It reminds us that we have forgotten the basic truth about our existence. We have forgotten who we are. We know we are not these fictitious characters that we have spent our lives creating. We are something more. We spend our lives trying to remember our original identity. That is what the spiritual search is all about.

I just finished watching a Netflix show in which the main character wakes up to discover that she cannot remember the last few months of her life. She has amnesia. Amnesia is a very rare condition in real life, but it is a common theme in films. Some of the best movies on the subject are The Bourne Identity, Total Recall, and Paycheck. Two of those are based on stories by one of my favorite authors Philip K Dick. Other films on the topic are The Majestic, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento. There are a lot of books on the theme also. This fascination with amnesia makes you wonder why it is so popular.

I think it is popular because at some level we recognize that this is our condition. It reminds us that we have forgotten the basic truth about our existence. We have forgotten who we are. We know we are not these fictitious characters that we have spent our lives creating. We are something more. We spend our lives trying to remember our original identity. That is what the spiritual search is all about.

There is an old Norwegian tale about a boy who found an egg in a nest as he was climbing up the rocky cliffs near his home. He took it home and placed it under a goose on their farm alongside the other goose eggs. One day it hatched out, along with the others. When it was born it looked very different! Not like a goose at all. It had unwebbed, claw-like feet, which made it stumble as it tried to follow the mother goose with all of the little goslings. Its beak was not flat like a goose; it was pointed and twisted. Instead of having cream-colored down, it was a brown color. To top it off, it made a squawking sound! It just did not fit in at all. 

Then one day a giant eagle flew across the barnyard. The eagle swept lower and lower until the strange, awkward little bird on the ground lifted his head and pointed his hooked beak to the sky. The misfit creature, feeling a kinship with the eagle, stretched his wings and began to hobble across the barnyard. He flapped his wings harder and harder until the wind picked him up and carried him higher and higher. As he began to soar through the clouds, he discovered an amazing fact: he was born an eagle, but he had been trying to live like a goose.

That is the story of our lives. We are not what we think we are. We are not these strange human creatures with ape bodies. That is one thing the fundamentalist Christians have gotten right – kind of. Fundamentalists know deep down that we are more than apes. But they express that by being anti-evolution. And they feel threatened when biologists point out all the genetic evidence that shows undeniably that humans are zoologically just a type of ape. 

Christians are mistaken when they deny evolution. The evidence is overwhelming that gorillas and chimps and monkeys and humans all descended from a common ancestor. But their intuition is right. They sense there is more to the story. That we are essentially something akin to the divine. Made in the image of God. Christianity calls this imago dei. 

Christianity says we are children of God. In the Bible to say that someone is a child of someone of something, it means they are of the same nature. Christians recognize this when they call Jesus the Son of God. They profess that Jesus is divine. But they balk at saying the same thing about the rest of us. They backtrack when the Bible calls us sons and daughters of God.  It means that we are of divine origin. Our animal bodies have a biological origin that developed through millions of years of evolution on this planet, but our true nature is older still. Our true nature is eternal and immortal. That is where the idea of the immortality of the soul comes from. Christianity borrowed that idea from Greek philosophy. Plato in particular.

You know what else Plato said? Plato said that all knowledge is actually remembering. He said that before we were born we had perfect knowledge, but when we were born we forgot all this, including who we are – our true nature. Learning is actually remembering what we have forgotten. It is recovering what we once knew. That is why the figure of Socrates in Plato’s works taught by asking questions. It is called the Socratic Method.  He called himself a midwife bringing forth the truth that is in each of his students which they have forgotten. The key to knowledge is asking the right questions. And results in a kind of new birth, as Jesus said.

That is what the spiritual inquiry is. It is asking the right questions. The fundamental question is “Who am I?” There is an old joke that I recently told my brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are devout evangelical Christians. They did not like it, but maybe you will. A man is struggling with his identity and he lifts his head to heaven and shouts, “Who am I?” A loud voice from heaven answered, “Who is asking?” 

That is the question. When you investigate who is asking the question “Who am I?”, then you discover who you are. Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Inscribed on stone at the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi were the words “Know thyself.” For when you know who you are then you know everything. It is the key that unlocks the spiritual amnesia. Then we wake up. We remember who we are and we know who God is. Then we know what the universe is. We know what Ultimate Reality and Ultimate truth is.

The tragedy is that most people do not ask this question – at least not seriously and persistently, like the widow in Jesus’ parable. People are satisfied with prepackaged answers given by institutional religion. They do not seek deep enough, and therefore do not discover our divine heritage. So they live a barnyard existence instead of soaring in the heavens. Until we know who we are and what we are, we are destined to live a life that is not ours. A life that is a fantasy written by a fictional character called the ego. But when we remember who we are, then the sky is the limit.

There is new Netflix series called Midnight Mass. I have only seen a little of it. As soon as it was apparent that it was about vampires, it lost me and I stopped watching. A listener to my podcast wrote me and told me about a scene in the show. She said it sounded very much like what I have said about death. A character named Erin describes what it feels like to die. Here is the monologue. I was going to edit it, but it is so good that I am going to quote the whole thing. It is about remembering who and what we really are.  She says she is speaking for herself, then says:

"Speaking for myself? Myself. My self. That’s the problem. That’s the whole problem with the whole thing. That word, “self.” That's not the word. That’s not right, that isn’t…How did I forget that? When did I forget that? The body stops a cell at a time, but the brain keeps firing those neurons. Little lightning bolts, like fireworks inside and I thought I’d despair or feel afraid, but I don’t feel any of that. None of it. Because I’m too busy. I’m too busy in the moment. Remembering. Of course. I remember that every atom in my body was forged in a star. This matter, this body is mostly empty space after all. And solid matter? It’s just energy vibrating very slowly. There is no me. There never was. The electrons of my body mingle and dance with the electrons of the ground below me and the air I’m no longer breathing. And I remember there is no point where any of that ends and I begin. I remember I am energy. Not memory. Not self. My name, my personality, my choices, all came after me. I was before them and I will be after, and everything else is pictures, picked up along the way. Fleeting little dreamlets printed on the tissue of my picture's dying brain. And I am the lightning that jumps between. I am the energy firing the neurons, and I’m returning. Just by remembering, I’m returning home. And it’s like a drop of water falling back into the ocean, of which it’s always been apart. All things… a part. You, me and my little girl, and my mother and my father, everyone’s who’s ever been, every plant, every animal, every atom, every star, every galaxy, all of it. More galaxies in the universe than grains of sand on the beach. And that’s what we’re talking about when we say “God.” The cosmos and its infinite dreams. We are the cosmos dreaming of itself. It’s simply a dream that I think is my life, every time. But I’ll forget this. I always do. I always forget my dreams. But now, in this split-second, in the moment I remember, the instant I remember, I comprehend everything at once. There is no time. There is no death. Life is a dream. It’s a wish. Made again and again and again and again and again and again and on into eternity. And I am all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that I am.”

That is the end of the Midnight Mass scene. All spiritual seeking is trying to remember what we have forgotten. Remembering what and who we are. When we remember, when we snap out of our spiritual amnesia - that is awakening. That is salvation. That is eternal life.