Manifesto V, part 3

Q: Wait. If you guys are the "pineal gland of the Body of Christ", and the pineal gland in in the brain, aren't you claiming to be God or something?

A: No. Watch what happens when you apply logic to religious dogma!
1: Christ is the Head of the Church.
2: The Church is the Body of Christ.
3: By substituting 1 into 2 we get: The Church is the Body of the Head of the Church.
4: Wait. That can't be right. Hold on.
5: By substituting 2 into 1 we get: Christ is the Head of the Body of Christ.
6: Conclusion: Christ is his Own Head.

This difficulty can of course be avoided by realizing that sometimes religious statements are not meant to be taken literally and instead refer to Esoteric and Numinous Truths by way of Metaphor.

This is the part where we quote something that sounds all spiritual and seems to have some deep meaning.

Looking behind

That which appears to contain a message

you may find no meaning.


Looking behind

that which appears to have no meaning

you may find a message.


These are called

The three levels of meaning.

A member of the ILHJ must always be on a quest for the Acton Mountain Giant Asparagus, which is Lost. The details of how this mighty vegetable failed to be accounted for are presented in another document. Just keep your eyes open and your taste buds prepared for action. Because after all this time, we really don't know if the original story can be interpreted literally or not and so the Asparagus might just be extra green or mighty tasty. That is, the "giant" part might be a Spiritual Metaphor disguising a Deeper Truth or something like that. Furthermore, Acton Mountain may represent a higher plane of being or the exalted spiritual status that comes from pursuing justice and peace. We honestly don't know anymore, really. Just be alert.

Here Ends the Document
Every Man Her Own Pope
Glory to You, Lord Christ

Manifesto V, part 2

We follow the Way, but we accept fellows on our Journey. We don't worship Eris but we are friendly and recognize that some Cosmic Principles are mathematical but others are more Personal, if we choose to treat them as such. Therefore, it doesn't hurt to recognize that The World Is Big and has a Lot In It. Eris represents the principle that Capital-R-Reality exists at a level "deeper than the level of distinction making" and our ideas-about-reality form a grid through which we see it. Choosing a grid is an act of faith, but trying to not choose a grid because then you would be committed is an act of cowardice. Everyone has a grid. Anyway, Eris can be nice to have around and is a good teacher when She is not rapping the Knuckles of your Presuppositions with the Ruler of Unpredictability.

This is Discordianism-as-Philosophy for people who think most philosophy is too pompous. No one seems all that upset if Christians are Cartesians or Aristotelians or Platonists or even Existentialists (though they do often become rather het up at the Agnostics.) We are Christians who are philisophical Discordians. After all, Old Bob (pbuh) claimed to be Discordian, Subgenius, Taoist, Buddhist, and a Witch. Buddhism is plenty religious, at least in certain versions. We aren't quite so ambitious, but aren't as awesome either.

A guideline:

If you think that
Order is not always good
And Disorder is not always bad
And that Religious People take themselves Too
Damn Seriously

If you Find Life Confusing
Especially people who Never Seem
Confused

And you wonder where all this Confusion Came
From

And that maybe the Secret is to Tell Funnier Jokes

Then you are One of Us
Whether you want to be or not.

We are the Pineal Gland of
the Body of Christ

Hail Jesus.

[If the afterlife is just like this one, why do we go there when we die?]

Manifesto V

Dedicated to the principles of Following Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and Our Sister, Eris Discordia, in the pursuit of life-as-game for the Salvation of Mankind from the Tyranny of the Devil, who is One Who Cannot Abide Mockery and is known as Greyface to the Illumined, we Sacrifice the need to have our beliefs be taken Very Seriously Indeed by others.

Learning to not take Love, Laughter, and Life less seriously than ideas about reality, we progress along that infinite golden road toward a place of serene and uninterrupted Bliss that is the Kingdom of God and which has no war, strife, or Hot Dog Buns (obligatory stale joke). The burning chaos of creative fire which is the Lord is the goal of our path and we welcome those who would walk it with us as long as they at least pretend to get it. Because we all know that what you pretend to be, you eventually become.

Our Lord said that He was, among other things, The Truth. Being content with this statement as the basis of our Faith frees up a good bit of mental horsepower from pointless tasks like wondering what The Truth is, which we can now dedicate to trying to figure everything out. This is not the same, because if you are trying to figure things out, you don't need to be looking for Truth, only small-t truths that are confined to well delineated domains of applicability.

Try this some time: go out and read a bunch of philosophy and while you're doing it, keep in mind at all times the statement, "I don't know what I'm talking about, and neither does this guy." The results will be more dramatic if you read two well reasoned works which come to different conclusions. It works the same for theology. Eventually you start to realize that all philosophy and theology is a thin net of words stretched over a more substantial but less objectively accessible framework of experience and assumptions. Change either one, and the whole structure shifts. (These are the grids that are explained in Psycho-Metaphysics.) This whole thing is then a shell of artificial sense and nonsense covering a vast ocean of Who Knows What, flowing under the Feet of Our Understanding. (This is not to be confused with a Feat of Understanding, which is hard to stand up to.)

The implication of Our Lord's statement is that while statements may or may not be the truth, they can never be The Truth, because that's what He is, and He is not a statement, but is instead a guy. And God. At the same time. Members of ILHJ are forbidden from claiming to understand that, but are encouraged to believe it if they want to. The standard Discordian prohibition against believing what one reads applies here: you really have to feel it, and then, like, you GET it.
Meditate on how the Truth can be a Guy until you understand it, then meditate some more until you don't.

The great thing about beliefs is that you can use them to organize your life into a grand adventure if you want, and the bad thing is that you can also make your life a terrible burden using a variant on the same technique. No one can ever prove a standard-issue belief either true or false, because the sorts of things that can be done this way are not beliefs. The inverse square law is not a belief, because it can be measured and verified. A belief is an organizational filter that gives meaning to experience. (Do you believe that?)

[Bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that's beautiful.]

Manifesto IV

Some of the aforementioned Discordians are guilty of the publication of dour, humourless tracts that give turgid exhortations to the masses that they ought to think for themselves, as if that would work. No doubt these poor souls already think that they are thinking for themselves. This is a normal stage of development, and they will either become open Discordians or remain closeted, as everyone on Earth has their own role to play in This Great Drama.

Discarding the humor and hippie stuff to create a more Relevant 21st century Discordianism is, in our opinion, counterproductive. Enlightenment does not come from being told that you ought to be enlightened - if it did, everyone who had ever been to the New Age section of a B&N would be a Dharma Saint of the Divine Countenance or something. The humor and hippie stuff is a vehicle of illumination because it shows those of us who are ready to Know, that any one way of apprehending the Meaning Of It All works pretty much as well as any other - as long as you put a lot of belief-energy into it - because things are so confusing and we don't have enough information and most of this stuff is made up anyway.

Just the other day I read an essay in which the author was describing how the more he read the Bible, the more he knew it was True. Faith, he said, was given to people who invested time and effort in the art of belief.

Just like the Law of Fives: the more you are committed to something being True, the more evidence you see that it is. Our task is to be committed to believing in things that make us better, stronger, more compassionate and loving, funnier and healthier people.

We choose who to trust to reveal things to us and then we trust the revelation, which we trust because we trust the messenger, who seems trustworthy because the message is so darn plausible. Like it says In The Book - everyone I know who is right always agrees with me.

Chapter and Worse

The Ship of Fools, always an inspiration to discord oriented Christians (though they say "unrest") has started a project to find the "worst verse of the Bible." It's good to see this sort of thing, not least because it puts the lie to the notion that Christians are all Bible-literalist drones. This sort of self reflection is what all religious folks should do. (In some sense.)