[This is an edited conversation I had with a friend who prefers to remain anonymous. For more on Holy Rascals, please visit our website: holyrascals.com/.]
How should I refer to
you? As His Holy Rascalness Rabbi Rami?
No need. I use the title only when invited to state dinners.
And how often has
that happened?
It hasn’t happened yet, but it never hurts to be prepared. I
was lecturing in New Delhi with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama,
and I was tempted to have myself introduced in a similar fashion, but then I
considered all the bad karma that might accrue and went with Rabbi Rami
instead.
Do you believe in karma?
No, but I could be wrong. That’s why I am ready to join
every religion just on the off chance that one of them might be true. I doubt
they are, but just in case.
Where is the
integrity in that?
Integrity? I just want to be on the winning team when the
final score is announced. I don’t want to be burning in Hell and have the guy
next to me say, “Well at least you have your integrity.” He can have integrity.
I want the brass ring.
And the brass ring
is?
Heaven, Nirvana, the Pure Land, salvation, reincarnation as
a rich guy, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, all the marketing
promises religions make to entice me to join and convince me to pay.
But there are so many
competing rings, how do you know which ones to pursue?
I pursue the ones that agree with me.
So you are the final
arbiter of truth?
Of course; who else could there be? If you believe in “this”
and not “that” it is because, for whatever reason “this” makes more sense to
you than “that.” There is no way to know you are right, you just follow your
gut or conditioning, and then deny you are doing so in order to pretend you are
not the final arbiter of truth. But you are. There is no escaping it.
So is there no such
think as “truth” with a capitol “T”?
I think there is, but I don’t think it can be put into words
and marketed to us as a “this” or “that.” You come to Truth when you free
yourself from “this” and “that.” And once you’re free from “this” and “that”
you’re free to play with “this” and “that” for the sheer joy of playing.
This interview is
already veering into rascality. Where did the term Holy Rascal come from?
The phrase came from Sister Jose Hobday, a Native American
healer and Catholic nun. After listening to a talk I gave at the Aspen Chapel
in Aspen, CO, Sister Jose called out, “He’s a holy rascal!” It stuck.
Do you know what she
meant by it?
I suspect she meant that Holy Rascals use the language of
the holy—religious language, spiritual language—to unmask the absurdities of
religion and spirituality. Holy Rascals aren’t against religion, we only want
people to see religion for what it is: a cultural construct that can be a
powerful vehicle for meaning making and consciousness expansion, rather than as
what religions claim to be: absolute truths.
What does it mean
that religions are cultural constructs?
All religions are human narratives carrying the memes and
metaphors we use to create meaning for ourselves. We are meaning making animals:
we are the way nature makes meaning just as bees are the way nature pollinates
flowers. Religion is a primary vehicle for creating, preserving, and
perpetuating meaning.
Is nature
fundamentally meaningless?
Nature evolves, and because it evolves, nature isn’t
fundamentally anything. Nature isn’t a thing but a process that, over time,
surprises itself with innovations and mutations, some good some bad. Just as
nature becomes conscious by evolving conscious beings, so nature becomes
meaningful by evolving meaning–making beings.
Can we create new
meanings by creating new stories, new religions? Who would allow us to do that?
No one allows us to do this; it is just what we do.
Why would we do it?
When old stories no longer carry meaning, the need for new
meanings arises, and with it come Holy Rascals who meet that need by telling
new stories with new characters, or telling new stories about old characters.
So Abraham, Moses,
Jesus, Buddha are all fictitious characters?
Fictitious? Not necessarily.
Fictional? Almost certainly. For example, I have no doubt that Jesus was an
historical figure, but the Jesus that matters is the Jesus we know from Saint
Paul and the authors of Gospels both canonical and gnostic, and that Jesus is
the creation of these writers. The historical Jesus is not nearly as important
as the narrative Jesus. The books that convey the stories and teachings of great
spiritual saints and sages are not history books, but storybooks. Does it
really matter whether or not the Buddha preached the sutras attributed to him?
Not at all: it is the teachings that matter, not their historicity.
As creators of stories, Holy Rascals are also the exposers of stories?
Holy Rascals are spiritual culture
jammers who use humor, play, creativity, and critical thinking to reveal the
human origins of religions and how religions mask their true origins behind the
conceit of divine origins. Our “patron saints” are Mullah Nasrudin, the 13th
century Sufi teacher who used humor to free people from irrational thinking,
and Dorothy’s dog Toto who pulled the curtain back on the Great and Terrible Wizard
of Oz to reveal a small man with a large megaphone.
In freeing people from irrational thinking you…
Free them for reality.
In pulling back the curtain, you…
Reveal religious authorities for
what they are: men and women with megaphones. Again, religion is a human
construct for the creation, preservation, and perpetuation of meaning and
meaning making that is all too often corrupted into a fear–based system of
control promoting enmity between people, and the economic and political
elevation of a privileged religious class.
I think a Holy Rascal
is someone who reveals that the Emperor has no clothes.
Without clothes, the Emperor is no longer an emperor. The
clothes are the stories the Emperor tells in order to justify being Emperor. This
only works if the Emperor can convince us that these stories are really
histories. Holy Rascals delight in proving the opposite. A Holy Rascal teaches
us how to examine our narratives, how to see the constructed nature of the holy
and the sacred, and how to use reason, intuition, imagination, and
contemplation to free ourselves from narratives that no longer serve our quest
for universal justice, compassion, and meaning, and to shape new stories that
will.
Once you reveal
religion as story, doesn’t religion disappear?
Not at all. Religions are like any other product. They make
claims that promote their brand over and against competing brands. The cool
thing about the Jewish brand is that the Jews are God’s Chosen People. The cool
thing about the Southern Baptist brand is that it has a monopoly on salvation.
If you want to be Chosen, buy Jewish. If you want to be saved, buy Baptist. Every
clergy person is marketing her preferred brand. This is why a Methodist can no
more discover Krishna is Christ than the marketers of Coke can discover that
Pepsi is “the real thing.”
For the record, and just in case a Coca-Cola executive is
reading this and wants to send me a case of Diet Coke, I prefer Coke to Pepsi,
though I can’t exactly tell you why. Knowing that Coke spins a story to get me
to drink Coke doesn’t make me like it any less. But is does keep me from committing
jihad against Pepsi drinkers, or damning
them to hell for all eternity.
Clergy as “Mad Men.”
Do we really need them?
Sure. Clergy are like Dungeon Masters in the Dungeon and Dragons role playing game.
If you want to play the game you need a Dungeon Master to weave the story. If
you want to play Catholic Mass, for example, your need Catholic priests to turn
wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ. No one else can do that. So
Catholic priests are essential to the Catholic game. The same is true of other
clergy in the context of their respective games.
Calling religion a
game seems demeaning.
I don’t think so. All life is a game or a complex of games. The
issue isn’t game or no game, but what kind of game you are playing.
There are two kinds of games: finite zero–sum games and
infinite nonzero games. The goal of finite zero–sum games is to win at the
expense of the other. Tennis, for example, is a zero–sum finite game. The goal
is to end the game with you or your team as the winner and your competition as
the looser.
The goal of infinite nonzero games is to keep the game
going. Playing rather than winning is the point. And nobody can win unless
everybody wins. Friendship is an example of a infinite game. The goal of frienship
is to keep the friendship going not to end the friendship with one friend winning
at the expense of the other.
Religion can be played as a finite or infinite game. When
played as a finite game, religion is all about winning and losing, retributive
justice, and the in–group triumphing over the out–group if not in this life
than at least in the after–life. When played as an infinite game, religion is
all about compassion, distributive justice, and seeing to the thriving of all
as key to the thriving of any. We humans cannot help but play games. The
question is what kinds of games will we play? Holy rascals promote infinite nonzero
games.
Of course millions of
believers like to play finite, hate–filled games.
No, I don’t believe that. Millions of believers participate
in hate–filled, fear–driven, finite zero–sum games, but they don’t know they
are playing a game. They’ve been convinced that their story is history, that
Coke is true and Pepsi is false—and worse the beverage of the Devil. Once they
are helped to see that this is all a game, and a hurtful one at that, they will
stop playing. People don’t want to hate, they are simply coerced into believing
in a god who wants them to hate.
Do you ever envision
the end of religion?
No. People are inherently religious, and religion won’t
disappear. Holy Rascals aren’t working to end religion; we are working to shift
religion from zero–sum to nonzero, from the finite to the infinite game, from
fear to love, and injustice to justice.
What do you envision?
I can’t predict the future, but what I see happening in the
present is the emergence of a new seeker class: spiritually independent people
willing to cross the boundaries of religious brands in search of narratives
that give their lives meaning, and practices that bring those narratives and
their meanings alive in their lives.
And where are Holy
Rascals among these spiritually independent seekers?
We are behind them pushing; we are ahead of them pulling; we
are on the sidelines cheering, and we are among them struggling.