We are taking a break until Sunday, January the 3rd.

Syntagma wishes all our readers a hugely enjoyable Christmas and a phenomenally successful New Year.

John Evans

Carl Jung, the great Swiss thinker and psychologist, did not mince his words when referring to immortality: “When the summit of life is reached, when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges … and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation, he who is inwardly great will know that the long expected friend of his soul, the immortal one, has now really come.”

A more perfect apotheosis can hardly be imagined, for Jung had spent his whole life rummaging about in his own mind and that of others. As a scientist he was naturally reticent – colleagues could be dismissive of any apparent “descent into the swamp of mysticism”. However, as the final chapters of his late memoirs, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, show, Jung had penetrated to the heart of the matter even while playing the part of a dull, diligent, boffin of the mind.

Coming soon for Christmas ordering.

It is Christmas still, officially at least, so a few words on Christianity may be appropriate now. Since I am the one writing this, my own view of it will have to do.

Which proposition would you prefer?:

1. The Ineffable (name it as you will) enters every person at birth and is directly available to each, especially if the individual focuses upon it and requests access, or
2. The Ineffable entered one man 2000 years ago and his representatives on Earth today will negotiate your place in the afterlife, as long as you comply with a set of unbending principles and practices.

The first proposition is the “perennial wisdom of mankind”. The second is the view of the Christian church that arose within the last days of the Roman Empire.

In the 4th century AD the Emperor Constantine had an ulterior motive for his religious masterplan — the retention of political power at the centre. His church was therefore materialistic and authoritarian.

This is not to disparage the present-day Roman Catholic Church, or even the lacklustre Anglican version, into which I was baptized as an infant. On an individual level, many immensely spiritual people have made great contributions to human understanding from within the cupolas of their Catholic beliefs. I’ll cite just a few who appeal to me: Thomas Merton, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross.

They do, though, have one thing in common. Each got into trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities because they were perceived as “mystics”. Even the saintly Francis of Assisi’s Franciscans fell foul of the stern central authority.

What is a mystic? Someone who believes … no, “knows” … that the Ineffable is available to everyone. These are “Gnostics” — knowers rather than believers. Mysticism is really the universal religion of mankind, because when a person scales its heights there is no longer any need for the simplistic stories and precepts of evangelistic religion.

As Dr Johnson put it: “Example is more efficacious than precept.”

Let’s go back then to the early Roman church, which we now know took the uncomplicated Jewish version of the many Mystery schools around the Mediterranean and as far afield as Persia, and created the Western world as we know it. It’s useful to examine what Christianity was like before Emperor Constantine made it the prevailing faith of the Empire.

Christianity — and it was certainly not called that then — began a long time before the suggested birth of Jesus around 7BC. We know this from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other recently discovered sources.

It seems to have had Egyptian origins and arose among Jews in Alexandria from a Gnostic soup of practical teachings on how to have a direct, personal relationship with the Source of all things. It’s believed to have spread into the Hebrew lands through groups like the Essenes at Qumran — a sect that had at its centre a “Teacher of Righteousness”.

The Mystery schools of the Mediterranean region, including Greece, were mystical programmes of initiation, leading up to the all-encompassing Great Death Contemplation, in which a neophyte underwent a transformation of consciousness, directly experiencing the after-death state and stripping away the tyranny of the body (the cross we all bear in life).

In our terms, Near Death Experiences, reported in many hospitals, are quite close. They are, however, essentially different from the controlled, fully-alive, glimpse of what it’s like to be totally out of the body, while conscious of everything.

The early Gnostic Gospels, such as The Gospel of Thomas give a very different version from the later compilations bolted together by bishops into the New Testament. For example, the female has an equal part to play — there is a Gospel of Mary Magdalene and links to Sophia, or wisdom. The chapter in Luke which covers the visit of Jesus to Mary of Bethany is strangely cut off, and the passage where Jesus says she has a higher calling than Martha — contemplative rather than “active” — doesn’t read like the Christianity that comes down to us via Rome at all.

What began as a Jewish allegory depicting the life of Everyman (Jesus), was turned by a French bishop into an ersatz historical record of a real person. Anyone who has studied spiritual literature around the world will immediately recognize the allegorical intent of the Gospels, despite the extensive editing job.

The main aim was to attract a large, popular audience and wipe out the Gnostics, the early Christians. That suppression continued well into the medieval period. The massacre of possibly millions of Cathars in southern France, simply because they were different and were descended from an earlier version of Christianity, still resonates blackly in Church history to this day. St Bernard of Clairveaux, founder of the Catholic Cistercian movement, commented on the Cathars, “They are better Christians than we are.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his deeply religious book The Brothers Karamazov, has a chapter called The Grand Inquisitor in which he depicts Catholicism as the very opposite of the church Jesus would have created.

A good illustration of the process of historicizing allegory is to take John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and imagine Christian as a real man and the story a true one. Nothing else quite explains why the Vatican goes to such lengths to suppress any archeological find that may cast doubt on its version of events. The postwar history of the Dead Sea Scrolls reveals an extraordinary attempt at censorship. The Nag Hammadi Gnostic discoveries in Egypt faced similar interference.

So where is Christianity in the 21st century? The main thrust of the churches seems aimed at keeping people adhered to a faith based on a misreading of an old allegory. The allegory itself, by contrast, offers precisely what it says on the box: “gospel” — good news.

The good news is that everyone can receive proof of their own immortality if they really want it: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within and without … seek and you shall find.” The most enlightening version of that saying appears in The Gospel of Thomas, inexplicably banned by the Church. If people don’t want direct proof, no matter, immortality is theirs anyway.

That mystical interpretation of the familiar Christian message was the original one before Rome politicized it. In reality Constantine was no saint but an early version of Mao Tse Tung.

In our democratic age we are more susceptible to the view that Christianity is available to us directly, not just through the intercession of men in robes.

Today, the Church is faltering, even dying, precisely because it won’t give up the rewriting of history that took place in its early days. Moreover, it should ask itself why so many popular books depict it as a dark, evil institution that will stop at nothing to retain its power, wealth and influence. Surely, self-preservation isn’t everything.

A return to so-called “primitive” Christianity that encouraged personal experience, not conformity, is the only way it can save itself from becoming a minor sect for a few diehards — which would be very sad given the power Christianity has for good.

The world is crying out for genuine expressions of spirituality now. Young people are embracing New Age sects in large numbers. Ominously, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world.

Christians should stand against the decline of the religion and recognize it is based upon a massive untruth, especially as the original flowering of Christianity is just what the jaded West needs in these times of economic hardship and doubt.

John Evans

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As part of an extensive reorganization of the business as we enter our fourth year, we’ve redesigned the logo.

Last year, the old one got rather lost on our company Christmas card, so its demise was on the cards (pun intended).

After trawling through a miserable selection of samples from pro designers, I sat down in exasperation and created it myself. Shock, horror from the designers — self-promoting, naturally.

As the customer, I’m always right.

And it looks great on our newly-printed Christmas cards.