Well, I guess so. But our capacity for self-deception is pretty large.
I totally agree with that. The difficulty most times is not that I don’t know what to do, but that I’m not actually doing it.
Well, if I join a monastry I may find that someone else controls when I sleep, when and what I eat, how much I work, what work I do, whether I can speak, who I can see, how much I pray, whether I have sex or not, how cold my room is, what kind of bed I sleep on, whether I have a family, etc…
Those seem very tangible to me. If those kind of realities are intangible in your life then I’m not sure we are on the same planet. I’m picking an extreme example but the point is the same. Spiritual authority is not always some abstract concept.
I would imagine and since I have an affinity for the asthetic life, that it is not so much that someone else controls your life if you join a monastry. When you join a monastry your life is no longer your own life, now your life belongs to God. You are making the same sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. You suffer in order to attain spiritual awareness not just for yourself but for your community. The reasons for sacrificing in such a way is to gain, one has to understand the reasons. Again it comes down to faith and not following blindly. If a man were to join a monastry and for 25 years resent his master for making his life a misery, the only thing he would have gained is a life of misery. The purpose of such a life is to turn one’s mind, now turning one’s mind is absolute freedom.
A
Ned writes:
Ned, I realize I’m a fuzzy thinker and an even fuzzier writer, but you missed my point completely. You’re examples are all of the manifest world. My reference was to our spiritual nature. Your examples may be in service of that which is spiritual, but the aren’t of the spirit.
Forgive my slowness, but: why does there need to be a disctinction?
That struck me funny as well?
Spiritual or religious… for me, I do find this does seem to have two faces; religious authority and spiritual authority, one having a human face, the other omnipotent.
I’m not much of a philosopher, nor am a religious, but I do strive for a spiritual way with only one authority figure that I look to… that which made all of what we bear witness to. 
Even speaking specifically of humans, there are immediate authorities and ultimate authorities, and I think there’s a tendency to confuse them. If I am a Christian because that what my family has always been, and I feel a need not to dissappoint them, then I am following two sets of authorities: My family immediately, and the words of Christianity ultimately. If in a rebellious fit, I denounce the Lord and become a Bhuddist, I am not free-thinking at all. I’ve shirked off the immediate authority, which was of small consequence really, but just traded the yoke of one ultimate authority for another. Someone with NO immdiate religious authority and NO ultimate religious authority would either be an atheist of the most ignorant sort, who has no faith just because they don’t know enough about religion to realize there’s a choice to be made, or else they’re the kind of person you are likely to hear from listening to Art Bell- they simply make things up with no reason or accountability.
Both sets of authority have their uses. Immediate authority provides accountability. If my ultimate authority is the Bible, but I have no Christians authorities in my life to guide me in how to read it, then I have no one to answer to if I get lax and choose to ignore certain parts, or conveniently forget them when temptation arises. I’m sure it’s the same in other faiths as well- the rules are easier to live up to when you are surrounded by other people trying to live up to them.
Ultimate authorities are important mostly because they limit the immediate authorities. If you have an immediate authority but no ultimate, you are essentially living in a cult- throwing your lot in with a person, and whatever that person decides is right and good. With an ultimate authority, you can judge (carefully) the credibility of the people you follow.
I dunno, the whole Ultimate Authority-thing always kinda rubbed me the wrong way. It seems like it’s a solid way to void accountability on the part of the immediate authorities, to use your words.
It reminds me of the Mohist argument, where they justify their system using their proto-logic. They do a pretty good job of it too. But then all of a sudden the text takes a ninety-degree turn and say that if you don’t follow Mohist ideals, the spirits are gonna get ya.
If the religio-philosophy doesn’t offer tangible results in the physical world, what’s the point?
Woah woah woah, who’s to say it doesn’t? This sounds like a complete other subject to me. Any physical results from religious experience are going to be open to some level of interpretation, and then the question of authority vs. intuition becomes a factor again.
Also, I would say that ultimate authority actually creates accountability, rather than voids it. Without some ultimate authority (Bible or so on), the regular authorities are basically just saying what they like. You see this relationship between Congress and the Constitution- the Constitution in theory keeps them from passing any old law that crosses their minds.
Hey Ucc,
But doesn’t that require sincerity on the part of those who would accept authority? I see much authority used to avoid accountability. After all, it’s not my fault really, “the devil made me do it.”
Certainly, tentative. I guess I’m talking about the personal value of authority- if one cannot be sincere to oneself, then nothing will help them. 
The problem with that path is that it devalues authority figures to the point where they may no longer be necessary. Is that what you are saying?
It depends on who you are. As you grow in experience, devotion, and knowledge, you can certainly reach a point where the ultimate authority figure is the only one you need, and instead you are looking to others to be your colleages, and not your mentors. I am cautious in saying this sort of thing, because nowadays if I admit that some people can reach this stage, then everyone will assume they themselves are at it. For most of us- those that aren’t devoting their lives to studying religion- an authority is always necessary, if one wants to grow or maintain.
Why do you still need the authority figure once you’ve reached that point?
Well, because you’re still doing something. Even the Pope reads his Bible, after all. One of the qualifications I mentioned is devotion, and that means 'Devoted to…" and what you’re devoted to would be that authority. It need not be a person, in fact it shouldn’t be. It’s ultimately a set of precepts. But they have to come from without, or it’s egotism.
So you would count a text or series of texts as an ultimate authority?
I can live with that. It’s what I do, after all. If I may paraphrase The Mencius, if you can’t find teachers in the modern day, you must seek them in the past.
Confucius had a slightly different take on the issue, that everyone can be a teacher, “when traveling in the company of two men, I am bound to have two teachers. If they are my superior, I devote myself towards becoming their equal; if they are my inferior, I look within myself to see whether there is any similarity.”
Yes, absolutely. Technically, the ultimate authority is the Creed the book or whatever contains, but yes you have it. That is preferable to a person. An ultimate authority has to be the one that doesn’t change- the immutable standard. That’s what makes them capable of providing accountability for the lesser authorities.
And what about when the text lacks internal consistancy?
For example, in the Analects, Confucius argues strongly against the death penalty. Yet, the first thing he did when he was placed in office (the state escapes me right now) he ordered the execution of a ne’er-do-well advisor (think Grimer Wormtongue). Heck, his responses on what virtue and a gentleman is, are so varied you could write massive texts on the conflicting commands there (and there have been many such texts).
Confucius also argued that all men are born alike, it is through repeated practice that they diverge . . . yet he also argued that the Barbarians were unable to become civilized . . . then he said that if a gentleman lived amongst barbarians, they would become civilized . . . then he argued that when a gentleman lives with barbarians he ought adopt their norms.
What about when accepted exegesis has corrupted the meaning of the text? The I.1 of the Analects was originally about students coming to learn at the feet of a teacher, yet after the Daoxue movement it has become simply about friends and equals coming together.
Every ancient text suffers from these problems. I use my own tradition merely so-as to be non-threatening. Are we then to accept these contradictions and use each as it suits us, saying the Text allows it?
Or, instead, do we rely on our own heart-and-mind to seperate the wheat from the chaff. What was said that was good and what was said that was bad. Or, do we completely abandon the use of ancient texts and stick to more consistant, more modern religions? Ba’hai is quite consistent within itself and in its texts. Does that make the Ba’hai faith more valid than any other?
The idea of an ultimate authority is slippery because they will always be filtered through a more proximal authority, even if that is your own heart-and-mind, with its ego and experiences aside from the text. One could argue that even approaching a text with a Beginner’s Mind is a mistake because it removes the context in which the text was created.
I think this is an excellent point. The problem of spiritual authority is not as simple as submission and obedience to an single authority. It would be much easier if it were.
There can be situations where the student desires to be obedient to the “ultimate authority” but the direction of the “secondary authority” does not seem to align perfectly with the ultimate authority. So, the student has a choice of either disregarding the direction of the secondary authority or submitting without complaint.
The choice here is important, since the discernment of the student may not always be clear with regard to the ultimate authority (since he is after all only a student). Personally, I think too often we assume that our secondary authority is wrong and we miss the value in submission to something we don’t understand. It’s much easier to submit to those things that we agree with. When faced with uncertainty I think we (read I) often fall back on our own opinions, negating the very value in having a secondary authority at all.
In contrast there are clearly times when the correct path is to rebel against the secondary authority in favor of the ultimate authority. I’m thinking of the choice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to join the plot to kill Hitler when his own church had decided to avoid speaking out against the Nazi’s. He paid for his choice with his life, but I think it was the right one at the time. It seems clearer in hindsight, but I’m sure it was confusing for him at the time. And I’m sure there are many other similar examples in other relgious traditions.
I guess the issue still boils down to making the right choice in the right situation. But I fear too often we are prone to rebellion.
Xunzi taught that if you are lazy, you should surround yourself by those that are productive, so that you might follow their example and improve yourself.
He also taught that if you are a workaholic and devote too much of your energies towards a single task, you ought surround yourself with those who are lazy so that you might learn to relax.
Perhaps you believe others are too rebellious because you, yourself, lack the will to rebellion?