Five Voices - Softcover

Randall, H.W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1452011044 ISBN 13: 9781452011042

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2010

Synopsis

Five Voices depicts the course of a small, hastily arranged conference attended by five persons. The five persons are encouraged to draw spontaneously on individual experience in a collective attempt to analyze a cornerstone text of Christianity. Together they represent three different cultural backgrounds and distinctive positions on the issues of theism-atheism and mysticism-materialism. As the exchange develops, quotations are presented from two alternative versions of the text, each of which would incline the analysis in a unique direction. Aspects of both eastern and western religious traditions emerge. As two of the participants are educated psychologists, viewpoints from the fields of psychology and philosophy are generated and concepts are defined. Concepts from Transpersonal Psychology help to draw distinctions between realms of subjective experience. A third participant is Japanese, who after being raised as a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist had become a Christian Unitarian Minister. The book is comprised of three parts. Part 1 describes how the five individuals are drawn together through the agency of a common acquaintance. The character of each is illustrated through the initial encounter he or she has had with the common acquaintance in one country or another. In Part II analysis begins with the chairperson's offer of a sketchy background of the times of Jesus. The participants are encouraged to share candidly their insights, reservations and disagreements. Part III comprises a concise recapitulation of the main concepts and experiences that Jesus sought to mediate, as may be understood through language chosen from present day psychology and philosophy. The group's discordant analytic process extends over a period of three days. The story is told by an unidentified witness. Given the narrative style of Five Voices, sources and-or authors of the concepts borrowed from psychology and philosophy are acknowledged within the context where introduced.

About this title

Book Description

“You are either with us or against us” is an idea expressed by Lenin, Mussolini, G. Orwell, H. Clinton, and G.W. Bush, and in films such as Dirty Harry and StarWars. In such examples, the distinction would underscore a polarized, ideological conflict between groups of individuals. The expression may also be used non-politically, however, and not refer to competing ideologies.

Evaluations of good-bad and right-wrong, and concepts such as god-devil and heaven-hell would also indicate irreconcilable dichotomies. Such thinking may conjure up fear of or hate toward the ‘other side’. But being allied with the side that is singularly worthy of survival is an assumption instinctively taken for granted by all individuals.

Are such conceptions built into us through genes, upbringing, or the experience of our physical bodies? Whether informed by theory or not, we either agree with or oppose an elected executive; develop opinions about the propriety or impropriety of fellow social beings; believe or disbelieve in forces beyond the control of all humanity. Thus does every person, in whichever country, become an agent for views claimed by the politician, philosopher, theologian, and psychologist to be their exclusive domains of competency.

Philosophies may offer an adult rational argument, but religions are predicated on belief. Religious beliefs generally derive from the religion predominant in one’s childhood environment. They are thus not generally choices. By their nature they have united and thereby divided humanity. They have cultivated subjective, transcendent experience but also suspicious, hateful, political behaviour.

Their historic appeal can be attributed to the psychological need to face physical insecurity and the ominous mystery of existence. Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, and perhaps Krishna are purported to have lived human lives, and each succeeded in becoming a teacher and an iconic model of how to cultivate inner peace. The declarations and admonitions attributed each of them must have resonated, even if largely unconsciously, in the minds of their particular audiences.

Given the innumerable sects that developed out of disagreements in how to understand such teachers, who can know when they have understood the original teaching?

The book Five Voices attempts to identify the underlying matrix common to religious impulses. It offers a discussion between five persons. The antipodal classifications of believer (in some form of Godhead) and non-believer are represented by two of the participants. Given their five orientations, the participants argue the intent of the statements attributed Jesus of Nazareth

as portrayed in the text of Matthew. Jesus’ “He that is not with me is against me...” illustrates the ambiguous nature of language. It is argued as an allusion to the impulse underlying all religion, and not as a simple distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

It is hoped that the book can interest anyone interested in the relationship between politics, religion, and psychology.

Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1452011044
• ISBN 13: 9781452011042
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496