 10. Animal Sacrifice |
Animal sacrifice is as much misunderstood today as it was in ancient times.
During meditation the physical body and thoughts are set aside in order to experience the true inner SELF (the real you) this setting aside is the SACRIFICE of the ANIMAL BODY and the feelings and sensations which keep the true inner self limited and identified with the physical animal body of each human being.
The animal sacrifice in a spiritual practice has nothing to do with the killing of an innocent animal and then using its blood to redeem sin.
Franklin Jones states:
Another Christian myth (based primarily on the death of Jesus, and only secondarily on his Resurrection or Ascension) that has ceased to make sense as an exoteric idea. It is the myth of Salvation through the blood (or the blood-sacrifice) of Jesus. This myth is as fundamental to "official" (or exoteric) Christianity as the myths of the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus, and (like those myths) it has also ceased to be meaningfull (or patently acceptable as exoteric reality, or historic fact) now that various ancient and "primative" concepts of reality have ceased to inform the common mind of humanity.
The idea that Jesus' death was a universally effective blood-sacrifice (now either magically re-enacted or otherwise memorialized in the Eucharistic ritual of bread/body and wine/blood) depends upon ideas that belong to the ancient "primitive" and popular culture of ritual magic (commonly referred to as "shamanism") and its traditional ritual blood-sacrifice of animals (and even human beings). In shamanistic cultures (and all the cultures of ritual sacrifice, all of which developed from the "primitive" base that may, for the sake of simplicity, be referred to by the general term "shamanism"), prayers are offered Up (either to God or to various deities in the "air," or in the space between "Heaven" and Earth). The participants in such cultures believe that prayers cannot ascend unless they are carried up by "mana," or the life-force of freshly sacrificed animals (or even humans). That is to say, from such a point of view, every time a prayer (or request) is offered Up, it must be "delivered" by the released (and naturally ascending) energy of a blood-sacrifice, or else it will not "arrive." Likewise, the "mana" (or blood-energy) sent Up with a prayer functions as a kind of "self-addressed stamped envelope," to convey the resultant blessing (or the prayer's "answer") back to the sender.
Such ideas were common to both the old ritual religion of Israel and the popular Hellenistic religions that existed at the time of Jesus and early Christianity. Therefore, the death (and the apparently miraculous, or magical disappearance) of Jesus, coupled with all kinds of "reports" and visions and dreams and hopes, eventually became an "official" interpretation of Jesus' death as a blood-sacrifice - not only literally effective, but universally effective (such that faith in the Spiritual Power, or "Great Mana," released by Jesus' death, Resurrection, and Ascension would, in any and every moment, grant any worshipper direct access to "God" in "Heaven" above, without the necessity to go through any other rituals of purification or blood-sacrifice).
Thus, Jesus was "officially" interpreted to be a human sacrifice that grants everyone the "Mana" for effective prayer (or direct access to the "Heavenly" Blessings of "God"). It is obvious that most people living in modern post-industrial societies would not claim it is necessary to kill animals (or humans) in order to provide an energy-vehicle (to and from "God") for prayer-requests. Therefore (it must be asked), in a non-shamanistic culture (or a culture that has lost all sense of either the necessity or the meaning of the process of ritual sacrifice), what is the meaning of the death of Jesus? Without the shamanistic mind (or its idea of blood-ritual), the death of Jesus can no longer be understood as a sacrifice at all (whether effective or ineffective).
