“Pretty much,” she says, “although they seem strangely on edge or something.”

“That I will find out soon enough,” says Loose as he heads towards the back of the tavern restaurant.  He walks into the meeting room and finds the faithful already comfortably buzzed, even jovial.  So much for “on edge.”  Lucy the hack dramatist.

“Hey Professor, what do you have for us tonight?  The end of Western civilization?” 

Organizing the podium and trading a wink and smile for a frosty mug of stout, he mutters, “No, actually I thought we would discuss randomness and Brownian movement in contrast to chaos and sensitivity to initial effects.”  He drafts deeply from the dark & foamy.

Everyone has taken a seat and they have the look of anticipation in their eyes like piranha fish watching a one-armed monkey swinging across the creek.

Loose begins, his gravel-edged baritone lifted by amplifier to crash down on the gathered: “Randomness is the opposite pole of determinism, and both are required for the existence of a time-based consciousness.  Randomness is the buffer that tones down the occurrence of meaning. It is what allows the development of identity and the tenses of its existence. Thus, quantum mechanics is a critical part of our memory.”

Two hearty gentlemen are living large and loud at a table front center, oblivious to the shushes and exaggerated throat-clearings of several earnest attendees.  The larger man Thibodeaux crosses himself in response to the Professor’s prologue, and his friend Boudreaux laughs and says, “What ya doin’ dere, Thibodeaux?  Ya scared or sump’n?”

“I dunno what dat man done jus said, but it sound evil, yeah.” 

A polite titter belies the crowd’s mild perturbation with the scene chewers.  Now, however, a second front of affront opens as a hand shoots up from the midst of the assemblage—the unwelcome, wildly fanning mitt of one student from Hell—and the group’s collective groan brings to our doorway tipsy patrons from without, their faces emanating crass curiosity.  “Excuse me there, Professor,” hollers Hellboy, hand now suspended aloft and pointing lazily at the lecturer.  “Can you make it to where this isn’t going to be some boring bullsh** lecture?  I’m on my playtime now.  Say something good.”  He chugs a glug to celebrate his rugged honesty and leave no doubt of his grit.

Loose, beside himself, astounded at the rudeness, the chutzpah, the antagonism, the abomination, the obscene confrontation, looks as though an alley cat has just peed on his shoes at the bus stop.  “What....!  Boring?  Do you want me to sing it, then?  Or here’s what:  why don’t you pretend I am that cell phone you coddle at your head like an aural dildo, and actually listen to something of substance for once!”

He begins again, ruffling his neck like a hose-sprayed rooster.  “Living in a state of all meaning is to live in a timeless state, and it is not consistent with a nervous system composed of macromolecules that are themselves in a time-bound state.  Randomness allows us to relax. According to some, it is the realm in which free will exists.”

Another hand goes up.  Looseff’s eyes bug out.  “What the flaming flamingoes is going on here?”

“I have been thinking about the Adam and Eve thing; that seems particularly significant,” says F. Frank “Frankie” Franklin.

Looseff is bobbing and weaving around the podium as though it is taking punches at him. “Y’all don’t want to talk about randomness and Brownian movement?  We have two feet of snow out there and this is Louisiana!  Is this a random distribution or not?”

“I  been stackin’ up gators like cordwood and scoopin’ up rabbits like they was rubbers flung from a Mardi Gras float.  They can’t run in this stuff, ya know; they won’t be none left for Easter at this rate!  Heh,heh,” drawls Jonas the Swamp Man Jones in the grimy overalls.

Giving the Swamp Man a dismissive eye roll, Melissa in the cardigan sweater says, “Yes, Professor, I have a few lingering questions on your Adam and Eve subject, if you don’t mind too dearly.  I have much concern about this, and I am concerned for my soul.”

“What?  Am I a rabbi?  A monk?  A priest?  I just wanted to talk about science apropos Eve and Adam.  It was not my intention to go down that other road of wine-sodden souls,” says Loose.  “With all due respect.” 

“Waall I am afraid, saa,” says one man standing up, meticulously dressed in a white three-piece à la Boss Hogg, “I am afraid, saa, indeed”  (with an accent somewhere between that of a southern aristocrat and Foghorn Leghorn), “ I am afraid that we have, indeed, traveled down that road, and it is too late to turn back, saa.”

“Cecil, what did I say?  What did I say when we undertook this magnificent gambol?  We agreed that it would be nonpartisan, secular, and that we would discuss science as knowledge, the science of  knowledge and knowledge as a science,  and how we think as our thinking relates to the world as we see it.  I was happy to do that.  The college agreed to it and everything was fine.  Ah, but then during my brief hiatus of a single meeting, some Goss fellow shows up and starts talking creationism.  Was that your doing, Cecil?”

“Waalll, I admit, saa, I did decide to throw some leavening in the pudding, huh, huh, huh!  Howeva, I did not think we would end up haar.”

“Where is ‘haar’, Cecil, where is ‘thaar’? The whole point is that there is no haar or thaar!  We are everywhaar!”

Lo, the Goddess of Opportunity has smiled upon a Beatles fanatic, who raggedly croons, “. . .Haar, thaar, and everywhaar. . .  Haar, thaar, and everywhaaaaaaar.”  There is pause but no applause.    

A hand rises up and a young French-bearded philosophy major asks, “Does that mean that you are a pantheistic animist?”  There is grumbling in the crowd—some of it is a knowing grumbling, some the irritation of ignorance.

Loose puts his hands on his head.  “No, I am a beneficent Lepidopterist!”

“Wow, we haven’t got to that one yet,” murmurs young Sartre in ready defeat.

“I am kidding, okay?  Look up ‘kidding’ on your tweeble-tops or whatever.  I am ‘kind to butterflies’ is all that means,” says an exasperated Loose to the crushed junior philosophist.  “All I am saying is that a literalist interpretation of anything is suspect because words are limiting. We should enjoy our freedom of speech, for it is a lost commodity in most cultures even to this day, and we are rapidly losing ours, in my opinion at least.”  He raises his mug and salutes the attendees.  “Here is to freedom of speech and the right to peaceful assembling such as this!”  He gets a “Hyah, Hyah!” from the crowd.  Someone darts forward with a sloshing pitcher and replenishes his mug with a greener, meaner, cheaper breed of brew, the stuff that inevitably makes hell of mornings after.  

Melissa waves her hands.  “Can we get back to the Adam and Eve thing?”

“Miss Lizzie, pray what am I?  Spinoza?”  Loose effects an undocumented Spinoza pose, enjoying another private moment of enigma after the fashion of the no-holds-barred enigmatists.  “Okay!” he says suddenly, breaking from the apparent seizure.  “I will give you my opinion on this subject.  Are we not in a free-speech assemblage?”  He hoists his glass.  “Beer is the foundation of human civilization!  I can cite the findings of science!”[1]  

The crowd goes wild.  “Beer! beer! beer!  That is why we all are here!”

Damn!  Looseff thinks.  Has to be the full moon.  I haven’t seen the crowd this worked up since I mentioned Lamarck to a contingent of Tulane biologists.

“Do you want to talk Adam and Eve again?  Fine!  I will tell you this: the ‘sacred canon’ version is a really watered-down version of the extraordinarily racy one.  Has anyone here heard of Lilith?”

There is a hand.  “She was the girlfriend of that Frasier guy in the Cheers TV show.”

“Correct answer but wrong answer,” nods Loose.  “According to some scholars who have tried to make a literalist run on Genesis—most of them ancient rabbis—Lilith was the first wife of Adam before Eve.  Yes, Adam was a divorcee!  A friend asked me about Lilith just recently and I did not know anything about her.  I did some research.  I must conclude that the Lilith concept fits perfectly well with the idea that Eve represents the unconscious and the animas of man. According to ancient myth, Lilith is that nasty predatory sexual woman-spirit that causes men to have sexual dreams and fertilize their sheets at night in their dreams!  Basically, she is yet another sublimation of men to blame women for their own sex drive!  She is also the result of trying to correlate the first and second chapters of Genesis as being linearly chronological, instead of the second and third chapters being a further explanation of the first, which I have attempted to propose.

“It is interesting that for women, their unconscious is represented by men in their dreams. They probably learned quickly not to talk about having sex with men in their dreams because they would be accused of consorting with the ‘devile,’ which no doubt many have been accused of and punished for.  God pity the poor women getting off in their dreams who woke up their husbands; they were subject to stoning, burning, and drowning. . . not necessarily in that order.”

There is much shuffling and murmuring.  Some are fanning themselves, some are just agog, some akimbo, some pert.  Everyone is drinking more than usual.  Had Lucy been onto something?

Or just on something?

Loose continues, “I am not making this up; you can Google it and Wiki it—the final word, most students apparently believe, in high authority.  Or get a real education and peruse the texts of antiquity yourselves; that works as well, just something of a hassle.  The fact is, ancient rabbis have concluded in a very literalist sense that Adam was indeed created ‘both male and female,’ and God had to do some serious reconstructive surgery.  Adam was the first and greatest transgender duddly dudette dude. . . no slight to you intended, Mr. Briers,” he says to Hellboy the heckler, now clinging dizzily to his chair, the victim of a micky incurred earlier at the bar.  “When Adam and his first wife were teased apart, she turned out to be too frisky and ran off and had sex with demons, and that is why God later had to make Eve, who was a bit less of a hottentrotter.  This is what literalism will get you!

“Again, I am not making this up and it is not my opinion; it was the conclusion reached hundreds of years ago by Biblical scholars aspiring to literal interpretation.  I have previously stated my idea that the story of Adam and Eve is allegorical and related to Jungian psychology and the release of the true self.  The Lilith concept merely adds the Freudian idea of sexual repression.”

There is much agitation in the room.  Loose realizes he has an octopus on his face squeezing black ink in his eyes, and he needs to regain control of the ship.  He briefly ponders the bizarre abstraction of his octopus metaphor, but now is not the time to worry.  “Here is the sitch, ladies and gentlemen.  Effective immediately, the price of this lecture is fifty dollars a head.”  He ignores the resounding shock.  “However, each of you may alternatively elect option A, option B, or option C.  Here is your option A:  for the duration of the program, you will refrain from disruptive behavior and wayward commentary; then at the conclusion, when I block the door and collect, you may pass for free and off to seek your fortune.  Here is your option B:  you may follow the lead of yon erstwhile antagonist Briers and lay your head on your table.  You shan’t be charged for what has transpired in this world while you’re in another.  And here is your option C, which, if it holds the slightest allure for you, should immediately be embraced:  rise now, blow us a kiss, and quietly leave.  We would not have you sit and suffer.” 

A few moments of soul-searching and interpersonal exchange, considering social contexts and hues of the brews and reasons the sun bothers to rise, move upon the group an atmosphere edging into tranquility.  If anyone designs to stand, he finds himself bound to his seat by a momentous gravity.  None elects to evacuate.  All are in.           

“Very well.  We will discuss the Jungian interpretation and its ramifications on the Pauline doctrine.....  Now, if we say that Adam and Eve were allegorical, does that not indeed blow a hole in the entire Pauline arguments?  No one can read Paul’s arguments (they do actually make sense after enough study) and fail to notice how often he uses Old Testament ideas and stories, from Adam to the law given to Moses.  Paul stresses that they are allegorical.  He uses this allegorical nature of the stories to put together a much bigger allegory.  These ideas have formed the foundation of the Christian Church for the last two thousand years and they are all based on allegorical deduction.  If Adam is symbolic of the consciousness of the normal waking state, and Eve is symbolic of the collective unconsciousness, does this nullify the arguments that Jesus was the culmination of consciousness, unconsciousness and superconsciousness integration?  Dogs forbid, may it never be!  Jesus was well aware of his entire mental connection at all three levels.  As previously discussed, we also live in multiple levels of mind simultaneously. This why we just have that ‘feeling’ that there is more going on than just some reductionist single level of mind.

“Paul said that Adam was a ‘type’ of him who was to come.  Paul saw how Adam was allegorical of human mentality in its infancy and Jesus was allegorical of fully integrated consciousness, unconsciousness and superconsciousness. This condition is our eventual destiny to achieve as well.  Adam was willing to relinquish the comfort of his garden to go on an adventure.  He laid down his own life so his posterity could advance in knowledge.  How else was Adam a ‘type’ of one as compared to Christ? 

“Paul had some issues to resolve.  For example, if Jesus was the Messiah, why then was he rejected by most of Israel?  Paul said this was so salvation could come to the Gentiles also and not be limited to the Jews.  Eventually Israel would get another shot at it.  He had some hard words with Peter and other ‘pillars of the church’ and was basically despised by many for what they considered to be more heresy.  The fact is, all of Christendom was not unified in its belief system for quite a long time, and there were many variations.  It was not until the Council of Nicaea that Christian doctrine was set in stone.  Unfortunately, that is where the literalism set in.

“The other big issue was the law.  How did the law play into Paul’s new system?  He said that the law given to Moses was given to be a ‘tutor’ and teach us of our faults so we could know ourselves better and be more self-aware.  Religionists and he did not exclude himself—erred by thinking the law was literal and was given to be obeyed in every part.  But he realized the law was spiritual and not to be followed in the letter only.  This is what Jesus also said.

“The next big extrapolation was that people were never justified by the law in the first place, and that was not even the intent for their receiving it.  He cites the story of Abraham, who was childless and believed God’s promise that he would have a great progeny in spite of his lack of virility at an advanced age.  Just for believing what God said, that belief was ‘reckoned’ (which means to calculate) to him as righteousness.  Thus faith, not works, is the basis of enlightenment and salvation.  Thence Paul proceeds to show how this same kind of ‘faith’ in God is still relevant to us.

“The next great extrapolation was relating Adam to a collective of individuals’ souls because ‘As in Adam all have died, so in Christ all shall be made alive.’  This concept is actually the real, main, and only reason that creationist fundamentalists are so adamant about the literalist interpretation of Genesis.  This one statement right here is the basis of all their rejection of evolution, science in general, and that carries over into denial of climate change and the sanctity of the Earth.  Their belief is that all human beings died with Adam because he ate of the bad tree and was condemned by God, therefore all need salvation by Christ.  However, as previously discussed, the case against Adam is unfounded.  Adam did not fall; he actually ‘grew up’ and was blessed by God, as indicated by the gift of skins.

“If we let Paul also speak allegorically and shatter the fetters of religious guilt, we would get a new insight.  If we could see Adam as allegorical, then it could be a useful concept and dispense with the creationist restrictions and religious guilt.  As we have seen, the story of Adam and Eve, if understood allegorically, does correlate very well with what we now know about psychology.  We now understand the concept of the collective unconsciousness, represented by Eve in the story.  In contrast, we don’t normally think of normal waking consciousness, represented by Adam, as being ‘collective.’  It is the basis of ego and the sense of separateness of self.  How could normal consciousness be collective?

“Well, actually, we have a very strong collective consciousness called ‘The Global Zeitgeist,’ as well as other names such as ‘fashion,’ ‘being hip,’ ‘cool,’ and ‘tradition.’  How many people are in the ‘Global Zeitgeist’ of Rap music, for example?  Far too many, in my opinion, but that is just me.  I am in the Global Zeitgeist of ‘world music.’  How many people’s collective consciousness has not been affected, one way or another, by the almost decade-old illegal war in Iraq that was started for war profiteers, or the super bowl, or for that matter Mardi Gras?  Like it or not, we are all in this together and we are all connected in our conscious mentality as well as our unconsciousness one.

“The term ‘meme’ has been coined for the conscious ideas that hold us all together and/or tear us apart.  Certain presidents have mastered the trick of saying the same thing over and over and over again while denying reality.  Sooner or later it is accepted as true.  It is the politicians’ favorite trick.  They deny all wrongdoing.  How many times have we looked for something we lost and could not find it because we thought it was a different color or shape than it actually is?  I will be the first to admit that there are times when I am not the brightest pumpkin on the porch.  (Yes, like Halloween, perhaps.)  I have looked for things and looked right at them but could not see them because in my mind I was seeing something else.  Ideas can be ground into us and we will all assume they are true when they are complete falsehoods.  This occurs on a global-conscious scale and forms the basis of the ‘Adam meme.’

“So then, if the Global Zeitgeist consisting of the ‘Adam Meme’ of corporatized war and greed becomes socially acceptable, could we not say ‘as in Adam all die’?  When the taking of bribes becomes the rule of government, and the people who have been victimized feel they have no option but revolt (sometimes violent), could we not also say then ‘as in Adam all die’ at many different levels and in many different ways?   If, on the other hand, the ‘Adam Meme’ consisted of economic equity and social justice, sustainable resource management and legitimate energy policies, would this not result in ‘so in Adam shall all be made alive’?  Paul reformulated this to be the ‘Christ Meme.’  This is Jesus as a grownup Adam dispensing justice, mercy and truth. This is Adam cultivating his garden, instead of burning it down.  Dying in ‘Adam’ or living in ‘Christ’ is a question of collective global consciousness, since both Adam and Christ are allegorical of self-aware consciousness.”

Melissa, gambling that her sincerity and charisma will spare her a “wayward commentary” rap, raises her hand and asks, “What is the deal with all the animal sacrifices?  It just seems gross.”

Loose replies, “Paul understood that the animal sacrifices that Israel performed were for forgiveness of sin.  Paul ascribed the same mechanism to Jesus, who was the ‘final sacrifice’ in his interpretation.  Therefore all the Old Testament laws and requirements are no longer necessary, because they have been made obsolete. This is actually what caused Paul most of his persecution.  He encouraged people to abandon the traditional Jewish rites and rituals—especially that much-cherished rite of circumcision.  Paul was saying that all that stuff (Jewish law) was only meaningful in the archetypical realm of the unconscious.  When the archetypical world was finally manifested in physical reality, it was more important to focus on the physical reality instead of the more nebulous form of the idea.  This was necessary in order for the unconsciousness to be able to present even newer and more explicit revelations.

“Thus, this one big question remains.  What is all this business about animal sacrifice and forgiveness related to blood?  Is God really appeased by blood?  Dare I say it—it is allegorical!  Let us invite our self to the ‘Last Supper.’  Jesus said ‘This wine is my blood and this bread is my flesh.’  Was he being literal?  Some people actually believe he was being literal and that any and all wafers literally turn into his flesh at the sacrament.  They likewise think any cheap wine or grape juice turns into his blood.  I don’t think Jesus was condoning cannibalism.

“Furthermore, a law that precedes the ones given to Moses, but that is included among them, is the law forbidding the consumption of blood.  When discussing what food should be considered ‘unclean’ the Apostles decided the only food law that should remain in effect is the ban on the consumption of blood.  If wine literally turns to blood during the Sacrament, this is problematic.

“What does it really mean?  Could it be allegorical?  The flesh is a physical form of a body of limitations in a point of time.  The blood is formless, even though it provides the basis for the life of the body.  The body is sustained by the blood; therefore, our real life is in the blood.  Thus, blood is the closest physical substance equivalent to the infinite potential of the Zero Point Energy Field.  Our body of form and flesh, as a ‘particle,’ depends on a formless fluid as the photon depends on electromagnetic waves. 

“In what sense, then, does it mean to drink of Jesus’ ‘blood’ and eat his ‘flesh’?  Wine and bread are the fat of the land.  They are the riches of the harvest.  They both come from plants and go through a process of fermentation, which is basically a process of decay.  To be blunt, the Earth and all that are in it are the ‘body and blood of Christ.’  The foundation of ego consciousness is the body.  The ‘mind’ does not exist in the brain only but in the entire body.  The body comes from the blood, which comes from the food we eat.  This food comes from the soil, air, water and the sun, all transformed by plants.  When we eat plants, or eat other animals that eat plants, we eat the sun, earth, water, and air.

“If we will put away the idea that God is not just somewhere mysterious but is also manifested in physical reality, then when we eat bread and wine we consume the ‘body’ of timeless multidimensional reality indeed.  In the current allegory, this is ‘Jesus.’  Was it not said that the body of Adam was formed from the ‘dust of the ground’?  The name ‘Adam’ itself refers to red clay.  Was not this same Adam the ‘figure of him that was to come,’ as Paul says?  The body and blood of Christ came from the Earth.  Jesus is a representation of the Earth in totality, at least in my opinion—although not just the Earth, but all manifested physical reality.  All manifested physical reality is the intermediary and connection between our own self-conscious mind and the infinite potential of the Zero Point Energy Field, which some prefer to call ‘God.’”

Loose concludes his talk.  “Have you any questions?  Everything I have said is consistent with what the Bible says, and I could ramble on for hours, but we have already rambled a bit tonight.  I am currently writing a book on this subject, and it should be available soon.”  The audience sits stunned and silent.  I better make a quick exit before they wake up and stone me, he frowns.  Gathering up his stuff, he makes a quick bolt for the door. “See ya, Lucy!” he calls, passing into the Louisiana snow beyond as the door hits him in the *ss.