From Farting as a Spiritual Practice to Pizzagate: How Wild Theories Gain Traction

BY HARV BISHOP

“Since one’s idea of God is always a projection of their human consciousness, one needs to develop that consciousness to high levels to have any useful sense of God.” -Rev. Dr. Jim Lockard

Farting was once considered a spiritual practice.

Shocking as it may seem now, some spiritual traditions used to wrestle with the cosmic significance of farting. Or perhaps this doesn’t strain credibility when we look at the social media furor over the Pizzagate conspiracy theory or James Arthur Ray’s tortured rationale for the 2009 sweat lodge tragedy during his spiritual warrior retreat.

A recent Daily Beast article on the history of flatulence traced humanity’s efforts to explain intestinal gas theologically. Manichaeism held that “farts released divine light from the body.” On the negative side, Pythagoras feared that people could “fart out his or her soul.” This led to dietary restrictions in the hope of saving souls. Dour medieval Christians “saw farting as ‘the product of decomposition’ and thus, ‘as the mark of death.’”

Have we evolved beyond the need to ponder the divine significance of flatulence? In my view, we’re still doing the same sort of thing in different ways. As human beings, we naturally seek answers for what is happening around us; with sometimes wonderful and sometimes disastrous results. The human search for answers and meaning gave us both the Buddha and Pizzagate.

Exhibit A: Pizzagate

Right-wing talk radio hosts and pundits fueled conspiracy theories that Hillary Clinton and top Democrats were running a child sex slave ring out of Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor in DC. The “theory” apparently began with a single tweet from a white supremacist. The “evidence” includes passing mention of Comet Ping Pong in the Wikileak-ed emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Benign words such as “cheese” and sauce” where seen as code for child sex abuse. A man with a gun showed up at Comet Ping Pong, fired some shots, and vainly hoped to free the child sex slaves. There were none. That should have ended it, but alas the tale is spreading. More pizza parlors are falling under suspicion. There have been death threats.

Performance artist Marina Abramovic was unwittingly pulled into the complex pizzagate web after showing up in a leaked email invitation forwarded to Podesta. She was accused of being a Satanist by conspiracy theorists. Pizzagate trolls also lashed out in a similar way at one of my Facebook friends who sometimes posts beautiful esoteric art and photos. Salem witchcraft trials anyone?

Nor is this mess limited to the fringe. The Pizzagate conspiracy has been promoted by radio host Alex Jones, a favorite of Donald Trump, and incoming national security advisor, retired general Michael T. Flynn and his son Michael G. Flynn. The younger Flynn was dismissed from the Trump transition team after unfavorable news stories linking him to fake news and conspiracy theories. As of this writing, his father is still standing.

Reading significance into “cheese” and “sauce” reminds me of a time I worked in the Catholic press. Monsignor Matthew Smith, founder of the Register national system of Catholic papers in the 1920s, created a handbook to ensure moral conduct by his journalists. (If you have ever been around salty journalists you know that was probably a thankless job). Smith believed certain foods excited sexual passions so they were banned. At the top of the banned foods list was a banana split with whipped cream.

Research can now identify some of the factors that lead us to go down strange and often absurd roads to explain our politics and our spirituality.

A recent NPR story points to lack of education as one reason conspiracy theories take root. A study by UC-Berkeley psychology professor Tania Lombrozo showed that individuals with lower education tend to over attribute intention and meaningful patterns to unrelated events. An offhand pizza parlor reference in a Podesta email is part of a grand pattern. What about the fact that the gunman didn’t find any sex slaves? Well, you see he was an actor paid to discredit the theory because the truth was about to be revealed. And more innocents, from the performance artist to my Facebook friend, find themselves unwilling targets for ire. And clearly no one told Monsignor Smith that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, or the Manicheans that sometimes flatulence is, well, you get the picture.

Lombrozo said conspiracy theories also find tinder when people believe there are simple solutions to complex problems and feel they are powerless to influence government decisions.

Exhibit B: The compelling CNN documentary Enlighten Us: The Rise and Fall of James Arthur Ray. You may recall Ray parleyed his appearance in The Secret into a booming career as a motivational and spiritual teacher before the infamous Arizona sweat lodge tragedy that killed three and hospitalized 19.

An interviewer asks at the film’s end “I wonder how did it happen? I wonder if you ask yourself that?’

James Arthur Ray: “I think I know the answer to that question. It had to happen. Because it was the only way I could experience and learn and grow through the things I have done. That’s what I think is the reason for me. Am I drinking the Kool-Aid? Maybe but that Kool-Aid works for me.”

As Centers for Spiritual Living Rev. Ron Fox commented on Facebook, “So 19 people needed to be hospitalized, 3 needed to die and the rest needed to be traumatized so James Arthur Ray could grow spiritually. What hubris.”

That’s not to lay all blame for such tortured reasoning at Ray’s doorstep. Most of us who travel in New Thought or New Age circles have likely used some less extreme variation of Ray’s reasoning. A + B happened so I could learn C.

Ray’s rationale fits what Lombrozo describes. It attributes an external intentional pattern to complex events. That intention was to teach Ray a lesson. It’s a neat, simple answer that avoids his responsibility for his actions. And he, by his own admission, felt powerless during his imprisonment and after his release.

Compare this to the teaching from my Kabbalistic Rabbi Henoch Dov (Howard) Hoffman for facing challenging events.

“Is this the best that can happen?” he asks rhetorically. “No, of course not,” he continues, “but whatever happens can be turned to some good.”

Notice, there is no blame and no belief that every single event is karmically preordained. And at the same time, we are not powerless. If we aren’t cursing fate we can grow through our mistakes and, as the rabbi says, open a door in consciousness that others facing the same dilemma can move through. In other words, the visible world and collective consciousness grow through trial and error. No one can avoid mistakes so treat mistakes as precious opportunities.

If Ray adopted this approach he would be able to admit his responsibility rather than drink the Kool-Aid and, most importantly he could still draw lessons from his experience, grow spiritually and seek repair for the harms done by doing good. It is a model we can all use to work creatively with our mistakes.

I am also reminded of another saying of my rebbe’s: “The only true miracle is a change in perception,” which is much greater than a miracle that transcends physical laws in this world. In other words, the truest miracle is being able to see something from an elevated, wider, deeper, more integrated perspective.

Which brings us back to Dr. Jim’s quote that opened this article. Rabbi Hoffman says something similar. All the names of God in the Hebrew Bible are Divine qualities that we perceive through our human consciousness and are ultimately our projections of our conscious. What we often perceive as God, he says, is like a 70s-disco ball with multi-dimensional mirrors reflecting us back to ourselves.

That knowledge invites us to be humble and not to place ourselves or our demands for simple explanations for cause and effect, at the center of our own universe.