David Breeden is speaking all week about hidden knowledge.

Transcript:

Hello, I’m David Breeden, the Senior Minister at First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, a historically humanist congregation, and this is Coffee and Wisdom. We are in summer wisdom now in which we’re live on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:00 a.m. Central Time. And this week we’ve been talking about Mystery and the Inner Sanctum. That is, the idea that there are mystical things that can be discovered within certain wisdom traditions. We believe that the truth is out there, has to be, and as this magazine says, the Hunger for Secret Knowledge. But, of course, the question is, is there any? And that’s not such an easy question to answer. I mentioned on Tuesday that there’s one thing we have to remember when we talk about mystery religions, and that is that mystes in Greek didn’t mean what we mean by mystery these days. The mystes was an initiate into a mystery religion and then the mystical part of the mystery religion meant “that which awaits disclosure or interpretation.” So the mystery is not a mystery for those who are initiated into these particular cults, mystery religions. Some existed apparently in Egypt and then most in the Greco Roman world, first in Greece and then on over into Rome when the Roman Empire defeated Greece. Now, one thing we have to remember is that, in the ancient world, people thought that even more ancient wisdom was the best sort of wisdom. So the oldest traditions were the ones that must be closest to the truth. Now, why this would be true is a question that we have to beg, but this was definitely a belief in the ancient world. That’s one reason that Judaism was very much respected in the Roman Empire period, because the Romans knew that this was a very old religion. But the Romans also knew that it probably the oldest oldest, at least in the Mediterranean basin, is going to be in Egypt. So we’re going to have to go to Egypt to find out some things. But first, yes, we’ve got to talk about a civilization that probably didn’t exist at all, and that is Atlantis. Atlantis has been a mythical thing for a very long time. The idea here is an ideal Greek civilization on a continent called Atlantis, somewhere in the Atlantic that was somehow sunk into the sea, it disappeared. But it was one of one of the great civilizations. And, of course, as you know, there’s all kinds of books, movies, etc., about Atlantis. Now, where does this even come from? Well, Atlantis is first described in writing by Plato in a book called The Timaeus that he wrote in 360 BCE. Socrates is talking, but as we know, Plato fictionalizes Socrates’ language. So this is part of the description of Atlantis, this ideal civilization. “They despised everything but virtue…” (Now, those of you who have been following, along with Coffee and Wisdom, know that this virtue is the main good thing in Greek philosophy.) “…They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly on the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by excessive zeal for them, and honor of them, the good of them is lost, and friendship perishes with them.” So in Atlantis, the people put their priorities properly in the world, that is, friendship, goodwill and virtue are the good things. Money, luxury, gold. No, we don’t treasure those. Now you can see why this is an ideal situation. I think it’s probably fairly clear from the text itself that Pl...