Beyond Religion III

For my friend

Jan Jeżewski

With gratitude for planting the seed

Nothing exists except a-toms and empty space:

Everything else is opinion.

Democritus of Abdera

c.460 – c.370 B.C.

LIST OF ESSAYS

(Contents)

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1. XENOPHOBIA—On our genetic image and likeness

Chapter 2. APPLES—On fruit from several orchards

Chapter 3. LOVE—Why we should love our neighbour

Chapter 4. BEING THERE—More on being and becoming

Chapter 5. AN APOLOGY—On human depravation

Chapter 6. FATIMA—On prophesy

Chapter 7. ONE ON ONE—More on prophesy

Chapter 8. ARMAGEDDON—On making money

Chapter 9. THE ERRANT SUPERMAN—On assigning blame

Chapter 10. BLOOD BATH—On wholesale slaughter

Chapter 11. ETERNITY—On going to heaven

Chapter 12.VISUAL PERCEPTION—On the futility of reliance on our senses

Chapter 13. EUTHANASIA—On suffering and being human

Chapter 14. PROBABILITY—On quantum and other theories

Chapter 15. WHY THE FALL—On the reality of Eden

Chapter 16. BE YE PERFECT—More on duality

Chapter 17. THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG—On the birth of the universe

Chapter 18. THE CHURCH—The legacy of the Roman Church

Chapter 19. MIRROR OF A LESSER GOD—On the advantages of marriage

Chapter 20. ETERNAL DAMNATION—On divine wisdom

Chapter 21. ECUMENISM—On faith and religion

Chapter 22. CONSCIOUSNESS—On human nature

Chapter 23. TRUTH—On the nature of God and man

Chapter 24. FREE WILL—Or the law of Non-interference

Chapter 25. SERVICE—On masters and minions

Chapter 26. THE MASTER—On High Self and the nature of becoming

Chapter 27. SACRIFICES—On what we must sacrifice

Chapter 28. HELLO?—A conversation with God

Chapter 29. THE GOD PARTICLE—On phenomenalists and noumenalists

Chapter 30. HEAVEN AND HELL—On devotional and contemplative methods 

Chapter 31. SOUL OF A MACHINE—On Universal Soul

Chapter 32. SKIMMING THE SURFACE—On Pol Pot, science and karma

Chapter 33. THE GREEN EYED MONSTER—On envy and its insidious ways

Chapter 34. RUNN’N, JUMP’N & STANDING STILL—On suburbs and teenagers

Chapter 35. WHO AM I? —On the search for Self

Chapter 36. VIRGINS—On virgins and mothers of yesteryear

Chapter 37. WHAT IF...—On different possibilities...

Chapter 38. CHILDREN—On the need for weaning

Chapter 39. IMMORTALITY—On liabilities and consequences

Chapter 40. THE FUTURE—On seeing with spiritual eyes

Chapter 41. MASTERS AND MINIONS—On the mastery of being

Chapter 42. RECUMBENT EVOLUTION—On being human

Chapter 43. ALL PLEASURE—On different images of divinity

Chapter 44. OXYMORONS AND MISNOMERS—On proper use of words

Chapter 45. COWORKERS—On our responsibilities

Chapter 46. WEALTH—On how to procure riches

Chapter 47. APRON STRINGS—On the future of genetics

Chapter 48. PERCENTAGES—On individuality

Chapter 49. TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL—On killing in the past and in the present

Chapter 50. MANIPULATORS—On the search for freedom

Chapter 51. TRINITY—On various entanglements in numbers

Chapter 52. BEYOND RELIGION III—On an impersonal Trinity

POSTSCRIPT

All essays carry the date of original writing. Some have been somewhat updated as a result of further reading, watching and listening. The dates are given as year, month and day.

Thus XENOPHOBIA had been written on 000221, i.e. on February 21, 2000

FOREWORD

It seems to me that there is but one dominant purpose to the study of reality. It is exemplified succinctly in the American constitution: The Pursuit of Happiness. We, Homo sapiens, are a very young species. Our grasp of the workings of the universe is less than elementary. One generation ago we considered an atom to be the smallest, indestructible building-block of reality. Today we dare not insist that quarks, regardless of color or flavor, qualify as the ultimate Democritus’ a-toms. As the dominant species, we are still pretty ignorant. Not only in the fields of apparent esotericism but even in the areas of pure physics, all too often, the best we can do is to offer an opinion. But we mustn’t worry, as Carl Sagan put it: There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped.

There is still hope.

We abide on a minor planet orbiting an inferior sun, whose light would be invisible to a naked eye to anyone a few dozen light-years away. We have absolutely no reason to believe that we have earned any distinction among the intergalactic species. And within a galaxy consisting of billions of stars, among billions of galaxies, universe continues to expand at an absurd velocity. And then there are virtual universes, winking in and out of existence, even as virtual particles of which they are eventually formed.

In all this unimaginable grandeur, we, you and I, are put together over many millions of years from elements formed in the hearts of other, long dead stars. While most of our bodies consist of hydrogen, a star had to die to give us a few ounces of more complex atoms without which we could not survive. And thus, we and the universe are incontrovertibly interconnected. When I say We are One, we really are.

We really are.

What of the life force which motivates us to action, to thought, to higher aspirations?  What of motivation towards the arts, the music, painting, sculpture, poetry?  These are not the results of the ashes of the long dead stars. These are galvanized by a living force, living now, today, some say—immortal. This Force with the attributes inherent to It, particularly the attributes of infinite Knowledge and Love—I call God. All in all, driving us forward towards Its creation, towards Its countless stars, galaxies, universes, towards beauty and happiness. In the beginning there was God. The Creative Life Force. And the concomitant of this Force is Consciousness. All else comes forth from this single, omnipresent Consciousness. And there is nothing else. Visible or invisible. Manifested or virtual.

All is One. It is the attribute of this Consciousness that constitutes our reality. It is into this reality that I dive, headlong, all else being puny, transient, replaceable.

I invite you on a journey into the unknown. I hope you’ll come along.

***

INTRODUCTION

Anyone searching these pages for quick, glib, answers will be disappointed. I would rather my readers treated my essays as a menu of exotic dishes, perhaps a silver tray of hors-d’oeuvres, which they might taste, relish, ponder upon their esoteric ingredients, and if still tempted—swallow.

Whatever subject is discussed in these pages, it is always, per force, colored by my attitude towards reality as I see it. A friend once told me that I do not provide straight answers to the multitude of questions raised. I don’t, according to him, even provide sufficient meat to engage in a profound discussion.

That’s quite true. What I offer is a view of reality that is not espoused by the vast majority of people I’ve ever met. The intend of my essays is not to impose my views on others, but to inspire the reader to form his or hers own viewpoint which will not be limited by the evidence of their senses or conditioning.

We all see reality differently.

Beauty to some is dire boredom or indifference to others. We hear differently. Hard-rock is reputed to be music to some ears, jarring cacophony to others. A gentle touch is but a sign of weakness to those hankering for power. Tastes in food differ the world over. And so on. And what seems even worse (or better?) is that all tastes, all opinions derived from the evidence of our senses appear to be transient, ephemeral. We live, hopefully we grow, we mature. We become more discriminating. We evolve. Physically, mentally, perhaps even at the spiritual levels. This last motley is usually dismissed as superstition, unrealistic, impractical—unreliable. Yet, by the Sherlock Holmes’ well-known process of exclusion, the spiritual reality seems the only one that is permanent, unchanging, and reliable.

Whoever read my essays collected in Volumes I and II, must have a good idea what direction I have chosen in my study of reality. I searched, and continue searching, not just for the Truth per se, but into the manner in which modern man/woman can incorporate this Truth in his/her everyday life. After some twenty-five years of study, I came to the conclusion that once we find the key, which unlocks the knowledge seated deeply in our unconscious, our viewpoint changes dramatically. I have already demonstrated, however briefly, the futility of reliance on our senses. Unfortunately, for as long as we limit ourselves to the constrains of our intellect, we remain in dualistic reality. It is still a reality of contrasts, contradictions, and apparent mysteries so dear to most if not all world religions. As long as we wish to perform miracles, to act as an intermediary between the Potential and the Consequence, we espouse a dualistic, transient, ephemeral mode. We accept a reality that is not as good as it could be. On the other hand, the Perfection, referred to by some people as God, does not appear to be omnipresent. Unless we revise our definition of Perfection. If God were as defined by religions, there would be no need for miracles. God, who is perfect and omnipresent, precludes any necessity for improvement.

And yet...?

Hence the essays.

In the meantime, it seems that only spiritual reality offers escape from duality. It is passive, static, eternal, undisturbed, inexplicable bliss. If you join me on my journey, our search will not lead us to stop performing miracles, but to perform them only for those who still have need of them. For those who have not yet achieved liberation from the dualistic mode of being. We all perform and witness miracles daily. The trick is to see them with non-physical senses. To witness them as eternal observers and then to realize that we and the Observer are one.

***

Chapter 1

XENOPHOBIA

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And God created man unto his image and likeness. We continue to do so. If our own creations veer from our likeness, we call them retarded, stupid, maladjusted, or just ungrateful brats who do not appreciate all that we have done for them. Just look around. The streets are full of homeless kids with pierced ears, noses, eyebrows and probably brains. They are the vagabonds, looking for love in a beer-bottle, a needle, a reefer, or any other quick fix. We, the parents, have created their environment. We, the parents, repudiate any responsibility for their actions. Just as they do—the squeegee kids.

They are different. They do not conform.

They are not in our image and likeness.

If Einstein had spawned you or me, the illustrious entourage of egg-heads would probably regard our actions and mental ability as dismal. Retarded. I have a friend who’s child is much less retarded in relations to him than we are in relation to Einstein, yet the doleful father suffers because he regards his progeny as not ‘normal’. Little does he know that ‘normal’ means average, uninteresting, dull, one of the masses. By wanting your child to be normal you sentence him/her to mediocrity.

Xenophobia—the fear of the different, of that which is strange to us.

Ultimately, the fear of the unknown.

Being different from us is not limited to the extraterrestrials landing their bits of crockery in our backyards. Xenophobia is alive and well in the hearts of frustrated fathers and mothers whose children dare to be, to have been born, different. No doubt we think ourselves so perfect that any deviation from our mould, our paradigm, we regard with alarm, disdain, often disgust.

Strangely enough, only deviations, or what the scientists call mutations, have assured our evolution. And what is more, the basis for our animosity towards that which is different has a purely genetic background. For our species to survive, our genes must have spurned all other genes for millions of years. If we limit ourselves to such a mindset, then we, guided by our genes, will continue to do so. If we can rise above such a primitive level then we can extend what Carl Sagan calls the identification horizon not only to other species but also to the whole world. (1)

Why can’t everyone be like us?  We ask. Aren’t we good enough?

Certainly not if we are xenophobic. For whatever reason.

In my recent book VISUALIZATION, (2) I have listed a number of unlikely candidates for being recognized as retarded, together with their apparent deficiencies:

Albert Einstein and the renown author Virginia Wolf were unable to speak until they were three years old. As a child, the sculptor Auguste Rodin was so inept at reading and math that his parents and teachers discouraged him even from his passion for art. The multimillionaires of the entertainment industry, Tom Cruise, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg and Henry Winkler are dyslexic (unable to grasp the meaning of that which is read). So had been Leonardo da Vinci and Winston Churchill. Louis Pasteur had problems with math while George Washington couldn’t spell. 

I can only repeat that the problems these people faced were theirs to overcome. And they have been.

The first paintings of the impressionists had been regarded by the connoisseurs as ‘retarded’, and bought for pittance by the backward dilettanti from Russia. The Russian ignoramuses are now millionaires, western connoisseurs—dead and forgotten. The rest is history. Or evolution.

But there is also devolution. The physical universe suffers from a deadly disease called entropy. We can succumb to it and cooperate with the elimination of that which is different, or we can rise above it and rejoice in our abundant diversity.

Different is not bad, certainly not abnormal, but, all too often, super-normal. The absence of the average-gene in a son or a daughter is often compensated by a unique, extraordinary talent. It may be a capacity to paint or sculpt in a manner heretofore unknown. It may be a new resonance in musical structures, new approach to other art-forms; it may be an ability to love, to spread cheer and smile in areas where ‘normal’ people would be hard-pressed to find a ray of hope. It may take a long while to discover their unique gift. But the moral is simple. Do not judge, and particularly pre-judge. He who is different from us is not worse. He or she might well be better. Perhaps a mutant. A genius?  Only time will tell.

I know of a world chess champion that could not tie his shoelaces.

Was he sub-normal? 

To my knowledge no child prodigy ever survived our educational system. Oscar Wild said that he never allowed his schooling to interfere with his education.

Yet, we all remain xenophobic. To a degree.

The clever among us fear abject stupidity, the rich fear the poor, the poor—the rich. God forbid our daughter deemed to marry someone of a different skin hue. Perversely, the opposites invariably attract each other, simply because the dualistic reality demands it of the opposites. An electron is attracted to a proton—as mentioned before, the rest is history.

We are not equipped to judge our children. We can only attempt to help them as best we can. What if they cannot cope in school?  Just how many geniuses have our educational systems produced?  On the other hand, how many successful graduates have swollen the ranks of crooks, murderers, dishonest politicians, greedy lawyers or perverts masquerading under some disguise?  The children who are ‘different’ will never be any of these. They are and will remain the unique, precious gifts reaching out from the divine into our midst.

It is we who are retarded by wanting to bring all to a common denominator.

Neither we nor our children are limited to our bodies, even minds. We are spiritual entities experimenting with different modes of being. The sooner we accept this truth the sooner we shall free ourselves from our genetic psychosis, from xenophobia. And we shall allow our children to develop their own image and likeness. To be themselves.

And then, within the abundant ocean of mediocrity, let us hope, none of them shall ever become normal.

***

000221

FOOTNOTES

(1). Sagan, Carl THE COSMIC CONNECTION [Dell publ. Co., Inc.. New York 1973]

(2). Kapuscinski, Stanislaw VISUALIZATION / CREATING YOUR OWN UNIVERSE. [Inhousepress, Montreal 2000, Amazon Kindle 2010]

***

Education is what remains

after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.

Albert Einstein

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Chapter 2

APPLES

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When offering Adam an apple, Eve pulled a fast one. Who could resist Eve—whatever she had to offer? She was the only game in town. I’m sure she polished the pome, gingerly, on her silky skin, till it shone with the fire of gold. For a man whose fridge was still out of order, a tempting snack indeed. Nevertheless, we are told, the price of a single bite was the expulsion from Eden. One can but wonder what else Eve had to offer. A rotten trick, you might say, or, if we choose to interpret the parable literally (as so very many still do), perhaps a rotten apple? 

Apples always appear to have brought problems to mankind. The Greek goddess Eris, annoyed at not having been invited to a wedding, threw—not a tantrum, but—an apple. It was a gorgeous, golden apple, marked for the most beautiful. Immediately Hera, Athena and Aphrodite claimed the fruit, each for herself. You know women... Strife followed, all because of an apple. Prince Paris, the son of Priam the king of Troy, managed to get hold of this very same apple and, for reasons of his own, offered it to the most beautiful Aphrodite. In gratitude for the recognition (not to mention flattery), the goddess of beauty helped Paris to kidnap Helen, thus plunging the known world into the long lasting Trojan War. Have you noticed how much trouble a single apple can make? Of course the involvement of a beautiful woman doesn’t hurt any either. The Greeks knew that. They named the fruit the apple of discord, Eris—the goddess of discord.

After all this apple-trouble one can but wonder why the goddess Aphrodite is not mythologically connected to the tomato. Were not tomatoes originally known as apples of love, or love-apples? 

I really like tomatoes...

Many years ago a great man said that we could recognize the quality of the tree by it’s fruit, rather like being able to tell the quality of an apple tree by the apples it produces. If the apples are bitter, rotten, devoid of quality, then any reasonable man would cut the apple tree down, to make room for another. If one didn’t do so after a season or two, one certainly wouldn’t postpone the pruning, let alone outright cutting down, for thousands of years. Too risky. One bad apple tree might pollute or infect the whole orchard. Great danger lurks in procrastination of what one must or should do. Whatever it is.

Perhaps that’s why we have developed systems with built-in checks and balances. There are tiers of agencies designed to assure that the tree of the government does not bear rotten apples—at least, not... for too long. Not for long enough to infect the orchard itself. Only dictatorships, be they outright or oligarchic, defy this wisdom. And they fall. As Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, as Communism have fallen. Evil dictators and evil empires. Rotten apples. Trees tainted with greed, with the excesses of power, with megalomania.

And hence the paradox.

There is an organization that ascended to power riding the crest of the orchard. It is also the sole organization that acts in total defiance of the teaching on which it bases its authority. After two millennia of rotten, bitter, deceitful apples, of apples which caused more discord that Eris could ever do,