The Secret Within

In 8th century BC, man named Isaiah, reputed to have been a prophet, made a strange discovery. He discovered the secret underlying our state of consciousness. Isaiah also discovered that we were not born with this ‘superego’, but if we were lucky, then such a state of consciousness might emerge on the fringes of our awareness at any time when we open ourselves, our minds, to whatever it is that lies dormant within us.

Some 300 years later, around 5th century BC, another man called Siddhartha Gautama, who became known as Buddha, made the same discovery. Until we become aware of this inner state of consciousness, Buddha claimed, we were not really awake. We remain dormant.

Later still, some 2000 years ago, a man called Yeshûa said that unless we become aware of that inner life within us, we remain still dead. “Let the dead bury the dead,” he once said, equating a physical body to a dead condition until we become alive by discovering the life within us.

The only life Yeshûa recognized was a state of consciousness aware of its true nature. It had nothing whatsoever to do with any religion. Just a simple truth of which, it seems, the vast majority, the ‘many’, are not aware of. When they become aware of it, they become the ‘chosen’ few. Strange how few choose to be among the chosen. After all, it is up to us. All we need do is to sublimate our ego and recognize that we are more than our physical bodies.

Some 2800+ years after Isaiah, a man called Sigmund Freud, an uncompromising atheist, came close. He named this, or very similar state of consciousness, “superego”. No one knows why it took almost 3000 years to discover that Isaiah was not preaching any form of religion, or what scientists call superstition, but a deep analysis of human nature. There were no churches, not even temples in the days of Isaiah. He had to make do with conveying his knowledge directly to the people, in the hope that some of it might sink in and help people to find purpose in their lives.

Not much has changed.

All four men referred to the same condition.

It takes years to understand the mental acrobatics that Freud indulged in to explain his method. Volumes have been writer about it. It takes just about as long to comprehend the inner teaching of Buddha. As for the Yeshûa’s teaching, to this day it is twisted beyond recognition.

Only Isaiah managed to encapsulate the whole discovery into just a few lines. In Chapter 8:22 & 9:1–8, he explained, precisely, the whole process of awakening. You may have to read my Dictionary of Biblical Symbolism to grasp the consequences of the discovery, but the wisdom still remains expressed in 9 simple verses. If you want to know the secret, read for yourself. It will take you a few minutes to discover who you really are.

Today we celebrate the birth of New Consciousness.

Merry Xmas. 

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Intolerable Evil?

 

We all heard about power tending to corrupt and Lord Acton’s dictum, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. I’d written a blog about it earlier this year (February 5, 2013). Perhaps, there is one exception—the President of Uruguay? On the other hand, we all know which country is the most powerful in the world and, if we can trust Lord Acton’s reasoning often repeated by both president Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, we can draw our own conclusions, which country is, per force, the most corrupt.

Here, however, we are not concerned with corruption. Here we are concerned with the diametrically diverse forces pulling in opposite directions. In my essay (Beyond Religion I) I reached the conclusion that power is the opposite of love. Love is, or at least is detectable only among individuals, while governments are elected to wield power. Those heading the governments erase the concept of ‘love’ from the equation of their administration in order to ‘protect’ their citizens (read, “big business”). One never hears the word love in any speeches, or legislation. And yet “we the people”, keep electing governments. Allow me to quote a great English-American, Thomas Paine (1737–1809). Some centuries ago he proclaimed that:

Society in every state is a blessing,

but government in its best state is but a necessary evil,

 in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Could it be that Paine detected a conspicuous absence of love in the government’s behaviour? Imagine governments whose actions are motivated by love towards their citizen, let alone towards their purported enemies. They could call themselves Christians then. Yet nothing is as absent from government policies, let alone their power base—the military, as love.

“What does love have to do with governance?” they’d ask.

In government, love is a dirty world.

“We look after our citizens’ bodies, not their souls. Souls are the business to TV preachers or other proselytizers. We just kill our enemies. Fast. Preferably using machines that don’t give us any stupid posttraumatic disorders after wholesale murder. And most certainly, before they can kill us…”

Love…?

“…we call it prophylactic killing. Killing just in case. You can love your enemies all you want. We have the power to kill them. It’s just collateral damage. We don’t mean them any harm…”

“…government in its best state is but a necessary evil,

 in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

Thank you Mr. Paine. We need more people like you around: in America, and Europe, and in other centers of power. Just to restore sanity. Until we do, I’ll repeat to all who care to listen that Power Is The Opposite Of Love. And absolute power is the opposite of Divine Love.

You can find other essays in similar vein in my Beyond Religion Series. I did my best NOT to be preachy, just to share some thoughts. There are 3 volumes of 50 essays each. One per day. Enjoy. 

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Power over the Opposites

There is no good and/or evil. They both exist only in our transient, ego generated, state of mind. We tend to decide what’s good for us; and what isn’t—we tend to define as evi

Not so.

Basically we can only define as ‘good’ that which lies in the middle, or serves the totality of the manifested Universe. Or that that our concepts of good and evil have in common. The reason for this is simple. All, absolutely everything that exists, originates from a single Source. Some call it God, others the centre of a gargantuan Black Hole—the mother of all Big Bangs? It is interesting that a black hole is also called a “Singularity”. Like One/Single God? We are the instruments of the single Source through which everything, material, emotional or mental evolves.

By ‘we’ I don’t mean just humans, of course, but everything that can serve to enhance, multiply, enrich or act in any way to advance the manifested Universe. Everything that coverts the potential into manifestation.

Some of us, the few that are (choose to be) chosen out of many (all) that are called, participate in this process consciously. We can do so at different levels, in all walks of life. Nobody is excluded from the process, yet very, very few participate in it at conscious level. When we do, we are likened to gods. At least, that’s what the Old and New Testaments claim.

I suspect that they are both right. The moment we accept our place in the Universal scheme of things, our power grows exponentially to serve the fulfillment of our purpose. Such purpose can be great or small, although all are indispensible. No one is excluded from this process, even if very few fulfill it in each and every incarnation.

Nevertheless, we mustn’t worry. We, the fractal components of the Universal Potential are immortal. No matter how many times we fail in our assigned task, we are given another, and yet another, chance to make it right. This is what the adherents of various religions refer to as “divine mercy”.

And such it is.

As inseparable units of Universal Consciousness we cannot die, or “go to hell”. We can, however, waste our life, and the resulting pangs of conscience would be akin to hell.

Yet this is where the “infinite (or divine) mercy” steps in again. Sooner or later we realize that even a long ‘life’, is but an insignificant fraction of eternity.  We shake off the darkness that clouded our vision, and direct our steps, our states of mind, towards light. And then…

And then, once again, we become aware of being an indivisible part of the Universal Consciousness. And that’s as close to heaven on Earth as we can get.

It’s worth the effort.

Peter and Paul, went through a lifelong struggle to reach this state of consciousness. It hadn’t been an easy road. Not in their days. Find out for yourself. 

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Defining the Indefinable. Was Baruch Spinoza right?

 

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam. His thoughts on the Divine were both controversial and unacceptable to the Jewish community that raised him. They kicked him out. Later, the Catholic Church put his book on the Index of Forbidden Books. The poor guy couldn’t win. By the time he turned 23 he became homeless. Nevertheless Hegel said later that: “You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all.”

 Spinoza came into the orbit of my thoughts when I read his words that: “To define God, is to deny God”. There goes the Sistine Chapel…

Of course, he was right. To define means to “bring to an end”. To limit. And, surely, one can neither terminate nor limit the Infinite. For many years I agreed with Baruch. Still do. Yet now it seems that the influence of the anthropomorphic divinity on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is so powerful that something has to be said about the nature of the Absolute.

Think of poetry. It does not define but suggests, implies, alludes, nudges one into a direction wherein an image of that that has no image is gradually taking on an idea of an illusive presence. Perhaps while we cannot define the Infinite, we can postulate some of Its attributes.

We can think of a concept that is omnipresent yet expressing singularity, omniscient, outside any restrictions, and thus outside the confines of space or time, hence outside our concept of the Universe or even Multiverse.

To my mind there is only one option left.

‘God’ can be thought of as Infinite Potential. Once that potential is manifested in any tangible form—be it material, emotional or mental—it becomes definable. It may not be outside the Infinite, but it qualifies as only a tiny fraction of the Infinite, which, by having been created, by having had a beginning must also have its end. It is no longer undefinable.

Ergo, we are back to the Potential. 

Goodbye Sistine Chapel.

Times change. With the exception of my fundamentalist friends, I don’t expect to have a cherem issued against me. In Hebrew cherem means a banning, shunning, ostracism, expulsion or excommunication. That’s what happened to Spinoza. 

I am neither the first nor the last to speculate on what is really beyond speculation. The fun, however, is in the journey, in that brief moment before we revert back to the Potential. Perhaps a few billion years, at most?

There was a man who also speculated on the nature of reality and, perhaps, on its Source. It seems that he got closer to the truth than most of us, although we are, according to him, all “children of the same Source”. He didn’t fare any better than Spinoza. In fact, a lot worse.

The wonderful thing is that we, humans, have the equipment that allows us to speculate. To reach beyond the limits set by the material Universe. Some of us even use this ability. For me, this alone, is reward in itself. 

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Longevity—A Blessing or a Curse?

They say that only the good die young. If we examine the immediate past of some 2000 years, then this adage sounds a little too close for comfort.

Some of us want to live longer, although BBC reports that: “Alzheimer's Disease International says 44 million people live with the disease, but that figure will increase to 135 million by 2050.”

Live long and prosper?

Not any more, Mr. Spock

But there is hope. If we don’t live TOO long, we are much less likely to become a mental vegetable. I speak from experience. Both, dementia and Alzheimer’s affected members of my immediate family. It is not pretty. Not if you watch them from close by. When you do, they are no longer a statistic. They are real, bright, intelligent people loosing their mental, emotional integrity. Long life is not all it’s deemed to be. There are exceptions. I prefer not to count on being one of them.

Why do we insist on living longer? No matter how decrepit our bodies become, no matter how useless we become to the society, we seem to hold on to our bodies with broken nails. Don’t we know that we are immortal? That our bodies are little more than the means through which we add experiences to the real life that is beyond the ravages that physical reality offers?

Dozens of great prophets, mystics, philosophers, wise men and women tried to persuade us of this indomitable truth. And yet…

Every single night we leave our bodies… and dream, usually 4-6 times each night. We perform marvelous feats in our dreams, well beyond anything we could possibly do when lumbered with our physical enclosures. True, once we shed our material skin, our envelopes, we can no longer add to the storehouse of our memories, the storehouse of our subconscious, but, considering we are very likely to reincarnate again and again, surely, we shall have plenty of chances to do so in the future.

Why do we continue to hold on so tight to that which we no longer need?

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands—over the years probably millions—of people who accomplished more in a 35- or 40-year lifespan than most centenarians. Isn’t it time we thought of letting go when the time comes? Isn’t quality more important than quantity?

My suggestion is simple. For as long as we contribute to society we have duty to do so. When we become a burden… shouldn’t we let go? I don’t want to accumulate a debt I’ll only have to repay in my future incarnations.

As I mentioned above, I witnessed the ravages of dementia and Alzheimer’s in my own family. Don’t get me wrong. There is also love and laughter, yet… If you read The Gate you might decide if you really want to live long. Too long. 

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Also available in paperback.

Absurd Abundance

I vaguely recall the American comic Bill Cosby telling his son that he can erase him, and make other one like him only better. My quotations may not be exact, but the sentiment is there. Mr. Cosby seems to be saying:  “Son, behave. I don’t need you. You need me.”

Perhaps it is time for us to start behaving. Nature provides us with free food, drink and other appurtenances of comfortable living. We waste them. All of us. Well, the vast majority.

In my last blog I wrote about the absurd abundance that nature built into our biological system. Yet nature did not stop there. It continued its extraordinary generosity throughout flora and fauna.

Did you ever wonder why does nature work on the principle of almost inexhaustible affluence? Think of the seeds and spores it produces from a single tree, a single rose, even grain from a stalk of wheat, apples in a single orchard.

Surplus. Overabundance. Generosity.

Almost inexhaustible.

Almost. Not quite.

Could it be that nature, in her wisdom, or out of the benevolence of the universe, wants to protect us, humans, from ever running out of nourishment? Or from other materials we need to build shelter, keep us warm?

We define financial independence by living from interest (including dividends and suchlike) from the riches we have accumulated during our, so-called, productive years. Nature keeps producing, presumably in the benevolent hope that we can live in perfect comfort and affluence while we inhabit our physical bodies.

And yet…

And yet we abuse her gifts. We no longer live from the absurdly generous interest that nature provides. We grow fat, obese; many of us accumulate much, much more that we need. More than one car, more than one dwelling, millions in our bank accounts—the list goes on. We wallow in our greed, and will continue to do so until we run out not only of nature’s interest, but of the capital itself.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

After all, we create our own universes, our realities in which we abide for short stints: our reincarnations.  Hopefully learning. After all, none of what we can perceive with our senses is real. Remember? Have you read my Delusions—Pragmatic Realism? You don’t have to, of course. You can find it all out for yourself, by yourself. After all, we all travel different paths, and hence we all pay the piper according to our understanding. But be sure, sooner or later, we all pay the piper. Nature is our bank and we all live on borrowed money.

Isn’t it fun?

We have a new pope who seems aware of the depth of depravity towards which humanity is careening. I once wrote a novel in which, likewise, a newly elected pope did what was necessary to save us from our greed. It is the sequel to The Avatar Syndrome. You might enjoy both stories. Let me know. 

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