Peter and Paul, sequel to Yeshûa?

My new historical novel Peter and Paul is now in its final (proof) reading. Quite unwittingly, it became a natural sequel to one of my favourite bestsellers: Yeshûa—Personal Memoir of the Missing Years of Jesus. If you enjoyed Yeshûa, you’ll enjoy Peter and Paul. Guaranteed! (I don’t live in Jericho—I must blow my own trumpet!)

Seriously, I tried to be as historically correct as I could be, while delving into what, I thought, must have been the mindset of my two protagonists. Let us not forget that, with Israel under occupation, and the Roman Empire itself in a constant state of ferment, Peter and Paul were setting out against tremendous odds. In addition to obvious lack of funds, they were treated as blasphemers against the faith of Moses and the Prophets. The Jews, and pretty much everybody else, hated them. After all, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and others had their own, well-established, religions. The priesthood of each group was willing to fight for their personal convictions and interests—to the death. Not their own death, of course. And, as you will learn, the priests fight dirty.

There was a lot at stake.

We must not forget that the upkeep of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the countless magnificent temples of other various religions, took money. Lots of money. And other than in Israel, there were no official tithes. And even in Israel, the tithes had to support not only the upkeep of the temple. While there were many different tithes, or taxes, essentially the Hebrew law demands a 10% tithe to be paid to the Levites, who didn’t contribute anything to the economy. Rather like the overwhelming majority of the priesthood and the politicians of today. 

When all is said and done, the new Christians, who initially had been considered as nothing more than yet another Jewish sect (there were a few), yet were unwilling to pay tithes. Also, those in power claimed that only they, who had the monopoly on the established, ‘traditional’ interpretation of the Torah, were right. Again, rather like the Vatican or the fundamentalist sects today. Add the same aggressive rebellion of all the other religions of the day, and you have a beehive in which the new coverts had to navigate in order to survive. Many didn’t.

And we think we have it tough?

Today, our ‘governments’ will still put us in jail for not paying taxes (tithes imposed without our acquiescence), but at least we are unlikely to be stoned to death by a disgruntled group of politicians or civil servants. At least… not for now. 

Why Peter and Paul? (My forthcoming Historical Novel)

Dozens asked me this question. Peter and Paul symbolize the irrepressible duo, which defines the human entity. It is expressed in the saying:

“Many are called but few are chosen”.

In the historical context Peter stands for the chosen few. The few upon whose ‘shoulders’ the church was to be built. The word ‘church’, symbolizes the mindset, which adds up to the Hebraic nephesh, translated by biblical scholars as ‘soul’, which we know as the subconscious.

Paul, on the other hand, stands for the masses, “the ocean of thoughts”, or for the many that are called. Thoughts originate from past experiences as well as from the unconscious, i.e. the field of infinite potential. Yet the matter is not that simple. Without the masses regimented by Paul, Peter would have a hard time finding ‘the few’. Ergo, we (our tumultuous thoughts) are all indispensible. The cooperation between the two, between Peter and Paul, could be compared to a selective process. First get to all who show the slightest interest. Then get them more interested. Finally, those “chosen few” take it upon themselves to continue the good works. And what are the good works? They are a conscious commitment to the search for the infinite potential welling within us. They are the mindset that affirms the Psalmist’s statement: “ye are gods”.

It is a journey that ends in infinity.

Of course, the good works results mostly from restoring the balance. When we are told to feed the hungry, heal the sick, help the poor, it is not to become “holier-than-thou”. We may be feeding their bodies, but we hope that our ministrations will restore their faith in their purpose—that it will restore the balance in their minds.

Sooner or later we shall all learn that altruism is not an attribute of a generous person, but a trait necessary for our survival. Why, you ask?

Paul knew that, but he didn’t know why. Peter did.

Peter knew that at the very core of our existence we are all one. By giving to others, we enrich ourselves. We enrich our subconscious, i.e. our soul. 

This above is NOT a sermon. It is a statement that pertains to our survival. The consciousness we now display will remain in our subconscious forever. Or… be deemed unsavory, not worth saving, erased. It would be as though we haven’t lived.

It would be lost forever.

And that, my friends, is a very, very long time. Our true nature is revealed in the Gospel of Thomas, which I discussed in my book, Key to Immortality. You might enjoy it.

The Innocent

It is always a question of balance. With the neutral Creative Force[1] being omnipresent, we alone are responsible for maintaining the balance. If we forget that all realities are set on automatic, we’ll never understand their workings. The centrifugal and centripetal forces in our solar system work in synchronicity. Again, it is a question of delicate balance.

This holds true for material, emotional and mental realities. The law that enforces it is Karma, or the Law of cause and effect.

It has been said that, “It is better that a 1000 guilty get away than one innocent be punished unfairly”.

Actually the number varies from ten to a thousand, depending on the source. Some ascribe this law to legal theorist Maimonides. "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." Others reach back to the ancient days: “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.” We all know the story.

Back to the Innocents.

The ‘non-righteous’ will have no choice but to restore the balance they upset anyway (omnipresent consciousness ‘operates’ beyond the limitations of space and time). We could eliminate them for they own good. Only to do that, we would have to be able to predict their future and we, well… we can’t even predict if it will rain tomorrow.

On the other hand if we were to eliminate a single ‘righteous’ one we would add to the mess created by others, without any positive return. And the constructive qualities of ‘good’ are so great, compared to the ‘bad’ ones that the math simply wouldn’t work. Look into the past. A few innocents have done more good than 1000s of guilty ones. The math really works.

But there is an overriding universal law that also comes into play. It asserts that love is the most powerful force in the universe. It is the force that holds the universe, indeed all of us, together. It could be compared to the centripetal force. Unfortunately, in a dualistic reality we must balance it with the centrifugal force, and… the opposite of love is power; [see Essay #5 Power, in Beyond Religion I] The material world isn’t, nor can it be perfect. But it creates conditions in which we, individualized units of consciousness, can learn the fastest.

Thus balance must be maintained in the material, emotional and mental realities. Either that, or we shall fall apart. Our consciousness operates from a very fragile, superbly balanced entity designed for learning.

It is up to us to make sure that we do.

---

[1] ^“…for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:45. [forget religion, these are facts].

Killing is Such Fun!

 A few facts.

According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total world spending on military during 2011 amounted $1.74 trillion in USD. And the USA must be proud. They alone have spent $711 billion, which is more than twice as much as the next 4 big spenders put together. There is absolutely no doubt that the USA have the ambition to be by far the world’s biggest killers. Fun, isn’t it?

There was a time when Alexander the Great had that privilege, then the Roman Empire, and look what happened to them. There were others, before them and since. Do you remember many? Even history seems to have forgotten.

Perhaps there is something to the saying that “he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”

Do you think this also applies to bullets? Bombs? Missiles? Other weapons of mass destruction?

There is an (unfortunate?) universal law that applies to all laws and to all of us, wherever we might be:

“Ignorance of law in no excuse for breaking it.”

If you jump of the roof, you will fall. If you don’t eat, you will starve to death; if you hit a wall, the wall will hit you back with equal if opposite force. There are also laws of ethics, of logic, and many others. Buddha, Socrates, Moses, Plato, Yeshûa, Newton, yes, men from all walks of life, tried hard to imprint some of those laws on the human mind. We are in danger of dying by a force equal to that by which we live. Be it a sword, or bullet or an a-bomb. In this life or the next. Balance will be restored.

The laws have nothing to do with any religion. If you don’t believe me, try my Dictionary of Biblical Symbolism. These really are universal laws. And by the way, you don’t have to drop a bomb to commit murder. The bodies don’t matter that much. As a matter of fact the physical bodies are not real. The murder, like adultery, takes place in your mind.

Nevertheless, the Great Masters spoke in vain. Some listened—the vast majority did not. Still don’t. That is why so many are called and only so very few are chosen. Yet, it is always our choice. We and only we can decide if we wish to be among the chosen few.

Most don’t. Most enjoy killing.

Secrets Dispelled

The fundamentalists must have hated him, yet he used to fill the Carnegie Hall to the brim. 2,804 seats plus standing room. It was a start. Then came his books. His name was Emmet Fox. A man I admired for many years once said that wisdom is a perfect balance between knowledge and love. He considered these two as an amalgam that keeps the world together. Or so it seemed to me.

Emmet Fox was teaching us who we really are. Now he’s dead. Luckily, knowledge is omnipresent. Even the most paltry atom knows how to behave, how to act, which way to spin, how to hold on to its electrons. That’s a lot of functions, more than most people perform consciously at the same time.

No matter. They say we have evolution on our side. So they say. Actually we don’t, though scientists would never agree. Yet, whenever nature attempts to upset the status quo with most innocuous innovation, all established seats of power rise up in defense. They all, yes, all of them, want to confine evolution to whatever we, men, or better said, they—the scientists, say is the right change, the right direction to advance.

They, my friends, are wrong.

No weapon of mass destruction advances evolution.

No political system advanced us on the evolutionary path. There was hope for democracy until we saw the behaviour of both, the lower (the house of reps.) and the upper houses (the Senate) of the USA in recent years.

Likewise, no religion took us a step closer to becoming better people—some individuals, perhaps, but certainly not as a species.  Killing from 30,000 feet up in the air, suicide bombers, and priestly shenanigans with under-aged boys are living proof of this.

Furthermore, everything that advances our civilization seems to be in direct opposition to the advance of our culture. Look at any art form and compare it to the Renaissance. Barring exceptions, it’s pitiful.

We must choose. Either we shall continue to become more materially dependent on technological gismos of the very, very rich providers, or we shall turn the page and ask ourselves three little words.

Who am I?

And then we might attempt to define ourselves not by what we own, or whom we know, or what we can do, or how much money we make or have, or how many enemies we killed for the glory of “democracy”, not even how much power we wield—but who we really are.

Then, and only then, there is a chance to reverse the trend of devolution. Look around you. There is still time for the few. For the masses I lost hope. Perhaps you can reverse the trend at least for yourself. The book below might help. It dispels DELUSIONS. Believe me, there are many. More than most of us can handle.

An Alien amongst Us?

Just think. 200,000 leaves on a single oak. It’s like a small town of leaves, living together, in harmony, without strife or jealousy. Not at all like humans. And a clump of trees would be like a city, with each tree a borough. Finally we have a nation, I mean a forest—a multitude of towns and cities—the leaves growing into millions, many millions—still all living in harmony, without jealousy or strife. Still not at all like humans. Indeed, acorns are from an alien species.

Perhaps we just don’t like harmony.

And then we have a continent of forests. Reminds you of anything?

Each autumn the leaves turn yellow, just like human skin, then shrivel, just like human skin, and then die. We do, too, we just take a bit longer. But while the leaves live they, through the magic of photosynthesis, turns carbon dioxide into air that others can breath and enjoy their own life. Throughout their annual cycle they contribute to the life of others, they make the world a better, richer place.

Do we do that? Most of us? Do we make the world a better place? Annually?

Evolution brought us to a certain point and then we ate an apple. Both of us. Adam and Eve. (I know, it’s all symbolic). And thus, symbolically, this gave us the power to say no. No to nature, no to the gifts that the leaves still possess, while we seem to have lost ours. Whatever they were. Don’t you ever wonder what were our, human attributes? What was it that would make us superior to an oak tree that gives, year in and year out, all it has, to make this world of ours a better place?

And if you don’t wonder then should you be surprised that about a billion people think that fairly soon we shall all be recycled, to start again?

That’s what they think in the East.

Here many believe that on arrival in heaven, and for ever-after, we shall continue to wonder if ever, if in any single year, or throughout our lifetime, we contributed to our world as much as every oak does year in and year out.

At least when we die, our bodies, or ashes, fertilize the earth, (like the leaves do, every year) making this a better place. Perhaps we are worth more dead than alive.

Just wondering…

For the real story of Adam and Eve, you might try my essay #50, Eve, in Beyond Religion I Series. It is an inquiry in the Nature of Being. You might find it interesting.

Autism and other mutations?

Not all is lost. Not yet. According to H.P. Blavatsky’s Esoteric Buddhism, we still have a few years of Kali Yuga in which to catch up. Almost another 320,000 years. But time flies. So lets hurry and get back to Charlie Rose.

The same series organized by PBS which compelled me to write “The Brain” blog, also brought us the program on Autism. Alas, as always, the famous doctors agreed that anything that deviates from the norm, from average, is a sickness.

“If you are not like me, you must be sick”, seems to be their dictum. Well, they’re almost right—in part.

Our way of life is organized to best serve those who conform to each other. We drive on the same side of the road. We eat similar foods (mostly triple burgers? I said similar, not same). We try to speak the same language although elocution seems to be a lost art. Etc, etc.

But there is a deeper, a much deeper problem.

The differences between us originate in 3 different sources. One, they can be genetic—we inherit our inadequacies. Two, we acquire them through lack of understanding how the world works (this includes the contagions). And three, it results from nature’s attempts to advance our evolution.

That item last has been discovered, though not yet confirmed by scientists, only some 5-6 years ago. Autism is the result not of deviations of a single gene, but whole groups of genes, which combine in a different order only AFTER they leave the donor. This is true of both sperm and/or ovum. By that I mean that BOTH parents were completely ‘normal’, meaning that they could cope in the environment in which most people function. Yet their child, male or female, is born with autistic tendencies, often demonstrating enormous skills/talents in some fields of endeavour.

In cases of autism, only one of the three causative factors is present. From perfectly ‘normal’ parents, in perfectly ‘normal’ environment, the children are wired differently.

This single fact will, one day, lead the scientists not to attempt (almost always unsuccessfully) to ‘cure’ the autistic condition, but try to cooperate with nature in her evolutionary attempts to advance our species.

Science, like evolution, advances very slowly—at snail’s pace. The material reality is a work in progress. Many mutations don’t work. But one day, some man or woman will become very famous by advancing the theory stated above. And then, usually it takes about 10-15 years before a discovery reaches the financial coffers that enable the ‘scientists’ to begin their research in earnest, we shall change our view of autism. We shall observe the children with curiosity and admiration as one would observe heroes who took the first steps to manifest Homo Superior.

If you are very young, and if you live long enough, you might actually see it happen. Good luck. Of course, once the ‘scientists’ recognize the truth of my words, we the ‘normal’ people will become redundant. Except for those who will be looking forward to their next reincarnation.

Like I said, we only have 320,000 years to go.