Solomon

They say that he was the wisest of them all. Well, think again. He wasn’t. Offering to cut a baby in two is not my idea of wisdom, not even to arrive at the truth. So let’s pretend that that was just his warped sense of humor.

However…

In Hebrew the word ‘Solomon’ means: “peace, peaceable, welfare and/or well-being”. There is no reference to wisdom, although it could be argued that it took wisdom to maintain peace. Although we are told that Solomon was later given another name, Jedidiah, which while meaning “Jah is friend, or, beloved of Jah” there’s still no mention of wisdom.

However…

David, Solomon’s dad, was forbidden to build a temple. The reason was simple. We are to hold the sacred in our hearts, not in a building of polished stone and timber. Solomon, in his (lack of) wisdom, ignored that. With his heart full of pride, first he built a royal palace for himself, and then put his loins to good use with 700 wives and 300 concubines. Some claim he did so to gain political connections, only there weren’t that many connections to be made. If you wish to learn more about his sexual prowess, read Visualization—Creating Your Own Universe. You will be amazed!

Also, for the time being, he had neither time, nor money, nor materials, to build a temple.

However…

Later he got an idea. Instead of separating church and state he installed himself, as king, on the top of the priesthood. Thus, having all authority on his side, he set out to build himself a temple, to his eternal glory. It never crossed his mind that he, as much as you and I, are the temples of god.

King Solomon did to Judaism what Pope Julius II did to Christianity.

In Chronicles Chapter 2, we learn just how he did it.

“And Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the land of Israel… and they were found an hundred and fifty thousand and three thousand and six hundred. (That’s 153,600)

And he set threescore and ten thousand of them to be bearers of burdens, and fourscore thousand to be hewers in the mountain, and three thousand and six hundred overseers to set the people a work.”(This adds up to 70,000 + 80,000 + 3,600)

His concept of slave labour was perfect. Not wise, but pure and simple. Peaceful? Only if the slaves went quietly. Or perhaps the ‘peace’ only applied to the welfare of Israel, not to ‘strangers’.

Not much has changed…

And now imagine. In spite of Solomon and Julius II, and thousands of others building monuments to their transient, material glory, the I AM manifestation still thrives in our hearts. Welcome to the club of the Immortals.  

Jihad

To most of us, this word is better known as “holy war”. No, it hadn’t been invented by the Moslem. It is the idea of the Crusaders, backed with great ardor by popes and ‘saints’ alike. It had been the Christians, who invented the concept of Jihad, of justifiable murder. Only we did it in the name of the Prince of Love. In the name of Yeshûa.

Surprised?

Thou shalt not kill, said Moses. Oh, yes, you may, replied Pope Gregory VII, after he bravely overcame initial qualms. Those had been long cleared up by an early 5th century Saint (!), Augustine of Hippo, in his City of God dissertation. He, the saint, liked writing works on Christian Doctrine. Why love them when you can kill them? Sounds like a hippie proposition.

By the time of the first crusade, some 500 years later, the ground, I mean the doctrine, has been clearly set.

Thou shalt not kill? Oh, yes you may, confirmed Pope Urban II, by now sure of his righteousness. Love your enemy, affirmed Yeshûa. Only after I murder them, apparently. Turn the other cheek? I wonder if Urban II was smiling an inane smile when he blessed the first Crusaders setting out on their tour of duty.

So what of Jihad?

In Arabic, the word means ‘struggle’ and, so they say, it is a religious duty of Muslims. Wikipedia defines it as: “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad… (there is more).

Welcome to the club.

There is one consolation. Crusades lasted only a little over 100 years (1096-1204), thus there is a good chance that if what is happening at present in Moslem countries could be regarded as a form of Jihad, then in a mere 80 years or so they will reach the same level of sanity which we, the Christians have reached in comparative time. Of course, they might not benefit from the good services of Philip IV, of France, who managed to murder most, and outlaw the rest of the Crusaders. We shall see.

Of course, in the 12th century Pope Lucius III created the concept of inquisition to combat heresy, and the church continued to burn heretics, alive, until Joseph Bonaparte abolished such peccadilloes in early nineteenth century. The Holy Office had fun while it lasted.

Since history is said to have the habit of repeating itself, we can look forward to only some 80 years of continued Jihads, and then… to a around a millennium of homicidal excesses based on the explicit examples set out by the Great Inquisition.

Unless… unless the Moslem are much, much more advanced as human beings then Christians were during the last two thousand years.

We shall see.

In my Essay #49 the matter is discussed in greater depth. You can find it in my collection Beyond Religion Volume 3.

Enjoy![1]

[1] More info. in I Segreti del Vaticano by Corrado Augias

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Something for Nothing.

You cannot keep it. It just cannot be done. Unless you take possession of anything in your consciousness, you are going to lose it. If you can hold it in your hand, or in any aspect of you that is transient, that which you hold is also transient. And… the loss of such items, loss with the accrued interest, may be very painful.

But why, you may well ask?

There are a number of reasons. First we must remember that whatever we can hold in our hands, like silver or gold, or a piece of paper with a title, which makes our ego swell, is essentially empty space. This, as you know, is not a religious statement but scientific. See my previous blogs or read Delusions—Pragmatic Realism.

So, if whatever we can perceive with our senses is virtually non-existent, it is only in our consciousness that we can give it sustained reality. A person can die, and we still love them. The buildings I designed may be lying in ruin, but the designs still ‘live’ in my mind, my imagination. Ideas and even feeling have a much longer shelf-life than anything tangible. Mozart, Mendelssohn, Verdi are long dead, but their true possessions live on. They will forever belong to them. They are an intrinsic part of their consciousness; of the essence of their being. Some people call it spirit—but consciousness will suffice. Not consciousness as we know it, not the consciousness generated by our biological construct, but the immortal consciousness which is indestructible, together with all the wealth we acquired and stored within in. Like Mozart, or any other individualized consciousness that is bringing out that which is immortal from the infinite potential… for others to share in.

Their priceless gifts of love. 

Was Jesus Married?

First, the name Jesus is meaningless. His name, and we all know whose, was Yeshûa, not Jesus. In Hebrew, Yeshûa (an abbreviated form of Yehoshûa), means “Yah is salvation”, that is in no way reflected in the Greek version of his misspelled, mispronounced name, which the ignorant religions adopted.

Why? And this is the punch line.

Because, once outside Israel, those in charge didn’t want anyone to know the meaning of his name. Instead, they wanted to make him into a Messiah, who died for their sins, and thus they could break ALL the commandments and still go to some elusive destinations they called heaven. The religious heaven is nothing more then a carrot, just as hell is a stick, both designed to control people. According to Yeshûa’s teaching, heaven and hell are both states of consciousness, not some harebrained idea devised by religions.

And this brings me back to Yeshûa’s marriage or lack of such. The matter is of no consequence. Moses taught people how to live, here on earth. Yeshûa taught people spiritual truth ONLY. Whether one married or remained celibate never entered into the picture. What our actions did to our minds, to our states of consciousness, was of primary importance. Of course, the two are interconnected, but one is the cause, the other the effect. Yeshûa was concerned with the cause.

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (Key to Immortality, logion 114), some of his disciples, probably as ignorant as most of us are today, wanted Mary to get out from their inner circle (just like the clique in the Vatican today), because “women are not worthy of the Life”.

To which Yeshûa replied:

“See, I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Now, if we leave this to the avowed fundamentalists, Yeshûa would have to perform a surgical operation of great complexity. Alternatively, he was referring to her state of consciousness, offering to inspire her to be guided more by her conscious mind, then to react to her subconscious. In biblical symbolism, woman always symbolizes the human ‘soul’, or nephesh, which stands for the subconscious.

For those not aware of it yet, “living spirit” is consciousness aware of its divine attributes. ‘Raised’ consciousness is spirit. Read Isaiah 9:6 to see what I mean. It is not to be confused with the ‘animal’ consciousness that generates ego, or that which sets us apart. Nevertheless, the “living spirit” is omnipresent, whether we are aware of it or not.

Consequently, whether Yeshûa was married or not is only important to people who suffer from the need to control women, or for women who want to use this inconsequential tidbit to free themselves from such a control. Most women I know have freed themselves from the sacerdotal need to control others. 

More power to them

Not of this World

I’ve struggled for years. I fought, rebelled, wouldn’t let go. Finally, I remembered. “Be in this world but not of this world”. How did Yeshûa know even then? In the meantime I fought, tried to persuade, point out that the reality we take as real—isn’t. It just isn’t real.

Never mind that we are essentially empty space.

If one lives, say, in England, and visits France, Spain, Italy etc, for a short while, one shall be ‘in’ those countries by not ‘of’ those countries. One shall be a passerby. I thought I was convincing. My friends called it mumbo-jumbo.

And then I had a dream.

Each day, around five in the afternoon, I lie down in my bedroom for a moment of quiet. I relax my body using self-induced hypnosis, then wait to see what, if anything might happen. Sometimes I try to induce some effects, but, well, more often then not, I fall asleep for about 10 to 15 minutes. Sometimes I dream.

This time I dreamed, with a difference.

I dreamed that I am lying down on my deckchair at my tiny terrace outside. Suddenly, without any warning, I was floating some 10 feet above the deckchair. Nice dream, thought. I looked over my shoulder and saw the land descending gently towards a lustrous expanse of water. In spite of its mirror surface, I knew it was flowing languidly from left to right. The next instant I was suspended the same 10 feet over its surface.

“Fantastic!” I thought. “I wander how it feels…”

Even as the thought was formulating in my mind, I found myself under its surface, floating, hardly feeling the caress of the tepid water, watching in utter amazement the individual grains of sand at the bottom. Towards the shore, multi-hued pebbles drew my attention. Then I became aware of the sunrays splitting its light into an iridescent kaleidoscope of colours caressing the liquid crystal around me.

It was then that I became aware that people like me couldn’t breathe under the water. The next instant I was hovering the same 10 feet over the deckchair, on my terrace.

“If I fall down from this height, I’m bound to break something”, I mused.

Even as a touch of fear set in, I opened my eyes to see the familiar ceiling and wall of my bedroom. I was lying, peacefully, on my bed.

In this world but not of this world…

Which was real, I wondered. Which is where I have my real being, and which is just a transient instant on my eternal journey. In my heart I knew the answer.

I learned another thing. I learned that heaven is not for the fearful. It is designed for the brave at heart. This fact is, perhaps, best exemplified by the courage of the two protagonists in my forthcoming historical novel Peter and Paul. They, too, searched for the true reality. The book tells you how they found it. 

Rats

It has been known for some time that rats confined to a relatively small space, tend to develop aggressive characteristics. Recent research in the Central Animal Facility in Guelph, Ontario, confirms those established findings, and adds that if rats, in addition to spatially restricted confinement, are deprived of any ‘interesting’ activity (such as resting on a PVC tube, or gnawing on or pushing around a Nylabone, a nylon chew product) their stress factor is considerably increased.

Rats are mammals. So are we.

We live in ever more confined spaces, our technology deprives us of the use of the full capacity of our brain. More and more our electronic toys do our thinking for us. Even adding up.

As for ‘congestion’, the following is extrapolated from Wikipedia:

…the world population reached one billion in 1804. 123 years later in 1927, it reached two billion. By 1960, only 33 years later, it reached three billion; four billion by 1974; five billion by 1987; six billion by 1999 and, according to United States Census Bureau, we have reached seven billion by March 2012, although the United Nations estimated that we reach seven billion already in October 2011.

Some say we shall reach ELEVEN BILLION BY 2050.

As mentioned, rats when confined in small places and deprived of their ‘toys’ which stimulates thinking, go mad. They attack each other, seemingly without a reason. They are becoming vicious, murderous, ‘unreasonable’. In other words, deranged. Mad.

Remind you of anyone?

The other species which is acting in a similar way is called Homo sapiens, commonly referred to a men and women. Our religious powerhouses still advocate procreation at the fastest rate possible, presumably to gain additional ‘tithes’ they can collect from their newborn sheep. This is true of both: Islam and Christian religions, as well as political power-mongers who wish to increase their tax-base.

In the meantime, 35,676,000 rats are squeezed into Tokyo; 21,163,226 into the Metro Area of Mexico City; 19,672,582 into Sao Paulo; 19,439,000 into Cairo; and a mere 14,837,510 into Moscow. These are the most populous cages. By comparison, New York is a tiny cage confining only 8,244,910 of us.

Ah… sorry, I meant people—not rats.

Who knows how many rats there are in those cities? But they are going mad, anyway. Yes, both rats and people. Other animals will soon follow suit.

The only government that seems to care about the human race, a government that imposed restrictions on their population growth is the terrible, horrid, atheistic, communist government of ‘red’ China. They care. We, the enlightened, freedom-loving, democratic, religious bunch don’t give a damn. And, I strongly suspect, soon, very soon, we shall be damned. Or go mad.

Possible consequences of overpopulation are suggested in my novel Gift of Gamman, a Sci-Fi novel that might be of interest to you. Enjoy!

I and my Father

 He who initiated this discussion is no longer with us. He said, simply, I and my father are one. He was right, of course, it cannot be otherwise. All is One, thus the two cannot be apart. Not really. Not if you accept that there really only is One—that there is a single consciousness, which manifests in infinite diversity. Cosmos beyond cosmos, worlds without end. Yes, all expressions of a single consciousness. The Progenitor of them all.

It used to be that we thought the ‘visible’ stars constituted our universe. Now, according to the astronomers, they represent only 4% of the physical reality. The rest is “dark matter”, and mostly “dark energy”. One day they’ll discover that the universe they perceive is all illusory, that reality, the true reality, is only consciousness.

So what of ‘I’? What of my own individual expression of the omnipresent consciousness?

There is a well know saying that you are where your attention is. When you and I regard anything, when we place our attention on anything, anything at all, we do so from a single or singular point of view. By being omnipresent, the One can do so from infinity of viewpoints. Thus the expression of the infinite in us is always unique. Yet we, by looking out, so to speak, offer individuality of vision that is equally unique. No one can see what we see in exactly the same way. Thus, the two abide in indispensible, indivisible union. We truly are One.

I’d written an essay on the subject of: “I and my Father” in 1997. I read it today. Nothing has changed. In the field of consciousness, time is very relative. As with mathematics, it often stops. The stasis lingers for a little while—then starts again. We are suspended in that fleeting moment between the two chronological movements. Or, if you prefer, we move between the two moments of stasis. Your choice, depending on the scale.

If interested, the essay #13 in my collection is titled “One”, and is part of Beyond Religion volume II. In it I cite a statement by Daryl Reanney. He said: “…what the egoless mind sees is unity.” It is from a book he wrote, After Death, A new Future for Human Consciousness. It is a strange title, one might think, as Mr. Reanney was a distinguished molecular biologist, teaching at universities on New Zealand and Australia.

No priest I ever met said or implied such a thing. It took a scientist. A very rare scientist.

Nevertheless, I think he was right.