BELIEFS AND PHILOSOPHY
(Comments: Tony.Papard@btinternet.com)
For me, it is not what you believe but how you live your life which counts. I believe in the after-life, but not in organized religion. I don’t even believe in God, if by that you mean an all-wise Creator who produced the Universe out of nothing and has been planning everything ever since.
Nor do I believe that the scientific theory of ‘The Big Bang’ solves anything either. It is plainly obvious to me that the Universe can’t have come out of nothing, whether God is involved or just some unexplained Big Bang. I’m sure the Big Bang is correct, but something must have come before it – a contracting Universe perhaps, pure energy which was converted into matter, or matter originating in a parallel universe. Whatever happened, our Universe didn’t come out of nothing. Moreover, it can’t disappear into nothing. If matter exists now, it must always have existed in some form or other in some place or other, and it will always exist somewhere, either as matter or energy. There can be no beginning and no end. Everything is eternal and ultimately must be infinite. That, to me, is pure logic.
But this article is intended to be essentially about how we live our lives, why we are here, and what follows this life. I believe we are all here to learn, to evolve and to progress to higher forms of consciousness. This includes all living things from single-celled creatures and plants to humans and beyond. The Great Spirit (what religious people call ‘God’ and what scientific people might call a Unified Conscious Energy Field) has also evolved, and continues to evolve. Our ultimate goal is to become part of this Unified Conscious Energy Field (or become one with The Great Spirit).
To do this we have to evolve beyond the human existence, beyond constant reincarnations on Earth and the other inhabited planets of the Universe to permanent existence on the Spiritual Planes. In other words, we have to evolve into beings of pure conscious energy existing in a parallel universe. All this is perfectly consistent with the theories of Quantum Physics. Religion and Science have never been closer in their joint belief that there are invisible worlds or universes which our senses cannot identify. A materialist or rationalist can no longer just believe in what he or she can see, feel, touch, smell or taste. Parallel universes interpenetrate our own, matter is far from solid (that is merely an illusion), and there also exist all sorts of invisible energy, high frequency waves and of course anti-matter.
So back to belief systems. Are fundamentalist Christians right when they say they will go to Heaven because they believe in Jesus Christ, or because they believe they haved been ‘Saved’? Is everyone else condemned to Hell because they are not Christians? Similarly with other religions, are only their followers to be blessed with eternal life in Paradise, and the rest doomed to oblivion or eternity in some sort of Hades? All this mumbo-jumbo was written thousands of years ago by people who didn’t know any better. Now we have scientific theories, mathematics, experimentation and verified paranormal (or Spiritual) phenomena such as near death experiences, out-of-the-body experiences, remote viewing, astral traveling, mediumship, ESP, clairvoyance, etc. which together give us a clearer view of reality.
After nearly 60 years on this Earth during this current lifetime of mine, I have come to the conclusion, based on the available evidence, that it matters not if you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, any other religion, an agnostic or an atheist; it is your actions which will determine whether you progress or stagnate, whether you move on to the higher spiritual planes permanently or keep reincarnating in human form. If we don’t make sufficient progress in this Earthly life, we will have to reincarnate until we have learnt these lessons, faced up to the bad karma we have created and moved on to better things.
Christians believe that their founder, Jesus Christ, provides a short-cut to Salvation. That those who believe in him as the Son of God, that he died on the Cross to save us from our sins, are Saved and go straight to Heaven no matter how badly they’ve acted in the past. This applies to fundamentalist evangelical Christians right the way up to Roman Catholics, who believe in Salvation thru the last rites of a priest.
I am not sure whether other religions have similar beliefs, certainly the Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism seem to place greater emphasis on the soul’s progress thru various incarnations, dealing with bad karma as they progress to Nirvana or higher spiritual awareness.
Some followers of Islam seem to believe there are short-cuts to Paradise, and this has been made very evident with the fanatical suicide bombers who are apparently told such martyrs go straight to Heaven. Yet this is not typical of Islam, which actually forbids suicide.
Ancient religious texts can be a hindrance to human progress. They were all written by human beings, who claimed to be divinely inspired, and most of these texts originated thousands of years ago. Undoubtedly there are good ideas and some helpful philosophy in all religious texts.
Take the Christian Bible for instance. Few would deny that most of the Ten Commandments, the basis of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, provide for good moral conduct (though some, including myself, would deny that adultery is any big deal, or that monogamous marriage is the only legitimate form of relationship).
In the Christian New Testament, there are the Beatitudes (Blessed are the Peacemakers, etc.) and the many other wise quotations attributed to Christ. In other religions there are also guidelines on how to live good lives. People like Mahatma Gandhi also showed us by example how to live.
Amidst all this, however, there are an awful lot of bad things in these ancient religious texts. In the Bible, for instance, it says ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. This is contradicted by Christ in the New Testament saying: ‘turn the other cheek’, but many prefer to take the Old Testament maxim instead. Then there was Moses who handed down the Ten Commandments including ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ yet saw nothing wrong in encouraging the Israelites when fighting the ‘enemy’ to slay all the males and ravish all the women who were virgins, implying that he also endorsed the raping of female children and the killing of young boys.
In both the Old and New Testament there are meaningless instructions about not eating pork, or drinking the blood of any animal. For some reason most Christians (except Jehovah’s Witnesses) ignore these rules, written for hot countries without refrigerators thousands of years ago, but religious minded Jews and Muslims still keep to these rules. Yet evangelical Christians, whilst happily and sensibly ignoring exhortations to refrain from eating pork, condemn homosexuality quoting outdated Biblical texts to justify their case. If we are going to ‘pick and mix’ our quotations, let’s pick the good ones and forget the bad and outdated ones. Slavery is also endorsed in the Bible, as is women’s subservience to men. All this outdated nonsense has no relevance in our modern world.
Also troublesome are ancient texts promising, for instance, Israel to the Jews, which has caused no end of problems in the 20th and 21st centuries. The fact is the present State of Israel, created artificially in 1948 and expanded in 1967 by Israeli occupation, could never ever provide enough living room for all the world’s Jewish people, even if all Palestinians and Arabs were forcibly expelled and made into stateless refugees. Far better everyone in Palestine/Israel lived in a democratic, secular, non-racist unified state with equal rights, but that seems a long way in the future. At present only a two-state solution seems a realistic long-term goal, and even that won’t be easy.
Let’s say it plainly: all states based on racial superiority or exclusiveness are wrong. There are two words for such a state, both coined in the 20th century: Fascist or Nazi. There have been many such racist states, including the German Third Reich, Mussolini’s Italy, apartheid South Africa, Dixie prior to de-segregation and racist Israel.
The world let the Zionists expel or persecute the Arab Palestinians because of guilt for not accepting more Jewish refugees during the Second World War, and because ancient Biblical texts justified giving Palestine to the Jewish people. It was a typical ‘nimby’ case – ‘not in my backyard’. If the Jewish people, homosexuals, gipsies or any other persecuted minority deserved autonomous homelands there’s plenty of space to create them inside countires like the USA, Australia or Canada. However, the Bible said the Jewish people were promised Israel. This was very convenient for everyone except the Palestinians and the Jewish people themselves who have to live with the basic problem: a country far too small to contain both populations.
For reasons such as these (justification for creating Israel in Palestine, for slavery, the subservience of women, persecution of homosexuals, exhortations to hatred and violence, etc.) it would be better if ancient religious books were confined to museums and libraries. Perhaps only selected excerpts which actually help us to live better together in harmony with other humans, animals and the natural environment should be published widely. But this is unfortunately impossible, due to the religious fervor/fanatacism of the various creeds.
Nevertheless I believe all incitement to hatred and violence should be banned, whether spoken or written, and this includes that contained in ancient religious texts. Such texts could not be legally written and published today in politically correct countries, so why allow them to be widely distributed just because they were written centuries ago? I make no apology for saying this; the writers of these texts were wrong, we now know better, and so all writings which encourage hatred of other races, homosexuals, other religions, or which say some people should be forced to be subservient to others should be banned. This is called progress, it is why we are here on Earth. We are supposed to have learnt from our past mistakes, we are NOT supposed to stagnate or go backwards by constantly quoting outdated texts written by uneducated people thousands of years ago.
So how should we live today, and do we all have to live absolutely perfect lives before we can progress permanently to the higher spiritual realms?
Well, I believe love is the key to everything. As far as humanly possible, we must try to treat other people and animals as compassionately as possible. If we have to kill animals for food or to develop life-saving drugs, do it as humanely as possible. If the forces of law and order have to injure or kill another human being about to murder or torture innocent people, do it as humanely as possible, with minimum violence, using non-lethal weapons or tactics when available. Killing another human being must only be done as a very last resort and for only two reasons: to prevent that person killing/torturing innocent people or as a mercy killing at the end of their useful lives, at their request or with their freely expressed consent.
As to relationships, these are many and varied. There are monogamous heterosexual relationships, but these are by no means the only kind. There are monogamous homosexual relationships. There are also promiscuous heterosexual and homosexual relationships. All these exist in both the animal and human kingdoms. There are also many variations – poligamy, partner swopping, threesomes, communes, open relationships, etc.. All are perfectly valid, so long as all are between consenting adults and no one is intentionally hurt. The law and religion have no right to enter the bedroom and dictate personal morals; what is right for one person may be quite inappropriate for somebody else. We must all decide for ourselves what kind of relationship we want – some will opt for complete celibacy, others may choose one or more of the options above. Often the choice is not entirely voluntary, we just are what we are. The result of our genetic make-up, upbringing, childhood experiences/influences and probably past karma. If we are gay, we are gay – there is nothing anybody can do about it, and there is nothing wrong with it. It is perfectly natural for a minority of individuals in both the animal and human kingdoms.
Is there a short cut to Heaven? Well, yes there is. There must be. Few of us could live absolutely perfect lives. However, salvation doesn’t depend on what you believe or who you believe in, it depends on whether you are really sorry and really regret any wrong doing. By this I don’t mean victimless ‘mismeanors’ such as masturbation or consensual gay sex. Relgion has a hang-up about sex, which is as natural and necessary for our well-being as a hunger for food.
When I talk about wrong doing, I mean harming other people or other living creatures. If we do this, in order to progress we must truly regret what we have done and try as far as possible to put it right, or compensate for it. But we don’t always have to entirely live out our bad karma. Simply by being truly sorry, and trying to behave better in future we have already learnt our lesson, and have made progress towards the higher spiritual realms. It doesn’t need a Savior to be sacrificed on a babaric instrument of torture and death, the Cross, for us to be forgiven our misdemeanors. First, ask those who you have trangressed against or harmed to forgive you if at all possible, if not, be truly sorry and try to beg forgiveness from and help their close friends and relatives, and try to live a better life in future.
(By the way, I always wonder why mainstream Christianity - in fact all Christian sects except the Jehovah’s Witnesses - chose something as horrible and repugnant as the Cross to represent their religion. Would we today start a new religion worshiping the Electric Chair or the Gas Chamber? Such an idea would be barbaric and repulsive, even if the founder of such a modern religion did die by that method, and even if they did supposedly physically rise again from the dead. In the latter case, surely an open tomb would be a more appropriate symbol?)
So we can get to the higher spiritual realms by learning from our mistakes in the past, trying to rectify them and live better lives in future. When we get to the higher realms, what will we see? Will Jesus be there? God? The Buddha? Mohammed? Moses? Well all these people, except God, presumably existed in human history, and since none of us ever really die (we just get transformed into something else) then all these people must still exist in some form or other somewhere. So the short answer is ‘yes’, we will see and be with all these people and our loved ones eventually. One day we shall all be united as one in the Great Spirit, or Unified Conscious Energy Field which is synonimous with unconditional eternal love. A very positive energy force indeed.
This is where ‘God’ comes into the picture, for once we have achieved that selfless state where we merge and become one with the Great Spirit, where our own conscious energy merges into the Unified Conscious Energy Field we become One with the Multiuniverse, part of the Eternal Truth. We become One, if you like, with ‘God’. What is more, you can still be an atheist, because only the terminology is different, the phenomenom is exactly the same. A religious person will go to reside in Eternity in the presence of God; an atheist will find that their conscious energy merges with an infinite eternal Unified Conscious Energy Field.
There is no beginning. There is no end. Time is an illusion. Everything is eternal and infinite.