Do We Live in a Moral Universe?

Sooner or later, I had to get around to this one. All religions claim that they have a moral core. The Christians and Jews share the ten commandments. Similar ideas are found in most religions. I like the metaphor that the Egyptians used. The god Ptah measured your heart in a scale at the time of death. It had to weigh more than a feather. I know a few people that would not pass that test. Of course, there is civil law. Kill somebody and you may have to go to jail; it depends on whether you meet certain legal tests or not. An accident and you will probably not go to jail, and a deliberate killing, if they catch you, you surely will unless you are acting in self defense. But what about the so-called sins that we commit here on earth while we are living? The Christians have a place called Hell waiting for you. Be good or you'll go there, they say. The gnostic does not believe that the universe has a problem with morality. The law of Karma was designed to deal with this problem and it does it well without disturbing the hot places in the center of the earth. If you hurt somebody, physically or emotionally, you will get the same thing back. This is a law and not an option. Act at your own risk. Recently, a driver ran over a homeless man in a wheel chair and then drove on without rendering aid. The dog that watched over the homeless man was devastated. Would karma act for the dog? I not only believe that it does, but I personally think that the driver should come back as a dog and go through the same process. Will that happen? I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of that driver and find out. Having all of this in mind, the universe is moral, but not in a religious way. Karma is like a traffic light. You may speed around several drivers who you think are going too slow, but when you get to the red light look in your rear view mirror. They will all come up to the light and join you. All that gas that you used to pass them? You might call it your contribution to karma. Will you always get the red light? Probably not, but don't count on avoiding it forever. It just won't happen. That's the way karma works. Just when you think that you've made it into the clear, you get zapped. Think back on your life, and you will recall moments just like that. How do you get around karma? That's an easy answer. Just live your life by the golden rule. You might even find that you enjoy it more that way.

Salvation by Metaphor

Some people believe that Elvis is still living. Sightings are frequent. Many people believe that they have personally encountered aliens from outer space. Ask if anyone has seen an angel lately, and you will get many responses, most of them quite sincere. Ask a skeptic to debunk these accounts, and he or she will get equally imaginative. Most of us go through life without seeing Elvis, avoiding alien contact, and not, to our knowledge, encountering any angels. I suppose that someday contact will be made with alien beings, its just doesn't appear to have happened just yet. For all we know the world is full of angels. My dog appears to have some angelic qualities. He loves almost everybody he meets. He balks only at large black dogs. He might have had a bad experience in the past with one of them. Notwithstanding all of the above, most of us live very ordinary lives, free of exotic experiences. Should that discourage us. I think not. We can use our minds and find metaphors for just about anything. Some of the creatures that are found in the deep ocean could easily pass for aliens. All of us have met beautiful people who have gone out of their way to help us. A conductor on a train I was riding on solved a seat mixup by placing me next to a beautiful young lady my own age. As for Elvis, we all miss him. Persumably, if there is an hereafter we will get a chance to hear him sing again. Metaphor is not a weak substitute for exciting beliefs. It is probably better than any of them. Happy dreaming. It makes life worthwhile.

Deepak Chopra

Every age has its great minister. No one speaks to the gnostic better than Deepak Chopra. Schooled in the eastern religions, he brings the essential message to the west in a way that resonates in our minds and hearts. His gifts are no better expressed than in the book that I have mentioned in prior postings, "How to Know God." He has written many more books, and I urge you to read them all. His name and writings will outlive this generation by many more. I would like to share one thought from the book above. It will give you a taste of what he has to offer. In that book, he says: "What is my greatest strength.....Insight. What is my biggest hurdle......Delusion." If the gnostic dilemna could be better expressed, I do not see how. What saves the gnostic from delusion: Metaphor. What is the biggest cause of delusion in religion? Literalism. Can there be any doubt what road God desires us to take?

A Gnostic Looks at Atheism

I have previously said many times that God is unknowable. I have also said that all religions are metaphor, whether they take themselves literally or not. It is as easy to say that God does not exist as it is to say the He does. An incomprehensible and unknowable God could just as easy be no God at all. There are many mediums who say that rather than dying, we go to another dimension and continue the journey through life. They say that our life is not dependent on the religion that we profess. Are they right? Everybody dies, so everybody will go through whatever door awaits us in the hereafter (or the notafter as the atheists will have it.) Take whatever position you desire, the universe will have its way. I am only certain of one thing. Any one who professes to know does not know. The gnostic searches for God in metaphor. The ultimate metaphor is light. In the Secret Gospel of John, God is referred to as "Light." So long as light shines on me, whether I can see it or not, I believe that the light will guide me when I die. The mediums all state that it is a bright white light that greets us upon death. If it does indeed shine upon death, I believe that it shines on the atheist with the same brightness that it shines on the believer. To the gnostic, everyone stands the same before their Creator.

Samael Aun Weor

The history of the gnostic movement has many interesting and heroic personages. Men and women who have contributed to the gnostic movement, none of them stands any higher than Samael Aun Weor. If you type in his name you will get, among others, a Wikipedia entry that runs some 17 pages from my computer. The accompanying article tells you much about him and if you are interested in pursuing his writings further, you can go to schools or read his books as you see fit. Google his name and a wealth of material will result. While I have not studied him, I find that he espouses ideas that I cannot as yet agree with. The old gnostic idea that man is a degenerate animal is one of them. I can accept it metaphorically but not literally. However, studying him is well worth the trip. One of the things that he espouses is that man is a conscious animal. Consciousness is a state of being, he says, and it is closely related to God. This I agree with totally. He says that we are 97% asleep and this sounds about right. His views largely conform to those of G.I. Gurdjieff, but not entirely so. There is a heavy eastern strain in his philosophy. This is unavoidable since the Hindus and Buddhists have done so much in the gnostic area. Personally, I prefer the methods of Deepak Chopra and other writers who use the eastern ideas, but put them in a western frame that is more comfortable to the western reader. We are the product of our own culture, and it makes sense to stick with that until you have mastered the material, which few of us have. All in all, he is well worth pursuing, and I would urge all of you to put him on your list of source material.

Do We Really Need to Believe?

I have previously stated many times that the sole basis of religion has to be metaphoric. My reason for so stating is that the ultimate foundation of religion, namely God by whatever name you use for Him, is an unknowable. While I am not a scientist, I know that in the domain of quantum physics energy, particularly energy in the form of light, is the foundation of all matter. I also know that without the laws of physics, matter would not exist. However, it is a stretch to equate the laws of physics with the nature of God. It is possible to equate anything you desire in the world of metaphor. This is essentially what our ancestors did with their creation mythology. Deep within the human psyche is a need to belong to the universe in more than a natural way. When the scientist expounds natural laws as having no basis other than the law of probabilities, he or she ignores the need for the human to feel more special than that. "Too bad, it just ain't so," doesn't cut it. Using such documents as the Bible or the Koran, humans substitute the words of a prophet or a messiah for certainty and bolster it with faith in their belief system. The fact that millions of people are drawn to this illustrates the extent of the need. I do not think that it is necessary to substitute belief for facts. Once you shed your belief system you open up a whole new world; the search for gnosis or the understanding of the mystery of life. This is what the ancients were up to before Constantine stopped it cold by making Christianity the sole religion. Even the Christian Church had an active wing, the Gnostics, that were doing this. Far from being a weak substitute, metaphor becomes a powerful agent to expand human consciousness in a positive way. Now all of the world's wisdom is open to you for your growth. Now you are not restricted to single path that essentially leads nowhere. Look on metaphor as a key that opens a door; a door to understanding. Once you have taken this step you will discover a wealth of material. A good place to start is the works of G.I. Gurdjieff, particularly "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson." The fundamentalist Christian will see the name Beelzebub and automatically ascribe the book to Satan. The reader will soon see otherwise. The book is rich in understanding of the nature of man and has been the foundation for many people who are now writing with the thought of expanding our religious world. The book is in print and can be ordered through Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble, or your neighborhood book store. The time has come for we as a people to expand our conciousness to fit the expanding knowledge that we need to exist in the modern world. The best place to start is to shed our outdated belief system and commence learning what the world and ourselves are really about. This is the search for gnosis that Plato and Aristotle were engaged in many centuries ago. Isn't this a good time for you to do the same?

What is Belief?

Let's examine belief. Many religions stress the need to adopt a particular creed and to pronounce that creed as the sole way in which the "believer" can achieve their particular goal, such as the salvation of the soul. But this is not the only form of belief. Many people believe that God does not exist. For these persons the need to seek out God is a waste of time. It is impossible to find that which doesn't exist in the first place. Many people simply don't have the answers and will sit it out on the sidelines. We commonly refer to them as agnostics. Of these three basic systems of belief, who' s right? The answer is that they all are right up to a point, and after that point they are all wrong. I believe that the concept of God is a mystery that cannot be solved. If it is a mystery then no one person or belief system can suffice. The Atheist says that there is no God. To believe so, they say, is foolishness. The fundamentalist Christian says that Jesus is the only way to the Kingdom of God. The rest of us will miss the train when it pulls out of the station, and the only thing left is Hell or Death. Such certainty is not in the cards. It may or may not happen. As the old saw says, "We pays our money and takes our choice." The subject is too big to grasp and so we can only flounder in our own pond and make as big a splash as we are able. Hopefully somebody else will join us so that we don't have to make the splash by ourselves. No matter how many join us, however, we are not going to possess the truth itself, only a metaphor of the truth.
Atheism may be the most honest course open to us given that we have no way to see God or to prove His existence. The scientist who studies quantum physics can tell you that all life on the quantum level is as mysterious as our search for God, perhaps even more mysterious. Most of them are atheists, but not all. I prefer to leave the examination of reality to scientist. We still have a way to go in that field, and who knows what we will find out as we go along. There's a book called the "God Theory" out there that is worth reading in this regard. This leaves us only with the search for God by metaphor. To look for God in metaphoric terms leaves the issue in the hands of the poet rather than the scientist. I am content with that. While poetry does not give us reality straight, it gives us reality none the less. Who can read great poetry, listen to great music, or read a great novel without being deeply stirred? Only those who think that they know the answers and are not searching. For the future let's require our preachers to read more than just the Bible. Let them read Shakespeare. Let them study quantum physics. Let them study other religions thoroughly before we allow them to comment on them. Above all, let us open our minds and our hearts to all of the great truths that lie out there. For the final answer, let us abolish war, crime, inhumanity to our fellow humans, and the rape of our planet. Then perhaps we will have the capacity to understand what the winds of wisdom have to say to us.
Until we reach this point let us love one another and tolerate one another. Waiting for God to provide the answers may seem logical, but when the answer comes and all there is on earth is the remains of our civilization rotting on some forgotten plain, what is the point of that? Let's not wait for an answer from the sky. Let's do it ourselves with our poets and scientists leading the way. Only by so doing can we truly find God within us.

Insanity Explained

It came to me on reflection that I left a false impression from my previous posting, "A Gnostic Dream" that was hanging in the air. I said that the world was insane thus leaving the impression that I think that people individually are insane. This is not the case. People are not insane unless they have a condition that leads to that result. Most people are clear headed and understand fully what they think and believe. However, we as a people end up supporting positions and ideas that have no true basis in reality. There are many examples of this, but I will use a few. War heads the list. There is a book that everybody should be required to read. It is called the "Guns of August" and it was written by Barbara Tuchman. It tells the story of how an assassination of an Archduke in Sarajevo led to a war that cost millions of lives. The man who killed the Archduke was quickly caught and could have been tried, convicted, and executed for his crime easily. Unfortunately, an entire generation of young men had to place themselves in harms way before the matter was settled. If this is not insanity, what is? Crime is another. Recently I read the story of how two young men lost their lives simply because they interrupted another young man while he was talking to a young lady. The young man who killed the other two had a gun at home. It seems like we have as many guns in our society as we have people. We outlaw drugs like marijuana because they are harmful, but we are told that regulating guns is off limits. However, there is one factor that outweighs war and crime by a substantial margin. That factor is food. We have more than enough food to feed every human being on earth, yet people are starving. I do not suggest that the average person supports war, crime, or starvation. We are a good people who have charity in our hearts. However, most people live in a bubble. This bubble has impenetrable walls around it. We simply do not see the effect of these things clearly, and we do not take responsibility for them as we should. If we did, the world would look very different to us. This is where gnostic christianity comes into play. If we transform ourselves, we will transform the world. This is the challenge that God lays before us. First we look through the glass darkly, and then we see ourselves face to face. To find gnosis is to break the bubble and enter the world as it is. By so doing, we can not only transform ourselves, but we can transform the world. John Lennon was an advanced soul. He wrote and sang a song called, "Imagine." I invite you to listen to it. In my opinion, it is the voice of God speaking to you. My prayer and my dream is that you will listen.