Yellowstone National Park

What has Yellowstone National Park have to do with the Gnostic Way? On the surface, nothing, but below the surface, everything. While literal Christians are running around declaring that the "End Times" are coming, according to the Book of Revelation, it appears that God has placed a far more potent end times in Yellowstone National Park. The "End Times" predicted by the Book of Revelation and the "End Times" predicted by the Mayan Calender are figments of overactive imaginations. There is no reality underlying either one of them. Both are metaphorical and should be taken as such. Yellowstone Park is another matter. It turns out that Yellowstone is a Super Volcano. In case that term means nothing to you, imagine a volcano going off in the middle of the United States with a force at least 3,000 times Mt. St. Helens or even as much as 10,000 times. That, unfortunately is Yellowstone National Park. The volcano under the park is on a 600,000 year cycle and the 600,000 years are up. Its due to go off at any time. I am not suggesting that it will explode next Tuesday at 10:00am. It may take a few thousand years one way or the other, but it will go off at some point. What can we expect when it does? Rather than answer that question myself, I suggest that you google the Toba Super Volcano that went off about 74,000 years ago. There is much material on the Internet, and it is graphic. Our ancestors survived it, obviously, but not by much it turns out. Our wonderful Earth that we love so much is a dangerous place. We don't need to invent fairy stories to predict the end of the earth as we know it. What does this mean to a Gnostic? The Gnostic believes that we are eternal as is our God. It is not the Earth that holds and shields us, it is God. The search for God is not in the sky. When the Yellowstone Volcano blows, the sky will be full of ash and sulphuric acid. The Gnostic believes that the end for all mankind is not in an Armageddon, but rather in the arms of God. If you doubt this, go pay a visit to Yellowstone Park. I've been there several times and its beautiful; for now.

The Gnostic and the Church

Should you chose the Gnostic Way do you have to give up on the church? Absolutely not. What you do have to give up is your dogmatic ideas. This means that unless your church has matured past its dogmatic past, you may need to find another one. If not, then it will fall upon you to show your fellow parishioners that there is a better way than denying all of the advances that we have made in science in the last 500 years. When you find your fellow parishioners saying that the Bible is literal and that the earth was formed a few thousand years ago, it is time to find a more progressive environment. I would say the same if you are urged to handle poisonous snakes or babble in so-called foreign tongues. The good news is that there are plenty of progressive Christians and they have churches that will make a fine home for you. If you can stand being called a Cafeteria Catholic or a luke warm protestant, you will be very comfortable in your surroundings. Why? Because God will be there even if your fundamentalist friends do not believe so. The Gnostic Way is not a religion, it is a process. A process which helps you find God within yourself. It can fit anywhere where people have open minds and a willingness to share their faith with others unconditionally.

The Cosmos Connection

I want to preface this posting by stating that I am not a scientist and do not pretend to be one. I have no expertise in the makeup of the universe and no way to acquire such expertise. As a Gnostic I deal strictly in metaphor. My search for God is not dependent on acquiring all the available knowledge in existence, but it is dependent on my attempting to understand what our scientists know. I accept such knowledge as metaphor, because I have no way to verify it myself. I am dependent on the ideas of people who possess greater knowledge than I possess. Having said all of this, I believe that I have in mind some very powerful metaphors. One of these metaphors is that we are all connected. By we, I mean not only ourselves as human beings, but the entire universe. In Laszlo's book, which I cited in a previous posting, he goes into this connection in detail. Apparently, one atom can be affected by what happens to another atom, even if they are light years apart. Laszlo goes on to say that the same rule applies to our biological body, namely, the cells that make us up. This interconnection can be demonstrated by experiment. Do I understand the mechanics of all this? Of course not. However, a metaphor of this connection can be found in the words of Jesus when he says that the Father knows when the sparrow falls to the ground. If you find yourself asking the question "what happens to us when we die?" it might suit your purpose to change the question slightly. Perhaps you should ask, "what does the universe know about me?" If the universe knows you are alive, it will know that you have died. More to the point, if you are that much attached to the universe, it is a short step to the idea that the attachment is permanent and not temporary. If as I pointed out earlier, God is an idea that has no beginning and no ending, the idea that makes you up may well be part of God. I believe that this is so. This is why I have said that the soul is part of God and equally has no beginning and no ending. If Laszlo is right, you can say the same of the universe itself. Do I know all of this? No. Do I believe all of this? Yes. Why do I believe this? If the atoms are connected to one another, why are we, who are made of atoms as well, not equally so?

Learning to Surrender

The idea of surrendering is not popular. We all admire the person who refuses to give up despite the odds against him or her. History is replete with stories of those who stood up to adversity and persevered. For this reason, surrender is not an idea that attracts people. However, there are many reasons why surrender is and will be a good idea. When Germany and Japan surrendered in 1945, not only did they end a bloody war, but they ushered in an era of growth and prosperity. Had Saddam Hussein had the good sense to surrender to the Post 9/11 pressure brought against him, not only would his country have been spared an invasion, but he might very well have enjoyed a comfortable retirement in some friendly Arab country. One of the most important lessons to be learned by human beings is the art of surrendering to reality. If a person refuses to accept reality, the result can often make that person's situation far worse. Today, we see an example of that in the plight of ancient religion running into an unclimbable fence called modern science. The time has come for people of faith to take a second look at their universe. It is far more intricate and difficult to comprehend then the simple stories of the early civilizations of the middle east found in our religious texts. Our belief system requires not a fine tuning, but a deep modernization based not on fables and half-truths, but on an intricate understanding of our world and how it was constructed. The book I recommend to you for this purpose is "Science and the Akashic Field" by Ervin Laszlo. Laszlo is one those who represent the best for our future, a scientist and a philosopher; a good combination I think. Read his book and you will never look at the cosmos the same way again.

The Never Ending Search

Anyone who might be observing the gnostic way for the first time, could easily be tempted to ask the question, "what are you Gnostic's really looking for?" To say that you are searching for God sounds good, but what does it really mean? I think that this is a fair question. Assuming that the gnostic succeeds, just what will he or she really discover? What if God doesn't exist at all? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the God that most of us think about probably doesn't exist. That God is anthropomorphic. That twenty-five cent word means that we attribute to God the features of our own personality that appeal to us; sort of a Superman without the cape. If you take the time to really look at the universe(s), you will discover that it is much more intricate than anything that we can conjure up in our minds. It is hardly anthropomorphic. That said, what can we expect to find? I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate on what I think we will find. I see four principles that are likely to exist. (1) God is an idea. Plato suggested that an idea had a life of its own. I believe that this is true. You might be saying now, how can an idea exist independently? If you take the time to study quantum physics you will probably discover that the essential building blocks of the universe consist of energy moving in specific manner and little else. This energy has proven capable of providing us with atoms, molecules, elements, and the intricate matter that makes up our world and ourselves. Could there be an idea involved in this process? If so, where and how can we identify this idea, and particularly where and how can we locate its source? I leave it to you to provide the answer to this question. (2) Time does not exist. If you could attain the speed of light, you will discover that you have reached a point where time is no longer applicable. How do I explain this? I can't. Einstein did it better and I refer you to him. (3) The rules are the same no matter where you might find yourself. How do I know this? If the law of gravity were different in some other place, you would not find billions of galaxies floating around in our universe. Each of these galaxies presumably have billions of stars, and many of the stars have planets. If I am wrong so be it, but I don't think that I am, however. (4) Our feeble little brain has allowed us to look into both the larger world and the smaller one. This morning I saw a picture of the swine flu virus in the Los Angeles Times. I know that the picture had to be taken with an electron microscope. I have seen pictures from the Hubble Telescope that have captured galaxies millions of light years distant. We know much more about the universe than did our ancestors. Presumably, as more time goes by we will learn much more. What is the limit here? Nobody knows. These four principles allow me to be optimistic about the search for God. They also force me to be humble about it. It will not happen any time soon. I say this because the more we know the more questions arise. Knowledge is power, but knowledge also confounds power. The atom bomb teaches us this lesson. It is miraculous that we have found a way to harness the power of the atom. It is equally dangerous if we use that power to destroy ourselves. On one side lies enormous benefit. On the other side enormous destruction. The metaphor of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden applies here. We have eaten the fruit of that tree and we possess great knowledge accordingly. In doing so we have departed from the simple and easily understood world that God provided us in our primitive years, and have embarked on a perilous journey. As a gnostic, I am optimistic. I believe that when the journey is complete, and we are face to face with God, we will discover ourselves in paradise. What price we have to pay to get there is another matter. Pray that it will be a tolerable one.

Eternity

This posting is not about explaining eternity, rather it is about discussing the effect of eternity on our lives. The gnostic believes that our life is eternal. We do not die, we are only transformed. What is the effect of this on our current existence? Simply put, it means that we have always lived, and will always live. I say this in spite of the fact that nothing upon which we depend for life will have eternal life. The earth will die, the sun will die, the Milky Way Galaxy will die, and our universe will die. Life is an idea. Plato understood the power of ideas. Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony. He couldn't hear it except in his mind. It was an idea. It becomes real when a conductor leads an orchestra in playing it, using Beethoven's score. Even if the universe were to die, the idea of the universe, and presumably the life within it will go on, if nothing else as an idea. But what is the orchestra that will bring life to the idea? In our case it is a new universe, presumably made by contact with one of the eleven universes that our great minds have mathematically demonstrated to exist. Does this boggle your mind? Surely, but nonetheless here we are, living and breathing on the planet earth. You might say that the orchestra is all of the matter making up our universe. What does this mean to us? Are we a part of this universe, and are we a part of the idea that lays behind it? The gnostic says yes to this question. When Beethoven and his score are no more, will nature conjure up another Beethoven to replace him? Don't bet against it, you might lose the bet and find yourself living an eternal life. That is the gnostic way.

What Does God Expect From Us?

Does God expect us to do anything for Him? Christians believe that God wants us to accept a certain canon. If we believe this canon, we will be given eternal life. If we do not believe it, we shall ultimately perish. Nothing could be further from the truth. God does not care what we believe. The atheist will walk through the gates of heaven at the same time and at the same pace as the most believing Christian. God is not about saving your soul. Like God, your soul is immortal. It is part of God, has always been so and always will be so. God does not require that you believe anything. What then does God require? There are three rules. The first rule I have talked about frequently. This is the rule that requires you to love your neighbor with the same intensity that you love yourself. We are all the same, although we have differences. Those differences do not go to the essence of who we are. For this reason, we are forbidden to judge one another. God is our judge. The second rule is one that I have discussed as well. This is commonly called the law of Karma. In reality, it is the brother and sister of the first rule. If we give love to one another, we get love back. If we harm, persecute, murder, or abuse one another, we will equally get the same thing back. God wants us to use the law of Karma to good effect; give love and get love back. In this manner the law of Karma becomes a way to reform our world and make it immeasurably better. The third rule is where the gnostic comes in. In this rule, God wants us to grow and mature. He does not want us to hate knowledge and to disparage those who seek it. Put another way, He does not want us to be satisfied with the status quo. There is much to learn, and we have the capacity to learn it. The Hubble Telescope has expanded our knowledge of the universe. We built it, put it in space, and have maintained it over the years, even improving it as we go along. God favors such activities. The more we learn about the world we live in, the closer we get to the day when we can see God face to face. This means that our faith must be an open one; open to change and open to new revelations of the truth. These three rules present us with a pathway. That pathway is upward and outward, leading us away from ignorance, war, crime, and the abuse of ourselves and the planet we live on. It is a pathway that will ultimately lead us to knowledge of God. If we are willing to walk on that pathway, and are equally willing to do so together, rather than apart from one another, there is no limit to what we will be capable of achieving. If I could will it so, I would have every human being now living form a chain, hand in hand, that circles the globe. Such a chain would signal to ourselves and our God, our willingness to learn and listen to what He has to say. It is not a question of belief. It is a affirmation of understanding of our true selves. It is the gnostic way.