Religion
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use
Galileo Galilei
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother
Albert Einstein
When I finally plucked up the courage to look into Religion I realised I really didn’t know how to define it, except that it must surely all be of an Idealist bent, and must therefore contain non-physical components, which must themselves be of a Mental and/or paranormal nature.
§ The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘religion’ as ‘A particular system of belief and faith’. No mention of ‘paranormality’ or ‘transcendental’ or similar . This was as odd to me as Richard Dawkins not seeing ‘intelligence’ as a creative force in The Blind Watchmaker (although he does claim that ‘life, once started, will evolve sufficient intelligence to speculate about its own origins’, thus requiring something to occur by an accident of chemistry and then go on to ponder upon its own existence. I can see to rationality in this, I’m afraid).
I wanted to find out what made religions tick, and whether they could offer any clues about the spooks that Science refuses to investigate. Would I be able to find any solid rational content to replace the failed Hypothesis of Materialism? Why do all peoples and cultures seem to need religion? Why are they all so different? And is there any Truth in any of them? And if so, which one, and how would I know? I hoped things would become clearer as I blundered about in the various theological thickets, trying to apply logic and reason to a field notoriously alien to such approaches. I began with the Bible. I’d had to read bits of it at school and it bored me stiff, but this time it was different. I was doing it because I wanted to.
It took ages to read, trying to grasp the big picture. Three things struck me most, when I finally put the book down, thunderstruck by Revelation. Firstly, these guys were serious. Whatever the truths of the matter, they meant what they said. Secondly, there was no shortage of paranormal activity, from water divining to resurrection, with quite a lot of casting out of devils.
§ If you’ve never read Ezekiel 1 (written in ~600 BCE) prepare for a surprise. This was no soft-centred ‘heavenly vision’ of harps and pastel angels. Visions don’t ‘come from the north’ or have wheels. A NASA scientist was so impressed by this report that he set about reconstructing what he was convinced was a flying machine, and wrote a book about it. The episode impressed Ezekiel so much that he went to stay with friends ‘and remained there astonished among them seven days’. Personally, I’d have stayed a fortnight.
Thirdly, the Old Testament (OT) and its God is remarkably different from the New Testament (NT) and its God.
§ A dilemma: should God have a capital or not? I’ll stick with the convention of giving a/the monotheistic God a capital. All others will not get one. (‘Goddist’, I know, but what the heck…)
The essence of the Bible seems to me to be that the Jews claim they were selected by God to tell the world that Monotheism was Truth, either by word or by example; and that they accepted this, but eventually wandered off-message, as we might say today, so somebody was sent to sort them out.
Jews would not accept this interpretation, of course. For them, the Messiah, the Liberator, is still due. And they don’t think in terms of needing to be sorted out, either. For them Jesus was just a trouble-maker, sticking his nose in where it wasn’t required.
To me, as an impartial reader, the two key themes of the Bible are Monotheism (OT), and Reformation (NT). That was all I needed, it seemed to me. The essence of Judaism was The Ten Commandments, and of Christianity The Sermon on the Mount: both being a page or two of rules set by…. whom?
§ Very similar, these two rule books, except that the Christian one seemed to be more conciliatory and kind. Why was that?
The Ten Commandments
1. You shall not worship any other god but YHWH.
2. You shall not make a graven image.
3. You shall not take the name of YHWH in vain.
4. You shall not break the Sabbath.
5. You shall not dishonour your parents.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not commit perjury
10. You shall not covet.
The Sermon on the Mount (briefly)
1. You must be more righteous than the people in authority.
2. Do not murder, or even become angry or abusive.
3. Make peace with those you have dispute with.
4. Lust is as real an act as adultery.
5. Divorce is only acceptable after unfaithfulness.
6. Don’t make oaths. Your word is your bond.
7. Don’t resist evil. Turn the other cheek.
8. Lend when asked.
9. Love your enemies. Pray for your persecutors.
Jews say their rules were set by Yahweh, who is God. Christians say theirs came from Jesus, who was (and still is) the Son of God. Hard to prove, either way. But the violent vain and vindictive Yahweh didn’t sound to me much like the compassionate God of Jesus.
§ ‘Was Jesus a Christian?’ Obviously not; he was a Jew. Christians were first called such only many years after Jesus’ death, when Paul visited Antioch. Would he have even called himself a Jew? It seemed to me that he was concerned with Mankind, not just Jews. And he said he had come with a sword, which I took to mean something to cut through the Gordian mass of legalistic empire-building that had led to ‘Religion’ becoming more concerned with The Temple and The Gravytrain than with The Word. It seemed to me that Jesus was primarily a Reformer, aiming to restore Monotheism as The Message the Jews were meant to be exemplifying as ‘the chosen people’.
No doubt a number of Christians and Jews will be outraged by something I’ve written here. Please don’t be. I’m just feeling my way.
I then read the Koran. My overall impression was one of sympathy for Archangel Gabriel, whom they say dictated the Book to Muhammad. Some 75% of the text is a plea to people to stop being selfish and greedy, and to turn their thoughts instead to God’s wishes and the next world, where they will be judged for their deeds, good and bad, in this life. This is repeated sometimes five or six times in almost identical words. It struck me as being very like the OT, but with the volume turned up to 12.
§ ‘The Arabs of the desert are most stout in unbelief and dissimulation; and likelier it is that they should be unaware of the laws which God hath sent down to His Apostle’ (9:97). I also felt sympathy of a similar kind for Moses and Jesus. People will not listen to good sense, will they? Every parent, teacher, and probation officer knows this.
What had I gleaned from the three ‘Desert Religions’? For a start they had much in common, despite all the differences we hear so much about:
- They were all Monotheistic, and concerned with the same God.
- They were all revelatory: ie, they had arrived from a paranormal source: either God, His Son, or His Angel.
- The rules dished out concerned mainly ethics, morality, and justice, especially divine justice.
- They all insist that Man should pay less attention to worldly things and more to otherworldly things.
- They all ask people to treat each other as they would like to be treated themselves. This has been called ‘The Golden Rule’.
- They state that individuals will be rewarded or punished for their good and bad acts accordingly.
- They were all written for the societies and moralities of their day.
- They all insist on some sort of Day of Reckoning. (See Revelation, if you’re feeling bold and are not given to nightmares).
- Their writings contain puzzling passages (not least, Revelation).
- They all centred on Jerusalem, the ‘Heritage of Peace’. (Said Heritage of Peace has been invaded 44 times in its history, more than frequently in the name of the God of Peace, Love, Mercy, etc.)
- They were not incompatible per se, but have been made so by clerics.
- They all required people to choose morality of their own free will. In fact, it was the central common theme. That was a surprise.
§ Jesus had nothing against Jews; he was clearly trying to help them.
The local Jewish folk had nothing against Jesus; he was widely supported and admired for his healing and message of peace. But The Management did not like him one bit.
Islam has nothing against Jesus (in fact he is mentioned by name in the Koran over twice as often as Muhammad) and respects him as a great prophet.
But there are sections of The Management who take up an anti-Christian stance for emotional/political reasons.
The Koran respects Jew and Christian alike as ‘people of the Book’. The doctrinal beef seems to be with whether Jesus was ‘The Son of God’ or just a prophet. It also despairs of the Jews for having wandered off-message.
As the Jewish texts arrived many centuries before the Koran appeared, there is no comment on Muslims in the Torah, the original Holy Book of the Jews. Thus any animosity must have come later, from some level of The Management. The same applies to Christianity, which had a 600 year head start on Islam.
It was clear that the Abrahamic Three are very close in essence, but had become separated by differences in ritual, beliefs, and priestly power.
§ Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim descent from Abraham. The Koran even calls Abraham a Muslim. That caught my attention, as Abraham lived millennia before Muhammad. It seems that anyone who ‘submits to God’ is Muslim by definition, despite whatever else he may call himself. Hence the phrases in the Koran ‘To you be your religion; to me mine’ (109:6) and ‘There is no compulsion in religion’. (2:256). How do Islamist terrorists get round that one, I wonder?
This idea of ‘submission’ bothered me a bit, but it became clearer later.**
Ritual had always been a mystery to me: stand up; face East; burn this candle; sit down; stand up; sit down again; sing this or chant that; ring a bell; stand up again; bow down… But as I thought about it (for the first time) I began to see the point. A shared ritual is a collective glue. It pulls people together, and, as I was to discover**, collective mind seems to be an important issue.
§ Unfortunately ‘shared ritual’ can also act to separate. There’s a famous joke about a Welshman marooned on a desert island. When he is finally rescued, he is living in a modest wooden hut, but he has built a huge stone chapel on either side of it. Why two? ‘Well… that’s the one I go to, and that’s the one I don’t go to.’ If we substitute almost any person of religion for the Welshman, we get a pretty clear picture of much of human history: Protestant vs Catholic; Shia vs Sunni; Liberal vs Orthodox; blah vs blah.
Also, a statue or candle or icon is a personal focus: an aid to concentration. They are not ‘idols’ or ‘graven images’ per se, although some people do indeed invest powers to images. I later came across a school of thought that helped to explain this strange phenomenon.**
Beliefs also baffled me. The essential revelatory message of all the Books was very simple: You were made by a very superior Being; choose His way of kindness and justice towards each other, and be rewarded; or carry on being selfish brutes and be punished for it. Most of the rest was fabricated by priests and clerics and their hangers-on.
§ Are there other revelations, not included in the Books? A dozen or so books written in the first and second centuries claim to be authentic gospels (including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene) or first-hand experiences of the sayings of Jesus. These are the New Testament Apocrypha, and make fascinating reading. Incidentally, Revelation probably made it into the Bible only because it was thought that John, ‘the beloved apostle’ had written it. Some think it’s a forgery, of which there was a great deal in CE centuries1-2.
A fine example of man-made doctrine occurred in 12th century Europe, when the Roman half of Christendom and the Greek half mutually excommunicated each other over a couple of details of ritual and approved Belief.
§ One dispute concerned how many fingers one should make the sign of a blessing with (the Bible has no comment on this); another dispute originated with Charlemagne: did the Holy Spirit derive from Jesus as well as from God, or not? It doesn’t seem to have occurred to these Men of Certainty that they were dealing with points of definition that might be way above their own level of comprehension.
Why so many ‘Beliefs’? Power games?.. although these zealots seem to be utterly sincere. Is ‘games’ the right word?
Power: From my political days, I knew how easily people can manipulate apparently obvious axioms to suit their own purposes:
‘God gave us this land. How dare you say it’s yours? No, we won’t stop building on it.’
‘Ah.. when Jesus said ‘Love thy neighbour’ he didn’t mean Catholics, did he…? I mean, be reasonable…’
‘Anyone who is not a Person of THIS Book is an infidel and must be beheaded on video amidst self-righteous braying and clap-trap….’
And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah … to the misery and detriment of all.
It was clear to me that basic religion, of whatever stripe, was constantly corrupted by manipulators and power-mongers. The early popes felt obliged to sign up a tribal hardman (Charlemagne) to keep other tribal hardmen at bay. Eventually there were popes who were rapists, sodomites (one allegedly died on the job), and murderers, getting rich off the sales of Get Out of Hell Free cards (‘Indulgences’). Another Big Reformation was necessary, and came about in Tudor times, amidst much burning and counter-burning of sincere people, all in the name of the God of Love.
***
Back to my own concern with the paranormal. Did revelation really occur? If so, why doesn’t it occur today? Why in the Middle East and not in Bagshot or the Bronx?
It all seemed a bit unlikely, but I couldn’t dismiss revelation out of hand any more, the way a Materialist could, because non-Materialism (ie Idealism), insists that Mind must have preceded Matter, so ‘revelation’ could not be out of the question, and might even be an essential part of the human condition. I would have to think about this one…. For a start, who was doing the revealing, and why? God? Son? Angel? There was no way I could check, and no philosophy or operational structure I knew of that would enable me to make any progress. It all felt a bit unsatisfactory. I listened to a few bishops and rabbis and mullahs in the media and got the impression that deep down they were as baffled as I was, and the louder they shouted the more desperate they sounded.
The difference between us was that this didn’t matter to them. They ‘Believed’; I couldn’t.
§ And by the bye…why are there so many discrepancies in the biblical reports over say, the birth of Jesus? Matthew tells us that baby Jesus was visited by ‘wise men’ (not ‘three’ wise men), but Luke makes no mention of them, which seems odd, as they were preceded by a bright star which would have been the talk of the town. He does, however, mention visiting shepherds. Matthew doesn’t mention the shepherds. Mark and John, the other gospel writers, don’t mention any of the above, or Jesus’ birth at all. Luke says Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room at the inn. None of the others mention an inn or a manger. The Koran says Jesus was born under a palm tree. Granted that the Gospels have been filtered through human memory, many times, and have been edited by other human minds, sometimes for personal purposes, but surely God or His agents would get His basic facts consistent? A magistrate would throw a case out of court if it was supported by such garbled ‘evidence’.
On the other hand, if the whole story is just a cynical forgery, surely even the most half-witted forger would have made sure he got his basic ‘facts’ consistent?
And why would any forger go to such trouble? What would he gain from it? I can find no reasonable answer to this. You might suggest that it all helps to keep priests in power, but when you look at the dates when things were written, and the consistent forces that keep the texts alive, this argument doesn’t really stand up, I don’t think.
Where does that leave me? Puzzled.
I was also puzzled that anyone can think ‘every word’ of the Bible is ‘literally true’.
Another problem, stemming from my youth, was ‘Why should I think any of this old waffle is true? It’s just fairy tales from the olden days when people were stupid and didn’t know any better’.
But I have no trouble in ‘believing in’ Julius Caesar, who lived before Jesus. Nor in Tutankhamen who lived close to the days of Moses. So why did I not ‘believe in’ Jesus or the reports in the Bible? Jesus is even referred to by a couple of diarists and Jewish sources. He was clearly a historical figure unless all these mentions are also forgeries (see The Jesus Mysteries by Freke and Gandy).
§ And as for olden-days people being stupid… I’ve heard modern engineers say they wouldn’t know how to start to build the Great Pyramid. One bright spark suggested that they built a huge ramp first and hauled the dressed blocks (up to 60 tons in weight) up this. But then a brighter spark pointed out that it would be harder to build the ramp than to build the pyramid. It’s still a mystery how they did it. Up the coast, at Baalbek, there’s a platform of three dressed stones that weigh ~800 tons each. And they lie on top of two dozen other dressed stones of ~300 tons each. Nobody has a clue how they might have been moved. And there’s an unfinished obelisk at Aswan weighing 1,200 tons.
I then realised that it’s nothing to do with the age of the texts: it’s all to do, yet again, with the wash of Materialism that our society is drenched in.
Materialism says miracles and Sons of God cannot exist; therefore they do not exist. Thus the Bible and everything in it must be rubbish.
But as I had now discovered that Materialism itself was rubbish, I was free to think the Bible and religion out for myself, with nothing to fear from the Mullahs of Materialism who had (in all innocence) controlled my mind at school.
***
Apart from the issue of Revelation, there were scores of other anomalies that caught my eye, some small, some stupendous. Among them:
The Koran mentions angels, including personal guardians for every soul; djinn (created from ‘subtle fire’); the creation of humanity from clay; ‘moist germs’; ‘those who conduct the universe’; possession; Houris (virginal non-carnal maidens); God being the Lord of Sirius; multiple Satans; a competition between magicians; the production of quail and manna for the Jews in the desert; a djinn called Iblis arguing with God; God shrouding people with a veil; loud noises killing people; the possibility of repeated Creations; the rumour of inter-breeding with angels; efreets (powerful djinn, or the ghosts of dead people); and ‘He well knew you when he produced you out of the earth, and when ye were embryos in your mother’s womb’.
The Old Testament is packed full of anomalies. Here are a few from the Torah (the first five chapters): God planted a garden and walked round it, talking; there were giants in those days; the Sons of God bred with humans; Jacob wrestles with someone he thinks is God; a rod turning into a serpent and back again; a hand that turned ‘leprous as snow’ and back again; magicians producing hordes of frogs, boils, hail, lice, fire, at will; pillars of fire; don’t touch the Ark or you’ll die; God encouraging an invasion; ‘And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people’; masses of quails appearing from nowhere; ‘and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague’; water from a rock; a bed twelve feet long; ‘the foreskin of the heart’.
The New Testament: a few examples from the four gospels: baptism with fire; disease cured at a touch or at a word; remote healing; possession (and dispossession); calming a sea with words; devils trying to bargain with Jesus; multiple possession discharged into pigs; raising the definitely dead; creation of bread, fish and wine; water-walking; foreknowledge; angels, ascending and descending; transfiguration; possibility of reincarnation; ‘before Abraham was, I am’; three hours of darkness in the afternoon, plus earthquake; consultation with non-physical beings; talking clouds; …and of course, ‘the Holy Ghost’, the closest I came to a spook in all three books, (except for Koranic ‘efreets’ who/which are not clearly defined). And clearly the Holy Ghost is no sort of ‘ghost’ at all, but a great power, associated with ‘fire’ (as are efreets. Coincidence?).
‘Before Abraham was, I am’ stopped me in my tracks. The implications were just stupendous.
***
Despite all the obvious objections, all three of these books had, to me, a ring of reportage rather than of Stephen King. Take the plagues of Egypt as an example: an absurd series of God/man-made disasters.
§ Water turning into blood; hordes of frogs; ditto gnats (possibly lice); ditto flies; mass disease of livestock; boils for everyone; enormous thunder and hail; swarms of locusts; untimely darkness; and finally.. death of the firstborns.
Why should I be even a little bit persuaded by such nonsense? It was because of the context. The over-riding purpose of the Old Testament is to be an extended tribal history, concerned with the identity of the Jews as a people and their relationship with God. Nothing extraneous is mentioned. No insightful description of personalities or sentiments; nor of landscape nor of raiment save that worn by Joseph; nor yet of the splendours of Egypt and they who dwelt therein (this style is catching)… Only actions and important events are recorded. The style is spare and factual, and suitable for memorising accurately, to be passed down orally over generations. Secondly, it is absolutely without irony or humour. What is stated is stated as bald fact, yea even unto the last jot and tittle. I detect no trace of creative imagination anywhere in the Old Testament. That’s why the plagues, and the extraordinary events read so convincingly, I think.
Another feature is the repetition of whole chunks (as in the Koran). An oral history can do without superfluous repetition, you might think, yet it is there. Clearly these passages are thought to be super-important.
The same feeling of reportage infuses all three books. Perhaps Mind really had contacted Man, somehow. I could not now logically deny the possibility. But proof?
§ Leviticus goes into great detail of how the tabernacle (tent) to hold the Ark of the Covenant should be constructed, down to the fixtures and the colour of the curtains.
§ The Koran is so insistent upon bad guys burning in Hell that it’s not surprising that impressionable idealists, or youths with muddied consciences, should have become easy prey for ambitious and bigoted clerics who will tell them anything to get them to do their dirty work for them in exchange for a ‘promise’ of Paradise with 72 virgins (who are not mentioned in the Koran). It’s the old Get Out of Hell Free stunt again; the popes in crusading days did exactly the same thing: ‘Go fight the unbeliever; sins forgiven on the spot. No fasting required.’ What blood-sodden knight could resist?
Reading three books is not an exhaustive study of Middle East history and theology, but my overall impression was of a singular message insisting that there is only One God, and if you don’t pay attention to this fact and behave yourself you will seriously regret it when you die. The audiences of the day were the munchers of badger kebabs who literally couldn’t see this One God lark when clearly there were lots of gods of the tree, the mountain, the lake, the dawn, the desert, as other clerics (or equivalent) had told them down the previous centuries, and as visually represented by idols. Why change the customs of our fathers and our fore-fathers before them? These old gods would let us rape and pillage ad lib, so why should we sign up to this new god of yours who won’t allow us a few harmless pleasures?
But sometimes the prophets prevailed and the masses adopted, or pretended to adopt, this new-fangled Monotheist Whotsit. The priesthood then maintained orthodoxy largely through threats of Hell.
Phase two developed as the prophets died off and were replaced by professional priests, who gradually slid into the same paths of luxury and corruption that the prophets had so recently warned against. True, they may have maintained the name of the Monotheist God, and may have put aside blood sacrifices, and idols and ‘graven images’, but they replaced them with ‘graven images’ of their own, in making The Temple or The Book or The Liturgy or Church Taxes more important than the Monotheistic message.
§ Thus the progress of the Monotheist Desert Religion/s seems to have been:
1. Prophecy or revelation or declaration of Monotheism.
2. Very slow uptake. Not popular with the masses, though they are impressed by the miracles, and any healings in the offing.
3. Priesthood settles in and enforces Belief, then becomes corrupt and backslides to previous beliefs, decadence, etc..
4. Reformation occurs.
5. Repeat 1-4, ad lib.
We might think of Moses as the first Reformer of the Desert Religion/s when he smashed the golden calf. It’s gone on ever since. First Jesus, then Luther, then many others, each with his own idea of The Original Purity. There are 30,000 Christian sects so far. Judaism has two major branches, one Trad, one Reformed. There are others. Interestingly, the latest revelation of the Desert Religion, Islam, has not yet had a serious Reformation (would Baha’i count?), but has nevertheless split into two major camps (based around an ancient power issue) and a number of smaller ones.
Interesting stuff, but my real concern was with what the anomalies might tell us about the true nature of spooks. I also wondered if any of them might be the White Crow I was still looking for.
§ Sexually rapacious demons looked promising for a while. They were taken very seriously by The Church, and in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a Bull chastising people for having ‘intercourse with evil angels, incubi (m) and succubi (f)’. This launched an Inquisition to purge Europe of witches. Powerful stuff… but not my White Crow, as psychological explanations were plausible (although some of the accounts are pretty hair-raising).
Also not-quite-suitable was a report of a somnambulist woman in Wisconsin who had been sleep-driving vehicles for decades, for up to fifty miles at a time, while never having had an accident.
Jesus raising someone from the dead despite the scepticism of the local neighbours (‘Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.’ John 11:39) would definitely qualify, but I could not investigate such ancient claims. They had either happened or they had not. In my previous ‘unwitting-Materialist’ life, I would have written all these miracles off as hogwash, but now, after dismissing Materialism itself as hogwash, I was left with the intriguing possibility that Mind, if it could create a universe, could certainly raise the dead or fix up a virgin birth.
I’d recently read of a few cases of what seemed to be impressive ‘non-medical’ healing in the modern world.
Who knows? Leave the door ajar…
The Anomalies I’d noted seemed to fall into four main groups:
- Revelation (eg Yahweh speaking directly to Moses, and Gabriel to Muhammad)
- Healing (Jesus and the disciples)
- Phenomena (Walking on water; stick becoming a serpent)
- Explanation, which includes the central message of ‘be nice, or else hell…’, endlessly repeated, but also something else I wasn’t expecting at all… My unconsidered understanding (ie ‘prejudice’) of Monotheism was that there is One God; that’s it. All other personages are sinners of varying degrees whose sole duty is to worship the One God, by telling him how Great and Holy He is. This had never seemed like a satisfactory state of affairs somehow, and I was intrigued to see that my prejudice was clearly quite wrong, according to the various revelations. There was much more to Heaven than God demanding adoration and a hell stoked by imps.
But the imps were a clue suggesting that God is not the only power operating in the Other World, as revealed. Presumably as Monarch (single power) He retains overall power, but there seems to be a host of Subarchs, all doing variations on His will, on the whole. The fourteen examples I noted are:
| Angels | Cherubs (with and without flaming swords) | Djinn | |
| Holy Ghost | Seraphs with multiple wings | Houris | |
| Efreets | Sons of God who can breed with humans | Devils | |
| The Devil | ‘Those who conduct the universe’ | Satan | |
| Satans | The Trinity |
This short list of powers and beings is not enough to draw up a proper Natural History of Heaven, although it seems to be accepted that there are numerous grades of Angels (‘Those who conduct the universe’?).
§ In the Bible we find mention of Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers, Archangels and Guardians.
What is the difference between ‘a devil’ and ‘the devil’, for example? And what was all that in the OT about Sons of God picking up a bit of rough?
I do like the Koranic phrase of ‘those who conduct the universe’, painting, as it does, a picture of a competent hierarchy making sure everything runs smoothly. This suggests that there is some sort of enormous plan afoot. But what is it? I couldn’t find an answer in the texts. In fact the fourth category, of ‘Explanation’, is pretty thin in all three books.
§ In the light of the Koranic ‘conductors of the universe’ I am surprised that Muslims so often complain that Christianity claims three gods and not one. Surely the Trinity is just another way of expressing ‘conductors’ or ‘facets’, or something similar. After all, a triangle has three sides, but is still one triangle. St Patrick allegedly chose the trilobed shamrock to illustrate the same thing to the pagan Irish (although ‘Celtic’ Christianity was actually already well-established by then).
Two other things stood out for me. Firstly, Jesus reportedly met up with the extinct Elias and Moses for a consultation. The implications of this are immense: the possibility of ‘spirit return’, (which might finally put me on the track of what ‘ghosts’ might be), and the idea that the all-powerful Son of God might need advice from other beings, ‘dead’ or alive.
§ ‘And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them. And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus.’ Mark 9:2-4
Secondly, the utterly unexpected theme of disputes in Heaven.
‘I am about to create a man from sounding clay, black mud moulded into shape; when I complete his moulding and breath into him of My spirit, kneel down and prostrate before him.’ Accordingly the angels prostrated altogether, except Iblees (The Satan); he refused to join those who prostrated. Allah asked: ‘O Iblees! What is the matter with you that you did not join those who prostrated?’ He replied: “It does not behove me to prostrate myself to this man whom You have created from sounding clay, black mud moulded into shape.’ (The Koran 15:28-33)
So is God omnipotent or isn’t He? It seems that some sort of free will applied, even in Heaven, and before Man’s creation. I do like the idea of Allah asking an angel ‘What is the matter with you?’ There is a ring of exasperation about it.
There is also the extraordinary caution in I John 4:1..
‘Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.’
Does this mean free will for ‘spirits’ to go on the rampage? And…
Isaiah..14:12 ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.’
More cockiness cut down to size. But Lucifer (whose name, oddly, means ‘Bearer of Light’) clearly felt he might get away with it. Again, where is the monotheistic omnipotence? And…
Matthew8:28 ‘And… there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.
And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?
And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding.
So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.
And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.’
Not so much consultation as attempted negotiation, but how might ‘devils’ think they could patch up a bargain with the Son of God? And what did they mean by ‘before the time’? This implies a plan, even a plan of predestination of some sort, which is known to the riff-raff of the Other World, but not to us on this one. What’s going on?
I was left with the feeling that not only did the three Great Books urge their readers to choose a good life of their own free will, but that this same element of free will continued in the Afterlife, and even, according to the Iblees story, in the Prelife.
§ The ‘Prelife’?… as in ‘Before Abraham was, I am’?
Add to this the notion that the Son of God had consultations with Elias and Moses, other Great Beings who were nominally dead. This was getting very intriguing. This consultation suggested a possible lead to how ‘ghosts’ appear but it lacked all detail.
Where now? Other religions? If so, which ones? I couldn’t spend the next fifty years researching every religious nook and cranny, so I decided to settle on the other Big Two which had been around for millennia and which had travelled the world: Hinduism and Buddhism. Would they help me with my quest to understand spooks?
The central Hindu text is the Bhagavad Gita. It contains the essence of the revealed truth of Hinduism, rather as the Gospels do for Christians. The revelator is Krishna, who seems to be God or the Son of God, or a Manifestation of God,
§ A manifestation of God is called an Avatar. Avatars seem to be as important to Hinduism as prophets are to the Abrahamic world. I found myself wondering whether Jesus was called ‘Son’ as this would be easier for a bunch of boisterous camel thieves to understand than the trickier abstract concept of ‘Manifestation’.
and who sounds remarkably like Jesus. But whereas the Gospels spread their message via the life of Jesus, here the action takes place before a symbolic battle and consists of a nervous military commander (Arjuna) directly questioning Krishna, who gives direct answers in response.
§ The name ‘Krishna’ is oddly similar to ‘Christ’. In fact, one Indian dialect calls him ‘Krista’. In many places in the Gita, Krishna speaks of His oneness with God: ‘I am the way… Come to Me…’ and ‘Neither the multitude of gods (or Devas), nor great sages know my origin, for I am the source of all the gods and great sages.’ (10.02)
Jesus says much the same: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well…’ John 14:6
There is some discussion on the names on the internet. One pundit declares that Krishna and Jesus could not be the same person, as Krishna died long before Jesus was born. No, really…
Here there is no hectoring, or lurid threats of hell, just gentle explanation and patient encouragement. There is also far more Explanation than in the NT or the OT or Koran.
Much of what is presented as Explanation in the Gita comes under the heading of anomalies for most Westerners, especially me. Here’s a sample:
Loud noises causing harm; three worlds; ‘just as our body exists in space, similarly our thoughts, intellect, emotions, and psyche exist in the space of consciousness’; ‘all beings are unmanifest before birth and after death’; the world is made up of mind, intellect, ego, ether, air, fire, water, and earth; spiritual energy is the cause of the universe; this world is a sort of illusion; raising energy to between the eyes; the universe comes and goes in 4.32 billion year cycles; there is a force higher even than spiritual power; ignorant people possess the delusive qualities of fiends and demons; ‘worshippers of the demigods go to the demigods, the worshippers of the ancestors go to the ancestors, and the worshippers of the ghosts go to the ghosts, but My devotees come to Me’ (and are not born again); ‘I continually support the entire universe by a small fraction of My energy’; body-giving mother and life-giving father; levels of power and being; one can become whatever one wants to be; bioimpulse powers (pranas); presiding deities.
This was heady stuff. There is no talk of miracles, and hell is spoken of as a rational result of one’s own actions, not as somewhere you are cast by another power. I read the Gita twice. Not only did it actually mention ‘ghosts’, but it also spent a lot of time explaining a term I had come across elsewhere, but had never really understood: karma.**
I then moved on to a central text of Buddhism: the Dhammapada, and was struck by how similar it was to the Gita. This is not surprising perhaps, as Buddhism was a reformatory movement within Hinduism, aiming (as Jesus did with Judaism) to cut through the rituals that had become attached to the core message and which were threatening to strangle it. Like the Gita, it had many Explanatory ‘otherworldly’ passages, again largely concerned with the importance of duty over desire, and the need for self-improvement via choice, but no miracles or effects, as in the OT or the NT. The only specific anomalies I detected were:
- Mara (the tempter); ‘lordship of the gods’; Yama (the lord of the departed); the world of the gods; heaven, hell, Nirvana; the wicked man burns by his own deeds, as if burnt by fire; ’36 channels’.
§ Try the internet. The Gita in particular is translated with modern Westerners in mind. Don’t get caught up in the historical side. Skip through it until you get to the philosophical body of the work. The Dhammapada is more succinct.
Gita: http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/gita.htm
Dhammapada: http://manybooks.net/titles/anonetext99dhmpd10.html
So where was I now? The Big Five were in absolute agreement, I had discovered: This is not the only world; be nice… or be nasty, at your peril. The choice is yours.
This wasn’t what I was expecting. My previous views of Religion were of daft superstitions backed up with mad charades and parasitic clergy of various tints. How had I come to be so mistaken? And I had been shocked to discover that Materialism was not a rational philosophy, as I had been vaguely used to thinking, but completely irrational.
So now I had to face the fact that Religion was not completely mad. If the Desert texts had attracted my attention, the Indian texts did so much more.
I was intrigued by the consistency between them, especially by the appeal to people to use their free will to choose what they would make of their life. I hadn’t been expecting that. It made more intuitive sense** to me than the Abrahamic commands to OBEY some sort of puppet-master God. And as for the hierarchy or even hierarchies that are hinted at in the Other World, including the possibility of having the free will still to disagree with God… well, who could resist reading on? But read what? I had no interest in pursuing any philosophy based on a third party’s opinion, so theology was out. I wasn’t interested in ‘following’ anything or ‘belonging’ (to anything with a dogma…) I was very much still an agnostic in all matters religious, and felt no urge to be otherwise.
If there is an Afterlife or (gasp!) a Prelife, that is clearly astonishingly important, but so far all I’d got were reports and rumours, albeit ‘revelatory’ reports. ‘Revelation’ is all very well, but what about reason and evidence?
There must be something that would cast some rational light on it all. Meanwhile, I was still looking for a White Crow anomaly.
§ What about an engineer who works for United Utilities on Merseyside, who usually uses radio waves to detect underground leaks in pipes, but who sometimes just uses a couple of bent welding rods to dowse for them instead?
For centuries people have been successfully dowsing for water, minerals and even corpses, using a map and a pendulum. Science isn’t interested.
What About Yoga?
This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures a world for himself
Swami Vivekananda
The M.E. meant that the best I could manage was a few light duties around the farm: weeding; holding things; admiring the view; a few minutes of wood sawing; leading April in and out of her shed. Anne suggested yoga as a keep fit aid. Well, why not? I began doing a gentle daily routine she knew of.
The journey continues! If you find my logic persuasive, please tell your friends about bad-dogma.org Mention it via Twitter and any other medium you can. Word of mouth is vital…. Thankyou. CG.