Friday, December 8, 2023

How I view Jesus

I still consider myself a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. He is much more than the savior from sin. In fact, I believe that he was only that to first century Jews who needed to understand that they were already acceptable sons and daughters of God. This whole narrative about Jesus is tainted by the Orthodox understanding of sin and salvation. It was further turned into an unnecessary source of shame and self-deprivation by Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and the other reformers. It along with Puritanism has been the source much trauma and error. However, I believe it is mostly from misunderstanding his real message of love and freedom.

You can say, but he taught about hell and mentioned that it was where worms would never die. Well, in my view, that is part of the misinterpretation of his message. If one believes that he was really a historical figure, and that he really taught prior to the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, and I do, then he was actually quoting Isaiah 66 in a passage that I think foreshadows the destruction of the temple. He was informing them, by them, I mean first century Jews that the temple and city would be destroyed by Messianic fever and fervor.

You can also say that he taught about Gehenna and suggested it was eternal. To that I reply that he was using hyperbole against a first century Pharisaic teaching that Gehinnom was a fiery punishment where souls went for a year to pay a penalty for their sinful ways. He actually used a lot of hyperbole in his teaching. He suggested that they gouge out their eyes and cut off their hands. He also said that lust was really adultery. I don’t think it was to make the mosaic law tougher. It was hyperbole to show that concern and love for others was a better road to follow.

This brings me to the first narrative that Jesus taught that was profitable for everyone and would be great to follow and would make this planet a better place to live and would help us all become more humane. Notice the idea of humane comes from the word human and is linked directly to humanity. The idea was to love the other and not persecute them. This love should extend past the norm of the day to one’s enemy.

He was likewise a proponent of what today we call social justice. He taught that the highest ideal for humanity was to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give shelter to the homeless and visit the sick and those in prison. He taught that if one really wanted to follow him, they would do those works as a natural way of living. It would be these works that would separate a true follower from one that was false.

In a more spiritual vane, he taught that the realm of God was already among humanity. Its source was the indwelling Logos or the divine spark. God was creative mind and was the parent of all humanity. The Logos was actually incarnate in humanity. He taught that he was indeed the incarnation of the divine Logos, but he did not stop there. He went on to teach that we all are the divine Logos incarnate.

When it was said that he was the Christ, the Messiah, it was actually saying that he was the divine Logos in flesh and blood. He was, if you allow- the anointing of the Logos. Again, he did not stop there. He went on to teach that we too are the anointing of the Logos as well. While he was willing to be a mediator between humanity and creative consciousness, he also taught that we too could be a mediator for ourselves.

Orthodoxy got it twisted but so did Gnosticism and the other expressions of Christianity in the first three centuries. There was much about Gnosticism that was correct, but where it went awry of his teaching was in not understanding that Jesus was one of the most egalitarian teachers and mystics of all time. The gospel that the realm of God was available to all and currently among humanity was unique to him. And, that is the reason that I choose to follow his teaching as best as I am able.

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Is Pseudoscience a Pejorative Term?

Pseudoscience is a favorite term to throw out against anything that suggests consciousness is foundational to reality. I am not saying that there is not pseudoscience at all. Rather, academic science uses pseudoscience as a pejorative to dismiss and ridicule aspects of paranormal phenomena that could be studied with at least a modicum of scientific rigor.

The materialist, physicalist paradigm and its accompanying dogma has discouraged and, in many cases, eliminated ideas that were important in times past. Much of humanity has been completely cut off from spirituality, and the aspect of being human which is a product of consciousness. This has been all because of not accepting things that cannot be falsified.

I am referring to phenomena such as near-death experiences, visitations of departed relatives, UFO encounters, especially human contact and abductions. I am also referring to shamanism and all mystical experiences. What kind of scientific examination could be used you may ask? Well, for one, self-reporting could be encouraged and not stigmatized.

Each of these phenomena lends themselves to providing data that could be analyzed by computers to find recuring similarities. They could be categorized in ways that statistical data could be used to identify the similarities. The problem is that there are not enough groups interested to take on this work, and it is in my view mostly because of scorn. I am quite certain that ancient civilizations that were philosophically advanced would take advantage of the opportunity to do the analysis made possible by technology.

I think that the current attitude is much more a reaction to religious dogma than anything else. Admittedly, especially in the western world, Orthodox Christianity has been controlling. In the United States Puritanical values have added to the rejection of anything spiritual. In Europe, the control of the Roman Church has had a similar effect.

In spite of this, spiritual and paranormal phenomena have been ubiquitous across all nations and cultures across the globe. The problem is that there have been too few attempts at understanding it and little if any innovation in developing methods of study. Further, all of the people who undertake study are ridiculed and called false science. That is what pseudoscience means.

Yet, within the ranks of theoretical physics, there is a plethora of hypotheses and theories that are many times hotly contested by others within the discipline. That seems to be okay but the minute that someone tries to link the strangeness of quantum mechanics to consciousness and spirituality they are ridiculed and accused of woo.

A glaring example of this is that the author Whitley Streiber has collected a group of stories in his book “The Communion Letters.” They are a few of the almost 200,000 letters he received after writing his book “Communion.” Once it was published, thousands of people from all over the world sent letters reporting similar experiences to the ones he included in the Communion book. According to Streiber the similarities were striking in a lot of accounts. It would take a lot of human power to examine all of the letters he received. His wife did a heroic job but was still only one person. Those personal stories could be analyzed in much more depth if there were more human and technological resources available.

A similar story was just recently published. It was a book entitled “The UFO of God” by Chris Bledsoe. Both he and Streiber report having contact with a non-human other-worldly female that presented esoteric information. Additionally, you have the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) that has collected and investigated thousands of stories over the years. It would be great if all of these stories could be collected and examined by a computer program that would identify similarities and present the data in a statistical format.

This represents merely one aspect of the many paranormal phenomena that are reported by individuals. More resources could be applied to near death experiences, NDE’s as well. Computer programs could be written that would categorize and correlate the information. While there are many doing this already, the number is too small in my view and more people should be interested in the investigation and the results.

Likewise, there are many cases of past life remembrances that need similar investigation. Some of these have been traced to events that can be verified. While I realize that it would be impossible to determine if someone was Napoleon or George Washington in a past life, there are many reports of more mundane lives that offer detail that could be analyzed and correlated to historical events.

We have used quantum mechanics to advance technology so much over the last one hundred and fifty years that it is a shame that we do not invest more time and resources into investigating these phenomena that have been reported throughout history. It could certainly make our lives richer, and to admit that there is a world of spirituality and consciousness that we do not understand does not mean that one has to believe in past religious dogma.

I believe that consciousness is fundamental and foundational and if that is true, the more we explore that aspect of reality, the better we as the human race will adjust to the dimension that we currently occupy, and the more positively we will affect our individual lives.

 

Saturday, November 4, 2023

Miracles; Why some experience them and others do not

Have you ever wondered why some people who believe in spiritual and supernatural healing get healed and others do not? Or, why the law of attraction seems to work for some and not for others? Have you ever pondered the fact that if God, creative consciousness heals one person and not another what that suggests about God? Is the creative spiritual source merely arbitrary and capricious? Have you ever entertained any of these questions? Well, many have. I know I have.

What is the answer to these questions? Is it all merely a matter of chance?  Or, is there something deeper at play? My answer is there is something far deeper at play.

Over the last two years, I have been influenced in my thinking by Dr. Bernardo Kastrup and Dr. Donald Hoffman. Kastrup has a PhD in computer science, is knowledgeable in psychology, and is in his own right a philosopher. Hoffman is a cognitive scientist at the University of California at Irvine and is doing research into consciousness using evolutionary game theory. He has written a book entitled “The Case Against Reality.”

Both believe that consciousness is foundational to reality and that the creative source of the universe is mentation. They agree in a lot of areas, and they have used similar metaphors to explain their idea of reality. Kastrup is promoting a philosophy he calls analytical idealism which is a variation of the idealism of Plato but with a twenty-first century understanding of science. I will try to briefly explain his ideas first. He begins with the idea that we do not really see reality and instead see and interface that he likens to a dashboard of dials. Hoffman’s metaphor is a virtual reality headset or a computer screen. Neither of the metaphors shows the underlying reality they represent. Both are designed to eliminate the overwhelming data in reality.

Kastrup also sees each of us individual conscious agents, (a phrase that Hoffman coined) as dissociative personalities of the one universal mind. He points out that there are documented cases of dissociative personalities within individuals where one personality is blind and the other has sight, and that the blind one actually cannot physically see because of a change in the brain. It should also be pointed out that some personalities are actually aware of the existence of the others. This enriches the metaphor.

Hoffman has used evolutionary game theory to show that the chances that we see reality as it is are absolutely zero. He theorizes that there is a deeper reality than space-time and he has spring boarded off the work of physicist Nima Arkani Ha-med. He cites the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics proving that the universe is not locally real. He and his students have written papers that have been peer reviewed and published so he is not completely fringe woo. His idea is that we are all conscious agents of the one supreme consciousness. As far as determining the purpose consciousness has in creation of us, he leans on Godel’s incompleteness theorem. It basically states that mathematics is infinite and there is no end to the exploration of it. He believes that the purpose for the material world and all other dimensions is consciousness exploring itself.

As I said, I have been influenced by these two academics to a great degree over the last two years. However, my view is that science is not spiritual enough and spirituality is not scientific enough. I therefore will in turn springboard off these two theories of reality. I have concluded that consciousness is the foundational aspect of reality. I think it is synonymous with what we call spirituality. Creative consciousness and God are interchangeable terms.

Consciousness has infinite and unlimited potential knowledge. However, in the realm of consciousness, thought and knowledge there is no experience. Experience demands a dimensional reality. We then are God experiencing what it knows. The possibilities are infinite and endless.

This brings us to good and evil, pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, prosperity and poverty and all possible examples of polarity. This is the reason that I see the Kybalion as so informative when it comes to the nature of this mental reality. It states that polarity is one of the seven basic principles of hermetic teaching.

If Dr. Bernardo Kastrup is correct, and if we are each dissociative personalities of the one great mind, and if Dr. Donald Hoffman is right in this assessment of the purpose that consciousness is exploring limitless possibilities, then we each are individual conscious agents of the one great mind and as it is without beginning and end, so are we eternal. If we are eternal, we never end. We merely change from one state to another and from one incarnation to another. As we do we keep adding to the experience of creative consciousness which I like to call the mind at larger. We also have the opportunity to rest in the mind at large or the mind of the all.

Here is where the questions mentioned at the beginning find their answer. Why do some experience miracles and others do not? The quick answer is choice. Before you get angry and shut this down, please hear me out. If we are divine, dissociative personalities of the creative source, we are eternal. Assuming the Hermetic principle of correspondence, as above so below and as below so above we can know that within the one great mind at large, we can communicate. In an egalitarian fashion, each of us individual souls or conscious agents can choose what experience we will have next.

Going further into Hermetics, if we look at the principle of polarity, we can and do experience pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, and likewise all of the other polarities of potential experience. Both joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure are but seasonal. They all add to the experience of the one great mind at large the creative source. We all grow because of these experiences and it is toward love and peace, but the experience wouldn’t be complete without experiencing hatred and unrest.

Some people have chosen to be able to manipulate situations in miraculous fashion, and others have chosen for a specific incarnation to be locked out of the experience. It all washes out over various incarnations. It adds to the experiential knowledge of potential knowledge. It is in the mind at large that we individuals have free will. Sometimes we appear to have it in incarnations and sometimes it appears that we are locked into fatalism. There are endless dimensions and possibilities. Not all of them are the same as this arena of dimensional space time and matter. Not all experiences are material. The possibilities are truly ineffable.

We are one and we are separate. This fulfills the Hermetic principle of polarity. “All truths are but half-truths” and “All paradoxes are resolved.” This should motivate us to gain the absolute most out of every opportunity for experience. The main place to focus our attention is on the egalitarian aspect of this ongoing eternal process. We can also choose at any time to rest in the Mind of the All.

Saturday, October 28, 2023

Can science and spirituality merge?

 "Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” Werner Heisenberg

Truly we have made momentous scientific progress in the last one hundred and fifty years. We have gone from the automobile to the information age. We have gone from the Wright Brothers to super sonic Jets. We have gone from Newtonian Physics to quantum mechanics. We have visited our moon. We have remarkable advances in medicine and medical technology. This is to say that materialist, physicalist science has an impressive sequence of accomplishments. But somehow, we have developed a scientific dogma that eliminates and scorns the spiritual. In spite of that, there is a growing trend to reincorporate spirituality into our day to day lives.

Conversely, spirituality is not without its dogmatic side. Religions are responsible for what appears to be unbridgeable divisions in human relations. It has been the cause of war and blood shed for millennia. It has been a vehicle for control, fear and psychological toxicity and trauma. One could go so far as to say that religious dogma is the cause of materialistic dogma. Physicalist and materialist dogma is a reaction to religious dogma. It exists to completely offset the problems that religious dogma created.

Neither science nor spirituality have the total picture. The strangeness of the universe points to a far more complicated reality. This has come about from the latest advancements in science, especially in the area of the role that consciousness plays. Consciousness is a mystery but it is emerging as an integral part of the nature of reality. Idealist philosophy that once lost its luster is regaining respectability. In fact, it appears to be going full circle. Platonic idealism is enjoying a rebirth, but it is tempered by scientific discovery and advancement.

This leads me to believe that science is not spiritual enough, and spirituality is not scientific enough. In my view, that too is changing. This raises the question is God and inadequate term? Is consciousness a better more descriptive term? Is it not spiritual enough? These are questions that will be answered as we move forward in both arenas.

Moving forward into specifics, let’s take a look at the things that can bring science and spirituality closer together. First, we will look at the historical, philosophical, and religious side of the equation. I want to begin with Greek Philosophy. They thought of the world in terms of the physical, mental and spiritual, I start with Greece because there is a written record. However, I want to stress the idea that Plato claimed that Pythagoras went to Egypt and received ancient wisdom that actually came from a more distant past.

While one cannot be certain, what resonates with me is this knowledge is truly ancient, before Egypt, and I think likely goes back to Atlantis and probably before that. This leads to Hermeticism or Hermetic Teaching.  Plato stated that the knowledge was truly ancient and went back to Atlantis. So, what does this have to do with science, you may ask? For instance, atomism is an excellent case in point. The idea of the atom was widespread across cultures and ancient spiritual traditions. It is present in ancient India; It is in Buddhism.

This reinforces the idea that the story of Hermes Trismegistus is likely based in some form of fact. I am not implying that he existed literally as the story is told. However, the story points to the reality that there were advanced civilizations that predate modernity. Perhaps even civilizations and individuals that had even greater knowledge than what we have today. Civilizations that rose and fell and in the falling left a fragmented story that was incorporated in the beliefs of different cultures and spiritual traditions.

As these stories were told and retold, they developed into dogmatic beliefs that in turn became religions. They show a spiral of awakening and sleeping. Awakening to new possibilities and then sleeping in dogmatic certainty. Yet, underlying it all are the basic truths of the nature of reality.

All of the ancient traditions held mentalism, what we now call consciousness, as the foundational element of reality. It is interesting that in the Kybalion, a hermetic document written in 1908 asserts that the ancients knew what we knew and more than we know about physics and psychology. This suggests that there is a common thread of thought that transcends time and culture pointing to a real knowledge that humanity as a whole holds intuitively.

Moving on to science. We, especially in the western world, were thrust into what has been called the dark ages by a controlling dogmatic religion. The burning of the Alexandrian Library alone speaks to the idea that we have gone in cycles of awakening and sleeping. However, the renaissance led to an entirely new awakening and ushered in the age of reason and in turn brought to fruition the age of scientific materialism. In many ways it was a reaction to the controlling religious dogma of the dark ages.

Newtonian physics described the world as material. Yet Sir Isaac Newton was deeply interested in Hermeticism and the Corpus Hermeticum. Ironically, Newtonian Physics led the way to a materialist, physicalist view of reality. Out of this a new dogma arose. It was the dogmatic view that only things that were material were important and worthy of examination. Spirituality was disparaged. I believe it was not least because of a reaction to religious dogma. In this you can see the Hermetic principle of rhythm. As one looks throughout history, one can see the pendulum effect. The Kybalion states that as far as the pendulum swings to the left, it then swings back to the right.

Scientifically we are now entering the return swing of the pendulum. As Newtonian Physics gave way to relativity and space time and quantum mechanics emerged in particle physics, the cutting edge of physicists, biologist, and cognitive scientists are now moving beyond space time to a deeper reality that at the very least hints of a concept of mentalism.

While there are different interpretations, the concept that information is foundational to reality is pointing toward consciousness being foundational. There are many scientists that are at the forefront of this idea. I am not saying that they all think in terms of the spiritual, but they all show that one who focuses on the spiritual nature of reality is not an ill-informed nut job.

To give an idea of what I am referring to you have Dr. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at UC Irvine that is building a case against reality. His hypothesis is that consciousness is the foundation of reality. He is spring boarding off the work of physicist Nima Arkani Hamed who has found physical realities beyond space time. With the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, quantum entanglement is a proven fact, and the universe is not locally real. Information moves instantaneously which is well beyond the speed of light. String Theory, while not yet proven in a laboratory postulates that at the basic unit of the atom are strings of vibrating resonance that determines physicality. This can be similar to the vibration of thought.

To close, I find it interesting that so many of the intellectual giants of the last hundred and twenty-five years have believed that consciousness or spirituality was foundational. To name a few, are Carl Jung, Werner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr, Bertrand Russell, William James, all of the transcendentalists come to mind. If the pendulum is indeed swinging back to spirituality gaining a renewed importance it is not a bad thing. It makes me wonder what the dogma that develops from this swing will do to humanity. I am optimistic. I see human history on an upward spiral and while there have always been setbacks, the trend is to continue toward higher heights.

 

Friday, September 29, 2023

Eclectic and Syncretistic Spirituality Explained

The word eclectic is normally used as a furniture style, but it is also related to thoughts and tastes etc. Syncretistic is an amalgamation of various religious traditions, cultures, and schools of thought such as philosophy. So syncretistic and eclectic spirituality is an amalgamation of beliefs. It is my belief that this approach makes by far the most sense in choosing a spiritual path and spiritual practices.

The reason for this is simple. All mystics are first and foremost human beings. This means that they are not only influenced by mystical input but also have the cultural and life experiences of their place in history, their community, and their familial and ancestorial traditions. It also includes all of the religious ideas they were exposed to by their environment. 

While this does not mean that they cannot rise above these factors, it likely means that all of the above factors will spill over into their mysticism. It is also dependent on the intellectual and technological advancements of their society and culture. Therefore, one can rest assured that all so-called sacred texts have within them a certain amount of human and cultural input. All means all and it is especially true of the bible.

This is where eclectic spirituality can be so important in one’s spiritual path. All religions have mystical revelation from the source within their teachings. Likewise, they all have human and cultural input. Our intuition is able to distinguish which is which if we but learn to trust it.

Since I was raised in evangelical Christianity, I have found that while there is mystical revelation in the bible there is likewise cultural input that is not necessarily pertinent today. However, I have also found that for me, Christianity is not complete and that I can find additional revelation in other religions and religious texts, and yes, even in science. We continually are advancing in knowledge and experience. This is true of us as individuals, and it is likewise true of us in various cultures as well as humanity as a whole.

I will give you an example of my eclectic spirituality. I draw mystical revelation from Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, and Hermeticism. I have actually come to believe that Hermeticism is foundational to western religion and philosophy. But I also see that there is potential to reinforce mystical revelation from quantum mechanics, philosophy, cognitive science, and biology.

For me, I see reincarnation as a very likely phenomenon. So, I draw on some of eastern thought as well. However, I am not a fan of the perpetual circle of karma. This forces me to use my intuition and the mystic within me to find a better solution to the purpose of reincarnation. I have done this and have addressed it in other blog posts. There are countless other examples, but I will not pursue them here.

I mainly want to point out that we each have divinity within each of us. This divinity makes us all mystics. We are effective in mysticism to the degree that we believe we are divine, trust out intuition. I want to encourage you to make sure that you allow your intuition and your individuality to help you ascend along your spiritual path and find the perfect place of integration between your higher and lower self. Both are equally important to the human experience. Part of the lower self, or the human self is what Carl Jung called the shadow self, and we likewise need to embrace and accept it as well. That doesn't mean that we cannot improve and change the things we don’t like, but it does mean that we should embrace wholeheartedly our humanity.


Thursday, September 28, 2023

 Here is another video blog. It answers the question what it means to reimagine reincarnation and should it be reimagined. It is important to remove the eternal treadmill wheel concept. Please like and subscribe to my YouTube Channel Cosmic Consciousness.

Reimagine Reincarnation

 


Wednesday, September 27, 2023

An Introduction to the Kybalion.; Video Blog

I am going to begin posting video blogs to go along with the written ones. I will continue with the written blogs as well. I am using an AI program called Pictory AI. Please like and subscribe, and enjoy.

Introduction to the Kybalion



How I view Jesus

I still consider myself a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. He is much more than the savior from sin. In fact, I believe that he was only that ...