God Beyond Religion: Redemption from the Tao Te Ching

Redemption - At that time, the broken will be made perfect; the bent will be made straight; the empty will be filled; the worn-out will be renewed; those having little will obtain much; and those having much will be overcome.  The wise, embracing unity, will become the world’s model. Not striving, they will become enlightened; not asserting themselves, they will become distinguished; not boasting, they will be praised; not building up themselves, they will endure.  As much as they embrace the world, the world will embrace them.  Is the old saying, “The broken shall be restored,”  a false hope? No! All will be restored and return rejoicing.

~Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching . Ancient Renewal. Kindle Edition. 

The above quote is from the Tao Te Ching, which is pronounced the Dao De Jing credited to Lao Tzu in roughly 500 BCE. The fact is that the above passage could have been said by Jesus or it could have been written by the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah. This is a continuing theme in God Beyond Religion. It shows the universality of mystical revelation over the centuries. For me, it actually makes it easier to believe that God is love, that the fruit of the spirit is correct, and that the definition of love fits in nicely and naturally with mystical revelation. 

Look at what Lao Tzu wrote about peace: "Peace is meant to be our natural state. A whirlwind never outlasts the morning, nor a violent rain the day. Just as earth and sky return to peace, so should we. They who act with violence become violent. They who act with virtue become virtuous. They who act in the spirit of the Tao become Tao-like. They who follow the Tao, the Tao will guide. They who pursue virtue, virtue will reward. They who live by violence, violence will soon destroy."

~Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching . Ancient Renewal. Kindle Edition. 

Jesus said that blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God. He also said that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. It is important to realize that one of the fruits of the spirit is peace. The great thing about it is that I do not have to give up my faith in, nor my relationship with Jesus to acknowledge divine revelation given to others who are not Christian. 

Again, I need to repeat over and over this fact. According to the New Testament, God is love. According to the New Testament here is a definition of Love. 1Co 13:4-8  "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  (5)  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  (6)  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  (7)  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  (8)  Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." It logically follows that if God is love, then the above passage is also definitive of God.

The New Testament also explains and defines the fruit of the Spirit. Gal 5:22-23  "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  (23)  gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." This passage describes and defines the fruit of God's Spirit. Love is the definition of God, and the fruit is what the Spirit of God produces.

Therefore, and I want to emphasize and underscore this point! When discerning what is inspired by God, one has to see the attributes that describes God or the fruit of the Spirit of God or it is NOT inspired by God. Let me repeat. ANYTHING, that does not line up the definition of love, or the fruit of the Spirit of God IS NOT INSPIRED BY GOD!!!!

God Beyond Religion: The Role of Mysticism, Participants of the Divine Nature

2Pe 1:3-4  "His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  (4)  Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature."

I am in the process of re-reading a book that I read in the 1970's. It was written by Abraham Maslow and entitled Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences. I had lost or misplaced the book but found a free PDF of it online. You can access it yourself here. I need to thank the Bahai People for making it available. Maslow has an interesting premise about religions vs. mystical experience. Here is an excerpt from chapter three. 

“If you will permit me to use this developing but not yet validated vocabulary, I may then say simply that the relationship between the prophet and the ecclesiastic, between the lonely mystic and the (perfectly extreme) religiousorganization man may often be a relationship between peaker and non-peaker. Much theology, much verbal religion through history and throughout the world, can be considered to be the more or less vain efforts to put into communicable words and formulae, and into symbolic rituals and ceremonies, the original mystical experience of the original prophets. In a word, organized religion can be thought of as an effort to communicate peak-experiences to non-peakers, to teach them, to apply them, etc. Often, to make it more difficult, this job falls into the hands of non-peakers. On the whole we now would expect that this would be a vain effort, at least so far as much of mankind is concerned. The peakexperiences and their experiential reality ordinarily are not transmittable to nonpeakers, at least not by words alone, and certainly not by nonpeakers. What happens to many people, especially the ignorant, the uneducated, the naive, is that they simply concretize all of the symbols, all of the words, all of the statues, all of the ceremonies, and by a process of functional autonomy make them, rather than the original revelation, into the sacred things and sacred activities. That is to say, this is simply a form of the idolatry (or fetishism) which has been the curse of every large religion. In idolatry the essential original meaning gets so lost in concretizations that these finally become hostile to the original mystical experiences, to mystics, and to prophets in general, that is, to the very people that we might call from our present point of view the truly religious people. Most religions have wound up denying and being antagonistic to the very ground upon which they were originally based.” Quoted from chapter 3, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences, Abraham Maslow, Author.

The difference between the peaker and non-peaker according to Maslow is that the non-peaker has but a vicarious experience with the religion that was developed to explain the peak experience of a peaker. Likewise, according to Maslow it is always a vain attempt as the non-peaker does not have the experience, and therefore the understanding of the mystic. Further, most times the peaker's experience is explained by to others by non-peakers in a form that results on dogma. Whereas the peaker has mystical experiences whereby there is communication between the peaker, and the supernatural creative source.

The mystical experiences can be in the form of visions, audible messages, sensing, and knowing. When visions, the person is known as a clairvoyant, audible messages a clairaudient, sensing a clairsentient, and knowing a claircognizant. These are attributes readily accepted in the metaphysical community. However, they are true of Christ followers as well. Paul eluded to them by mentioning the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. The Hebrew Prophet Joel recorded this more than seven hundred years before Jesus. Joel 2:28  "Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions." According to the apostle Peter, this happened on the day of Pentecost. Peter no where recorded that it would end. In fact, the passage cited at the beginning of this post explains that we are participators in the divine nature. Even if you are skeptical about the 2 Epistle of Peter being authentically by him, it was undoubtedly written by a student or follower of him, and that person no doubt heard Peter say it and teach it. 

If you take the time to read the Tao Te Ching, you will undoubtedly come away with the opinion that it was divinely inspired. Much of all the writings and teachings of the mystics came from inspiration from the creative source of the universe. Dare I say? All great writing comes from inspiration from the divine nature. This brings me to the verse from 2 Peter. It is possible today for all to be participants in the divine nature. In fact, at the unconscious spiritual level all are. We participate in creating our world and our circumstance. The purpose of this post is to make us aware of it and thereby cause us to be more intentional about our participation. I think the operative word is to become mindful.

One of the downsides of strict dogmatic beliefs is that they discourage mystical experiences. They do this by frowning on mystical revelation that appears to contradict what was written before either in sacred texts or orthodox interpretation of the sacred texts. The reality is however, that there is a continual growth in consciousness in an upward spiral. What may seem correct for one culture is not of necessity incumbent on successive cultures.

Further, if God is love, and if the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self control, then it follows that mystical revelation will incorporate those ideas. In fact, one can comfortably discern a mystical message by whether or not it incorporates those ideals. It is also imperative to use the standard of the definition of love in the discernment. 1Co 13:4-8  "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  (5)  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  (6)  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  (7)  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  (8)  Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." The latter part of verse eight suggests that prophecies from previous cultures will in fact pass away.

So what exactly am I saying here? We will move toward the upward spiral of consciousness as we begin to realize that we are partakers of the divine nature and have an important role in advancing our spiritual consciousness.

God Beyond Religion: Mystical revelation across the centuries

This is not written to the ashiest nor even the agnostic. This is aimed at the religious person who has developed and adopted a belief system of faith in a specific religion, who believes in a creator God. It is only reasonable to agree that there is but one creator God. If there is a God and I am addressing those who believe there is, then it is also reasonable to believe that such a God is the one and only creative force of the universe. It seems equally reasonable to me that the one creative source of the universe is a monotheistic entity. It may make sense here to ask the question what is personhood? Personhood is the quality of an individual entity that has the ability to think, reason, act and communicate. It is within this definition that the creative source of the universe indeed has personhood. 

Therefore, if there is a creative source for the universe it is necessary that it is indeed conscious, reasonable, and able to act. Aldous Huxley in his book "The Doors of Perception" referred to the Mind at Large. In his view, the Mind at Large is available to all, but our brains actually act as a reducing valve to limit the amount of stimuli and information we take in. Could this Mind at Large be the consciousness of the creative source or God consciousness? Huxley encountered the Mind at Large while on mescaline but acknowledged that mystics and psychics experience it as a natural occurrence. Is it God consciousness that all of the mystics have tapped into? Did Lao Tzu tap into the Mind at Large--- God consciousness when he wrote the Tao Te Ching? Did Heraclitus and the Stoics after him tap into the Mind at Large--- God consciousness when they wrote about the Logos? I most definitely believe they did.

Let me include some incontrovertible facts predicated with an if__

If there is a creator God who created the universe it follows that there is but one creator God.

If the creator God is love, and the definition of love is this 1Co 13:4-8 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. (5)  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  (6)  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. (7)  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  (8)  Love never fails. It follows that this is the definition of God.

If the Stoics identified the creator God as the Logos, and it was substantiated by the John’s gospel, then the Logos is one name for the creator God. If Lao Tzu identified the Tao as the creator God it is yet another name for the one God. If quantum mechanics has identified the unified field as the creative source of the universe, then it is also a name for the one creator God.

If Jesus, and subsequently us are/were the incarnation of the Logos, first it would not be the totality of the Logos, and secondly, it would also be the incarnation of the Tao and the Unified Field.

I think that it is time that we begin to look at all of the mystical revelation throughout the centuries, and synthesize the message the spirit has been sending to humans over the years. So much of the past has resulted in tribal exclusionary beliefs. Yet, the human race is indeed one race and there is a sibling relationship amongst all humanity. There is a way that adopts tolerance that would allow individuals to maintain the unique positive aspects of their belief systems, and still be accepting of the beliefs of others. 

I was born into a family that held fundamentalist, evangelical, Christian beliefs. That in no way prevents me from seeing the universal nature of other mystical revelation and incorporating it into my belief system. I was only able to adopt this view as I began to see that it was reasonable to look at the sacred texts in a different way. I began to see that some of it was mystical revelation from the creator and some of it was cultural based on exclusive religious practice. Even in the writings of the apostle Paul, one needs to be able to discern between Paul the mystic, and Paul the second temple Jewish Rabbi.

This brings us to the point of this. It is important to look at an inclusive universal spirituality as opposed to an exclusive tribal spirituality. The sooner we embrace this the better off we will be. The error of exclusive theology and apocalyptic theories are being addressed within Christianity. Below is a telling table that explains the demographics of world religions today. You see a total of all the population accounted for including those who are secular, nonreligious, agnostic, and atheist. There are a total of roughly 7.8 billion people here on earth. Less than a third are Christian, and there are only 500 million evangelical Christians world wide. That is only about 5% of the world population. Isn't it interesting that this 5% of the religious world are certain that they alone are the only correct religion and the only ones that will go to heaven. This leaves 95% of the world in their view doomed to eternal torturous punishment for not believing the correct set of facts. Think about that for a minute and let it sink in.  

World Religion Demographics 2020 List of religious populations - Wikipedia

Religion	Adherents	Percentage
Christianity	2.382 billion	31.11%[3][2]
Islam	1.907 billion	24.9%[2][3]
Secular[a]/Nonreligious[b]/Agnostic/Atheist	1.193 billion	15.58%
Hinduism	1.161 billion	15.16%[2][3]
Buddhism	506 million	5.06%[2][3]
Chinese traditional religion[c]	394 million	5%
Ethnic religions excluding some in separate categories	300 million	3%
African traditional religions	100 million[6]	1.20%
Sikhism	26 million	0.30%
Spiritism	15 million	0.19%
Judaism	14.7 million[7]	0.18%
Baháʼí	5.0 million[8]	0.07%
Jainism	4.2 million	0.05%
Shinto	4.0 million	0.05%
Cao Dai	4.0 million	0.05%
Zoroastrianism	2.6 million	0.03%
Tenrikyo	2.0 million	0.02%
Animism	1.9 million	0.02%
Neo-Paganism	1.0 million	0.01%
Unitarian Universalism	0.8 million	0.01%
Rastafari	0.6 million	0.01%
total	7.79 billion	100%

Don't misunderstand me. Not all of the religions listed in the table are of equal value in mystical revelation about the true nature of God. However, they all contribute to the understanding. One glaring omission for me is Taoism. It is not missing but included in 394 million Chinese traditional religions. I mention Taoism because the Tao Te Ching is one of my favorite writings available to humanity. There is a close correlation between the Tao and the Logos in my view. 

I make no claim that I understand all of the religions mentioned. I am somewhat familiar with many. Second temple Judaism, which coincided with the time of Jesus of Nazareth was greatly influenced with Zoroastrianism and Greek Philosophy. The Logos was first written about by Heraclitus and the Stoics 500 years preceding Christ.

All of these can wrap into the suggested spirituality of quantum mechanics. The unified field likely describes the creative source, which is also been called the Logos and the Tao. An understanding of many of the traditions and the mystics that are associated with them can add a richness to the spiritual experience. This is from one who considers himself spiritual but not religious. I would even go so far as to say mystical but not religious. I am a peaker as defined by Abraham Maslow in his "Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences." 

1