Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. – Steve Jobs (Stanford, 2005)
Section 1: Death
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An Islamic friend thought Islam was originally a peaceful and tolerant way of life and wanted everyone to return to an original Islamic utopia. I looked at Islamic history, and it did not sound like a utopia. People who want to return to a natural way of life sometimes also look backward, whereas a progressive looks forward and wants to make the world better. Instead of looking at what we want the world to be, in this chapter, I am going to try to look at what it is.
Henry Kissinger was one of the chief architects of today’s political world. Kissinger killed a lot of people, and is the world better or worse? Did Kissinger do the lesser of evils, or was it all evil? Perhaps we should consider if there were better options Kissinger could have taken. Would you have done the better option?
Perhaps you think you know what needs to be done. You think you are going to be a hero. Let me tell you about a person who the news once portrayed as a hero. At one time, there were dirty bums all over the streets of New York. Rudy Giuliani Enforced laws that cleaned the streets. Millions of New Yorkers felt safe. Then Giuliani’s political opponents used these laws against those who had kept the city clean. Now, the news portrays Giuliani as a villain, and there are more Bums than there were before.
We live in a world where Kissinger can murder millions of people and get a Nobel Peace Prize. The problem with the world isn’t just the fake news on TV. Did Kissinger believe himself? Did Giuliani believe himself? How do you know if you should believe in yourself? I think truth does exist, and the truth is what we need. But can we find it?
While thinking about life as a mission to touch, my Muse appeared and said, “When you die, you become what you are. Some find Heaven. Some find Hell.” Stories about death tell a fable about life. People who do not like struggle and pain might prefer to think of the afterlife as perfectly peaceful. Such a peaceful afterlife would be boring. Of course, life has hardships, yet it also has accomplishments and pleasures which make life interesting. My Muse was trying to say how important life is.
Objects are a mixture of activity and parts. Activity changes the parts while the parts restrict the action. Think of how rocks, plants, and animals all contribute to what happens in their environment, and all get influenced by the environment. The symbol of the year portrays the activity of parts in a continuous cycle. The cycle we see is a story about how the world influences us and how we influence the world. We can portray this story as the Tree of Life, which contains the body and the environment.
You live as the events of your material self, and death happens when your physical process loses necessary configurations. Something about the mind could continue after death if your mind ran on resources outside the body. In an Information cloud, a program gets distributed on multiple physical servers, allowing transactions to continue when a single physical resource breaks down. However, the only known physical resource for our mind is the nervous system in our body. Also, body functions are needed for the transaction of the mind to happen correctly. This integration of mind and body would not continue after death, and the technology to reconstruct a person has not been invented yet.
We have all heard about Individuals who claim to have come back to life and talk about being attracted to the light. I saw this light in visions, and it produces a comforting feeling, giving the impression that the mind transfers somewhere else. The experience could be what the mind sees when the nervous system restores itself before it wakes up. The right combination of chemicals will produce a similar feeling. Do not do this; you will give yourself brain damage.
What if a person gets to be born into the world again after death? What if every moment is a new life? Before birth, the individual must construct a tree of life to serve as the next life. The self must find the four steps needed to build a body while it travels through a labyrinth of seven crescent passages, mapping the seven days of creation. Multiply seven by four to get the number of days in the life cycle that each of us experiences while alive. In birds, this growth happens in an egg. In placental mammals, it occurs in the uterus inside a mother.
In a dark underground chamber, build a fire to represent the flames of Hell and encounter whatever lives inside you. Minds need a place to grow. Remember, whatever you were in life determines where you go next. While you walk through the maze, you pass the four motivating winds. The path begins with spring, the East Wind of Fire, and the conception of animated life. Continue to the South Wind of the Sun and Air that life needs. Continue to Water and pass the door of life to discover the two sides of the West: creation or destruction. Finally, you reach the North Wind, where your body becomes part of life on Earth. After birth, the journey continues as your life. Eventually, animate life ends, and your body’s material returns to the Earth. The seed waits in the underworld for a little while. Remember, the mind will know how to build a good life if it has a good life. This path did not happen before you were born. It happens every time you take a new step.
Section 2: An Actor in Hell
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Why mix fantasy with facts when fairy tales lead to misinformation? Right now, I can’t think of a better way to say what needs to be said. So, here we go. An actor plays you, the character, and this actor plays another person after you die. If the actor is an entirely different person from the character, the character would have no afterlife. The character will continue to exist after death if the actor is the same person as the character. But even if that were true, your current living biological character is practically unique and separate.
People happen in an organized form of matter in a process called life. Once an event occurs, it exists eternally as a historical fact, and these eternal truths are written in the book of the universe, where your character’s story exists forever the way it was. Though some events seem more relevant than others, all your events become part of your story. Make this story part of you by playing the game of life, and try to play it correctly.
Pure existence has no form, so it cannot touch another without a vehicle of touch. The mind’s essence desires to touch, and the world becomes the vehicle used to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. The Actor constructs each step in life, and this actor learns which choices to make by feeling rewarded for past choices. Your body evolved to make the right choices as long as it feels the right rewards. The more touch, the happier your actor will feel, and happiness makes the actor better able to construct a happy life.
The red line of the soul crosses the black line, where events happen as time passes through the black line. The eternal book of your life gets recorded on the red line. Notice how time differs from eternity. The important place happens where the lines cross at the moment happening now. Call this moment EUOI. The actor plays the character in this place. The material line has alternative futures, whereas the past seems unchangeable. The past made the character when the actor made steps leading to the future, and the self only gets the form made by the character.
Do we need a story about an actor and a creator? Dividing the self into separate personalities is silly if you only have one self. This self is both the craftsman and the instrument being crafted. Also, salvation never comes by rejecting the material self or pretending to join the immortal part. To deny life would create a situation worse than death; the immortal part will regret missing a life for all eternity.
In the story, the actor continues to experience long after death. Imagine if memories and feelings continued after death. Everything you do in life feeds the fires of Hell. In Hell, you come face to face with yourself, and a person’s Hell includes truths about their place in this world. Depending on the person, the encounter will be painful or pleasurable. Truths affect people in Hell the same way as in life. Hell will feel familiar to you, and since we need others, the quality of your relationships determines if you feel pleasure or pain.
I heard Protestants say that only Jesus can save a soul from burning in Hell for all eternity. Such obscene stories appeal to perverts, who enjoy fantasizing about people in pain. No one gains from punishing a sinner after the sinner dies, so let us forgive and wish happiness for everyone. Live your life, making it the best you can, and become confident enough to forgive.
Our social instincts allow us to feel bad when we hurt someone. We should feel good about those times we helped. Most of us do plenty of good stuff, and only a few sins against other people enough to end up in the painful pit of Hell, where we find police, judges, prosecuting attorneys, socialists, and anyone who tries to manipulate others. These people made others suffer; something in them must know what they did.
I know someone who always makes an extra effort to follow the rules, and this person says letting anyone break the rules is unfair. This hater writes long Emails to people in positions of authority, telling them to punish the violators. The hater can’t understand why people never respond and assume those in authority have failed to do their jobs. The hater claims that God will punish the evildoers who failed to respond. At 23, the hater looks like a grumpy old person.
One of the greatest events in life happens when the young enjoy the company of other people. Instead, the Email writer spends days alone. Perhaps this life will change if this individual adopts a happier attitude. Let’s challenge this person to try spending one day saying nice things about other people. The hater refused. So, let’s challenge this person to try saying nice things about other people for an hour. The hater refused. So, let’s challenge this person to say one nice thing about another person. The hater refused. Though we all have the right to make mistakes, the email writer seems to have strayed too far off the normal path.
Does this email writer have the same soul as everyone else, or is this a broken soul? Is it in its own personal Hell, or is it just happy this way?
Section 3: Union of Two
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All over the world, people think a ghost lives inside them. In the West, we call this ghost the soul, and various philosophers have tried to explain why we have a soul. The Ancient Egyptian Plotinus thought it was our link to higher goodness, and supposedly, you find it by concentrating on the right kind of thoughts.
“You must first actually become wholly god-like and wholly beautiful if you intend to see god and Beauty.” (Ennead 1.6.9)
Similar stories appear in those silly religions which teach people to meditate. New Agers tell us to love the divine in people. They love a fantasy that probably does not exist. We are objects, no more divine than any other object. Christians can claim to love people and want to save the person’s soul and then refuse to accept the person’s sexual needs when they equate harmless acts with sin. They hate someone if they hate what the person does. To love a person, love the character of the individual.
Cause and effect lead to more causes, so the sign of Cancer looks like a Chinese Ying Yang, and this great “69” in the sky portrays cycles leading to more cycles. These cycles become essential when two people join circles and let the instinct to feel love guide them to develop a rewarding experience with each other. The sex drive is a necessary part of our social instinct.
A Catholic priest told me that people feel depressed after an ejaculation. This priest ignores all the people who let the body tell us when we do something good by making us feel good. Each moment in life counts; it only happens once, and how it occurs never changes for all eternity. Eternity feels best if you touch another person, so make the moment count with a partner, for without a partner, we remain incomplete, and eternal moments get wasted. Remember, while walking through life on the black line, each step is eternal, and each moment of touch becomes our personal Heaven. Don’t listen to Catholic priests who live without establishing normal relationships with a sexual partner.
I know a few Christians who consider certain sex acts to be unnatural. Notice how suddenly these Christians become so concerned about Nature. Usually, they say nothing if you cut down a forest but show them two men kissing.
“You’ve got a couple of same-sex guys kissing, do you like that? Well that makes me want to throw up.” (Robertson, 2013)
Pat Robertson only cares about specific rules in the bible, ignoring the parts about not eating shellfish or not shaving. Such preachers ignore the stories in the Bible where two of God’s favorite men had boyfriends. David had Jonathan, and Jesus had a beloved.
“I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)
“Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.” (John 13:23)
These verses indicate that God loves gays. Someone with a limited understanding of evolution might assume natural selection would eliminate behavior that does not reproduce. We should not ignore how natural selection operates on multiple levels, and the reasons for human behavior are not always understood. Using recreational homosexual activity to bond socially might benefit our species and, therefore, should considered natural. I have never been attracted to a masculine person, but I know homosexuals in close relationships who do achieve a touching relationship with each other, and that’s good.
An activity becomes a sin against Nature when it fights Nature. The puritanical feel a great victory over the world when denying their sex drive. This sex drive made us fall from grace, so to rise, the puritanical set their will against the sex instinct, going through life with antisocial concepts brewing in their minds. Hating the way the world works is a flawed view because sex for fun can become a healthy part of our psychological development. Allow our water of life to touch others; individuals need the sharing experience. I am not saying that you should join every orgy that comes along. Most likely, your culture has a tradition where two people stay together and become part of a larger community. You can enjoy yourself within that tradition.
New Age friends told me that dramatic rituals awaken potential inside us. The book, “Be Here Now,” shows Shiva having sex with Shakti. These images appear to include social touching where characters accept material desires. Instead, sexual symbolism gets used to stimulate attention and turn the mind to ideas outside the world. New Age mythology includes channels inside the body through which a person directs attention. This attention rises from animal spheres below the waist to a rebirth initiation sphere, which leads to higher spheres of enlightenment above the waist. Kundalini yoga attracts those who want to feel improved. I do not think we need this improvement. Fun has always been a better way to celebrate life than any ritual, and we do not need esoteric knowledge to enjoy sex.
A New Age mystic can claim to see the creator of the world. The New Age concept of Brahman represents a unity inside everything, which personifies more than Nature because everything is a side effect of the unlimited. Those not concerned about Nature’s physical interconnections can favor such an idea. The wise never ride Shakti; Nature rides us, and an actual Nature mystic looks at Nature.
Do we need to manipulate the unconscious, or should we let it happen? Do we even have the ability to control it? Your conscious mind might not be in the driver’s seat. According to research by Benjamin Libet, the brain determines what you will do before you consciously choose to do it (Keim, 2008). If this were true, consciousness would be a lie, like a kid who falls off a bike and says, “I meant to do that.” The mind imagines whatever our level of understanding allows us. I suspect that awareness consists mainly of allegories. Perhaps all ethical, religious, and political beliefs come from the unconscious. Someone with enough awareness can watch their mind doing the editing, which is interesting.
Even if hidden motivations influence a person’s actions, no one needs to do anything, so don’t blame me for what happens in your underworld. You can go in a saint and come out a whore, but remember, you or the unconscious part of you choose everything in your personal Hell. Here, you find the objects to place upon your altar. Your instincts come from your material body. A universe made of material events is what you need. Some would instead seek a supreme dictator who can hear their prayer and care about them. You will not need that governor if you have confidence in yourself.
Section 4: The Dark Lord
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Suppose someone invented a good moral code that became popular, and then the followers of this code did evil stuff the founder never intended. Jesus told us to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39); followers seldom do. Instead, whole armies kill in the name of Jesus. Angela Davis did not want people sent to prison (Davis, 2003), yet liberals who praised Davis put their political opponents in prison. Perhaps any religious or political collection of values can eventually be distorted into something very different from what the founder intended. That is because all religion is interpretation.
The Catholic Church has been interpreting God’s revelation for over a thousand years. In one of their Core teachings, the God of the Bible is revealed as a father, son, and holy spirit. Actually, in the Bible, God shows up in other forms, and God hardly ever shows up as a holy spirit, but the church decided that these three persons are what God is, and you are not supposed to say that God is something else. The Catholics also have a bunch of angels and saints, which are old pagan gods pretending not to be gods because Christians are supposed to have only one God.
The Church’s scholarly writings are difficult to understand and can take decades to learn. There are also people who try to understand God without decades of special training. Do we need the fancy experts, or is the instant mystic just as good? Did Catholic theologians from Aquinas to Karl Rahner write a lot of big books just to say the same things the crazy guy down the street says? The truth is that there is no light to guide us through the darkness, and opinion is the lord of the darkness.
Protestants have a hard time understanding why Catholics venerate a wide variety of statues. Statues of Christ the Child interest people differently from statues of Christ the Savior. This Catholic experience allows for unique emotional attachments. Perhaps this tradition convinced African religions in Brazil to experience different forms of Eshu. I never learned the descriptions of each form, and this folklore never made any sense to me.
Brazil is loaded with a wide variety of African and Native religious traditions. Most rich kids who grow up in Brazil are not part of these traditions. They only hear about them through rumors. I was one of those kids. My understanding of the old gods comes from books and my own imagination. Within my temple design, I include a concept called Eshu. This concept resembles a Hollywood portrayal of the Devil more than any African tradition.
Educated white people in the United States disapprove of cultural appropriation. They think African religions, which enslaved Africans brought to the Americas, are only for blacks. These people ignore the way that some white people have traditions that include African symbols. African religions in Brazil mix ideas from different cultures, and some of these people seek assistance in the writings of the European Allan Kardec, who developed a religion called Spiritism. Meanwhile, a lot of black people are conservative Christians who prefer to avoid such African religions.
All religions have fundamentalists who consider only certain traditions to be authentic. If you want a more authentic African version of Eshu, find a traditionalist who knows more about African religions than me. But do you want to practice a religion that commits animal sacrifices so that you can pretend to be an authentic black African? Fortunately, there is more to African tradition than superstitions. Unfortunately, colonialism wiped out so much of African culture that only fragments survive, and those fragments are today being burnt by fanatics who want to restore an Islamic utopia (English, 2014). Fortunately, black families preserved a few books written in West Africa, showing that West Africa had scientists and mathematicians before colonialism. Black people could pretend to be like their ancestors by becoming scientists.
Does a holy person have to grow up in a traditional native culture, or can a quality visionary come from any culture? Beware of any guy who claims to be authentic. Clerics make money from true believers when the faithful pay thousands of dollars for rituals anyone can do for free. These con artists exist in all cultures, even cultures with old traditions. Instead of paying a priest for an elaborate prefabricated story, figure it out yourself. Whatever you discover is better than what those other guys sell.
We all have different ideas as to what religion is supposed to be. Pope Ratzinger’s theological work is so obscure that few people remember his contributions. Pope Francis prefers to use the church for social and environmental causes. So what is the purpose of a church? Is it for doing good or thinking about good? Francis has a lack of focus that has left the church divided. Sometimes, we need thinkers like Ratzinger to sort out the details. But then, what makes the details worth considering? I’ve been told that neither the old schools nor the instant mystics amount to much unless God chooses to contact them. Do you think god contacted either Francis or Ratzinger. I don’t.
I recently found a Grotto whose members claim that Satan gets understood through sorrow. Their misery feels so intense the members see such passions as necessary, and they delight in the senseless destruction of the self. Their revelations tell them that Satan made them Evil and guides them to become eviler. These kids introduced me to some good Scandinavian heavy metal music. They remind me of myself when I was their age. Most adults assume these kids need treatment. Stopping such people would deprive our culture of what these people have to add to our collective mind. If they end up being domesticated, we will never know what the kids could have been.
True and false seldom seem black and white. Between them is a gray area. Inside this gray area, you can find forms you never thought of before. The old man’s idea of Eshu personifies the opposite of what society considers acceptable. In a society of communists, Eshu would be a Capitalist. In a society of givers, Eshu would be a taker. In a society of believers, Eshu would be an atheist. We need to look at the world from outside the acceptable norms, or we will all end up a bunch of mindless sheep. A voice once told me, “On the Day of Judgment, it has been said they will separate the goats from the sheep. The goats will escape and run away free. The sheep will get slaughtered and sold for meat.”
Section 5: Reality and other falsehoods
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Computer programmers use bits of information to build virtual worlds. Relationships in our universe also seem to contain information when physicists measure these relationships. Since minds use this information to explore the universe, the information appears identical to the world. However, since the perception of information only exists in media, such as brains and computers, you think too much if you think the universe is made out of what you think. Then again, think of how the information in Genes makes us. Or think about how history made us. All that information might be the programming of the universe, and it might all be made of numbers. The idea that the universe consists of numbers has been around since the time of Pythagoras.
Small changes become diluted by billions of other events; however, remove one event, and someday, everything ends far from where it would have been. The most dramatic differences might be far from the source, implying provocation increases when a chain of events expands. This phenomenon does not violate the law of conservation of energy because provocation exchanges information. Though we need a lot of energy to move a mountain, the message to move a mountain can be sent with only a little energy. In differential chaos, small changes affect dynamic order. For example, Richard Dawkins described how genes influence the extended phenotype (Dawkins, 1976 ch. 13). Nature also has integral chaos, where the larger storm also affects small events. For example, in natural selection, as described by Darwin, a larger environment selects tiny genes. The two sides of the Cancer symbol stand for Integral chaos and differential chaos. We represent both aspects of Chaos with the sign of the uterus.
Do truths need to get stored on a transcendental hard drive, or do truths get stored in the material universe? For example, where we would find the information that answers the question, “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” The physicist Leonard Susskind considered whether the answer is located in Grant’s tomb (Susskind, 2008 ch. 7). I do not know if all truths are stored in the world; perhaps other kinds of truth exist. Some truths remain true everywhere as well as forever. Someone who steals a cookie remains a person who stole a cookie no matter where they go.
In my fictional story, the universal song is written when history adds more information. Events add up, causing the event horizon of our universe to expand. This cosmic pressure appears as dark energy in the new space, and new matter emerges due to some of this energy. The storm of chaos will never burn out if new material gets added forever. I do not know how to do the math necessary to investigate such ideas. They could be dumb ideas if cosmic information is only a bunch of disorganized static and there is no permanent story. Do not take my ideas seriously. The universe is more flexible than a single universal song, and no one sends people to Hell if they don’t believe in the song. If you find the song does not exist, it does not exist. Or say the song has always been if you think we all have a destiny.
Books on physics have lots of math, and this seems strange since math seems not to be physical, yet patterns in the physical universe coincide with math. The equations used in physics describe multiple situations instead of specific objects. These equations become an amazing tool when engineers use them to design spacecraft and computers. People chose the rules of arithmetic to portray patterns in the world, yet strangely, some mathematical tools were invented before anyone found phenomena to fit these rules. For instance, Euler’s formula was discovered before electrical engineers found a use for it (Maor, 1994). Did mathematics exist before anyone found it?
Did a supernatural mind create the rules and put them in the universe? Math rules seem nonphysical, and stories about God also refer to a nonphysical thing. Though information looks ghostly, measurable differences are properties of the material. The information is not a substance unless these properties are the substance stuff is made out of. This substance is not a ghost or a God; it is how stuff happens in our universe. Other universes in the multiverse could be quite different. Besides, a supreme God would not need to exist on the same level as mathematics if God lives at a higher or even a lower level. Whatever the case, the existence of a nonphysical thing would not automatically show the rules come from God. It could have come from somewhere else that has not been discovered yet.
We think roundness exists when we see what round objects do in the world. However, what round stuff does, such as roll down hills, might not be prescribed anywhere unless the universe does prescribe it in some way. Whatever the case, concepts such as roundness are produced when our minds learn about patterns. Does mathematics give us a deeper understanding of the universe, or does it merely seem deeper? Perhaps the coincidence between the physical world and Math is an illusion. People became so convinced in the myth of math that they only see the information that allows them to keep believing in the myth. Another trick fooled the mind, another form of Eshu. But how could an illusion be used to build technology? So, maybe it is not entirely an illusion.
Though some patterns have truth, the rules of math you learned in grade school are only one of many forms of math. Advanced students can invent completely different rules. Also, if anyone ever discovers useful conceptual tools besides mathematics, technology in the future will be designed with something other than mathematics. When that happens, some will assume that the universe is made of these new tools.
Stories can sit inside stories, but at some point, these stories need a physical medium to persist. For example, the meaning of a poem is not physical; however, the poem could be forgotten if we erase every place where it was written. We can have more than one copy of the information, but to modify a copy of meaning, we need to modify the medium the copy is on.
Even if the mind is not physical, your mind is in a modification of something in the material world, and this modification runs inside your nervous system. A platonic realm of disconnected information does not exist if all ideas are stuck in the physical world. Of course, I could be wrong, and if someone found something in the mind that is detached from matter, that would truly be a remarkable discovery.
Section 6: The Inner Vision
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The word religion means to link again, such as in a union of the faithful with God in a divine marriage. This union becomes evil if we forget about the Earth and let the union give birth to a Babe who is too controlling. In the Old Testament, God acts like an abusive husband. We do not need to act like that god. Earth is our partner. Love our partner for what it is, not for what you want it to be. Let us have a system of values where the divine child personifies a healthy relationship with life.
Believers say only God knows the perfect way. Well, until someone finds a way to interrogate deities, we have no way to confirm which morals God wants. God has no obligation to show us the perfect way and might only show us part of the way. Also, in a universe of possibility, with no final best path, even God would not know which morals work best. God did not give Noah the best of all possible Ark designs. A talented engineer could find improvements. Perhaps God wants us to improve the rules.
Imagine a law even the gods need to obey. You can call it Dharma. I do not trust the idea of law; laws hold Civilization together. Civilization gave people the need to cut a forest down, which is a sin against Nature. Therefore, laws lead to evil, so why claim we were born with a duty to follow a mystical law? You might think that being in harmony with this law would return us to a state of grace, similar to what existed before Adam and Eve committed the original sin. However, no one is born with sin because sin only happens when evil gets done, and no one does evil before birth. We do not inherit sin, and we do not inherit a need for any law.
Christians say Jesus died to pay for the original sin Adam and Eve committed. This idea does not appear in a single Bible verse. Augustine combined Bible verses into the story of salvation and original sin (City of God, book 14). The story of the Serpent tempting Eve was used to sell this religion of salvation. Protestant Christians claim people will burn in Hell unless they free themselves from original sin, and only faith in Jesus saves you. Protestants want us to believe in Jesus the same way people in North Korea believe in their dictator. If the Gospels’ authors wanted this kind of Jesus, the Gospels’ authors would have been explicit about it. Instead, the authors wanted us to follow the example Jesus sets. Jesus hints at how to do this in the story of the Good Samaritan. Notice how Jesus gave priority to what the Samaritan did instead of what the Samaritan believed.
The Ancient Greeks had mystery cults where initiates would go to find harmony. Paul ignored what the real apostles said and emphasized the parts of the ministry of Jesus that included salvation for the soul, which turned the Jesus story into an imitation of a Greek mystery cult.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
Christians claim to get a profound Inner experience when they find Jesus. However, nothing special shows up in this experience because Jesus taught stories people already knew. In a way, Jesus does live in our hearts, but not in a mysterious way. Some of Jesus’s teachings about love and peace might have come from a Pharisee named Hillel.
Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you! That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary, go and learn! (Hillel, Talmud Shabbat 31a)
What you do to people is the important part. People do not need Jesus or Buddha to show the way. We do not need light to guide us. There is no need for Zen enlightenment or salvation, no need to waste time in meditation, and people do not need unchanging morals; people don’t need any rules. We also do not need a cosmic law, no dharma or karma, no reason to get saved, and there are no monsters living in the dark. You learn how to be nice to people by being nice to people.
The world is not a limited section of an eternal divine. The opposite is closer to true; the divine exists confined in the minds of confused people. Stuff happens in a universe of potential, and this potential requires space; therefore, those seeking only the eternal seem limited compared to those who go outside and enjoy what the world has to offer. Those in a cage cherish whatever freedom they get. Even pacing from wall to wall provides relief. Religion only seems like an answer when it seems to give comfort. Life is better outside the cage; the only cages are those you give yourself.
The lucky go through life full of confidence, never seeing their faults; however, the ability to see your faults becomes a key to greatness. Some of the greatest athletes never considered themselves good enough, so the athletes practiced harder. Some of the greatest scientists never considered themselves good enough, so the scientists searched harder. Some of the greatest artists never saw the purpose of their work, so the artists tried harder. The confident person sits in satisfaction, never moving from one spot, feeling comfortable with simple answers on how the world works, too lazy to look for better ways.
My parents moved around, so I spent too much time alone. When Someone is alone for a long time, anything you do to fix the problem becomes the problem. The solution is people, and they were not available. As a kid, I watched my mind fall apart. You might think that the end product was damaged. Perhaps you are right. There’s no point sitting in this cave any longer. The inner vision sucks. Here, we find doubt. Whatever we do will get done outside the cave.
Susskind claims the total amount of disorder in a volume cannot exceed the surface area of the volume (Susskind, 2008 ch. 18). We reduce the amount of disorder in life by limiting choices to a small area, but the world has good stuff you would miss if you limited yourself. Your Animal wants this stuff. It wants the whole universe. The universe has a lot of surface area to enjoy.
Next Page Chapter 14
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