Category Archives: religion

Atheism as transitional phenomenon

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“The mind is the work of our brain” – this theory is currently accepted as truth by most Scandinavians. Viewed generously, this can be likened to saying that “Windows is the work of the computer”. Given the many great realms open to the human mind, however, it is more like saying that air is the work of the lungs or that dry land came into being because the fish evolved legs. But when you don’t have a realistic alternative…

This is not the first time in history that atheism is surging here in Scandinavia. Much the same happened a bit over 1000 years ago, as Christianity was replacing the old Norse religion. According to a saga writer who saw the tail end of that period, many of those who had been brought up in the old religion and saw it discredited, did not latch on to the new. Rather, they “believed only in their own strength”.

This is not hard to understand. If there are a lot of people who don’t believe in Odin and Thor, why should I? But if my ancestors lived for generations without even having heard of the White Christ, why should I bother with him?

It is the same today. For the first time in history, many different religions from various times and places all show up at the same time, and people reasonably think that they can’t all be right, so why should any one of them be right? It seems only logical.

But this logic can also be reduced to the absurd. For the same bringing together of the world has also shown us many languages: Some big, some small, some easy to learn and some quite obscure.  If most people in the world don’t speak my language, why should I?  And why should I adopt another language, if most people don’t even understand it, much less use it? Indeed, when humans can’t agree on a language, why should I speak at all?

Now arguably, you cannot survive without speaking (though some monks might disagree). You can survive without religion. But most people don’t speak merely for their survival, but because it is a genuine expression of human nature.

I have a theory – it is not a revelation, merely a speculation – as to why atheism has surged so much more in northern Europe than in the USA. I believe it comes, this time again, from the sudden transition.

If you remember the theory of Spiral Dynamics, you will know that different people have different levels of complex thinking. What we call higher levels are such that can handle a more complex worldview. This change started rather earlier in the USA and has continued at a gradual pace. The USA has, for instance, still a large “Blue” segment that believes in religious myth in a literal way, and values obedience to authorities with no need for understanding. This is generally considered shamefully primitive in the Nordic countries, where the norm now is to be Green (postmodern) in theory and Orange (capitalist) in practice.

Because the Nordic countries (and the Netherlands) have experienced such a rapid “lift” in complex worldview, it is natural that people find their childhood religion primitive and even caricature-like.  Furthermore, the Nordic countries had very little religious diversity to start with. Each had a national Lutheran church that counted some 95% of the population. In this comfortable near-monopoly, the churches may have seen little point in changing until it was too late, and then mainly by becoming generally permissive, rather than attempting to meet intellectual challenges.

People whose heads are now in the postmodern world have available a religion suitable for the 18th century, with God as an enlightened monarch at best. Not that there is anything wrong with that – for the people who have a worldview to fit.  Like water takes the form and size of the container, so also religion will take the form of the mind in which it is contained. But here the water of religion was frozen in a form badly suited to the postmodern mind. Naturally this led to a wholesale rejection of traditional religion.

Lately, New Age spirituality seems to be growing in this area, presumably as an attempt to fill the religious vacuum. But being vague and mixed with many kinds of superstition, it is unlikely to fill the role of religion. What will, I don’t know yet. But history suggests that humans will naturally return to a religion that fits their level of development.

Spiritual peeping tom

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“You’ll understand the dazzling world of grownups one day, too.” Let’s hope so.

In reading St Teresa’s  book The Interior Castle, I came to the chapter introducing the Fifth Mansions. After reading a bit of that, I decided to stop. This is beyond me. I feel like a peeping tom looking in at other people’s love life, in this case their love life with God. For now, I think it will do me little good, because I don’t have the experience to relate to it. This is the life of true saints, and I am not one of those.  I am more like a tourist, hoping to become an immigrant, into the spiritual realms. I am not worthy to look at such a thing as the soul’s union with God, much less write about it.

I am quite familiar with the phrase “pearls before swine”. It is a wonderful ‘get out of debate free’ card for us Christians, letting us get the last word and insult others in a most pious manner.  But now I have become the swine.  Or the dog, in the same verse by Jesus, the dog to which one should not give the holy. This is a level of holiness to which I am like a dog. So I slink away – at least for the time being.

Oh, and on my mobile phone Kindle, that’s two dots out of six. (Meaning I got through a third of the book.) That’s pretty humiliating. But probably also pretty accurate, or even generous.

I should stick to things that are relevant for where I am, I think.  Then perhaps later, if there is a later, I may begin to understand the dazzling world of true saints.

Euhemerus science

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Having seen how awesome King Hermes was, the Greek soldiers decided that he must be a god! Picture from the Japanese animated movie “The Golden Laws”, based on a book by Ryuho Okawa.

There is a theme to my last few posts, and I want to press that point a little more. But to do that, I have to introduce someone with a difficult name: Euhemerus, an ancient Greek. His name means “Happy” or “Prosperous” (or something like that), so there is a pun in today’s headline. Anyway, his name may be difficult to you, but not to the people in the Macedonian court, where he was working.

Macedonia, back then, was where Alexander the Great came from. Alexander inherited a pretty good army from his father, but still, he really did earn that name. He built one of the world’s largest empires over the course of a few years. He died young, and his empire fell apart, but it was still an amazing feat, and it also made communication possible between cultures that had until then been mostly apart.

Old “Happy” lived a generation or so later, so had a most compelling case for the theory that made him famous: That the gods of old were actually men (and women) who had accomplished such great works that people thought they were gods.

We shall bear in mind that Greek polytheism was probably a lot more like Japan’s Shinto religion (which I mentioned in passing yesterday) than Religion in the west today. The border between men and gods was already kind of porous, with heroes and ancient kings being seen as offspring of visiting gods, mainly Zeus. Many of these were considered historical persons, though some are no longer thought to be. In any case, if some of Zeus’ sons were men of great fame, why not the rest of him, and Zeus and his brothers and sisters too?

So was born the theory called “euhemerism”, which claims that gods were once men who got excessive respect, usually after their death. This theory is also found in one of the Jewish apocrypha, still included in some Bibles today. It was also embraced by early Christian thinkers, although after the completion of the New Testament. The phrase “Those who you worship were once men like you” resounded through Christian history, apparently without the slightest irony.

Yes, until recently it could be argued that Jesus Christ was the best documented example of a man being later worshiped as a god, or even as God. While worship of emperors was common in Rome, China and Japan (at the very least), this was a formal, ritual, even political act. It is doubtful that many embraced these men as their personal savior. But Jesus Christ was another matter entirely. Despite his life and death being accepted as historical fact (except for a while during the 19th century), he is mostly famous for his divinity.

Of course, the big difference is that Jesus really was Divine, but some misguided people still can’t seem to understand this…

More locally, the Norse gods were explained as great kings of old by Snorri Sturlason in the early 1200s, and I read his explanation repeatedly when I was a boy. I had no idea until this year that this was called euhemerism, though.

An unexpected twist to this topic comes from the prolific Japanese writer Ryuho Okawa. He claims that the ancient gods of Greece (and Japan, presumably many others as well) were in fact historical characters. He even made an anime about one of them, Hermes, and this movie is still possible to buy on DVD. It was a big hit in Japan, but flopped completely in the USA. “Flew like a turkey” I believe is the local expression.

Okawa’s view is a bit less rationalistic than classical euhemerism. He sees the ancient gods as historical men and women, yes, but they were filled with a spirit from Heaven. They were men and women with a mission from God, and this is why they were venerated after their passing. So he is not entirely dissing their divinity, but they were still mortals. In the tradition of Shinto, he refuses to see gods and mortals as fundamentally different. They are all aspects of the Divine.

Okawa ought to know, if anyone does. Because he is already being worshiped as a god by hundreds of thousands of Japanese, and there are numerous temples dedicated to him. That is one of the things that makes him so interesting: He is a living case of euhemerism in action. Imagine if Zeus had a Twitter account, or Jesus Christ was videotaped during the Sermon on the Mount. Would they still be worshiped centuries after their passing from the world?

Well, Jesus would, of course, since he is just that awesome. But at least he would not be portrayed as an Aryan photo model.

So far, Okawa is doing well too in the being worshiped department, but he is not dead yet. His new religion is called “Happy Science”, and so – by a surely unplanned irony – the circle is closed. Old Euhemerus the scientist would perhaps have been amused.

Islands of dreams

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“To be connected with the whole world, doesn’t it sound like a dream?” Or, in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people.” One girl’s dream is another man’s hell! What are my dreams? And what is my dream? Not the same thing…

Due to the cold, perhaps, I woke up a couple times before the alarm, even though I had slept too little the night before. (Not a dramatic insomnia, I just did not get my timing right.) Thanks to this waking up, I remember the two last dreams of the night.

In the first dream, I was going to college. But it was a college run by my current employer, and had experts from the various teams and departments teach their specialties to us who were studying there. That way, if I managed to learn, I would be able to to solve many of the problems as soon as I got them, rather than sending them on to people who were already overworked. (This is actually, if not realistic, at least giving me a hint of something. I should talk about this with my boss. Obviously not a college, but some way of sharing skills across teams. If no one else, then I at least am willing to study with the other teams, because I cannot continue being this clueless when others are working as hard as they can and still falling behind!) Anyway, the details are restricted by my non-disclosure agreement. I woke up just as I realized that I would not have to apply to get my old job back after I graduated! ^_^

I fell asleep again, after putting on the second space heater by my bed. (Yes, it is that cold. It is that or wearing outdoors clothes in bed. We are talking deep freezer here.)

My second dream was much crazier. It was about a young woman who decided to dive into the ocean from the ceiling of the atmosphere. That would presumably be the ionosphere in real life, but in my dream there was an actual ceiling over the atmosphere! Otherwise it was kind of realistic though. Obviously she did not dive in just a swimsuit from that height, but in a kind of re-entry capsule, in the shape (though not size!) of a short pencil, its sharp end down. It seemed like a hopeless thing even so, but I was just a disembodied witness. Needless to say, we did not find her or her capsule.

I woke up again, but briefly fell asleep once more and in the dreamworld some 30 days had passed. I read in an online newspaper that the capsule had just recently been found. Obviously the young woman was dead, but the scientists were optimistic that they would find enough data to say for sure whether she died before or after hitting the water. So it was not all in vain. It might be useful to others in the future of space travel (except the ones who are dead…) and anyway, it is science. Learning something new is always valuable.

The article also mentioned that she had a baby daughter, a few months old, for whom she had evidently left a message. I don’t think the message was disclosed, but I would not have cared anyway. I was just thinking about how you just don’t risk your life when you have a baby, it is just wrong. (Although on waking up again, I realized that there is probably no other time in your life you are more inclined to jump from the ionosphere…)

Anyway, that was my dreams tonight. In eerily related news, during my reading of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I came to the part where they arrived at the Island of Darkness. Spoilers ahoy, obviously!

***

In the novel, this island is also known as the Island of Dreams. The crew picks up a man fleeing from the island. He tells them that it is a place where dreams become real. They start out thinking that this would be a good thing. Dreams come true? That is a very positive phrase, after all. But then he explains that he means real dreams, not daydreams. And suddenly they row for their lives. (Although in the end, they are able to escape only with the help of Aslan in disguise. This Aslan fellow sure is something!)

So this made me think of what Ryuho Okawa wrote, that you can get an idea of your afterlife by observing your dreams. He also says that the Other World is a world where dreams are real and reality is like a dream – they switch places, basically. The afterlife is not of the body, but of the soul and mind only. The soul will gravitate toward that which resonates with its content. If my soul is filled with love for others and hope of seeing them happy, then it will surely gravitate toward that kind of scene eventually, not just in the afterlife but during our last years on Earth as well. If however it is filled with suspicion or envy or grudges, it will seek out such places both in our dreams and later when it moves freely.

This certainly sounds logical, although I am not sure whether it is theo-logical. But if we think about it, who is going to Heaven if I am not a person who would like it there?  If I go to Heaven and hate seeing happy people, won’t Heaven be Hell? They should be swarming all over the place, after all. If I become transformed in death so that I wake up not hating people, is it really me, or haven’t the real me died and been utterly destroyed (“fear him who can destroy both body and soul, yeah verily”) and some other guy gone to Heaven instead? It is not much help if he has my name if he has a different soul.

So. There may be something to it. But! Our dreams, don’t they reflect our past more than our future? If they are beginning to change – and it seems they are – is it not the newest me who counts? Think of that robber on the cross, I am not sure he slept too well during his last days on Earth, but I think he slept much better after his death, knowing that he would wake up to be with Jesus in Paradise.

I myself is still a bit nervous, but I am no longer convinced that I unavoidably will go to Hell. There is still some Hell in me, but I don’t feel at home there the same way as before. I am no longer so quick to think “I’m going to take you bastards with me to Hell” if I feel threatened. But it may still be much, much too early for me to say: “I’m taking you bastard with me to Paradise!” like my hero.   Perhaps one day… Yeah. In my dreams.

More quiet revolutions (please)

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Preferably as quiet as this. Screenshot from the exceedingly family-friendly anime Kimi ni Todoke (Reaching You), which is not actually sponsored by Happy Science, strangely enough. It is not the happiness that is lacking, at least.

The December issue of Happy Science’s monthly magazine is out. It is mostly about childhood and its enduring influence on your life, and about how you can (and should) look back at your childhood with new eyes and seek to understand your family and yourself as you were at that age. Things that seemed pure bad at the time may make sense now, if you look at it from a much higher perspective than you could then. In this way, you transform your past, and thereby your present and your future.

I have already done some of this before, but I don’t remember all that much about my childhood (except the dirty jokes I read in my brothers’ magazines. It is amazing how well I can remember those after 40 years. I must have a “pornographic memory”.) Anyway, it is said that when you have children of your own, you remember things from your own childhood that you otherwise would have forgotten. Because you have to deal with the same things that your parents had to deal with, and you remember how they did it, and perhaps when you do the same thing to your children you remember how much you hated it and it gives you pause.

I don’t have children so I will probably continue to not remember much other than the books I read. Actually I am not sure I did much at all except reading books (and my brothers’ magazines) and play alone by the streams. Oh, and go to school and taunt the bullies, who would then proceed to beat me up, making me angry so I would taunt them again on the next opportunity. An endless dance or mutual arrogance. But that part of me has already been transformed by self-reflection, which is one reason why there is less hell in me these days than there used to be.

Anyway! More quiet revolutions! The Happy Science Monthly also has an excerpt from a lecture by Ryuho Okawa, the would-be Buddha of our age. “When we first started, we could not even imagine taking responsibility for the happiness of all humanity. However, today, I strongly feel that it is our mission to spread our message across Japan and the world; it is our mission to guide all people to happiness.” Yes, wouldn’t that be nice, if they could guide all people to happiness! There are still almost 7 billion left though, compared to the perhaps 10 million they have supposedly guided to some degree of happiness so far. Keep up the good work!

I am not being entirely flippant there. I may not actually believe that Mr Okawa is a god from Venus, but I do think that if somehow his teachings come to influence the majority of people, we would definitely enter a golden age the like of which has not been seen in recorded history. Love, wisdom, self-reflection and progress is good stuff. Unfortunately, I am all too aware that most people have very different priorities from that, so it won’t be easy. Jesus Christ still has not reached all the world after around 2000 years. And most of us who have heard him haven’t understood much of what he said. So, it is a long canvas to bleach, as we say around here!

Mr Okawa remains optimistic, though. “We are now in the midst of creating a quiet but sure revolution, which will influence neighboring countries, Asian nations, Africa, Europe, and America. By spreading the spiritual Truths, we are gently undoing the mistaken values of today’s society. We are bringing this world back to the world of Truth, where it came from.”

Quiet Revolution? That sounds familiar:

“There’s a quiet Revolution going on,
Like a fire in every corner of the world,
And friends that you have known for many years,
Are talking with a new light inside,
Talking with a brightness in their eyes”
…
“There are quiet celebrations going on,
So many have been waiting for so long,
To see the whole world waking from a dream,
And find a new dimension inside,
See a revelation in our time,
Something is coming now,
Something is coming now.”

-Chris de Burgh, fromQuiet Revolution.

Unfortunately it will probably take some time still for the whole world (or even the reasonably civilized world) to wake from its dream. But quiet revolution is definitely the way to go.

“Hay and straw”

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Despite the rural placement, there is actually no hay and straw in this house. I include it just to show that I do have somewhere to rest my head, unlike a certain someOne.

This December I have been playing Christmas songs almost from the start of the month. Earlier years I have only done this occasionally, at the spur of the moment. I bought a Christmas CD the first year I had a CD player and has played that sometimes, and another Christmas CD with panflute some years later, but generally I have almost ignored Christmas songs, as I have ignored most other things Christmas related. Well, I did spend Christmas with my best friend for many years and superficially took part in their rituals, but mostly just to be nice.

This year, I have had various good old Christmas songs in my head since around the turn of the month. We’re talking about Christian Christmas songs, not the modern secular “please be nice and let us all be happy” Xmas songs which goes out of their way to not mention God, much less Jesus, although Santa Claus is kosher here since the local name does not have anything to do with saints. These songs are gaining prominence here in Scandinavia at least, but they are not on my mind, of course. I am remembering the songs that were classics when I was born. And probably in most cases when my parents were born too, shortly after World War I.

In fact, today I found one song that was almost forgotten. It is not really a Christmas carol, but there is a line that is vaguely Christmas related, so it is on the Christmas CD Julefred (in Norwegian) by Solveig Leithaug Henderson. There is a parallel English version available, in which the Norwegian songs have been translated into English. I recommend it, as she also has a beautiful voice. She sounds just like she looks. Her voice is not really Enya-level, but is very clean and ideally fit for quiet ballads, and Christmas carols without excessive jazz.

Hay and straw (“Høy og strå” in Norwegian) was a song Solveig’s old parents taught her just as it was about to be forgotten. “It is surely well known among people above 90” they told her. Seems like it was snatched from the jaws of oblivion indeed!

I was listening to Christmas songs on Spotify, the (then) European music streaming site. I was searching for Julefred (Christmas Peace) as this is the name of another Christmas album I know of, and this one showed up as well, and had a couple of my old favorites. It was seeming coincidence that I came to hear this one, and immediately paid attention: The melody was very, very familiar. One of my beloved songs from The Christian Church (“Smith’s Friends”, a Norwegian super pious church) uses the same melody. They “borrowed” it from this song – I assume it is safely out of copyright, since that’s shorter here than in the USA – but I had never heard the original until now. I heard it and was greatly moved.

The song is not really about Christmas, but generally about the poverty in which Jesus Christ lived, having nowhere to call his home.

“The birds of the sky may have their nests, the foxes in the forest their den; the world’s Savior had no place he called his home on Earth.

“Hay and straw was the bedding of his crib, the world’s desert was his resting place. He to whom earth and heaven belongs, wandered here on Earth without a home.

“When in prayer he spoke to his father, he went up to the top of the mountain; he who created myriads of stars, for himself he did not build a house.”

(From the Norwegian song; the official translation is re-imagined in poetry.)

There is some uncertainty as to whether Jesus actually did own a home, as he lived in Capernaum for a while and there is a reference to “his house”, though it is unclear whether he owned or rented it. In any case, he spent much time on the road and at some point famously mentioned that he did not have anything to rest his head at. So I think the song is justified, whatever the literal facts.

I can’t help but notice that Moses is said to have left his position as Pharaoh’s daughter’s son, choosing instead to suffer with God’s people in the desert for the rest of his life. Elsewhere, Siddhartha Gautama turned his back on a kingdom to achieve enlightenment, and as the Buddha spent his life as a beggar to teach others. Even Lao-Tzu eventually left his library and set off with only a lowly water buffalo, at which point he supposedly wrote the Tao te Ching on request.

I can’t help but think that anyone who wants to save the world from the luxury of their palace or even mansion is unlikely to have lasting success, given the necessity for all these great spirits to venture into the desert. (Not that all of these are equal in my eyes, but you should know that already.) And rarely is this summed up better than in this near forgotten Christmas song: He to whom Earth and Heaven rightly belongs, wandered here on Earth without a home. Well, at least part of the time. ^_^

St Teresa vs reptiles! Fight!

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The strange thing about this castle is that it is our soul. It is so small as to be invisible, and yet large enough for God to live there. And some reptiles too.

I am not sure whether I have used this picture before. It may well be, for I know I have written about this topic before, about the inner castle keep. I think it may have been in this anime (History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi) that I first saw it, or at least that it first made a lasting impression on me, that we can have a huge castle inside, even as small as we are. It also ties in with the A and B influences of Boris Mouravieff, one of the weirdest thinkers to ever graze the fringe of the Christian religion, from what I hear. I picked up that particular notion of his through the One Cosmos blog a few years ago, though I am not sure if it was before or after I saw this anime.

Basically A influences are all the things in life that fits right in with our life as smart apes, while B influences are the things that fits with our life as eternal spirits. There is by and large very little overlap between these two world views, and yet most of us usually lives in them both to some degree. Or perhaps just around half of us, if Mouravieff is right, as he is quoted as thinking that approximately half the human populace has no spiritual side whatsoever, and cannot understand or relate to such things no matter what is done or said (though they can pretend to for worldly gain if they live in a religious society).

On the other extreme, you have people like St Teresa of Avila, whom I did not know about until a couple days ago. I mean, I knew she was a Catholic saint. That was not much of a recommendation for most of my life: I grew up in Norway, which was almost pure Lutheran Protestant before it became post-Christian as it mostly is with my generation and later. We were led to believe that Catholicism was a kind of “paganism lite”, with the saints playing much the same role as minor deities of the pantheons formerly worshiped in Europe. Kind of like Christmas was dressed onto the existing midwinter holiday, I suppose. Paganism with a Christian face.

Of late, I have come to see this in a different light. I have taken some pretty long detours, admittedly: My understanding of Catholic saints is now similar to how I see Buddhist bodhisattvas. Not identical, but quite similar. But there are also other elements, like the Taoist notion of the Immortals. I think “eternals” is a better concept though, because while I would be happy to achieve immortality through not dying, it is possible to become an Eternal even if you die. As Jesus Christ said about the Patriarchs: They all live before God. And the saints likewise, if not more so, are still alive in the theosphere even if their bodies are long gone.  If you for some reason happen to wander into that realm, you may meet them in a more intimate way than your neighbors or coworkers.

This just recently happened to me. Amazon.com sent me a mail recommending a number of books, most of them old-fashioned spiritual books (and one manga tankubon…) based on my buying history. One of the books was “The Interior Castle” by St Teresa of Avila. Given that I have thought (and written) about this topic several times, and given that the book is freely available (though not from Amazon) – its copyright expired long ago –  I started reading it.

I soon ran into a problem. The problem was that I was so overwhelmed by joy that I could not continue reading. The brightness of her words, the way she verified things that made sense but that I had feared might not be Christian. It was a bit like a court case where the crown witness is led in and suddenly you start thinking that you might win after all.

St Teresa, where have you been all my life?

This is probably going to sound weird even to people who respect me, if there are any left. But I seriously had to restrain myself to not squeal loudly and hug random objects from the pure pleasure of the reading.  It was a pleasure that was in a certain meaning “sensual” in that it filled my body, but it was not sexual. I may not look like it, but I do know sexual pleasure, just take my word for it. This was not it. But it was a certain kind of ecstasy from within. If those who fall in love feel as strongly as I did (and they probably do) then I can understand why they behave the way they do.

Be that as it may, St Teresa is awesome, or I am badly misguided.

The interior castle she describes is made of a single enormous diamond or other clear crystal, at the center of which God dwells in a very bright light. (Yes, that is eerily similar to Happy Science’s notion of the Buddha-nature within, which is customarily described as a diamond and shining with a bright, warm light. I believe this notion comes to them from Buddha, whereas it almost certainly did not come to St Teresa from that quarter. Perhaps it just happens to be a very good description.)

Unfortunately, the castle is easily covered by dark cloth (it is not very big until you enter into it). It is also surrounded by reptiles. She keeps using this expression over and over during her first chapters, which are the only ones I have read after several days. Reptiles, snakes, venomous reptiles. They even follow you into the castle, where they are numerous in the outer mansions, and it is almost impossible not to be bitten by them.

Tell me about it!

Even though, and even after, I have rejoiced in the pure joy of the spiritual teaching, these critters are still biting at my heels. But that is life, I guess. The B influences yearn against the A influences, and the A influences against the B influences. They oppose each other, so that we may not do what we want.

A different picture of the Buddha

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Today I wanted to share this leaked picture from the anime The Rebirth of Buddha. The anime is made by Toei Company and Kofuku-no-Kagaku (Science of Happiness / Happy Science), based on the book by Ryuho Okawa.

Anyway, I really like this picture. It is a bit like an icon. (In the classic sense, not the computer sense.) It is the artist’s depiction of the Buddha as he might look if he had been born in the world in our time.

Of course, the Buddha might have been born into one of several different bodies, in different possible places and at slightly different possible times, and still have had essentially the same ministry. The Buddha is not a historical accident, not simply a product of his genes and his upbringing. Of course these provide the flavor and the form, the container if you will. But it is the deliberate choices he makes, driven by his spirit and his destiny, that makes him unfold as a Buddha.

Of course, most of us are not the Buddha, but something similar holds true for us. If we live for many decades, our own choices will more and more shape our lives, and our inheritance less and less, for better or for worse. If you have a strong spirit, your life will be that much less accident and more choice. Or that is what I believe, based on what I have seen.

Do you want to try the thing he is doing in this picture? It may be a bit hard to see because of all the light, but basically here is what you do:  You put your palms together in front of you, firmly but not hard, at a natural angle. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and calm your mind. Just will it to be calm and quiet, don’t nervously check up on it. Now open your heart and emit a bright, warm light.  Well, at first it will probably be pretty weak, but don’t worry. It’s not like you are aiming to impress anyone. After all, this light is only visible to spiritual sight.

Then, what is the point of it? Well, it is Light. It drives away Darkness. It causes happiness. Anyway, if you don’t want to, nobody is forcing you.

Each of us has in the center of our spiritual heart a connection from Heaven, like plumbing or electric wire. Since you are human, you probably have this whether you know it or not.  Much like you can turn the tap and water comes out with force even if you have not dragged it up from a well yourself and lifted it to great height, or you turn a switch and a light bulb lights up even if you are not running around turning a dynamo yourself. It comes from outside but it only shows up inside, like the light in the light bulb does not come in through the window to be reflected in the bulb, but is still not a product of the bulb itself. Does that make sense?

–

Godless arrogance

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You don’t believe in gods? Fine, there are a lot of gods I don’t believe in either. Just don’t be a donkey about it.

The Economist has an article about the Pew poll (what an ironic name in this context) about religious knowledge. Shockingly, this poll showed that members of the Christian majority knew a lot less about the minorities than the minorities knew about them and each other. Who would have thought it? Next we will learn that black kids know the name of more white Presidents than white kids know of black Presidents!

Now, the really funny part is not this piece of non-news, but the excited crowing by the official atheists about their 0.4-point lead over the Jews and 0.6-point lead over the Mormons. Evidently this finally vindicates their claim of mental superiority. I see a different pattern though.

Rather, the sudden loud braying of the atheists (not only when asked to comment on this article, but also on Facebook and other social media) compared with the silence of the Jews and Mormons (who probably feel ashamed that they were not able to answer all the questions). I think this reveals something profound about what makes people atheists in the first place. But first a little detour to Norway.

Here, some 75% of adults are atheists. (More among the young, and the proportion is rising as the last generation of “Christians by default” are dying from natural causes.) Do you think they would do much better than the American Christians? Hopefully a little, given that our educational system is better. But nothing like the American atheists, because in America, atheists are people who actually bother. In Norway, it is the default. Conversely, the questions are trivially easy for me, a Christian in an atheist country.

But the arrogance of the outspoken atheists is much the same here in Norway as in the USA. It is their calling card, so to speak. As well it should be, because the only reason for atheism is a gargantuan arrogance.

It is roughly comparable to a deaf person being convinced and preaching that music does not exist. Sound, sure. You can feel the house vibrating when you turn up the stereo. But music? Ridiculous superstition. It is easy to prove, because people who claim to be musical – or even to be musicians – cannot agree on which music is best. Furthermore, they are unable to describe it in any logical way that makes sense to an outsider. In other words, it is all in their head.

Now, agnosticism is not only a perfectly valid point of view, but it is the only perfectly valid point of view unless you have firsthand experience with higher reality. Which is somewhat but only somewhat voluntary. You can pray and meditate like crazy and depending on who you are, you may never ever experience anything more than you would if you wrote letters to Santa Claus and put them in the fireplace. Such is the fate of some people, and others do experience unusual things but prefer to write them off as mental phenomena. Which sometimes they are, no doubt. Under those circumstances, agnosticism is understandable. In fact, religion is not understandable then, but it still sometimes happens. It could be a leap of faith, or it could be that you have the hots for some religious person, or your business partners are religious, or you’ll get burned at the stake if you don’t convert. (OK, probably not recently. Shot more likely these days, by the Taliban.)

Anyway, the outrageous part is the absolute faith in that which cannot be seen, namely the non-existence of God, gods, angels, high spirits or whatever. To just ignore the entire theosphere and tell religious people to mind their own business is one thing. The absolute conviction is what takes an unimaginable amount of arrogance. This is why arrogance is the prime virtue of atheism, kind of like compassion is for Buddhism.

But am I not equally arrogant in writing off Zeus, Poseidon, and Athena? No, not at all.[Note for clarification: Unlike the claims that atheists “just believe in one less god” than I do, I know people who have had personal experiences with Norse gods. This doesn’t make me want to follow their gods, nor do they expect me to.]  The fact that Bach is far superior to the Rolling Stones and that rap is the anti-music is based on direct observation and repeatable experience. This is entirely different from the reductio ex nihil of the spiritually deaf and mute. “There is no god and I am its prophet!” Why the hell do they even bother? Secular frustration?

Oh wait, they want to liberate us. Good luck with that. As long as you do it by giving Bibles to the children, I’m not going to stop you. (As opposed to the Lenin, Stalin and Mao method of atheist liberation.) I actually agree that people who have read the Bible and are not horrified either by the Bible or themselves have probably not truly read it in the first place. Which of the two outcomes, though, I believe depends on your level of arrogance.