Category Archives: religion

Simulated angel

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OK, this is going to be a bit weird.   Then again, so am I.

Regular readers will know that I have played the Sims games from the start in 2000, upgrading to Sims 2 in 2005 and until I got Sims 3 this summer.  Over time I developed a special way of playing, where I was always looking out for the happiness of my imaginary characters.  This culminated in the Prosperity Challenge project, where I took on the role of “Guardian Angel” for a whole neighborhood of Sims, simulated people “living” in my computer.  For each and every member of each and every family, I would seek to provide a balance between their free will, their immediate needs and guiding them toward becoming the most they could be within their aspiration.

The neighborhood started as six small families, broke and deep in debt, with no skills, no jobs and no friends outside the family, and all of them having lost loved ones before seeking refuge in the small mountain village.  From this foundation I gradually nurtured a village filled with love and friendship, where the various talents worked together to create a better future for all.  A good education, a harmonious family, a career fitting to fulfill their lifetime wants.  Befriending the randomly generated, computer-controlled characters they met in school, college or work, they drew more and more people into their society, starting to take the shape of a small town. And I would still take care of each of them individually, sometimes taking into account things that had happened much earlier in their lives (and months ago in my own timeline).

What was it that tempted me to take up such a hobby?  And why did it take this particular form?  Many players of the game will torture and even kill their characters, or use them to play out scenarios of casual or uncommon sexual relations. In a way this makes sense since they play for the enjoyment of the player, who is real, while the little computer people are not.  Or not by our standards.  To me, they were conferred a secondary reality, a thin and wavering one for sure, by the virtue of living inside my mind.  They were, as I see it now, inhabitants of the second dimension.  And it was natural for me to want to treat them the way I would want someone from a higher dimension to treat me.

***

If we for a brief time suspend disbelief (lots and lots of disbelief) and imagine that I lived in the world described by Ryuho Okawa in his “Laws” books… suddenly this all makes more sense. Why was I drawn toward acting as an angel toward lesser beings?  Because I actually was a higher-dimensional being myself, incarnated in this world as part of my education. Probably not an actual angel from the seventh dimension, but not all that far off:  Quite possibly from the Realm of Light in the sixth dimension.  Regular readers will know that I constantly make references to the Light where others might say God or Buddha or The Almighty or some such. This fairly lofty origin (though still far from the top) would explain why I was born with unusual intelligence and a deep longing for knowledge and insight in the workings of the world, or why I wanted to be a prophet at an age where other boys wanted to be fireman or pilot. It would also specifically explain my programming skills. Perhaps I was sent to Earth merely for my own education, but probably not:  I may have had some specific task in sights when I incarnated, something that would benefit many people, as is frequently the case for those who descend from that sphere.

But unfortunately, something went off track and whatever I was meant to do, never happened.  Instead I ended up alone, watching the world as if from a distance, while helping my Sims achieve the happiness and prosperity I was sent to give the humans of this world.

Where did I go wrong? What caused me to turn my back on the human world, to “bury my talent” (to use an expression from one of Jesus Christ’s stories)? How did I forget my purpose on this plane of existence? I honestly don’t have a clue.

***

Of course, my cluelessness could simply stem from not living in a world where Atlantis and Mu were real continents and where most of the world’s gods and heroes were at some point real (albeit somewhat different from how they are remembered today). That instead we each only have one life in this world, and then a final judgment, if even that.  Living in a world where talents are bestowed by genetic lottery rather than celestial hierarchy, a world that will eventually be deserted and share the fate of Venus, and where all our words and all our works will be utterly wiped from the visible universe like footsteps in the sand before the rising tide.

In such a world, playing angel for small computer people may well be the most reasonable thing for one such as me to do. Probably not, though, but “it felt meaningful at the time.”

Books: The Laws of the Sun / Eternity

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A world where benevolent spirits regularly assist humanity, and where humans again can become angels and help others? Who wouldn’t like that? (Picture from the anime “The Laws of Eternity”, based on the book with the same name.)

I got my first two Happy Science books! (Although it was called Institute for Research in Human Happiness at the time the book was printed, it is the same organization, Kofuku-no-Kagaku.) I mentioned this briefly on Thursday. As I try to write a review of sorts, I will treat the two books together, as they are very similar. The Laws of the Sun is more focused on history and giving an overview, while The Laws of Eternity goes into more detail on the Spirit World, but they are both set in the same world. They are part of a trilogy, with The Golden Laws still missing from my collection. That one is supposed to go into recorded history in greater detail, chronicling the lives of Moses, Jesus, Gautama Buddha etc.

First let me mentally prepare the casual reader that these books can be read in two very different ways. You can take them as a description of our reality, or think of them as describing an alternate version of our world. If so, it is a world with far more depth: This planet alone exists in 10 dimensions, of which we live in only 3. Our biosphere is surrounded by that of the fourth dimension, which again is surrounded by the fifth and so on. The total population of humanoids in these spiritual realms exceeds the people on Earth by a factor of ten, so it is no wonder the spirits are constantly interfering in life on Earth.

If you have a hard time thinking of anything supernatural that you have seen or heard of from sane people, you are probably going to treat this as science fiction. But with Happy Science already having about 10 million members after a generation, there seems to be a good number of people who think otherwise. And I can certainly see why: It is a world I’d love to live in myself. Unlike some religions, it really has a happy attitude. Hell is considered a corner of the fourth dimension, and plays the role of a temporary purgatory rather than eternal damnation. The vast majority of spirits are benevolent, and many of them are quite powerful. The people in this world can easily have the same kind of experience that I have of not being alone and receive encouragement and advice from an invisible companion.

The Laws of the Sun also presents a world with a far longer history of human habitation, going back to the age of the dinosaurs, and mentioning several waves of immigration from other planets. And continents rise and sink several times per million years, unlike the leisurely pace we are used to. This is because the planet Earth has its own godlike consciousness and reacts violently to human crimes, such as killing Jesus. We got away easy last time, but the Atlanteans were not so lucky when they buried him alive with most of his family. Jesus, Buddha, Newton and several others are fairly regular visitors according to these books.

When I just present these things out of context, you probably get the distinct impression that you have to be an idiot to believe these books and Happy Science in general. While it is certainly not hard to imagine there being 10 million idiots in the world, or even in Japan, this would be a grave failure. The books have a completely different side that I will now go into. They are deeply pious and contain treasures of wisdom.

This is the thing that keeps me confused about the books and the organization in general, as I already said before. When it comes to human life, there are profound insights that are likely to help the average person improve their lot in this world (and the next, if any) greatly over time.

There is also a calm acceptance of human weakness and folly, quite different from the fire and brimstone anger found in some religious books. It is as if the author has no dark repressed wishes that comes out the back door in the form of flaming hate against this or that particular type of sinner. For people familiar with American religion, for instance, this difference is pretty dramatic. Sure, you can go to Hell, but it is for your own good. Not because God is angry, or even because you deserve it. In Hell you get to play out those dark fantasies that you secretly believed in, and see what they result in. Hopefully you sooner or later wake up to your true nature as a shining diamond, a child of the Creator, and everything will make sense.

Now the Christian reader may find this theology unbearably liberal, but instead of going on and on about the eternal damnation, the books go on and on about the glories of Heaven. Or the Heavens, rather, as these are the afore mentioned higher dimensions. And Okawa manages to make them seem really attractive, places you’d want to go even if it means spending your free time polishing your soul. Whereas most people probably at one time or another has questioned the fun of playing harps on a cloud or singing Hallelujah for an indeterminable length of time, any good-hearted people would probably feel right at home in one of the many heavens described here. Take pride in your work? Like to make others smile? Come to Heaven! We have limitless job opportunities for people like you, and you can continue to improve yourself over countless eons until you have godlike powers to bless others. Of course, you won’t be able to use those powers for selfish means, but blessing others is the true happiness anyway.

And this is the red thread that runs through the books (and also other books I have read excerpts from). It is a deep and real understanding of what happiness is, what love is, and how it corresponds to everyday life. According to Happy Science, the primary source of happiness is a love that gives. Receiving love is important to humans, and can make the difference between despair and joy. Receiving love is like getting water in the desert. But far greater is the love that gives: It is like a river itself, that flows in cascading waterfalls from the higher heavens through the lowers until it reaches us here on earth, and even Hell itself will become a Heaven if reached by love. A person who is full of giving love will belong to Heaven already in this life.

I agree without reservation with this. As does Jesus Christ, evidently, since he is quoted in one of the oldest books in the New Testament as saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Jesus is, not by accident I think, also a favorite inspiration in Okawa’s books, despite his own Japanese background. Or perhaps because of it? I sometimes think that we have become immunized by the contemporary religion so that we don’t see the revolutionary message of Jesus, while a stranger may be astonished by it.

Apart from a theory of happiness, there is also one of the best definitions of love that I have seen so far (and I have written quite a few of those here over the years, as my own view has changed, generally becoming more cynical over the years.) To Okawa, love is the power that unites. It unites man and woman, parent and child, teacher and student, doctor and patient, coworkers, entire nations. Wherever we are pulled together into greater unity, the power of love is at work. As we ascend through the heavens, love intensifies, because we become more at one with each other. At the very top, after all, God is One, the Father of all. Therefore, the closer we come to The One, the closer we come to each other. Elementary, my dear Watson!

I hope you now see my dilemma. The clarity of this man’s practical spiritual wisdom is embedded in books that read like the manual of a science fiction roleplaying game. Which is it? Of course, some of the more blasphemous readers would say the same about the Bible. Woe unto you! Fire and brimstone… oh, wait…

The hunger of Hell

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“Having food is equivalent to being in heaven!”  I know that feeling.  But once you have enough food, you start realizing that there is one more thing needed to escape your personal hell.

A few years ago, around the Easter of 2005, I had an illness that affected my digestion.  I was unable to digest most food for a couple weeks, and since then I have been unable to digest fat in more than small quantities.  At the time, I used to not eat much, but mostly fatty foods.  When I was no longer able to eat fat, my digestive tract simply did not have the capacity to keep up with my need for food.  I lost weight for several months until my body had adjusted to the larger quantities of starch I needed.  Even then it took many more months to get back to a more normal weight.

During the period when my fat reserves were low, I was almost always hungry.  Even when my stomach was full, there was a deep craving in my body and brain for more food.  I would overeat and get sick until I learned to know my limits. But even when sick, a part of me was still hungry.

For millions of people around the world, this is their daily life, or even worse.  They can rarely eat as much as they want, and even when they do, they cannot do so for the months it would take to fill their body’s reserves.  They are always starving.  Whatever they do, there is always this craving that can only briefly be alleviated, and never fully.

There are also some people who suffer from a problem of the metabolism, in which the body never gets the signal that it has enough energy in storage.  These people are wrecked by hunger even when they are drowning in their own fat. It is an almost hellish existence, and one to call on deep sympathy from anyone who has truly felt hunger. If you feel contempt for these people, please reconsider before you are given a hands-on demonstration.

And yet, there is something even more hellish, namely the hunger of the soul.  For like the body depends on food to survive, so does the soul depend on love.  I use “soul” partly in a religious sense, but even the psyche in the most clinical sense is in deep trouble if it cannot receive and metabolize love.  Children given food but not love will often sicken and die, or grow up with brain damage visible in a scanner.

As with the body, the soul also has its metabolism.  There are many people who cannot absorb and make use of all kinds of love.  A large number of them cannot believe in voluntary, selfless love.  They rely on threatening or coercing others, or using “guilt trips”.  But of course the quality of the attention they get is much lower than that of ordinary love. But they have developed this strategy early in life, and they stick with it, even though they are bound to suffer from “love hunger” throughout their whole life.  Ryuho Okawa writes that the souls in Hell are in this situation, desperate for love but unable to receive it because they only think of taking, not giving. His notion of Hell sounds more like the Purgatory of Catholicism, and I certainly don’t claim any personal knowledge of it.  But that many people are in a kind of hell already in this life because they cannot “metabolize” higher forms of love, that is an almost trivial observation.

Even if you exclude the hellish “love substitutes”, there is clearly a wide range of loves. There is the physical love (as in “making love”), which can have both good and bad aspects, depending on the situation that surrounds it.  A higher form than this is the natural form of “love that gives”, such as the love a decent parent has for its child.  In a good marriage, the spouses will also have this kind of love for each other.  And there are even more selfless forms of love. But around here, we start to enter the realm of religion, and I don’t expect all or even many of you to take any interest in that.  In any case, if we strive to share the highest form of love that we are aware of, even if it is of this world, it is far more useful than theoretical speculation on some remote, spiritual love that we then proceed to never use.

Not that it seems particularly theoretical or remote to me at this time.

At this point you may say: This talk about higher love, is that not just “sour grapes” for people who fear being rejected for physical love, and perhaps with good reason?  (The concept of “sour grapes” refers to an ancient fable of a fox who was unable to reach some grapes on the vine because they were hanging too high, and walking away commented that they were sour anyway.)

“Sour grapes” can certainly happen. It is quite common, in fact.  Many of the “live single or die” people suffers from this.  But in fact the name is quite apt.  This attitude has a bad taste.  It is bitter, cynical, mocking, critical. Those who suffer from sour grapes will at some point make it clear that they don’t feel they get what they deserve.  In contrast, you will notice that my most fervent hope is to never get what I deserve.  This was not always so – when I was young, it was the other way around. But that is a long story, not for today.

The Japanese writer Ryuho Okawa compares love to a river that flows downward, from higher realms to lower.  Divine love flows through the realms of archangel, saints and angels, through the spirit world and into our own, like a river in cascading waterfalls. This is the life of the saints, a waterfall of love passing through them from the endless source above to the endless need below. Even while in this world, they are also in Heaven and take part in the flow of love there.

You may not believe in saints, much less angels, not to mention God. But you believe in love, unless you are already in Hell while still alive. Please understand that just like some foods are more dense in nutrients  than others, so also there are higher forms of love that are more nourishing than lower forms. In this way, someone who has access to a very high level of spiritual love may say to those who are still unfamiliar with it:  “I have food that you don’t know about.” You may believe this or not, but what counts right away is to metabolize the love that is available at our current level, so we can work and grow.

It is not true that love is all we need.  We still need air, water and food.  Nor does spiritual love completely replace sex, in case you wondered.  But true love frees us from seeking all those things of this world as a substitute for love. Comfort eating, for instance, or “making love” where there is no love, only desperate need for attention. Opening up to ever higher forms of love frees us from the hunger of Hell, while we are still alive.  If you set your sight on the highest form of love you believe in today, and seek to attune to it and share with others, Heaven will be on your side whether you believe in it or not. And gradually, over months or years, you will feel the fierce hunger fade and a deep sense of satisfaction flow through your days.  You don’t need to explain it to experience it.

Oh, and this seems like a good time to link to The Hungersite.  You can show your love by clicking once a day to feed the hungry of the world for free.

Quite different, eh?

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Angels of different religions are working together?  Wouldn’t that be nice. This is how the  new Japanese religion “Happy Science” sees the world, although their concept of angels is closer to bodhisattva, or saint in English.

Google is very helpful.  For instance, they have a wealth of information regarding Kofuku-no-Kagaku, or “Happy Science” as it is now called in English. Admittedly some of it is from people who are generally worried about sects, not least after another Japanese sect gassed the underground, killing several and sending hundreds to the hospital.  But I ought to know that sects are not all the same.  After all, I spent some of the best years of my life as a “sect member” in the Christian Church.  Even Christianity itself was described as a sect when it was new (it’s in the Bible, mail me if you can’t find it).  So that is not my worry.  But there are bound to be doctrinal differences, given that they are not even Christians.

Then again…  Let me quote from “Bibliography of Japanese new religions” by Peter Bernard Clarke:

“Kofuku-no-Kagaku considers, therefore, that humans have chosen the most appropriate life environment in order to practice their own ‘soul-training’. In this sense, their view on life on earth is quite different from that of the Judao-Christian tradition, for example.”

(It is spelled Judao-Christian now?) I cannot speak for the Judaists, but we Christians believe that it is God who chooses the most appropriate life environment in order for us to practice our ‘soul-training’.  So yeah, there is a difference.  If we chose it for ourselves, we might make a mistake and end up with a less than optimal environment.  If God chooses, then “we know that all things cooperate for the benefit of those who love God, those who are called according to his design.” (Romans 8:28.) So yeah, there is a difference.  But it is also strikingly similar, at least compared to the common view these days that all things happen by blind chance and that things cannot possibly be good unless they feel good.

Well, I prefer things that feel good myself, but I try to learn from other things too if they are not so bad that I am fully occupied with panicking…

Obviously the extensive mythology of Atlantis, Mu, the Greek gods etc is something alien to me.  As I’ve said before, if they want to be literal about it, I can’t follow them there.  (In that case, they should probably also avoid a job in geology and related sciences. Then again the same applies to Christians who are literal about Noah’s Flood.) But interestingly, Happy Science seem to accept central parts of the Bible, including the story of Moses and Jesus.  I saw a trailer for one of their movies on YouTube, and it showed short sequences from those two.  There is also a snippet from their movie “The Golden Laws” depicting the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  (Albeit with two somewhat confused kids from the future as spectators.)

Anyway, it is kind of interesting that people living so far apart agree on so many things.  I mean, until a few centuries ago our ancestors hadn’t seen their ancestors since the deep of the Ice Age.  Why don’t they for instance think it is more important for your eternal life to eat with chopsticks than to be faithful to your spouse? According to the experts, religion is just a social glue, right?  Obviously I don’t believe that.  I believe that certain “laws of eternity” are written inside us, much like instincts are written inside animals, but we have much greater freedom in whether or not to follow them.

Hell is inside, too

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If I were transported to a realm in which my outer appearance matched my inner self, which would it be?  I honestly am not sure.  But I hope it’s not quite as bad as the one to the left – anymore. I remember when it was, though.

I have spent a bit of time piecing together more pages of the Happy Science lore.  It is not like I’m converting or anything, but it is interesting to see what lies beneath when people so remote from me in so many ways still come up with at least some ideas strikingly similar to what I believe too.

The notion of Satan and Hell are a bit different from the Christian version. I am not sure how it goes along with the Buddhist version. Yes, for some reason Buddhism also has a number of hells, some of which I have seen depicted.  Unfortunately, the Chinese Hell of Lust was rather arousing. -_-  I don’t think that painting conveyed reality in any sense or form!  The glimpse of the same Hell in the anime did not have that effect. Anyway! Hell! Who raised Hell, when and where?

According to Happy Science (fiction, most readers would mentally add), it all started when El Cantare, the highest humanoid spirit of Earth, invited a bunch of less evolved humanoids from the Magellanic Cloud.  Because of the prevalence of dinosaurs and such at the time, this hardy race was picked.  But they were rather rash, as were their guiding spirits (gods, if you will).  One of these was incarnated on Earth for some good purpose but got addicted to the pleasures of the mortal realm.  Instead of going back to the Heavens for another round of selfless service, he decided to create a realm in the image of Earth, in the 4th dimension (the one closest above us, the first stop of the afterlife).  This degenerated into Hell, as the people who accumulated there secreted dark thoughts and emotions that clouded the Heavenly Light so it did not reach them.  It also cast its shadow on Earth, with all the troubles this caused.

So far we have a vaguely science-fiction like version of the familiar story.  But the interesting part comes next.  According to their book, Hell is not specifically about the afterlife.  It starts already in this life (as does Heaven, but most of us have heard that already):  It is inside us.  Or at least inside those who haven’t gotten rid of it yet.  The way to avoid demons is to not have any dark recesses in the mind where the Light doesn’t get in.  If I have those, I have a connection to Hell already.

I agree. Unfortunately, having dark recesses is something that comes very easily.  And you don’t even have to believe in Hell to already be there, to some degree.  It is something I notice most blatantly with my liberal acquaintances, although I don’t know for sure whether this is because they are more prone to carry around their private Hell, or I just notice it more easily because it is more different from my own tendencies, so I don’t have the filter of automatic self defense.  Perhaps some of each.

In any case, there is a lot of whining there about how much injustice there is in the world, and not least concerning themselves.  Their idea of being discriminated against is roughly my idea of “that’s human life”:  Having to deal with people who don’t like you and accept you, being looked down at for being different, getting less money than some people who are at best your equals, being misunderstood over and over etc.  Seriously, this is my ordinary life, but it is not Hell for me.  We can’t all be The Real Princess.  People are unlikely to consider us as important as they consider themselves.  The greater problem is when this is mutual, as it all too often is.  That is my Hell: the Evil Inside.

Let’s say you live in Europe or some liberal state in America. You’re gay so you can’t marry in the state where you would prefer to do so.  And it eats you inside and you can’t let it go, because it’s just not fair, and they are repressing you, and you think you have the right to hate them and anyone who tells you to stop whining and get on with living.  You can still live together as if you were married; you can eat together, you can sleep together, you can set up contracts and wills etc to regulate your economy as if you were married etc. But it’s not enough, because you’re still regarded as Not Equal. Well, that’s true, but is it really worth going to Hell for while still alive?

What if you had a sexuality that you simply could not accept because of your conscience, even if it was technically legal?  What if you knew that you could never have one satisfying sexual intercourse over the duration of your earthly life? Or any form of lasting, intimate relationship?  What if you, for good measure, had to always be an outsider, be viewed with suspicion, pay more and earn less, because you did not fit society’s automatic duonormativity?  What if, in addition to all this, you had to listen to the whining of people you would otherwise like, if they could just let go of the pea under their mattress? Would you suffer then?

Hell no! Outrage is something you do, not something that happens to you.  Pain is something that happens to you. I don’t like pain.  And I certainly don’t like to inflict mental and spiritual pain on myself.  The hand I was dealt had some high cards and some low cards. I’m not going to bluff. But I am going to play the hand I was dealt.  And ideally, play it reasonably well.

Of course, this applies to other areas of life as well.  It isn’t all about sex, although it may sometimes feel that way when you don’t get any.  (I hear it becomes pretty trivial pretty fast. But what do I know.) So, someone is earning more than you do, even though they have the same job, because of some triviality.  So, you decide, after thinking this over for a long time and considering all options, that this is a good reason to go to Hell while still alive, to become bitter, to try to enlist other people in your crusade, and to never ever let it go.  Because it just ain’t fair!

Tell me about it, as if I haven’t experienced it firsthand for years and years. But life isn’t fair. Death is fair, probably.  We have a saying in Norwegian: “I døden er vi alle lik.”  This can equally be translated as “In death we are all equal” or “In death we are all corpses”, depending on your mood.  What I don’t believe is that in death we all go to Hell. But I don’t know for sure, I have only faith in this regard.  What I do know for sure, however, is that in life we don’t all go to Hell.

There are many such matters. I only thought of these in particular because there are people I really wish to have as my friends, but there is this chasm set between us. Their life is my hell, and quite possibly the other way around.  I am the kind of loser you would not want to be if you had the choice between being a loser and just die.  But I live most of my time, if not in Heaven, then surely somewhere right outside, where the light is bright, the smell of the flowers reach me, and the faint music from inside.  I may have pain from time to time, and I don’t live up to my own hopes.  (This is probably because I think too highly of myself, but some aspirations are allowed, I think.)  And I probably whine too much about those things, because you never see your own whining as clearly as that of others. But let me say this:  I would not swap even my current, half-baked soul for all the sex, money and fame of the world.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.  And so is the Kingdom of Hell.  May we all choose wisely.

Myth as transformative serial art

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What is a myth? Ideally, something that lifts you up toward the light and shows you something greater than yourself, leaving a residue of a higher world.

I’ve watched The Laws of Eternity three times over the last week or so.  That is extremely unusual for me.  I have mentioned this before, that I hardly ever watch a movie twice, or read a comic twice, or even a book, because I have a very strong memory for stories.  The exception, I said, was religious or spiritual works.

It may be over the top to compare The Laws of Eternity with Holy Scripture, although I suspect the actual members of “Happy Science” probably regard the book that way.  The movie is not the same as the book. The movie is set in the world described in the book. Or at least that is the impression I get from reading scattered pages of the book online thanks to Google Books.  I may well order the books too, but not because I believe in them in a literal sense.  Or at least not the story part, about the civilization on Atlantis and Mu and other continents that supposedly rose from the sea and fell back into it over the last 100 000 years.

That is not to say that it is a bad thing to take it literally. Well, it is a bad thing in that it is not true.  But the purpose of a myth is not to be true in the scientific sense, but to be true to the soul. The myth exists in a higher world.  Remember what I use to say here?  “We create lower worlds, higher worlds create us.”  And that is why I watch the movie over again, because it creates me, or recreates me, just a little.  You may say it concentrates me, so that after watching it I find it easier to resist thoughts that are harmful and pull me towards Dissolution. Conversely, it becomes easier to think thoughts that are helpful and pull me toward the Light.

I had not expected that from an anime, to be honest.  And after watching it, I find it hard to enjoy the other anime, even those that don’t glorify extramarital lust.  (Japanese manga and anime have a somewhat undeserved reputation for perversity.  Not undeserved in that the ecchi does not exist, but it is not as dominant at home as in export to the west. In Japan, there is manga for the housewife, manga for the salaryman, manga for the small kids, sports manga and educational manga.  But many westerners want to look at the panties of high school girls, and there is manga for that too.  But enough about that on such a beautiful day.)

Back to myth and the higher and lower worlds. This is important. There is a science that relates only to the material world, and it is a good thing for its use.  But the human mind is free to travel to both higher and lower worlds, and indeed will do so virtually every hour of the day in normal people.  Mostly lower worlds, again in normal people, in the form of dreams and daydreams.  The deeper of these are the daydreams of wish fulfillment, in which the imaginary world exists to gratify and glorify the ego of the dreamer.

The myth is the opposite of this. The myth is NOT all about you.  It is about something much greater than you, something that dwarfs you and fills you with awe.  (If it does not, then it has to some degree failed its task as a myth.) “Myth” is not a synonym for “lie”, as it is perceived by some superficial people.  A myth may even be literally true, but its power lies in its ability to create something in us and fill us with conviction of something higher, greater and ideally better and more noble.

Note that what is a higher world depends on your starting point!  We all live in the same physical world, but we don’t all live in the same mental world or the same cultural world. For instance, the mythology of ancient Greek or Scandinavia may seem crude by your standards, but they may have been an ideal to reach up toward in the crude and cruel world of the Bronze and Iron ages.  To take another example that illustrates this: The law of Moses institutes the rule “an eye for an eye” (and a life for a life).  This is seen today as harsh, vengeful, even primitive.  But in the culture of the Bronze Age nomads, it was a big improvement, because the rules of the blood feud was more like “a life for an eye”, since both sides considered themselves more worth than their opponents, and the conflict escalated until one side was eradicated or both were so weakened that a third faction conquered them both.

So when I refer to Happy Science movies as “myth”, it says a lot about myself.  If I were a saint, I would be above that level, and it would be a waste of time at best.  But despite all my accumulated knowledge, I am no saint.  I have the wisdom of Solomon, but mostly before or after I need it.  (I always have it when someone else needs it, of course!) I despair of ever becoming a saint (your name for this state of being may vary) without the company of saints, but saints are not only few but also have better things to do than babysit me. And even if they did, I wonder if I could tolerate it, for I love freedom and aloneness.

Anyway, myth as serial art.  You know that there was no manga in the Bronze Age, or even a few centuries ago.  For most of known history, even writing was rare.  Instead we had stories.  The bard, or just the old crone of the village, would be surrounded by people longing to hear a story.  And then the old one would recite a story that had been told many times before, a story they knew from their own childhood, about the clever Hermes or the lovely Aphrodite or any of the thousands of other old stories.  But then like now, there were also many coarse and dirty stories that the menfolk told each other when the children were asleep (or pretended to sleep, at least) – stories that pulled the mind down in the gutter. In that sense, not much has changed with the arrival of the printing press, and manga, and anime.

So when I talk about myth, I mean a story that is transformative, in that it lifts the human spirit up toward something greater, grander, more permanent, and hopefully more noble. The myth would ideally leave a residue of the higher world and a kind of longing for it.

The opposite could also be called transformative, I suppose, but I prefer to call it dissipative. The self is dissipated, weakened, and find it harder to tolerate reality and the challenges of life.  This, I believe, is what causes the stereotypical otaku that lives in his room and hates all things that are not part of his hobby, and who cares nothing for the feelings of others.  But  this is not something new, and certainly not Made in Japan. It is a risk we run all the time, to sink down in a darkness of our own making. We need the help we can get, to move toward the Light.  But what helps one is not always what helps another. And I am as “other” as you are ever likely to find, so I won’t say you will get anywhere by following in my footsteps.  But at least you can see them at all, in a world where most people are like shadows, just shadows in the fog.

Happy Science and hard work

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di090809

“I’ll show you the kind of work angels do” – they are always ready to help people become more happy.  Even in Europe.

Late Saturday night I got a mail from the helpful contact person at IRHH Europe.  The abbreviation is for Institute for Research in Human Happiness, recently updated to the shorter, more catchy “Happy Science”, which supposedly is also a translation of their Japanese name, Kofuku-no-Kagaku.  I don’t know nearly enough Japanese to say for sure. Luckily they have a European branch, in London. I inquired there as to buying their movies, but I had not expected them to be working late at night on a Saturday.  Clearly other people’s happiness is more important to them than relaxing on the weekend. Perhaps they are like the bodhisattvas of the anime, whose joy was in helping others.

Unfortunately, the movies are only available in Japan, but they would try to see if there was a way to buy them from there.  They also told me that there will be a showing of one of their movies in Oslo on August 29!  Unfortunately this is in the Swine Flu season, and I still have all the other problems with travel because of my digestion.  But it would certainly been interesting to see it on the big screen, and meet some of the locals.  Although I fear this might disappoint me.  I have found religious organizations that proselytize tend to have a disturbingly high content of glassy-eyed people with a dysfunctional relationship to things like work, humans, and self-image.  (As in, the self-image is grossly exaggerated relative to the  rest.)

At least Happy Science encourages people to study and work hard and act in the best interest of other people. Do the actual members live according to this?  I don’t know. If they do, they would certainly soon have a noticeable effect toward a better world. And in any case, it certainly seems the European branch office lives the way it teaches.

Health, Hell, Oblivion and Niflheim

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O Lord, forgive me.  In particular, forgive me for downloading the anime Butt Attack Punisher Girl, from which this picture is taken.  To say that it is not safe for work is an understatement. Combining elements of Christianity, Buddhism and Butt Punishment, it is not even safe for home even if you are alone in the house.  I did get this screenshot though before deleting it.  What profits it a man if he gains a truly rare old anime but loses his soul?

You can usually suspect that my health is not in the top ten days when I start writing about religion. If it gets really bad, I may even pull out the Bible, which will almost invariably threaten me with horrible death and doom.  This is as it should be, as the same book says, “Serpentspawn! Who taught you to flee the coming wrath?”  But there is also a more practical reason why I usually just open the book to some instance of the Wrath of the Lord:  The Bible consists mostly (in quantity, I mean) of divine wrath.

If you are a casual Christian, or just raised in a Christian society, you may have the opposite impression.  Based on the Bible quotes you hear most often, and especially all the pious talk that is not actually Bible quotes at all, it is reasonable to suspect (as many atheists do) that religion is opium for the masses, an attempt to soothe their fear of the unknown and unknowable, of which death is the greatest.  If only!  Once you start reading the book for yourself, you will see that God’s main project is not to comfort people, but to make them LESS comfortable. It is more of a loud alarm clock than a lullaby. There is page after page threatening loss, ruin, pain and a humiliating death unless the reader takes the spoon in the other hand and repents. Perhaps even then, but at least then there may be a chance.  The God of the Bible is NOT impressed with the dominant species of the planet, and he goes into great detail on the issue.

With the wisdom of Solomon, I predict that the atheists who dismissed the Bible as an attempt to placate people will be even less eager to get in line when it turns out to be the opposite. Oh well. What I want to write about today is equally valid for atheists and theists, and probably equally offensive to both as well. We’ll also stop by Norse mythology and a point where it is disturbingly exact.  Still, let’s start with a quote from the Bible:

“But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.”

This probably means something to you if you are a Christian. To me, it means not being a hikikomori. I bet that was not what you expected.  Let me explain.

In Japan, the hikikomori (person who stays in their room) is an extreme case of the otaku,  a person obsessed with comics, animated TV series or computer games. By spending an inordinate amount of time and thought on these topics, the otaku (usually a young man) becomes gradually unable to live in the real world.  He withdraws to home and eventually to his own room, neglects practicalities down to even personal hygiene, satisfying only the basic needs of the body as needed to remain alive and obsessed.  Due to the strong sense of family duty in Asia, parents will usually provide for these men quietly.

As we see, the hikikomori has withdrawn from the  hard reality of ordinary life, into a world of daydream, a small world where they are in control.  As a result, they are destroyed as humans, specifically their sanity.

Regardless of the local culture, anyone who withdraws from reality to live in daydream will experience dissolution.  They enter into a sea of chaos, losing sanity and energy.  You can say they lose substance, “like a slug that dissolves as it moves” to throw another Bible quote at you.  (Slug here being the mollusc, not the projectile.)

You may at first glance think that the hikikomori is similar to the hermit. And for some hermits, unfortunately, this is true.  Withdrawal, loss of mental substance, and outright insanity are very possible threats for those who seek solitude.  However, this is clearly not the case for all hermits. Some of the greatest thinkers throughout the ages were either complete or partial hermits.  This is because the everyday world – consensus reality – lies not on the end of the spectrum of reality, but somewhere in the middle.  There are worlds that are MORE real than this one, just like there are many worlds that are LESS real.  I have written about this extensively in the past.  One easy example of a higher world is that of mathematics.  Just like we create lower worlds, we are created through higher worlds.

The ancient Norsemen believed that the cosmos came to be in the meeting of two extremes: The fiery heat of Muspellheim and the freezing cold of Niflheim. From their meeting, the beginning of all substance emerged.

This is surprisingly similar to my current metaphysics.  I believe that the multi-layered universe is a thick multidimensional membrane between two non-existences:  The void, the absolute empty nothingness, and the Ground of Being, the absolute and undivided First Principle, which is also no-thing in the sense that it cannot be described as part of creation.

The universe available to man then has a gradient of reality. Some of the realms accessible to mind are less real than ordinary life, while others are MORE real.  By using the realms of mathematics and physics, we can predict and influence the ordinary world with great leverage. Modern society depends on this for its very existence.  Think of the people who traveled in their minds into the realm of nuclear physics, and how the work of these few adventurers changed the course of human history forever.

Less visible are the effects of those who have colonized the worlds of ideas, or the “mythical” worlds of  religion.  Yet some of the people who were active in these mental realms have changed the course of history in their own very drastic ways.  By adapting to a more real world, they grew more real themselves, becoming “larger than life” and able to exert enormous influence.  This is quite a contrast to those who have adapted to the LESS real worlds – they become powerless to even control their own lives.

Living near consensus reality, I have never ventured truly far in either direction, although I have some familiarity with neighboring realms. But I cannot imagine how it feels to draw close to Niflheim, the absolute zero (for cold is the absence of energy), where life is drained of all color and warmth, and even the sense of self dissolves into nothingness.  Nor can I imagine the white-hot fire of Muspellheim, the Forge of Creation,  beyond all myth, all symbols, and all natural laws, where all laws of nature are unified not just in theory but in experience, where pure existence wells up from something that is beyond even existence itself.

So, as Microsoft used to say: “Where do you want to go today?”

Bout of sickness

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Well, I ended up only being at work for an hour longer than usual, a pleasant surprise.  But before I got that far, I had a less pleasant surprise that made me wonder whether I could work at all.

On my way through the city, I started to feel bad.  I was short of breath and got a dry cough. Going up the stairs to my office, my heart was hammering much harder than it usually does for such a modest exertion.  And after I arrived, I kept getting rapidly worse.  I started to shiver and feel queasy and out of it, not exactly dizzy but kind of foggy. My heart was beating as if I were running, even though I just stood there.  It was as if all major parts of my body were starting to malfunction at the same time.  I must admit I thought that was what happened, that I had somehow fallen victim to sepsis, “blood poisoning”, an infection spreading throughout the body.  But how?  The loose tooth does harbor a disgusting mix of bacteria, but they have no obvious entryway into the bloodstream, and I have no infected sores that I can see.  I was confused.  But as I kept rapidly getting worse, I thought about going to the emergency room.  (You know what happens if I do that, or even go to a doctor – somehow when it is finally my turn, I am healthier than the doctor and nurses.  I really should get myself a job at a hospital, since I seem to absorb the healing aura of the place in some mystical way!)

Before I came that far, however, I had some sudden and uncomfortable bowel movements to take care of. After this, I felt very tired and spent 10-30 minutes in something between meditation and sleep in my chair, doing nothing but letting the nanomachines repair my body. Which evidently they did.  After some earlier episode, I carry an electronic fever thermometer with me, and according to it my temperature peaked at 37.5 C before that rest, and fell back afterwards.  That is about one degree C higher than my usual morning temperature, but well within normal human range.  Most children and many young women are naturally that warm.

I still don’t feel perfectly well, so no mowing today.  (Besides, the sun was already setting and that means the mosquitos are out.)  As midnight approaches, I have trace of headache, but my heartbeat is back to normal.  It was a bit of a scare, though. I still don’t know what caused it, which is the worst part of it.  Will it be back tomorrow?  Or in the middle of the night?  I have no idea.

One other thing bears mention today.  As I went to the bus stop, there stood a car parked there, a small pickup.  There was no one in it or nearby.  This is unusual, but I just observed it.  The bus had to stop out in the street, but I got on alright.  Two bus stops later, we picked up a couple more people.  This time there stood a lorry (truck) in the bus stop.  I did not see if anyone was in it, but it is not that unnatural.  We drove on, and I spent the time thinking about other things, if at all.  But as we were approaching the city, we stopped again, to let someone off I think.  I noticed that there stood a large car parked in the bus stop.  Then I looked out the window to the other side, and there stood a small passenger car parked on the shoulder of the road, not even at a stop.  It was completely empty and there was no one around.

I decided to check the Internet for clues as to whether the Rapture had occured during the night or morning.  It certainly looked as if a number of drivers had just had a few seconds notice to park their cars…

But whatever it was, I really doubt the Rapture will be a local phenomenon to the Kristiansand area, although some of the small churches here might be less surprised if it were.  The south coast is Norway’s “Bible belt”, although the religion is dying out even here eventually.

(I don’t know for sure whether the Rapture will be a literal, physical event, but I don’t see why not.  It will probably seem very natural though. I mean, the Jews returning to their lands flying like doves was a literal, physical event that must have sounded utterly magical and unrealistic for most of the time it was written in the Bible, likewise the prophecy that they would make the desert bloom. All of this came to pass and hardly anyone lifted an eyebrow.)

But if there is a literal, physical “alien abduction” of Christians at some future point, I think it is pretty sure that I won’t be among those disappearing.  I no longer have that kind of simple, childish faith. Whether that realization was part of what made me feel sick to the bone, I don’t know. “One event following after another does not always mean that the first event was the cause of the second.”

Golden rule rules

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Since it is official Jesus Day today, in memory of him teleporting out of the tomb and saving the world (how’s that for comeback), I thought I would say a few words about the Golden Rule. After all, Jesus made it famous. There are similar sayings from other people, or so I have heard, although I have never heard who. The Silver Rule (don’t do it to others if you don’t want them to do it to you) was around in the same area before Jesus though, and is generally something small children learn the hard way.

Anyway! It has come to my attention that some people think the Golden Rule is not perfect and we need a “Platinum Rule”. While I’d say Kant may have been on to something with his proposal that we should live so that our actions could be used as a universal law, that is a bit too wide to be practical. Most of us don’t know much about the universe and its morality, but we know what we’d like others to do to us. So we can do that to them.

Now the latest criticism I have heard is that we should do to others what THEY want rather than what we want. Uhm. Yes, dear reader, this is what happens when people think Jesus was some kind of barbarian hick who couldn’t think as clearly as they can – even though they obviously don’t even have the wisdom of Solomon. If they had, they would not have made fools out of themselves. (And I don’t mean that in a good way, this time.)

Let me illustrate this by example. Let us say that you really like grilled cheese sandwiches. Really, really like them. According to the Golden Rule, whenever you have guests, you would serve grilled cheese sandwiches and nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches, right? Because that is what you would want them to do when you visit them.

But wait a minute! One of your neighbors has this thing about hot dogs. He really, really likes them. Or so it seems, because every time you’ve been there, he has served hot dogs and nothing but hot dogs. Even though you have tried to speak to him at length and in great detail about the glory of grilled cheese, he just doesn’t take a hint and keeps serving hot dogs. He simply ignores your opinion completely, and you don’t like that at all. Did you hear that? So don’t do that to him!

We definitely want other people to consider our needs, and within reason also our wants. Therefore, the Golden Rule commands that we do the same unto them. How hard can that be to understand?

The Golden Rule grows with you. Just because you interpreted it in a childish way does not mean this was its only meaning. No matter how much your awareness expands, the same principle still applies. You want others to live a life that can serve as a moral guideline for the world? In that case, it behooves you to do the same.

That’s all, folks. Or at least it is Moses and the prophets.