Category Archives: religion

Pearls before swine, lots of pearls

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“The poison of jealousy turns even an angel into a devil.” When we go too high above our pray grade, we unleash a universal Constraining Force, which has the power to enrage the swine around us, or even the swine within. This is a fearful thing to unleash.

Recently I have immersed myself in winter and spring of 2010, rereading my first months in Riverview. I sure wrote a lot of worthwhile spiritual and generally good and useful stuff. I received a lot of revelations, and of course I had some from before, so I just kept writing it down. I am not really sure it has been of help to anyone, but perhaps one day it will be. Who knows?

I read a bit in Mouravieff’s Gnosis again. He mentions that those who are trying to break out of the general law – the inertia of the world – should keep silent about spiritual things. It is natural, he says, to want to talk to everyone about the wonderful things you have found. But it will cause the constraining elements of the world to become aware of you and react in various ways, externally and internally. (Resistance from other people, and temptations.) So while you may not need to literally go through your days silent, you should be silent about the spiritual sights you have just seen. He refers then to Christ’s words about not casting pearls before swine or giving to the dogs what is holy. They will just attack you.

That may be so, but if no one ever mentioned the spiritual things, then it would die with them, is that not so?

Well, that is so, but by and large it should be left to those who have achieved lift-off, I guess. Those who have so little to lose, the constraining forces can do little about them except revile them and kill them, which is not enough at that stage. Christ said at the end of his life that the prince of this world was coming “and he has nothing in me”. That is not the case for us newbies. Whether we think so or not, there is actually a lot in us that can be activated by the constraining force of the ordinary world.

But I keep having this notion that if I throw enough pearls before the swine, sooner or later they will lose their footing and fall flat. Since there seems to be an endless supply of pearls – for when you have been given an internal companion from Heaven, no matter how undeserved, there is no end to what could be said – it seemed reasonable to me that I must say all the words that should be spoken, before they are lost forever.

On the internet, nobody can see if you are a dog. Or a swine. I like to think that there are a few out there who are neither. But if I were to think of myself, and what is best for me, then I should probably keep a lower profile. The more we speak up, the more the constraining force will focus upon us, what the ancients called demons and Satan, which attacks both within through temptations and wild emotions, and without through slander and hostility. In one story written down in the gospel, Jesus Christ drove out unclean spirits from a man, and at once they went into a flock of swine. This is unfortunately so even spiritually speaking, that the swine are always receptive to the negative spiritual influences. The more pearls you throw at them, the angrier they get, unaware that what they are being pelted with is supposed to be valuable. We are not talking cuddly piglets here, a crowd of enraged swine is a fearsome thing indeed.

For a beginner such as I – and this is tragic in itself, to be a beginner after all these years and with all this insight – for a beginner, the constraining force may well completely extinguish the spiritual life if I go too high. This is a fact deeply enshrined in all serious spiritual traditions, and also mentioned in Christianity of course: “and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.” The Devil is the personification of the constraining force, according to Mouravieff. I don’t think it matters here whether you think of the Devil as a person as such, regardless the point stands that it is not something we should mess with just for the hell of it. If we go too far above our pray grade, we become “inflated” as some translations put it, and the constraining force will cause us to fall into damnable actions.

This is not unlike what I experience when I play Go, actually.  See, at the start of a match, it is customary to place stones at strategic spots on the board, with the unspoken intention of declaring the surrounding are one’s own, or to occupy it if you will. But if I start out reaching far into the other side of the board early on, the opponent will react by invading my home territory and cut it apart, and I end up with nothing. Since I am a beginner and don’t have the skill to follow up on bold moves, the best I can do at my present level is to secure a smaller part of the board and wall it off from enemy incursion.

While I believe that my Invisible Friend could easily reveal to me innumerable books of Heavenly wisdom, it is unlikely that I would fail to make a fuss about it, and subsequently be cut to pieces by the constraining force, “an anti-dromedary” as I call it. (Enantiodromia.) When someone who has made a sustained and earnest beginning in spiritual work is gutted like that, the result is usually terrifying. An utter ruin, a destruction on a far more massive scale than the setbacks that anyone can experience in life. I have lived a charmed life so far. Long may it last – but that means not playing Buddha on the Internet.

Go (igo) and religion

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“Even now I am in front of a Go board” thinks the 1000 year old ghost Sai from Hikaru no Go. “But for how long will God continue to listen to my selfishness?” The answer to that is a major spoiler for the story, but here’s a hint: Perhaps humans, like the stones on the Go board, are placed where they are for a purpose beyond themselves.

The ancient board game of Go may have some things in common with the great world religions. Is it a coincidence?

I hope that the recent revival of the ancient board game of Go (or igo, in Japanese) will also lead to a flowering of religion, specifically good religion. I generally think highly of religion, as promoting virtue and wisdom. But there is also bad religion, this cannot be denied: It promotes anger, pride and discord. I like to think that the game of Go, despite being a war game in principle, has qualities that encourage virtue and wisdom, and aligns with higher religion. I may be wrong about this, so let us think about it together.

It is clear from observation that Go encourages patience and self-control. We tend to think of young people as being volatile, given to quick bursts in one direction or the other, flittering and fluttering like butterflies from one idea to the next. But young people who play Go are able to sustain concentration for steadily longer periods of time, and suppress rash moves in order to reach a goal that is ahead in time. This is wise and virtuous, and any activity that promotes it should be given due credit.

An interesting difference between Go and chess is that chess is feudal: The pawns are inherently less worth than knights and bishops, from the very start. In contrast, all stones in Go are equal at the start, and equal at the end when they go back in the same box. It is only through their position on the board and the influence of being at the right time and place, that they derive their value. This is a way of looking at humans that is also aligned with virtue and wisdom. We are all born as babies, and it is through being at the right place at the right time doing the right thing that we become valuable in the greater picture. Someone who may seem insignificant at the moment may become very important at a future time.

To take one example, the religion of Christianity started in a barn and continued with a dead man on a stake, basically. It could hardly be less auspicious, a sight that would make most stomachs churn. But within a few decades, it was bringing light and hope to many nations. As for the Buddha, he was born a king but became a pawn, wandering off into the forest to leave all earthly ambitions behind. Yet his wisdom has lifted nations up over the ages to come. Lao-Tzu is said to have been riding out of the empire on a yak when he wrote the book of the Tao. He seemed destined to be forgotten, but a border guard convinced him to write briefly the wisdom of his long life. Even though what we do may seem insignificant, if it is part of a higher plan, it may turn things around long after our passing.There is no telling which small and forgettable person may end up being a hub on which fate turns. Nor can we tell at a glance who is winning and who is losing. The play of a greater hand may change one into the other.

A perhaps more double-edged effect of Go: Everything on the board must be assumed to be meaningful, to have a purpose, if only you could see it. Unless you are playing against a small child or a madman, there is not a stone on the board that isn’t there for a purpose.

The world we see around us can be said to consist of “law and coincidence”, or order and randomness. There are clearly laws of nature that keep the great things on path: The sun rises and sets, the moon waxes and wanes reliably. But there are also things that seem utterly unpredictable. This mixing of order and randomness goes very deep: If we have a sample of radioactive Actinium-225, we know that it will be reduced to half by exactly 10 days. But if we observe the individual atoms, there is no possibility to predict when they will decay. We know that half of them will be gone, but any one of them might linger for months, or disappear within seconds. There is no way they can agree among themselves who will change: They are atoms, they cannot communicate and have neither wit nor will.

On the goban (Go board), there is no randomness. Yet if you come by two strangers playing, at first glance it may look random indeed. (Although I am told that this is less so to an expert.) So the practice of playing Go encourages the thinking that all things have a meaning, a purpose. Religion is known to confer a similar experience. But is this really true?

There is such a thing as superstition. For instance, a black cat crosses the road and later that day you become virulently ill. There is a saying that bad fortune follows when a black cat crosses the road, so you may think this is the reason, or if not the reason then at least a portent or warning of something that would happen anyway. But neither science nor high religion supports this form of thinking. A lot of things happen that have no meaning in themselves.

But like the stones on the Go board, these things may have a meaning from outside themselves, because they are placed there by a higher hand. This is what religion teaches. But this requires belief in a God or Karma or some such higher power that controls all that seems to be random. That is quite a leap of faith! This aspect of religion is, and should be, voluntary. I am not going to try to convince you. As Jesus Christ once said: “If they don’t believe Moses and the prophets, they will not believe if someone rises from the dead.” Indeed, one of the last things any of his disciples said to him before his suffering in Gethsemane and on Calvary was: “Show us the Father, and it will be enough for us.” But of course Jesus could not show them the eternal, omnipresent God. He could only show himself. In the end, that was enough for 11 of the 12 who were with him. But not for all. No matter what we say or do, it will never be enough for all. This is how the universe was intended to work, allowing free will. This is what I believe.

So what I say is that the habits from playing Go may make it easier to think in the same way as higher religions do. Whether you think that is a good thing or not, I have no control over that. Nor do I see it as favoring one religion over another, really, although I suppose someone else may see that. And if you can derive wisdom and virtue from it without religion – which I am sure is possible as well – this is in itself a good thing, surely. These are scarce resources at any time.

But at least I can see more clearly now why so many elderly Japanese spend their final years playing Go. Perhaps it would be even better if they had started early, as many young people have done since the 1990es. Let us see what will be the final outcome of that.

Accustomed to this world

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“Everyone has grown accustomed to this world” says Asuna in Sword Art Online. Ain’t that the truth.

The closer we come to the end of our life in this world, the more accustomed we are to it.

Philosophy and religion occur in the strangest places. This season unveils the anime Sword Art Online, a story with a rather dark beginning. In 2022, ten thousand people have signed up for the new online role playing game “Sword Art Online”, which is the first that uses a brain scanning helmet to fully control the in-game character by using the same type of signals used to control one’s real body. Unfortunately for them, the creator of the game is a madman who has coded the game interface to electrocute them in real life if they die in the game. Also, you can’t log out.

The story is moderately interesting, but the premise struck me as being a kind of metaphor for materialism. It is this way with most people, after all: We think, at some level at least, that if we die in this world, everything ends. Although various religions claim this is not the case, we habitually act on the assumption that death is the end of all things

However, Sword Art Online is not entirely without hope. There is a giant tower of supposedly 100 levels, each progressively harder than the one below it. If the inhabitants of the game manage to clear them all, they will supposedly be free. Unfortunately, nobody knows for sure whether this is the case until it is done, just like nobody knows for sure whether they will really die in real life if they die in the game. They only have the word of the game creator for it. And so, people are hesitant to risk their hide to help clear the higher levels. After all, they have a life of sorts in the virtual world. After a while, they have gotten used to it, and have carved out their niche in this world.

***

In my Master of Magic fiction story resumed from 2008, the main character is a 18 year old boy from our world (or one indistinguishable from ours). He is drowning after driving into the sea, when his soul is pulled into a body in the magical world of Arcanus during an attempted resurrection of a young boy there. Probably. Or he may be in a coma in the hospital and imagining it all. He is somewhat undecided at first. But after seeing magic used first hand, he realizes that it is similar to programming, something he is very skilled at. It may take a lot of time and unreasonable effort, but he has decided to learn magic until he can figure out how it works, the very nature of the world he is trapped in. He intends to bypass the operating system of the world, writing his code directly into its registers, to slip through the laws that holds him in this world and ascend to the real world.

*** 

I think it is a very fascinating concept. But in my own life, I am not actually making this great effort to clear the enemies in my own nature, or to understand the laws of the mind that keep me trapped. It is more like a hobby, really. It would be nice to think that some outward event, some circumstance, would convince me if it is really possible to survive death. But I don’t think such a circumstance would actually make the big difference I imagine. After all, it was Jesus Christ who once said: “If they don’t believe Moses and the prophets, they won’t believe if someone rises from the dead.” History kind of proves him right on that, doesn’t it?

It is a disturbing observation that the closer we come to the end of our life in this temporary world, the more accustomed we have become to it. And in the end, we only have stories from long ago that there is a way out, that the end of this life may not necessarily be the end of everything. Everything pales in comparison to that – in theory. In practice, even the smallest coin at arm’s length will completely block the sun.

“2012” by Ryuho Okawa

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The end of the world? Not if Ryuho Okawa has anything to say about it! And he has quite a bit to say, as usual. Although this time most of the talking is done by the spirits of Montezuma and Quetzalcoatl. That’s how they appear in this book, at least.

The book 2012 is one of two I recently discovered on Smashwords. I tend to buy any books from Happy Science, although I have had a couple disappointments, even they have been interesting at least.  Happy Science is a Japanese new religion. Technically it is a cult, in the same way as Christianity, a religion centered on one man who is believed to be divine. Unlike Jesus Christ, Japanese author Ryuho Okawa is neither dead nor resurrected, but he obviously has some other qualities to inspire his followers. Like having written over 800 books in less than 30 years. This is one of them.

The book is a bit overpriced compared to its length. This seems to be a trend now that IRH press has taken over publishing the English versions themselves rather than licensing them to overseas spiritual publishers. Perhaps they feel that people should be expected to pay this much for books by a god? Or perhaps they just are unfamiliar with the price level in the English-speaking market. This is quite possible. I know from my own homeland, Norway, that book prices here are several times higher than in America, so much so that I prefer buying Norwegian books in English translations. Perhaps the same is true for Japan? Japanese anime certainly is expensive compared to American cartoons, so that may explain it. Anyway, prepare your wallets, I paid around 15 bucks for some 25000 words. Of course, being Norwegian, I don’t have a problem paying 15 dollars for a book, but your economy may vary.

Now for the book itself. It is sold as non-fiction, but I think some will disagree.

***

There is a prophecy that the world will end in 2012, more exactly on December 22. This is because the end of the Mayan calendar happens at this time. That seems a pretty flimsy excuse for ending the world. The world of the Mayans has already ended, so to speak, when their kingdom dissolved shortly after the year 900, even though their descendants still live in the area. The Aztec empire was to some extent inspired by the Mayans who preceded them. The Aztecs lived further north, in today’s Mexico.

Earlier this year, a calendar was found that included the next cycle, showing that Mayans did not actually expect the world to end this year after all. But the book I review was written in 2011, so this information is lacking.

Ryuho Okawa may be considered the greatest god on Earth, but even gods can’t know everything when they are incarnate. So he used his powers as the world’s greatest spiritual medium to place a general call to the spirit world, asking for whichever spirit was most involved with the 2012 prophecy. He then acted as host for the spirit, while his assistants interviewed it. They got quite a surprise. The spirit was that of the last Aztec king, Montezuma. But more worrying, he claimed to now be the guardian spirit of Barack Obama, and planned to use him to fulfill the Mayan curse in December 2012.

The book includes the full interview with the spirit of Montezuma. He does not seem all that impressive to me, and probably not to the Japanese either. He insisted that he did not want revenge on the Caucasians or the Christians, he just wanted to get the karma back to the middle by ending their dominance. He spent a good deal of his time talking about aliens and an expected alien invasion, but the connection between this and what he said before about ending the Christian calendar was pretty vague. All in all, for a great statesman he did not seem all that enlightened.

The more the contrast to the second interview in the book, where Okawa summons Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god, whom Montezuma had mentioned a couple times. Montezuma believed that Quetzalcoatl was actually Jesus Christ. Now, a while after the previous interview, Quetzalcoatl had contacted Okawa saying that he wanted to give a message. This happens from time to time. So Okawa let the spirit of Quetzalcoatl enter his body and let his assistants interview him.

This was a very different and somewhat hair-raising read. The spirit of Quetzalcoatl appears far more intelligent, coherent and spiritual. First, he confirmed that he was Jesus, but did not make an issue of it. In fact, he seemed surprised that he had lived a long life without being killed this time.

(In the lore of Happy Science, there are ten 9-dimensional spirits or Saviors, of which Amor (Jesus Christ) is one and El Cantare (Ryuho Okawa) another, but due to the vast spiritual power of these beings they can only pack up to 1/5 of their consciousness into one mortal body at a time. They can however send less, and there is also a difference of how “core” the personality is that they incarnate. Okawa is the very core of El Cantare, the most exact representation of his being and the most powerful. Jesus Christ was supposedly something similar for Amor. Still, it seems to have baffled everyone that Jesus would send even a fringe incarnation to Meso-America without telling his good friend Ryuho Okawa. There is no mention of this in The Golden Laws, which details the appearance of the Great Spirits in human history. Then again, Japanese generally don’t consider Latin America and Africa “human history”, more like pre-history I guess. Actually Quetzalcoatl took them to task for that.)

Quetzalcoatl does not consider the aliens much of a problem. His worry is something else entirely: Japan is about to get destroyed by a human army, and Okawa’s life is in danger. It is of the utmost importance that Okawa completes his message to the world before he dies and gets it to Latin America, where it will survive after the fall of Japan. Quetzalcoatl scolds Okawa’s disciples for their lack of devotion, saying that they treat Happy Science as a business and don’t see the importance of saving souls. He also takes the religion to task for its focus on material progress. God does not particularly care about material progress, says Quetzalcoatl: People are often more likely to seek salvation in hard times. Civilizations rise and fall because that is the way they were designed to work. To the gods, this is comparable to a washing machine, that shakes things up and down to get rid of the dirt. So there are good times and hard times, you cannot escape that. You need to save the souls, that is the purpose of religion, not to run a successful business.

Quetzalcoatl also states that the failure of the Happiness Realization Party to win political influence in Japan was due to the poor quality of Okawa’s disciples, they are 20 years behind the curve and it may be too late to save the country now. Thus his invitation to bring Happy Science to Latin America, where he will watch over it after Okawa is gone. You are only thinking about Japan, he scolds the Happy Science staff: We are trying to save souls in countries you don’t even know the name of!

Okawa seems taken aback after the end of the interview. Still, the afterword of the book states once again that the future will be bright if you believe in him and improve your mind. As humans, we have the divine ability to create, and together we can create a better future.

But it does not escape my notice that he has just this summer released a movie in Japan detailing the invasion by a superior Asian military power, and how in that case the nation can only be saved by spiritual means. I look forward to seeing it. Is this the legacy of Quetzalcoatl?

Happy time-twisting

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The universe is full of life!

“The infinite space is full of various forms of life.” So there is nothing strange about me writing about a reincarnated Pleiadean. It is a work of fiction, after all. At least I hope so!

The independent thought streams in my head, even the guest writers, can be pretty impressive. Take the muse I wrote about two entries ago, which was telling his story as a TSI (fictive name for Happy Science) member who discovered that he actually came from the Pleiades.

So I just bought a new book that has quietly become available from Happy Science, Secrets of the Everlasting Truths. The book goes in some detail about how Ryuho Okawa has found a way to explore outer space through interviewing humans who are reincarnated aliens. Most of them, he notes, are from the Pleiades and Vega.

Given that I just bought this book, it is not particularly surprising that I write a fanfic in which the main character is a reincarnated Pleiadean. Well, except for the small detail that I wrote that first and discovered the book afterwards.

***

In all fairness, this is not the first time Okawa mentions Pleiadeans and soul migration between planets. I (or my muse) did not simply make this up, there have been mentions in passing in two of his earlier books, although I can’t remember if he actually combined them back then. Now he declares that there is a number of these around already, as it also is in my story, and he spends a whole lecture on this phenomenon. He also mentions that time is not a straight line, but we already knew that.

It is one of those coincidences again. I have those from time to time, and they are usually not religious in nature (if one can call soul interviews of reincarnated aliens “religion” – it is kind of … not what most religions do.) Like one day I was taking a walk and thinking about how the world would have been if the tricycle had take off instead of the bicycle (still not sure why it didn’t, trikes are a lot more stable). While I was still elaborating on this scenario in my mind, the first adult tricycle I had seen in the area came into view. I had lived there for years and never seen an adult tricycle, nor had I thought about them for all those years. But as soon as I think about it… !

Several times I have dreamed about things that would make perfect sense to dream about, if they had only happened the day before instead of the day after the dream. I am not sure this is even supernatural: If we accept that time really is a dimension, then the sequence of past, present and future are necessarily continuous. Each part is “glued” to the parts before and after it. I have used the image of magnetism in the past: A magnet will easily attract a needle, but a needle also attracts the magnet. Usually the magnet does not move toward the needle, because the magnet is heavy and the needle is light. But if the magnet is placed precariously and the needle is stuck to something, once in a blue moon the magnet might move toward the needle instead of the other way around.

Let me take another example, which happened at the workplace where I was making my famous debt collection software suite. It is so long ago that we used cassettes for music. (They were self-enclosed audio tapes, popular before the age of the CD and some way into it, although they quickly disappeared when MP3 players arrived.) I had a combined cassette player and radio, and was playing one of my favorite songs back then, “Why Worry” by Dire Straits. After I finished playing that, I switched to radio. The radio was playing “Why Worry” – the same song I had been playing. I have heard that song only two or three times on radio, to the best of my knowledge. (I think I would have noticed, for it was special to me for many years. I actually bought my first CD player because I wore out the tapes by playing that one song repeatedly, then spooling back to play it again. This is much easier on a CD. ^_^)

So the time-switch between reading the book and writing the fanfiction is not in any way proof that Ryuho Okawa really is what he claims to be, the god of this world, chief of the powers of the invisible realm that surrounds our planet. But it kind of underscores his point that science still has a ways to go, I think.

I may be back with a full review of the book later, perhaps.

More Happy Science fanfic

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My Sims 3 self-sim during his late years, going on about his bookshelf. I would not be surprised if I do the same, if I live to be white-haired (or nearly so).

Whatever else you may say about the Japanese new religion “Happy Science”, it works wonders for my creativity. A year and a half ago I wrote a fanfic very loosely based on their movie “The Rebirth of Buddha”, or rather the world in which that movie took place. None of the characters from the movie appeared in person in my 50 000 words story. As I wrote back then, the story more or less wrote itself, to the point where even my wrists did not hurt the way they usually do when I write a lot. Not quite a miracle, I guess, but certainly unusual.

I’ve tried this two times later, the last being now. It really is baffling. I start with basically nothing – no plot, not even a character – and just invite this imaginary person to tell his story in first person limited view, the way a friend would tell a story to another friend. And there they go. The first one was pretty unstructured in that he would come with hints of things that happened later, and suddenly would get distracted by some point of doctrine that he would eagerly expound on. That was actually rather charming, I thought, and fun to write.

The one this summer is more systematic, more restrained, telling things in chronological order, sticking to what is relevant to the story. So it is a bit less exciting but more polished. Well, less exciting at the start. Things definitely take a turn for the exotic when he discovers that he is a reincarnated alien from the Pleiades, where he lived and died. After going to Heaven he and several others volunteered to incarnate as humans on Earth. He still has some trouble getting used to it.

This is a work of fiction and has nothing to do with my habit of referring to people as “humans” and “earthlings” and not understanding their obsession with romance and amassing property. Just thought you’d want to know. ^_^

There seems to be a  new personality each time I start one of these stories. Even the way they speak, although they do have certain common traits that they may have picked up from their common source material, the books of Master Taiyou Sorano, containing his Teachings of the Mind.

Am I the only one who finds this a bit… spooky? That I seem to have a bunch of voices from an imaginary parallel world in my subconscious?

***

I do consider that the reason for this effect is that there is a great deal of this type of personality in myself. It is not autobiographical as such, but I think I have the tendency. If I had been a little different, and Happy Science had been a little different (in particular not referring to the founder as God), I might have become a Happy Scientist in fact if not in name. It comes down to the books, you see.

There is in me a deep wish for there to be books so filled with light and life and power that they change the understanding and even the very personality of those who read them. There is the Bible, of course, but the Christian Church also had some books written by a few holy men, explaining the teachings in more detail and exhorting the faithful. I tried to read them all. And they worked, too! I was changed greatly. At first it was a confusing process, taking a few shortcuts through the wilderness outside of sanity as we know it, but I soon got into the light which grew brighter and brighter. I became the genius you all know and love.

It really worked – up to a point. There were changes that were never effected. There were limits never overcome. And a part of me has secretly hoped that somewhere I would find The Books, the ones that would unlock more doors and let the sunshine in. The Books that would change me without me having to go through strict discipline, without having to make great sacrifices. Simply by learning the Truth I would be set free – a rather optimistic interpretation of the Lord’s words perhaps, but why not? The words of Jesus were spirit and were life, as he himself attested. And he said to his disciples: “You are already clean [or pure] because of the words I have spoken to you.”

If Jesus had written hundreds of books, certainly that alone would suffice? By reading them, I could have become transformed into a being of immeasurable light, right? But for some reason he never did so. Neither did his disciples; one of them admitted that the world would not have space for all the books that would have to be written. Still, I would have appreciated a few hundred…

From time to time I come across another book that is so luminous, it changes the way I think, either temporarily or even permanently. (Well, so far.) Mainly books of timeless esoteric wisdom, these days, or hagiology (the lore of saints). So the dream remains alive.

So the TSI members who have a library of hundreds of luminous books, they are each in their own way an expression of my own dream.  Indeed, most of the few books of Ryuho Okawa that are in public sale in English have to some degree this effect on me, to increase my inner brightness, or so it feels. Am I wrong? Or are these exceptions? Am I the exception? There are supposedly sold millions of some of these books. Why has not Japan become transfixed with the glory of the Buddha or something? Of course, there have been sold millions of Bibles, and one may wonder how that worked out. Then again, we don’t know what society would have been without them. If something like the Viking Age, which was my direct ancestors before they got Bibles, I think we should keep the Bibles coming.

But in part I banish my relentless optimism to the realm of fiction, in which the whole libraries of miraculous books really exist and those who read them repeatedly become filled with unquenchable light that surpasses the normal limitations of the human condition. Even more than I have seen in this life, I mean. Of course, I sincerely encourage anyone who actually has become filled with celestial brightness through the reading of books to comment with their recommendations.

Remembering Eternity

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Should I look into my heart from when I was a child?

Sometimes in silence a remembrance comes to us from the depth of our early childhood. In a similar way, a “memo” from Heaven may reach our heart. Or we may not remember it until we are gently reminded by someone who Was There, then suddenly the details spring to mind.

When I say “remembering Eternity”, I don’t mean in the same sense as a religious proverb that was popular in the Christian Church when I was young, “Consider the brevity of life, the certainty of death, and the length of eternity.” I am sure that is useful, if somewhat oppressive to the ordinary human, and some of us not so ordinary humans as well…

I mean something entirely different and much weirder, which probably will make NO SENSE whatsoever to ordinary humans. Well, my apologies in advance if you are one of them. I don’t see many of you here.

There is this tome of esoteric Knowledge, by a much more widely accepted author than Boris. Despite some measure of fame, the author of Meditations on the Tarot preferred to be known simply as “Unknown Friend”. This is not without reason: He had in his younger days written certain books which he could probably not in good conscience rescind, but which would interfere in a negative way with this book, written toward the end of his life and published after his passing. I recommend therefore to not delve into his identity.

I don’t read the book much, just open it now and then. This may well be my loss, but although the book seems to be far more mainstream than Gnosis by Mouravieff, it is still very esoteric. So, I nibble. You know I have a weakness for this stuff and could easily sail up, up and away from consensus reality, which I now at least regularly visit. (Along with the world of the Sims, obviously…)

***

I turned a page and read about contemplation, the practice of which he calls “listening in silence”. I may have mentioned in passing that in my Lightwielder fiction (which is a bit of a metaphor or parable or simile or some such), the spiritual practice of the Servants of the Light is called “listening to the silence”. So he got my attention right there. This silence is an inner silence, of course, and I will explain if you ask how one can attain to it even if living by a high-traffic road or while taking the commute bus or train to work. Just ask if you don’t know.

There are those who hear God speak to them if they listen intently. But I have benefited the most from listening to God’s silence. In so far as I have benefited at all from anything in my life, this would be a big part of it, I believe.

***

But the next part was also super interesting. Unknown Friend claimed that this listening in silence is a form of recall, of remembering. He says that just as we have horizontal memory of the past, so we can also have vertical memory from Above. If you remember me recently speaking of how Eternity is at a right angle to Time, and that we can imagine Time as horizontal and Eternity as vertical… (I forget whether I uploaded that or decided it was above my pray grade.) Anyway, this is the same thing.

He also cites Henri Bergson that “pure memory is a spiritual manifestation. With memory we are in very truth in the domain of the spirit.” Again this is equivalent to my claim that Time is the first spiritual or at least mental dimension, in the sense that we do not perceive time directly, but reconstruct it with our mental powers of memory and anticipation. Animals can remember, sometimes with great clarity over long spans of time (famously elephants have such a memory), but humans have a unique ability to mentally “travel in time” as I call it. Unknown Friend describes it from another angle, that the past travels forward into the present and is reflected as if in a mirror.

In the same way, we can make our brain a mirror to what is Above, to timeless truth as I would call it. (Above corresponds to Eternity, as the horizontal corresponds to Time.)

I m not good with pure contemplation, or perhaps I have not taken enough time for timelessness. But when I read esoteric Knowledge, this is how it works: It resonates in my heart in the same way as a memory. It seems strikingly familiar. It is as if I already knew it, even though I don’t, even when I know I have never heard it before, could not possibly have heard it before. It can be hard for me to know whether I have written about something here in the past or just heard about it for the first time, that is how familiar it sometimes is.

I’d love to write more about all this, but I would go out on tangents and end up so far above my pray grade that I could not upload it. Unfortunately this is not just a memory of the future, this is already my second attempt…

Me, a kaleidoscope?

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 “God, please just overlook what I do tonight!” That’s a perfect case of what I mean. But even if God overlooks it, we must not. This is the paradox. 

I have not read in Gnosis I – the Exoteric Cycle since the day I discovered his teachings of the three time dimensions. I probably will again, given time, but I haven’t. Yet the scent of it lingers. Looking at my own entries from before I read it, I recognize bits and pieces that people usually don’t say, but that I and Boris Mouravieff do say, and somewhat similarly. It is rather weird. Boris Mouravieff is rather weird, if I may say so. He seems a bit outside consensus reality, even for an esoteric religious person. That does not necessarily mean he is crazy – it could be that the rest of us are crazy. Or it could simply be a different angle, as I like to think it is with me.

Take for instance the fact that our personalities are kaleidoscopes.

I was just a fairly small boy when I got my first toy kaleidoscope. It was a simple thing: A tube of cardboard or plastic or some such, with a simple lens at the eye end, and at the other end a part made of small mirrors and pieces of plastic. I held it up toward a light source, and the image of the small colorful pieces was reflected in the mirrors, causing a symmetric picture. Being human, I liked symmetric pictures. And being a child, I liked them being in bright colors. Also, being a child, I broke it eventually. I am not sure if I ever saw another. But the memory remains, even if vague.

Whenever I wanted a new picture, I would only shake the tube slightly, and the pieces rearranged themselves, causing the whole mirrored image to change beyond recognition.

The human mind really is like that, isn’t it? Just as Mouravieff says. Although I won’t vouch for his mathematics showing that there is just under 900 combinations in each and every human personality. If you are curious about the math, I’ll look it up, but that is not the point. The point is, I have written about this too, although not in those words.

What I have written about is the science of “hot” and “cold” mental states. This is not my invention, definitely, although I have observed them for many years now in my own life. Cold states are those in which we think rationally, and we usually have a fairly stable personality during all our cold states, although they can certainly differ too: Work is usually one such cold state of mind, perhaps the coldest of them all for most people. Most also spend the greater part of their home life in such stable states of mind, I like to think, although they may feel and act different from their job persona. (I tend to forget job-related things when I go home, unless I send a mail to myself. But I can very confidently predict how I will react, and I will keep an appointment if I can remember it.)

Hot states are usually set off by basic instincts: Lust, fear, anger or disgust. They are different from the cold states in that it is hard to predict what you will do in them, and it is hard to keep promises from one state when you are in another. This also holds true between different hot states: A promise made in fear may be extremely hard to keep while in lust, or the other way around. But also between hot and cold: People may honestly believe they would put a raw earthworm in their mouth for a week’s pay, but faced with the actual earthworm, they find that it is just too disgusting, their body decides to forget their resolution. There are about 5% who do take the earthworm though. These are the people you need in your military, send the others home. But that’s beside today’s point.

Today’s point is, we are kaleidoscopes. When we are shaken, our configuration changes, and we show a different picture for the duration. Our psyche consists of several pieces or parts, usually working together in a particular configuration that we tend to think of as “me”. But when shaken, either by an earthworm or a sexy person, one or more pieces of our psyche are “swapped out” for other pieces that fill the same spot, and the appearance of the whole becomes strikingly different.

Intriguingly, people here in the Nordic countries are less completely transformed by lust, by and large, than our immigrant population. I think this is because sexuality is more openly accepted as an integral part of life here, and so there are more connections between that part and the everyday parts of the psyche. We are able to think about sex in our cold states, as seen by people talking about it without breathing heavily or anything. So it takes more to cause a swap-out which puts lust in the driver’s seat. For many of our male immigrants, seeing a woman in scant or tight-fitting clothes is enough to make them behave like insane monkeys, while for us natives it is more of a gradual bending of the compass needle of the mind.

Be that as it may, it is clear from direct observation of myself and others that we as a natural personality are not a pearl of great price, but the broken shards of a kaleidoscope. When shaken, we change into something different, sometimes even into something that is hard to recognize.

Insofar as there is in us such a pearl, an indivisible and unchangeable part, perhaps it is better sought in exactly the part of us that watches the kaleidoscope and observes the shifting of its pictures.

A great mistake, so it seems to me, is to want “closure” when we observe in ourselves such shifts which we do not approve of. This is particularly the case with larger shifts, of which you can hear people say: “I don’t know what possessed me”, “I was not myself”, “this is not me”. That is nice, that we have higher aspirations than what we at all times can maintain. But it is important to accept the difference between “this is not the whole of me” versus “this is not me at all”. In the latter case, we seek closure. I am not sure that is a good idea.

For a Christian, for instance, to have been forgiven is often taken to mean closure. If God and men (or even, hard as that may be, women) have forgiven us, then It Didn’t Happen, right? Well, I don’t think so. To quote (for the Christian, specifically) 2. Peter 1:9, “But whoever does not have them [i.e. the virtues] is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.” To turn a blind eye on the parts of one’s kaleidoscope that don’t match our prettier aspiration, or at least to only perceive them fuzzily, is associated with not developing the qualities expected of the believer.

When some religious people are called “observant”, it is understood that they observe the precepts, the teachings of their religion. But it is also requested that one observe oneself, as the early Christians were told: “Pay attention to yourself and the teaching, keep at it; for when you do so, you shall save yourself and those who hear you.” (1.Timothy 4:16.) As it happens, this is a core tenet of Buddhism as well – the teaching of self-reflection as a saving way.

So, to the extent that we can do so without triggering neurological disorders, I believe it is to the best that we keep watching the kaleidoscope of the mind, until we have become thoroughly disillusioned about using its shifting sands as a foundation. It is not easy, but I keep trying.

Who to cling to

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Ah! People who believe are saved? Except… it seems the one thing all believers agree on is that it matters what you believe and who you believe in – believing in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost is not the same as believing in Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, not to mention Urd, Verdandi and Skuld. In fact, there is even the occasional bloodshed over which version of each deity you believe in…

***

Among the very most powerful lines I have heard in a worldly song was this, from Candle in the wind by (Sir) Elton John:

And it seems me that you lived your life like a candle in the wind,
never knowing who to cling to when the rains set in.

Because although we like to forget it, all our lives are such. When the wind is right, it makes our candle flare up brightly. When the wind turns, or the rains set in, we are snuffed out in a moment. Even if not, we flicker and fade after such a short time, consuming ourselves like a candle.

 ***

“But for me” says the Psalm, “it is good to keep close to the Lord.” Millions of us think so, at least from time to time, and particularly when the rains set in. Unfortunately there are now, and for a long time has been, many sects and outright heresies, who preach “a different Jesus and a different gospel” as St Paul already noted in the 0050es. There are indeed some who consider Paul one of the most accomplished at this re-imagining of Christ – I just mention that to show how hard it is to know anything for sure.

How do we know we’ve got the right Lord or the right God?

I think you can see from the last couple weeks of this journal that I am worrying about that. I didn’t use to, because the Presence in my heart would be my lifeline. And that is still how I feel. But I am no longer just playing in my crib under the watchful eye of the Original Parent. I have begun to dabble in things that may be too big and too wonderful for me. And I am not sure how to deal with that.

Do I really need to know all these things? I mean, yes, I am born to know things. It is my destiny. That’s the kind of guy I am. But I think there can be too much, way too much of it, or going too far ahead. Do I really need to know whether the moon is a cosmic fetus or how many dimensions of the mind there are beyond the 7 I can recognize? Do I need to know how long the astral body lives? I don’t see these things helping me to cling to God when the rains set in.

For some, that is all there is, to have a simple faith in God. And when the fog of life’s tests and temptations is so dense that you cannot see another step in front of you, that is all there is to us all, those of us who are blessed to have even that. But in this world there are born people with different personality types and different destinies. This is a good thing. We should not quarrel over this, as long as we seek each in our way to help others and not harm them, and to stay close to God or the Light.

But beyond the basics, there are so many doctrines, teachings and dogmas, so many competing sects and whole religions, all sure that they have The Truth.

I was blessed to meet, when I was still very young, a group of very pure-hearted Christians. Their teachings were not so much about things that can never be verified, like the various heavens and hells or what God did before creating the universe. They were more about how to recognize temptations before they have time to carry us off, how to react when people don’t conform to our expectations, how important it is to watch our thoughts and not just what other people see. Things like that. A practical mysticism, is how I think of it. I know the purity of these people, or at least back then. A purity that is unimaginable even to the vast majority of religious believers.

So when it comes to these things, I know from whom I have learned them, and that makes me very sure. Those who held tight to these teachings and meditated upon them became for all purposes actual saints. They became truly holy. I would go in and out of their homes, I saw how they treated their spouse and children (for those old enough to have that). I talked with young men one to one and sometimes prayed together, so I feel I know something about the purity of their heart. (Obviously I hardly ever was alone with a young woman, except in dire need such as having to travel in a car together to get home, and even that very rarely. But I am sure they were as pure and holy as the men, if not more so.)

So I am blessed in this, I have something to fall back on, to cling to when the rains set in. I know, not from theoretical speculation but from seeing and hearing firsthand. To a more modest degree, I feel like John in his first letter: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched —this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” So when I am in doubt as to whether I have taken a wrong turn, I have this to fall back on. How I wish that all were so blessed. But most are not, and I must take care not to deceive you. It may not be just me who will lose out if I lose my way and get puffed up by false teachings.

***

 I had been out walking and jogging today – I have done that a lot lately, walking part of the way and jogging part of the way. I was on my way home and had slowed down when the first heavy raindrops began to fall. By then I felt a strange but not unknown feeling. I checked my pulse watch, and my pulse was speeding up more and more, even though I was slowing down. One of those episodes. As the rain set in, big drops falling like cold tears, I started praying for those who had been puffed up and had begun to think of themselves as gods or saviors or very important persons in the cosmic hierarchy. I assume they started out much like me, having amazing insights, only more so.

The rain continued, but after a while I noticed that my heart was beating normally again. It was after that I suddenly recalled that line from the song.

And it seems to me that I live my life like a candle in the wind, but still knowing who to cling to when the rains set in?

(Now, the sunny days, those can be really hard in that regard…)

A different discontent

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I suck at being ordinary. Without the council of my heart, I am just a middle-aged guy playing The Sims. That is just not much to write home about.

I have installed Spore again, the world’s most epic strategy game ever, where you start as a small simple single-celled organism and evolve to dominate the galaxy, perhaps. I remember thinking, back in 2008, that I would like to play it for many years, filling thousands of planets with life. But this no longer appears to me a great way to spend my old age, if any. At least the Sims are a kind of model of the real world, more or less. Well, mostly less, but still. Perhaps at some point I shall learn to relate to aliens with three arms on their back and a head at each end, but it seems less than urgent at this time.

I made my way through one science fiction novel by the esteemed Vernor Vinge, may he live forever or as long as he wishes. But I got bogged down in the second, well written though it may be. SF kind of feels like a past thing for me now, no offense to the writer.

The different discontent inside me is this, that I am not discontent with my conditions, by and large. I have more than enough food, clothes, space, computers and so on. I thoroughly enjoy being single. I have the 24 hours a day that each mortal is allotted, hard to complain about that.  It is myself I am underwhelmed by.

I really don’t think I can give off much brightness by myself. What I have to share of value seems to come not really from me as such, but from the deeper part in me, from whatever structure has been built there in my subconscious, or from whatever being(s?) have set up camp there. How long has it been that way? Pretty long, I think. But how can I be sure I have got this right? Anyone who has revelations think they are awesome, I am sure. Yet some lead people astray, and some are just dumb, or miss the points that are worthwhile. The true nature of the tree is best deemed by its fruit, and the true nature of revelation is deemed by the virtue it imparts. This is what limits me, but not as much as it should, I fear.

As Elias Aslaksen says somewhere: “The speed of a human is like the lightning when it comes to puff himself up, but slower than the snail when it comes to humbling himself.” And that, when applied to myself, is grounds for discontent. Although a different one from what I had when I grew up, thank the Light.