Category Archives: religion

Knowledge inflates – me?

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An academic life without love is like a pot with no soup in it. It doesn’t exactly help when the empty pot grows bigger and bigger. 

I will talk about what we may call “deeper thought” (although it is often observation as much as logic). Let us leave alone for now the disturbing topic from yesterday, of how I seem to make discoveries only to find someone plagiarized me before I was even born. That is good or creepy, I guess, depending on who they were. Sometimes I don’t really know whether they are on the side of the angels or the other side, which makes me take a step back and wonder what I am doing.

What I am doing, as I recently wrote about, is studying esoteric Knowledge at a slow but noticeable rate. Apart from reading the One Cosmos blog fairly religiously, I have picked up a number of traditionalist books and other works of timeless wisdom, some of which still surpass me so much that I have had to put them aside while trying to gain experience on easier works. But on the whole, I keep nibbling at these kind of things. I have become wary enough to try to intersperse some hagiology – the lives of the Saints – in between the metaphysics. I want to nourish the heart and not just the mind. But even the mind… well, let me sum up something I have said before. It is relevant here.

There is knowledge, and there is Knowledge. Or more exactly, there are facts and there are Truths. Facts are exterior, fragmented, inert; they can be contained in us. Truths are higher than us, more whole than us, they are alive, they can transform us. Or that is my approximation to this, from my limited vantage point these days, and trying to put it briefly.

These tomes of timeless wisdom, this esoteric Knowledge, it has the potential to not just fill our container, but to expand it and change its shape. The container in this case is the human mind. And this is where I suddenly realized a new meaning of the Biblical proverb: “Knowledge inflates” (… “but Love builds up”, 1. Corinthians 8.)

So this revelation was that Knowledge – higher knowledge, the wisdom of high spirits – expands our mind; but if that is all that happens, we are in fact inflated. When there is more room but no more ballast, no more “mass” or weight, we have become more hollow, and we may not even know it.

***

I have until today only thought of this verse in the connection of external knowledge, theoretical knowledge. It may even be the original meaning. Certainly this happens a lot. There are tenured barbarians who are so filled with theoretical knowledge that they feel qualified to go far beyond their narrow specialty and speak grandly about timeless Truth (or the absolute lack thereof), as if they actually knew. And yet a common farmer may be wiser than them in the things that really count to the human heart.

But what I talk about today is the Higher Knowledge, the words of true geniuses, of High Spirits who see the world as if from a much higher place. It is the deeper teachings that are hidden in plain sight. This Knowledge is not just words in a book.

Now you may point out that I am in fact talking about words in books, “tomes of timeless wisdom” and all that. But it differs greatly from external knowledge like learning Japanese vocabulary or the names of the various bones and sinews of the body. Words of wisdom must be absorbed through the resonance they call out in the heart, a resonance that is remarkably similar to memory. It is like remembering something that you have always known, even though you were never told. Life experience seems to be important in this context, but it may be that some people don’t need this. I know I do, and others who also took up this wander-staff in their middle years. I was exposed to amazing insights when I was young, but many of them I could not comprehend then, despite my best intentions.

This Knowledge with a capital K, the one that is like the heart remembering what it never knew that it knew – I believe this changes our very shape, expanding us. But therein lies the risk of inflation: Of becoming larger but comparatively more hollow, when content does not keep up. In this case, “inflation” is very nearly literal, except transposed into a realm that is not physical.

***

 I do worry that this may be happening to me. I feel changed, but I am not sure it is all for the good. There is a widening, but I seem to also sense a loss of intensity. And given my previous entry, I wonder whether even my revelations (those that are not by way of books, at least directly, that are observations more than remembrances) are safe. This also is Knowledge, and it inflates, it puffs me up like one of those small animals that puff themselves up to look bigger, but have I really grown to that size?

St Paul had to go through considerable trouble so as to not boast of his revelations (which admittedly were orders of magnitude beyond anything I can believe to have experienced, if I have indeed experienced anything through the occasional and undeserved grace-granted glimpse).

“But love builds up” (edifies, to use a fine word.) Ryuho Okawa, of all people, wrote a wonderful little piece about running into devils when he was still in the early expanding phase of his own revelations, when High Spirits from Heaven (or that was his experience of them) came to him frequently and revealed amazing Truths. Be that as it may, due to this superior knowledge that far exceeded that of much older people all around him, he realized that he was beginning to puff up. Devils had begun to gain control of him through his growing psychic powers. What to do?

What he decided was to go back and start over from the ordinary. He asked himself: Without these powers and these revelations, what am I? If I was barred from ever accessing them again – from ever telling anyone about them, from ever experiencing them again, from even dwelling on them in my own heart – would I still be a person who people would look forward to meeting? Would I still, as a perfectly ordinary person, be able to radiate happiness to others, to inspire other ordinary people like myself? When he decided to take this approach, the devils fled from him.

(Let us set aside for now what may have happened to his humility later – it is beyond the scope of this entry, and opinions are divided.)

But this approach, as Okawa describes it from his own youth, resonates with my heart. It sounds definitely like the same thing that the Bible says. Knowledge – or possibly even (small-k) knowledge, if we are easy to deceive – puffs us up. But can we make others happy without brandishing the peacock-tail of amazing insights? To make them happy by our presence would be love (when we talk about their lasting happiness, not their worldly attachments and dubious desires, Light forbid.)

St Teresa mentions that if we want to know whether a revelation is from God or from Hell, we should see whether it makes us more inclined to virtue. No matter what a Divine revelation is about, it has the side effect of making us humble and inclined to virtue. I think she is perfectly in agreement with St Paul on that, at least. Good for him! ^_^ (I hear he is not that popular with women these days.)

But for me, right now, I have to take care. I wonder if my container is not already expanding much faster than the content, the Knowledge faster than the Love, if any.

Into the unimaginable

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If you’ve arrived here at the Chaos Node, you’ve already come to some unthinkable place. The question is, how much more unthinkable can it get?

Over the course of several walks lately, I have been trying to imagine a potential future in which I spend several hours a day studying the lives and teachings of saints, and traditionalist metaphysics. Think of this as a kind of daydream if you will, but with direction and attempted realism. Well, realism within the unrealistic scenario.

I can imagine this a few months ahead, but no more than that. This is not because the future is unpredictable, I get around this by imagining that I travel in time back to January 2010. That doesn’t help much: It is I who become unimaginable after perhaps half a year.

You see, the particular topics are not chosen randomly. I can quite well imagine what would happen if I studied Japanese for half a year, or two years, or five. Or any such mundane study, I think. But studying timeless wisdom is not like studying a skill, it is more like falling in love, I guess. Or having brain surgery with consequent personality change, although these are rarely to the better. It is like moving to a foreign country you don’t really know anything about except rumors. It is, in other words, a life-changing experience, only more gradual than most of them.

I know that much because I have already begun to change. I don’t spend hours a day on timeless wisdom, so far.  Part of the bus ride, mostly, although sometimes I find something so interesting that I will read it at home. Usually not, though. It is just that at this stage of my life, these teachings are so potent, even if they make up a small part of my time, they still matter. Because unlike job skills or gaming skills, these change who I am. And that is what I cannot imagine. Who I could become, if my being – my essence – was to increase. Who is the person that is more me than I am? How can I imagine that, anymore than a child can know who they will be as an adult? There are only daydreams, and even those fail me.

One thing I am pretty sure of is that I would become more stable, in the sense of less sensitive to outside factors. For instance, there are people whose mood depends quite a bit on the weather. When the sun shines, so do they; in the dark season up north here, they become dark as well. That does not necessarily mean they are less mature or less spiritual than others who don’t experience this – some people are just naturally immune, it seems. Likewise there are some who are barely human before their morning coffee. Grumpy may be an understatement in some cases. I am not a morning bird myself, but I could not have a good conscience if I were barking at people at a semi-regular basis. And there are other influences that make the compass needle of our heart go far off the north star of Heaven, influences like our own sex drive (for those who have that) or preferences for particular foods.

But when we grow more essential, more substantial, when our soul grows more real if you will, these things make less impression on us. Where we could easily be blown off our feet, we become able to handle these circumstances more, perhaps becoming one day unshakable. I cannot truly say I am like that, but that is how these influences work, in that direction. I guess we all have our weak points, and there are temptations I sincerely hope I won’t have to face. But one of the certified Good Things of timeless wisdom is to make us more rooted, in a good sense.

But there are other aspects to the change which I cannot really imagine at all. We are not simply dying to one distraction after another. We also come alive to something else. What that would be beyond a certain point, I cannot imagine. And yet, it is a steady pull on me. Of course, I have pulls the other way too, so there is a balance of sorts, or at least the movement is slow and erratic. What would happen if it were not, is something even daydreams don’t tell.

But then again, perhaps I am utterly mistaken. Perhaps there is an upper limit to how fast a person’s thinking can change – in fact, this seems very plausible, barring physical changes in the brain. Or perhaps there is even an upper limit to how much one can change past a certain age or maturity level, and all I’d ever do was amass theoretical information. Or perhaps each of us is born with a personal limit, a size of the spirit, that the soul can grow into but not exceed. Who knows.

But perhaps the limit is exactly that which holds me back now: That I don’t take time even when I have time; that I don’t love timeless Truth all that much compared to all the other things I love. After all, Truth cannot help but judge us even if given in love, much like light cannot avoid scattering the darkness and wakefulness cannot avoid dispersing dreams.

Me, a hollow flickering image?

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Insubstantial or larger than life? Or just having my head in the clouds?

As I was walking near the largest bridge here in Mandal, I reflected on the fact that I was as shallow as a picture, as hollow as an outline, and as insubstantial as an image projected on a canvas. Evidently I forgot to reflect on just how temporary I am, but I guess that kind of follows. ^_^

No, I was not tempted to jump off the bridge (it is anyway not high enough for instant death, although I am sure I would have drowned pretty soon). Rather, the reason for the somewhat extreme imagery was that I compared myself to the heavenly things that exceed my highest aspiration. By comparison, I am a very flimsy thing in whatever aspect of me you may study.

It is said that God does not exist, and in a literal sense I tend to agree, at least for a particular aspect of God. To exist literally means something like “stand out” (ex = out, as most exes may painfully know). God certainly doesn’t stand out. Rather, God is what everything else stands out from. If you watch a movie projected on a white wall, the pictures seem the only reality; they are colorful, ever moving, a variety of shapes and activity. In our mind, they are all there is to what we see before us. But in reality, the only substantial and lasting thing in front of us is the wall, which we do not see, and without which we would not see the images either.

(Only by withdrawing to some degree could God possibly allow the world to exist. A candle cannot burn in the heart of the sun, and the difference here is far greater than that. If God were to be fully present, there would be no room for anything else.)

Even the grandest things of this world are in this way flat and insubstantial, flickering briefly in time, compared to the Eternal. And not God alone, but even the created things of High Heaven – the Thrones, Powers, Dominions and various spiritual creations known and unknown – far exceed anything down here. Believe it or not. ^_^ I just say how I see it at this time. And mainly in a purely thinking way, for it is not as if I have been up there and peeked, to the best of my memory.

And yet there is this flickering little image of God still in man, though some may not know it and some may deny it, and some of us may greatly exaggerate our likeness. But there is this flickering outline of something greater even than the powers of Heaven, albeit only in potential. A potential which now, given my record so far and my limited lifespan, will surely remain mostly (at best) potential. The audacity of hope goes only so far – but it goes some distance.

From across the river, I saw the rows and clusters of homes stretching along the other side. Wishing to bless them all, each home and everyone inside them, I was quite aware that the blessing of my heart was very little worth. Even with a single soul, when met face to face, my heart’s blessing is insubstantial and likely to go unnoticed. Only for my simulated little computer people may my benevolence have any drastic effect, those who live in a small, simple 2-dimensional world far less real than ours. How much less then are the multi-dimensional realms of Heaven, far more real and permanent than the shifting sands of timebound Earth, bound to notice the coming and going of my heart’s unsteady thoughts.

And yet… I aspire to this, to be known in a higher realm, more durable and more real than this one. To taste of the crumbs of immortality, not merely out of a fear of death, but in order to gain the merest little substance, that I may be able to actually do something useful as seen from a much higher place. We may excel in our earthly work (though I currently don’t, unfortunately) but without guidance from Above our work lacks direction. It becomes one of innumerable chaotic movements that cancel each other out on a grander scale. One builds, another tears down. The work of a lifetime may fall to the fires of an hour. What is popular in one generation is reviled by the next. Unless we aspire to something beyond time, we don’t aspire much at all. So it seems to me.

I come home, and later in the evening come across a formerly unread statement by Fridthof Schuon: “If a man seeks to realize that which in fact immensely transcends him, he must  a priori conform to this end or model, for otherwise he will fail either simply by collapsing of else by being broken”. I had to go back and read it over and over.
… that which in fact immensely transcends him…
Yes. It does. I am messing with things that are of a completely different order. And I may fail utterly in the end. But without this aspiration, everything is and remains hollow, just flickering images that are gone when the lights go out. I do not simply accept that as my life, all else untried. I may lose my courage and my patience, but I would rather not do so before even starting.

There are those who think we can go from nothing to something through effort, lift ourselves by our own buddhastraps as Robert Godwin puts it. As a Christian (even if a sucky one) I think we can only move upward through the power of grace. That is not to say that this happens without our consent in details, or that it happens through magic or ritual in an outward way. The new life can only grow at the expense of the old, and accepting this in practice may well be called an “effort”. It certainly can be called suffering, by the original human personality which experiences restriction and the prospect of annihilation, absolute destruction. Of course, if the New Man ever gets the upper hand and gets to write this journal on his own, the concept of suffering is likely to be very different.

“Probiotics for the soul”

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“A disciple of God is always a disciple of God!” St Teresa would have agreed with this, I am sure. So would I, but it is harder to live it. The way of perfection is pretty narrow! Or I may be too big.

Finished St Teresa’s book The Way of Perfection. There is a certain irony in this, that I would read a book with that title. When I was a teenager, a main reason why I chose the particular Church I did was its references to the Bible verses about perfection. I argued that no one could be perfect, but the Bible argued otherwise. And yet, here I am. I’d like this to not be the home stretch of my life, but at the very least decades are gone, and I am still far from perfect.

Reading this book has not made me perfect either. But I think it has helped me a little, or at least preserved me a little from going in the other direction. Throughout the spring (from February) I have been reading a little bit most days on the commute bus to work. I currently think of it as “probiotic for the soul”. (Obviously probiotics have been on my mind the last few days!) Just like you supposedly can keep your body’s inner life healthy through regular intake of certain friendly lifeforms, so I think a regular intake of wholesome words can help the soul maintain its inner working. These words must be living, so that they have the ability to grow and work inside us.

The Bible, which I read a lot more when I was young, is well known among Christians to be “God’s living Word”. Jesus compares the Word with seeds that were sown, and there is also mention of the Christians (well, disciples as they were known at the time) being conceived through this seed. When Jesus is called the Word of God, this is an extreme honor: The Jews honor the Torah, as God’s Word, above all the prophets, even Moses who brought it to them.

In one of my unfinished pieces of fiction, the protagonist arrives in an alternate world where his hosts have a library where most books are of the form “Commentaries Vol 20 on the Commentaries Vol 19 on the Book of Light.” Trying to read one of them, it is way too deep for him, and he says so. His host asks him to first read the Book of Light. He opens it and finds that it is a collection of fairly simple-looking songs, a very easy read. His host says: “Where is a river deepest, at its wellspring or as it approaches the sea?”

Much of the Way of Perfection is dedicated to teaching the reader how to pray the Paternoster, the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father, who art in Heaven”) the way it was meant to be prayed. The saint draws out deep spiritual meanings and their implications for our life, over the course of many chapters. In the end, the short and simple prayer becomes such an awe-inspiring commitment that I have to reflect on myself before even starting to pray it. I don’t think this is a heresy, either. I think this depth, this awesome commitment, lies implicit in the original. The details may be colored by Roman Catholicism to some degree, but overall it is a universal truth. (Ironically perhaps, “Catholic” originally means nearly the same as “universal”.)

The divine Light differs from electromagnetic light just in this, that it is alive, able to grow and able to produce fruit. Ordinary light passes only in through our eyes, but the heavenly Light should shine out from our eyes, if all goes well, and indeed make us glow all over. But it is not visible to all, even in a figurative sense. (And to very few, in a literal sense. I am normally not one of them, and am quite happy with that.)

The Book of Revelation (“apocalypse”) is not at all my favorite in the Bible, but it has a great mental image: “The city wall’s foundations were decorated with every kind of jewel. The first foundation was jasper, the second was sapphire, the third was chalcedony, and the fourth was emerald. The fifth was sardonyx, the sixth was carnelian, the seventh was chrysolite, and the eighth was beryl. The ninth was topaz, the tenth was chrysoprase, the eleventh was jacinth, and the twelfth was amethyst.” (Revelation 21, verses 19-20.) The stones have different color and in some cases different transparency. The city was said to be illuminated by the Light of the Lamb, so I imagine this light shining out in different directions taking on different hues depending on the gemstone.

So this revelation that shines through St Teresa, it might have had a different color if it shone through someone else, and it may be colored by the particular nature of the Roman Catholic Church; but it is a living Light, I believe. If I tried to explain it again to someone else who had not read the book, it would take on some of my color, and it would no doubt be less luminous because I am less transparent. But because it is living, this light might once again grow and multiply in the person who received it, and shine more brightly from them (in time) than it did from me. This is what I mean by saying that the Light is alive and can grow. It is the nature of the Light itself to be like this; the souls in which it grows are not the source of the Light, but carriers of it, and it is the Light itself that grows in them.

This is what I believe. But because I am such an opaque stone, with shadows and fault lines within, you would be wise to also check elsewhere, and listen to your heart. People who are filled with love for others are particularly worth listening to, but even those will have a color, so they may be more or less visible to different people depending on the color of the recipient.

Anyway, I recommend the book warmly, whether you are a Catholic or not. The first part of the book talks about how to live as a nun, and obviously some of us are not nuns. ^_^ But it is still inspiring. And its lengthy exposition of the Lord’s Prayer should be of interest to all Christians, and may even be inspiring to others who seek the Heavenly things.

But if you have no interest in what is eternal and closer to Heaven / God / the Light, then you should not read this book. It is written in a familiar tone as if from a loving older sister. To bare one’s heart like this is a matter of trust, and it would be indecent to take such a trust and misuse it. I fear that the harm that comes from this would outweigh any hope that her seriousness might help you. This is not a book of evangelism, but one that speaks to those who are within God’s family, who are hoping to dare call upon the Eternal One as “our Father”.

It may be too early to read it again yet, for when it is so recent, I tend to just skim. I kind of miss it, though. There are many good books, but to me there was something so very safe about this book. It was indeed as if I had found a collection of letters from an older sister I had never known, who had gone through much of this life before me and left me advice. When I read St Teresa, I lament that I did not know of her when I was young. But the truth is probably that I would not have been ready for it then, and might instead have become immunized, thinking ever after that “I know this” while not truly knowing it. Hopefully there will be at least less of this now!

 

Your faith may vary

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When we think of faith, some may think of miracles – but when Jesus saw the people he had fed coming back to make him king, he was exasperated. They had not realized that it was a sign, but just that they got free food. In faith, there are layers of meaning, not all of them available to everyone at the outset.

Religious “faith” is a word that means different things to different people. Usually it means something weird to people who don’t have it, of course. That is probably why so many of them flee it like the plague. But it also means different things to different people even within the same religion.

Since most people I converse with are thoroughly agnostic if not outright atheist, their idea of faith is obviously one that harmonizes with this life choice. As they see it, faith is the lazy or stupid person’s alternative to thinking. Rather than gather actual facts and think logically about the conclusions they lead to, the religious person can simply believe whatever makes him or her feel good, regardless of whether it is factually true or not. Consequently, while they may be happy in their belief, they are likely to cause all kinds of trouble for themselves, others, and the world at large. The conclusion is that faith should be fought on every opportunity, in order to reduce its cancerous influence. The atheist may or may not actually be bothered to do this, depending on whether he has tried and failed sufficiently often.

Undeniably there are people who fit this description all too well, especially in America (or perhaps they are just getting more publicity there). Stupidity and faith are certainly not mutually exclusive. But perhaps they should have been.

“Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies; for they are ever with me.
 I have more understanding than all my teachers; for I meditate on your testimonies.
I understand more than the old, because I have kept your precepts.”
Psalm 119, 98-100

“The seeds that fell on good ground are the people who hear and understand the message. They produce as much as a hundred or sixty or thirty times what was planted.”
Matthew 13, 23.

A funny thing about that Jesus quote is that if you give it to others but leave a blank where it says “understand”, they will usually insert “believe” or “obey” instead. Jesus was not unfamiliar with either of these, but chose to use “understand” here.

Faith is supposed to cause, and coexist with, understanding and eventually wisdom. It is not supposed to be a quick way to avoid thinking – rather it should form a better container of thought than we can fashion out of our personal experience. Or you may think of it as the skeleton on which our thoughts are fastened, if you prefer that image.

In light of this, we see the absurdity of trying to avoid faith. Your average atheist does not avoid faith at all, but rather has faith in some other model of containing thought. Frequently this is some form of socialism, which is a philosophy that competes squarely against religion. The atheist is rarely entirely devoid of ideals – usually quite the opposite. He has ideals, and he is usually sure that what he is doing is for the greater good. Everyone needs some kind of overarching system of thought and meaning of life, or madness ensues. If you don’t have religious faith, you have faith in various other sources that you find more reliable. And it is no great wonder that you do, given that most religious people are stupid hypocrites – just like most people everywhere and at all times.

You should be aware that the usual religious person knows next to nothing about his own religion. I refer you to the occasional questionnaires by Pew Research (like this one) and the unavoidable embarrassing statistics that are published afterwards, showing that Christians only know about half of these easy questions while atheists know somewhat more. This is because in America, you have to actually make an effort to be an atheist; in some countries it is the other way around, but the majority will always be ignorant and not particularly care about it.

Thus, the willful stupidity that you observe in the religious person is NOT an effect of their faith, but the opposite: This is how you end up when you DON’T meditate on the testimonies, to use the Jewish description. Other faiths have somewhat different ways to express this, but you should find the same at least in those religions with which I have a passing familiarity.

***

The representatives of the religion is its saints and sages, just like the representative of science is the scientist, not some random quack who has read about quantum physics in Science Illustrated and believes he can use it for magic. Yes, unfortunately there is quite a bit of religion on this level.

It is not difficult to find in religious text things that are upsetting or that seem to run counter to common sense. But it is not difficult to do so with science either, if you are as ignorant of science as most people are of religion. For instance, to go back to quantum physics, pretty much the only thing common people know about it is that really small things can be waves and particles at the same time. This is obviously not true. There can’t be waves if there isn’t something to make waves in, like some kind of liquid or something. Stupid scientists! They should get out more. Well, no, we don’t actually say this because it happens to be demonstrably true, even though only a few people have actually seen it happen. The same largely applies to religion.

Science is not a religion. Religion is a science. It is a platform for exploring the deeper reality of the spirit, just as worldly science is for exploring the physical world. But in both cases, most people simply read the cliff notes and have faith in them; they are neither scientists nor saints. Well, neither am I, I guess. Still, you pick up some when you look around for decades.

Now you would expect this from me, who wanders the jnana (insight) path, while most Christian walk the bhakti (loving worship) path, if any. And certainly the Bible assures us that God has chosen that which is foolish in this world, to put the wise to shame. But it seems a bit of twisting words to think that this encourages stupidity. Rather, it encourages an alternate wisdom, based in a completely different container of thoughts. And, generally, based more on practical exercises than thought-building. Religion was originally experiential, it was based on things you could do and experience for yourself the truth of the words. If we don’t, well, we can hardly blame the religion for our shaky understanding.

***

In short: The stupidity of the religious is not from our faith, but from not understanding it or not practicing it. A faith that is only meant to serve as an insurance is unlikely to cause wisdom.

Hidden, forgotten treasures

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My hidden treasures, the original source of my happiness.

As you can see in my personal journal, I am still not entirely stable after the jaw surgery. I got a mild fever and malaise for a while today.

When I stopped shaking enough to be able to read, I fetched a book I have brought with me since my younger years, when I was in the Christian Church of Brunstad. As you may know, this was my home, more so than any physical place. It was, for the longest time, far from me that I would ever part ways with the Church, where the Truth was taught without reserve. All one wanted to know about the godly life was laid out plainly, and there was nothing to hold anyone back from growing in all goodness and holiness and purity, for the duration of our life.

Things changed a bit toward the end of my time there. A modernization, I guess you could call it. I wonder if they ever changed back. In any case, I brought with me the books from the old time. I have given away novels beyond counting, but the books from the Church are still with me. And it was one of them I pulled out of the shelf when I was once again able to control my body. It was the collection of articles by Johan Oscar Smith in the Christian magazine he started in 1912, and which I believe is still running: “Skjulte Skatter”, or “Hidden Treasures” in English. To this day I cannot see those words used without thinking of that small, simple magazine – simple in layout, but so rich in content. Smith died long ago, during World War II, but his words are still alive.

At the time the magazine started, it was around a decade since he became a Christian. He had grown up in a Christian country – as Norway was at the time – and in a God-fearing family; yet like many other young men, he was not personally a Christian. One good thing about our culture is that people generally are not expected to be a Christian just because it is the prevailing religion: It is expected that one chooses to be a “personal” Christian, or not. Those who don’t are free to live as they want, as long as they don’t break the laws (or only small laws), but a “personal Christian” is held to much higher standards. So people don’t do this unless it is important to them. So also back then, although it was more common than now.

After somewhere around a decade as a Christian, this man had an amazing wisdom, authority and clarity of thought. Reading him again now that I have actual life experience, I am struck by the clarity of his vision. Unlike me, he was not familiar with several religions and philosophies, and certainly would not have paid them any heed. But in the words of the Bible, read in that particular spirit, he was also able to draw out lessons that are true for all people, in all cultures, at all times. Of course, many things vary, and much of what he writes is only applicable to Christianity. In a sense, all of it, but then Christianity in the sense that one of the ancient church fathers said: There has never been a time in which that religion did not exist that is now called Christianity. (And I would read this as applying not only in time, but also in space. After all, Balaam seems to have never heard of Israel until he was hired to curse them, and yet God spoke to him repeatedly. So why would God not speak to Taoists, Buddhists, Hinduists etc?)

But in any case, Jesus Christ has lived and inspired Johan Oscar Smith with a wisdom that is quite rare in any generation. Certainly there have been more wise men in the world than I thought when I was young, and particularly compared to me! But even so, I am amazed when reading much of what he wrote back then.

For instance, in a very short column on faithfulness in the Light, he mentions that “it is not for the sake of the light that God gives us light”. That hit me like a blow, because as someone who by my new nature belongs in the “Realm of Light”, I tend to worship God as the Light, which I still think is valid. But what Smith refers to here is enlightenment or the light of revelation. The New Testament mentions (although he does not cite that in this context) that the revelation or manifestation of the Spirit is given to each for what is useful. We are not given revelations because revelations are cool, but because we are expected to act on them to better serve our neighbor. (Now that I read what I have typed, I remember St Teresa mentioning this too.)

It is possible to enjoy the Truth and then forget to check whether this means that I have to change my life. Which I have to, if I am faithful in the light. I cannot say I have been that, certainly not by the standards of this man, who is barely even known by most Christians in his native Norway, not to say anyone else.  I think he deserves more recognition. And I deserve less.

For I suspect that the reason why I let this book gather dust for years while I sought the Truth in books from faraway countries and times, was the same reason why it impresses me so much: The blinding brightness of it, that is unbearable if one has something outside of God’s will, some small thing or two or ten hidden in dark places. Things that seem a good idea to conveniently forget until just before one departs this world.

When a person wishes to live wholeheartedly for, in and by the Light – that is when these recesses become visible to the heart. There is something in this world one would miss. The reason why we want to go on living is not merely to serve God and Neighbor. There is also something we like so much that we want to keep it no matter what. Usually this is not a “deadly sin”, but some lesser vice: Smoking perhaps, but usually something less obvious or vicious: Computer games, delicious foods, sexual fetishes, a fancy car, a record collection, comic books, letters from a high school sweetheart who is now happily married elsewhere. (No, not all of these apply to me. I speak generally.) Most such things are not seen as evil by other people, or even by oneself when thinking rationally. But for some reason the Light points this thing out and says: “Get rid of that!” and then we dig our heels in. “Take something else instead!” we say. “Take this, or that, or those things which are much bigger and prettier! Just spare this little thing, it has not done you any harm, I will be good, I promise!”

In Buddhism these strange addictions are simply called “attachments”. In the language of Smith’s friends they are living sacrifices. When God wants a sacrifice, we should give it while it is alive and kicking and struggling. Tie the sacrifice with ropes to the horns of the altar! It will probably be easy to give up your favorite sexual fantasy when you’re 88. Or computer games when you’re going blind. Lots of attachments also die naturally while we are still in our prime, as my journal since 1998 clearly documents. There were many things that were dear to my heart at some point in my early journals that I now am happy to be rid of. And that is good. But the God of J.O. Smith is one who demands sacrifice. Not because he needs anything, probably not even likes to see us squirm, but because he sees that we need to be free from our attachment so we can see clearly, think clearly and act boldly.

“It is like killing your pets” I wrote in my journal when I unpacked more than 100 old computer games I did not even play anymore, and threw the paper, plastic and disks in their separate garbage. But if I have 101 pets scampering around my spiritual feet at all times, I will not be able to run the race of salvation, not only my own but that of the world itself. A great amount of Light is needed for this world to even survive the times ahead. I wish I could remain here and contribute to that. But unless I bear the living sacrifices into God’s temple (to use the Old Testament symbolism), I will not be part of the solution but of the problem.

 

Literal, symbolic resurrection

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Christ in glory

The resurrection of Christ, as imagined in the Japanese animated movie “The Golden Laws”, a story not so much about Jesus as about time traveling teens. Still, I enjoy watching that scene. ^_^ 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is and should be the part that sends people running, either away from or toward the religion. It is the central mystery (or madness) of the faith, the impossibility above all others. Various attempts have been made to make it more palatable, not only in the modern age but already a couple centuries after the event:  It was to be understood spiritually, or figuratively, not literally, said some. The Church eventually decided to leave it unexplained, for the most part, and that is probably for the best. It seems fair to me if the world thinks Christians stupid if not outright crazy, and worthy of pity: After all, this is how Christians feel about the world as well.

But one interesting detail about the role of the Resurrection has occurred to me only later in my life: The apostle Paul, who is the one who most frequently talks about Christ’s death and resurrection in us, in our lives, as the death of the old life and the breakthrough of a new and heavenly life – this apostle is also the one who most strongly insists that the Resurrection was thoroughly real. If Jesus was not resurrected, then our faith is nothing, says this same man. He refers to several contemporaries who saw Jesus after the Resurrection, as well as an unspecified group of over 500, most of whom were still alive at the time of his writing. This is not a historian, rather Paul wrote about things that happened in public in his own time. And yet, he is the one who keeps going on about “Christ in us” and the inner meaning of His death and resurrection.

You’d think those two viewpoints would appear from two different sources, right? One taking the Resurrection literally, another symbolically. But on the contrary, it is the same person who is most focused on one who also goes on about the other.

Now it may be argued that Paul joined the new religion well after Jesus had left for Heaven, and there is no hint that he ever met the risen Lord except in visions. On the other hand, the Resurrection is clearly the big selling point of the young church in the mouth of Peter as well, who was in the thick of it. You have to be very creative to find any hints that the first Christians did not believe in the literal resurrection of Christ. And yet, most of them don’t mention it as a spiritual process in the life of Christians. It may have been enough for them to know that their martyrdom would be temporary: Jesus would come back and raise them from the dead, so death was not a permanent setback. Any symbolic meaning of the event seems to have been little discussed, if at all. Except for Paul, although John also makes some mention of Christ in us.

Now I am not a preacher, or at least I try not to be. I just wanted to point out the strange connection, that the literal and the symbolic belief seemed to go hand in hand, rather than being opposites as they are seen today.

Temptation to preach

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The doors to the sixth dimensional Realm of Light are opening

The doors to the sixth-dimensional Realm of Light are opening, in one of my favorite sequences from the anime “The Laws of Eternity”. I have borrowed the terminology from this anime and the corresponding book by Ryuho Okawa, but the actual experience was almost disturbingly familiar when I read about it.

We who feel at home with the 6-dimensional Realm of Light have a tendency to want to lead or guide others. Not because we like to lord it over others, but because they badly need guidance, even ours. A lot of us fall into the general category of “teacher”, even if not necessarily as a job title. Because we have “seen the light” as the saying goes (although to varying degree) we would love to share this with others. That, however, is easier said than done.

When we talk about spiritual matters, it is not in the way of someone who has read books. This applies even if we actually have read books. The reason for this is that when we read books, or in other ways come across some piece of Truth, it resonates with our heart and it is this resonance, which is our own (in a manner of speaking, since all is a gift) which we retain.

The Truth hits us with the force of revelation: a sharp insight, like a bright beam of light, a wow factor. It is not like learning French verbs which you need to repeat until you remember them. It is like finding a missing puzzle piece that, once put in place, stays in place, and changes the picture permanently. It usually fills us with joy, but sometimes it shocks us, or drives us to repentance. It is “really something”. It is active, it changes us. This is how a piece of Truth differs from a piece of fact. The “realm of light” could also be called “realm of truth” in this sense. There is actually much greater and purer Truth further up, as we can see from the saints (who surpass this) but this is probably the level where we start to have these wow experiences repeatedly. So, we could call this the realm of insight, the realm of inspiration, the realm of revelation perhaps.

The theoretical knowledge that contained the “piece of Truth” may even focus on something else, and remains theoretical if we remember it at all. It is the part that resonates that we remember and which remains alive to us. The revelation, to use a religious word. I don’t mean by this that we hear voices and see angels, well most of us don’t. But it hits us with the force of revelation, is what I mean.

It is an absolute conviction, to approximately the same degree that we tend to believe our own eyes. I may concede that it is possible that these things are not real, but I would do so in the same way I may concede that my body is not actually real and I may live in some virtual reality, Matrix-style or otherwise. It is possible in a philosophical sense, but I’ll nevertheless continue to assume that what I perceive as real, really is real.

But still, there is a huge difference between absorbing something through resonance and actual practice. What we can see is a lot more than we can do – or at least that is the case for me. I may have a conviction, and I may have an understanding that is so alive and free that you could wake me up in the night and ask me to speak for five minutes or an hour about the things that belong to the Realm of Light, I believe. I have not actually tested this, but apart from the physical pain of talking (after all these years of mostly silence) it should not be a problem. I should not need a manuscript, or to look up something in a book, or anything except enough water to not lose my voice. This is what I believe, based on how ridiculously easy it is to write and write and write and write about these things.

But I don’t really live the kind of life that a spiritual teacher lives. The Voice in my heart certainly could keep going for a thousand years, is what I believe, but if I were to tell all of that, I would condemn myself by all the un-practiced knowledge. The iceberg would tip over and disaster would ensue. What I should do is hide the words in my heart and let them change me.

But it sure is tempting to preach. I am torn by my urge to say all the words that should be spoken, before they are lost forever. But it is not really my job to teach you everything and remind you of everything. The Voice in your heart will do that. All I should do is resonate on the same wavelength, so as to wake people up to what is already there.

To incarnate light

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This is how I appear in a roleplaying game, but not in real life. I guess that was a bit unrealistic. 

See, this is my longing ideal, my highest aspiration, I guess. To become an incarnation of brightness, to protect the innocent and keep the darkness at bay. But in real life, it is not that easy at all.

In the emergency room, when the second wave of the unidentified illness was rising in my body, when there was nothing I could do and I did not know what was happening, I started to worry. Well, in a way I started to worry before I called the emergency number in the first place, but it was more a kind of caution. They had asked me to call that number if it happened again, after all. But it was only between a quarter and half an hour later, as I was shaking and my heart was racing even while sitting in my outer jacket and a quilt-like thing over that again, that I began to think this might be the end.

I did not want to die. I think that is a fairly reasonable attitude, for someone younger than 80 and without grievous pain or sorrow, at least unless one dies for some great and noble purpose. Blood poisoning, as I suspected at the time, is not a great and noble thing. (I still don’t know what it actually was, and I can speculate on that elsewhere.) But the thing is, this went a bit beyond that reasonable attitude. I began to fear. What next?

If the materialists were right and death was the end of me, I would resent it, but that is pretty much it. I had my rough patches when I grew up and did not understand the Laws of the Mind, but most of my life has been a very good one. Should it end now, and my own joy and pain were the only things to be weighed, I would definitely have pulled the longest straw, as we say around here. He who dies with the most happiness wins, in which case I would at least qualify for honorable mention, I like to think. There has been a lot of singing (albeit severely out of tune) in the last three decades. Long may it last!

But if death was not the end, but rather the beginning, there was more reason to worry, I felt. If I were to be weighed not in the happiness received but in the happiness given, I was not too optimistic about my fate. And if I were to travel through the astral realm on my way from this world, would I be able to pass through it without being held back by claims to my soul? Would attachments snare me and pull me down? Would I fall to the Darkness? As I sat there, shaking with cold and weakness, I did not shine. I was not the one who cold help others, but had to impose on others to help me. I was painfully aware of that.

I tried to be considerate and express my gratitude to the nurse and doctor who hooked me up to various measuring devices. Thinking that this might be my last opportunity to bless others, I tried (without acting too strange). I entered a meditative state in order to calm the shaking of my body, to make their job easier. (Although I did not manage to maintain it while talking.) But I was not shining brightly. I was not a hero. I was just a weak and somewhat scared human. If I were to die there, neither those in this world nor those watching from the other world would find reason to celebrate the way of my transition, that is quite certain.

It is not so easy to be a hero in real life. But for now, I live. Perhaps I shall do so for a long time, or perhaps not. I wish to shine brighter. There are other things I wish as well, like eat delicious prune yogurt. But my highest aspiration, I think, is to shine brightly. To radiate blessing so that people can feel better simply by being around me. That may take its sweet time as things are these days. By my estimate, which may be overly optimistic, I am still two dimensions shy of being what the Japanese call a “nyorai”, an incarnation of compassion.  Someone who radiates blessing, whose mere existence in this world and this age is a blessing to those now alive and those who will come later. There are people like that. But I am far from it yet.

For now, I need to set realistic goals, in so far as it is realistic to set goals when we don’t know the day tomorrow. But even the grandest castle is built stony by stone, and even should it end up just being a small piece of wall made of a few stones, perhaps someday someone will find shelter behind it.

Not perfect at all

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“Please spare me from the green vegetables.” That kind of attitude would not fly at all at one of St Teresa’s convents, I dare say. But it would fly like a wind in my home, where green vegetables are as common as gold coins. 

Contrary to what you may think from my journal, I am actually not perfect. This becomes particularly clear to me when I read St Teresa of Avila, this time her book The Way of Perfection. Unlike her Life and Interior Castle, this one seems to not be written with a clear progression toward more and more inner purity. It is more of a guidebook for her nuns, on how to live in the convent. So I think I should be able to get through this one, without coming to a point where I feel I am cheating by looking at a holiness that is so far ahead of me that I should not even be able to see it.

That said, the contrast between me and what she expected from her nuns is pretty damning. They were to live in such poverty that while she did not expect them to starve to death, she reminded them that if they did, it would be acceptable. After all, they lived for Christ who died for them, and if they had to die for him as well, it would not be a big deal.

The purity and selflessness she expected from these people is really shaming me, who at this time of my life still have hobbies.  They may be nice hobbies, but you really cannot fit that into the “way of perfection”. I assume even today, monks and nuns live a life of complete selfless devotion to God and their fellow humans, taking no time to indulge or even pay attention to their own interests. Living a life as God’s finger on Earth. That’s not how I live at all. Sure, I want to serve the Light, but it is more like having a job that interests you I guess. An employee is partly free, even if he thinks about his job a lot. A slave has no life of his own. He is at work even when sleeping.

St Teresa and her nuns (at least if they lived up to her expectations) were thralls of God’s love.  They had nothing else to do, no other goals than to serve their Lord. That may indeed be the way of perfection. But it is not how I currently live. I try to serve God in my way, and they in His.

I use to read a little in the book each day on the commute bus. (It’s on my Galaxy Note, so no one can see the title.) It may take a long time getting through it this way, but that is OK. I am not so much looking for revolutionary new information, as to be reminded over and over how far I am from perfection. Because, as I am sure my readers can notice if they will, it is entirely too easy for me to preen in my advanced knowledge and tuck away my imperfect life where you can’t see it.