Tag Archives: books

They let the Pope write now?

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Everybody who was something rejected Jesus Christ as a blasphemous cult leader whose death would mean the end to his crazy movement. “Errare humanum est.”

I recently bought a book written by the current Pope, Benedict XVI. He was in fact a well known Catholic writer before he was called to be Pope. I suppose there must have been some hesitation in calling him away from his writing: Being the Pope is sure to be very distracting. Even so, he has managed to finish at least two books, or a book in two parts if you will, a biography of Jesus Christ. Now, it is not often you see a Pope write a biography of Jesus Christ, so some curiosity is in order.

I also hear reasonably good things about this man (the Pope, I mean, but of course also Jesus). I grew up in an officially Lutheran country (although it was already starting to turn mostly atheist) and anything about the Vatican was viewed with severe skepticism, to put it mildly. I have a more nuanced view now. Some of the intelligent religious literature I have read the last couple years has come from Catholic writers. They have a tradition for intelligent religious literature, going back at least to Thomas Aquinas, one of the geniuses of the Middle Ages. (Yes, there were some, contrary to what you probably imagine about the Middle Ages.)

Also, contrary to what you probably imagine about the Pope unless you are Catholic, his writing is not medieval either. He expresses his gratitude to the advances in historical realism in Biblical exegesis, although he thinks it cannot stand on its own. Comparing a number of recent Jesus biographies, he draws the insightful conclusion that they are so different, they probably say more about their authors than about Jesus. That may well be true. While this is not entirely a good thing, it is thought-provoking. In one way, I think we are all doomed to find Jesus in ourselves if at all… but hopefully in our greater Self, as the Eastern spirituality calls it, rather than our small self or ego. In the spirit rather than the flesh, to use the language of St Paul, who seems to give people the willies these days.

Anyway, I have read little more than the foreword yet, but I already found something interesting. There is a tendency these days to regard the Bible as either 1) God dictating his word to men, or 2) men writing their own opinions about God. But the Pope inserts a 1.5 that makes a lot of sense: The community or people of God. The individual writers did not live and teach in a cultural and spiritual vacuum, but rather were part of a community steeped in the earlier revelation. It was to no small extent through this community that God spoke the Bible, rather than simply through the individuals. What they expressed was often dependent in content or form on spiritual impulses in the community, thinks the Pope.

This is certain true to some degree, although I have to point out that a disturbing number of God’s prophets and apostles were killed by the community and the supposed “people of God” of their time. Not least famously Jesus himself. But I am sure there will be more to read about that in the second book.

As for the biblical writers expressing the will of God after being shaped by the spiritual community of God’s people, it is hard for me not to see the parallel to Joseph Ratzinger, now Pople Benedict XVI, himself. But then again, we tend to see in others something of ourselves, whether we are the Pope or not, I guess.

The book is simply called “Jesus of Nazareth”. The author may be given either as Joseph Ratzinger (his name when he started it) or Benedict XVI (when he finished it).

 

Feeling sadness

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Something strange happened yesterday. I woke up half past five in the morning from the buzzing of a bee in the window near me. These critters have some modest amount of poison and it sounded pretty desperate, so I found it prudent to get away. I got up and went down in the living room, where I put on my headphones and played LifeFlow 1 for 40 minutes.

LifeFlow is a series of brainwave entrainment tracks, and the names of the main tracks are their frequency in Hertz. The 1 Hz track is the deepest in the series, corresponding to deep dreamless sleep. What I usually use is the 2 Hz track, which has a much less disturbing soundscape, vaguely water-themed, whereas number 1 has the sound of whales and possibly some other marine mammals and a few other underwater sounds. It sounds spooky, to put it bluntly, and several people have complained about this on the Project Meditation forums. I however see the point in making this track more disturbing: It is quite hard to stay awake when your brain starts to synchronize at a frequency usually used in deep, dreamless sleep.

Be that as it may, I am not built to get up at this time. While I at least mostly stayed awake through the 40 minutes, I watched random hallucinations behind my closed eyes much of the time, shapes that arose and stayed for a while before disappearing again. This may be normal for humans for all I know, but it is very rare for me. Especially these days, and especially when the images are just meaningless shapes and not women. But actually very rare anyway. So seeing this long parade of random images was weird enough in itself. It was only the beginning though.

When the track ended and I opened my eyes again, I felt a profound feeling of sadness. It was not associated with any person or event or memory. It was just a pure feeling of sadness or perhaps regret or loss.

I suppose the ghost whale sound could have some part in it, but probably not. For one thing, the unpleasant sound these creatures add to the otherwise decent soundscape can actually be said to have lessened my regret over having eaten whale beef in my late teens. The whales are considered more or less saints and sages by the New Age community, but I dare say that their utterances on this recording make them sound edible indeed and not particularly worthy of preservation either. Your ears may vary.

Another clue is that I still feel some degree of that sadness two days and one night later. It is not as strong as it was when it started, but it keeps running in the background much of the time, so that I can be aware of it when I so decide. This fits better with the theory I immediately thought of when I noticed it.

You see, I have written repeatedly in these pages about my immunity to sadness. That I can feel joy, and sometimes fear, but rarely ever sadness. That is not something one would normally miss and want back (I did have it earlier in my adult life), but it is kind of weird for it to be so completely absent. What I think is that perhaps the new connections created in my brain during the entrainment may have unlocked the feeling that was somehow locked away at an earlier point in my life.

It could be a coincidence, of course. Or some spiritual attack, or help, depending on the outcome. If someone keeps going on and on about their happiness, especially someone who has several friends who experience deep sadness, it is only natural if they occasionally quietly wish for me to feel it too. And it is not like I have been praying to God to never experience sadness or anything. It is just something I have noticed, not something I have desired strongly or – I think – taken pride in. Though I suppose it could seem that way, that I have preened exceedingly about it.

Be that as it may, it is not of an intensity that makes me weep or anything. In a sense I actually find it fascinating, even enriching in the short term. If it lasts for the duration of my life I may change my opinion, I suppose. But in any case it is not like I am unable to feel joy.

I certainly felt like whining with joy for a little while this afternoon when I realized that Amazon.com had taken in a new Okawa book: The Moment of Truth, a brand new book from only weeks ago, based on his lectures in Brazil recently. I should not be so excited about books by a man who thinks he is God from Venus, but the thing is that he writes like a god. More exactly like Hermes, the god of speed, given that Master Okawa has published some 700 books by now (!), about one per week last year alone, earning him a place in Guinness Book of Records. And what is more disturbing is that they are generally quite well written. I would not lie if I said, if I could write even one book in my lifetime and it was half as good as the average Okawa book, I would be able to die with a smile, knowing that I had made a significant contribution to the world. But I haven’t, so I can’t. At least not yet.

Of course, some suspicion is in order when someone claims to be God from Venus. Even if he can go entire books without bringing it up. But that does not change that he writes an awesome prose that I hope to get closer to. He practices what he preaches, that you have not truly understood something until you can explain it in common words that even a child can understand. I have a long way to go in the childish writing department, as I am sure you have noticed!

So I pray that what I read may not harm me but rather help me. That is pretty much what I pray about food too. And I habitually add a prayer that I may also be of help and not harm to others. After all, that is what matters. What we feel does not matter so much as what we do. But of course what we feel tends to influence what we do. I certainly expect that for myself. I am still that much human, and I know it. Hopefully with my newfound ability to feel sadness, I will now be able to understand others a little more than I did before.

***

Oh, and happy birthday if you happen to read this. I wish you could be as happy as I have been, since you deserve it so much more. It is strange how fate has sent us down so different paths, from where we once started together.

Torah studies then and now

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Actually, I had a good idea why the Jews call God “Lord”, and even “the Name”, but I did not even know that they called God “the Place”, much less why. Live and learn. Or in this case, read and learn.

I’ve invested in yet another e-book, The Torah for Dummies by Arthur Kurzweil. This may seem weird since I am already a ways into my second book by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who may well write a lively and stimulating prose but whose treatment of the Torah is certainly not for dummies.

Kurzweil’s book is for dummies who understands words like “emanate” and “primordial”. (OK, those are kind of rare, but they are in fact there, and early in the book at that.) Dummies like me, then. I may not generally view myself as a dummy, but when facing the Torah, it would take a lot to not be the dummy. Well, if you begin to understand anything about religion at all, I guess. As I found in my first job, it is easy to speak with confidence – even arrogance – about things I don’t know, as long as I still don’t know how much I don’t know.

In any case, I did some free association on Amazon.com after receiving one of their many letters of recommendation, as it were. This book was not one of those recommended, but was bought by people who bought one of the recommended books. As soon as I saw it I felt drawn to it, realizing that I had kind of put the cart before the horse by reading Kabbalist literature without knowing more deeply how the Jews regard the Torah. As a long-time Christian (of sorts, I guess some may say), I felt that I had a decent understanding of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. But reading the sometimes strange interpretations by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz had made me realize that the Torah looks different to the Jews than it does to us. And so I returned a few days later and bought this book.

It is great for me that it exists in Kindle format. I realize that this transitional, fleeting form can be deemed less than dignified for a book dedicated to eternal truth; but on the other hand, I can now literally have it near my heart every day, in my mobile phone resting in my shirt pocket!

Arthur Kurzweil has a writing style that seems a bit similar to Steinsaltz, and this may not be a coincidence: It turns out that Steinsaltz is his teacher for many years, and has made a deep impact on his life and thinking. They have also collaborated on some writing. What great luck for me! In all fairness, my subconscious may have remembered their association from some casual mention in the forewords or on the Amazon.com web site. It need not be a miracle, or not more than the human mind is in the first place. I am not quite sure. I just enjoy it.

I was already becoming aware that the Torah is very special to observant Jews. We Christians respect the Bible for its content, but the Torah is to Jews more what Jesus is to Christians: The Word of God in physical form. The reverence with which they treat the Torah scrolls is perhaps only matched by the way Christian churches treat the Eucharist, and then especially Catholics and others who believe that the bread and wine literally turn into flesh and blood.

This is not to say that Jews only revere the form and not the content. On the contrary, they revere the content to the extreme. It is said that when God was to create the world, he looked to the Torah as his blueprint. In other words, the original Torah – the Word which was with God in the beginning – includes everything in the universe, even the upper worlds or heavens, if I understood correctly. Without the Word, nothing was created of all that which was created.

As I said, we Christians think of Jesus Christ in much the same way. In fact, Jesus reprimanded the scribes of his age because, as he said: “You examine the Scriptures carefully because you suppose that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me, but you are not willing to come to me to have life.”

I could not help thinking about this when I read about how important, even essential, it is to the observant Jew to study the Torah. It is literally considered the way to learn to know God, to move closer to God, and a work that is certain to be rewarded by God as a generous employer rewards his workers, albeit in the next life mainly.

Seeing the sincerity with which they still keep up this work, I wondered if they are leading themselves astray with this intense dedication to every letter of a book. (Literally – it is said that every letter in the Torah is important and corresponds to a particular person’s life.)

Thinking back, I have seen Christians do seemingly the same thing that Jesus spoke about: Apply their intellect to the written word, but not applying the Word to their own soul, that they may be transformed. I am sure both of these ways of reading are still open to the observant Jew as well.

Jesus is no longer physically among us, and neither is Moses. Yet the words left behind are not simply books intended to impart a certain, specific, limited understanding. Rather, they are LIFE. When read in the right way, they become a wellspring that never stops, expanding into something far more than what meets the eye. There is in fact no limit to what can be drawn from Scripture. Let me entertain you with a passage I found on Wikipedia:

At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it.

A pretty straightforward description of the Big Bang with the following period of cosmic inflation and the transition to the atomic phase. Written by the Jewish sage known as the Ramban some time before his death in the year 1270. How in God’s Name did he glean that from the Torah??

The world is full of strange and wonderful things. Scripture is evidently one of them. But, being the dummy that I am, I have a hundred other things that I would also like to do.

Two books

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“The Underworld seems like a rather intense establishment.” That, I would say, is rather an understatement.  Dante and Matheson have somewhat different takes on the afterlife, but I would definitely not want to spend a substantial time in the Lower Regions, for instance because of teaching things that are too big for me.

I have written a pretty strong religious entry, but I feel it is a bit above my praygrade, so I am uncertain about posting it. Perhaps I should wait a bit.

Finished reading Matheson’s book, What Dreams May Come. It really is similar to the fourth and fifth dimension in Okawa’s Laws of Eternity. Actually Matheson’s book is older, from 1978, but only by a few years. It seems unlikely that Okawa would base his worldview on it. On the other hand, both of them casually reference a certain Emanuel Swedenborg, acknowledging that he had a reasonable idea of what he was talking about. I would not know, having never had any dealing with the afterlife, to the best of my memory.

Having read the book, I found myself wishing it were longer, or that there were a sequel. Or that Master Okawa would write more books about the spirit world. It seems like a fascinating place. Of course, that would depend greatly on which part of it one landed in!

***

Begun on another e-book, The Candle of God by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. He is also the author of The Thirteen-petalled Rose, which I reviewed in February. I was quite impressed by that book, and so I have started reading this one, although it is not a sequel or prequel. The book is primarily written for fellow Jews, but not necessarily theologians, so it is fairly easy to read, at least for me.  I am not a Jew, of course, but has a passing knowledge of the Torah from reading the Christian Bible, which includes most of the Written Torah.

The fact that the Rabbi is so unabashedly Jewish gives a certain comfort: We know that he does not have a hidden agenda to prove the superiority of Judaism to a religious opponent or challenger. The primacy of Judaism is taken for granted, it is an axiom on which these books rest. So we get a peek into Jewish “mysticism light” as experienced by those who actually live in it.  It may be esoteric, but it is not obscure. There is no attempt to show off, just to show what he sees. This is an endearing trait in an author of religion or philosophy, where the temptation to add prestige to one’s words is strong and may camouflage itself as concern for the soul of the reader. Instead, his words convey an obvious enthusiasm.

Well, I should finish it before giving any kind of real review, but I find myself looking forward to more of it. But now I need sleep. There is work to do tomorrow, Light willing. And probably some City of Heroes, although if this book is as good as the Rose, I may be end up reading it at home and not only on the bus.

Dentist and stuff

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Picture taken a few days ago, as winter was still grappling with spring.

Slice of life, finally!

I went to the dentist and had the broken artificial tooth fastened again. This seems to happen once a year or so.  I honestly don’t think he does shoddy work to get more income in the future; it is more like I have a tendency to bite down hard right there. Quite possibly how I destroyed the original in the first place.

I used to say that “every time I buy a laptop, God kills a tooth.” (This is a pun on a popular Internet meme.) There really seemed to be a correlation, although there could not possibly be a causality. A tooth would break or come loose within a few days after I bought a new laptop.

Not so this time. On the contrary: On my way home, my mobile phone started acting strange.  It would scroll by itself to one side, even when I was not touching it. If I tried to scroll to the other side, it would still go its own way, so evidently it was scrolling faster than I.  I turned it off hard, so it did a full reboot, and the problem persisted. I then pressed randomly on the sides of the glass for a while, and it seemed to fall quiet after that. But it may indeed seem like I am heading toward buying a new mobile phone rather than a new battery for the old.

New versions of applets, like the most recent Facebook applet, also seem to run slower. This is just how it used to be on personal computers:  They were just good enough, but after a couple years when processing power had doubled, new programs and upgrades to the old expected you to have a newer computer, and things slowed down.

Seriously though, the phone is less than two years old. I bought it summer 2009. That means it is still under legislated warranty here in Norway.  Except that the shop where I bought it closed last week, and the chain it was part of has been sold off to competitors. The Tooth Fairy seems to take her job entirely too seriously!

***

In other news, the weather is mild now, around ten degrees above freezing, so I really get the spring feeling!  But it is still brown spring, the green spring usually does not come until the beginning of May or so, perhaps very late April. I also notice that it takes less use of space heaters to keep the house warm.

Books I am reading:  Another Sort of Learning (paperback) and The Order of Things (Kindle edition), both by James V. Schall, a Catholic professor, writer and philosopher. His writing is easy to follow for the modestly well-read layman, and often borders on the humorous. It is probably no coincidence that along with Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he also sneaks in a recommendation for P.G. Wodehouse. As a result of this, I have also begun on Wonderful Wodehouse 1, a collection of well-loved stories by the 20th century English humorist. It is also for the Kindle, and I read it on my mobile phone on the way home from work. At that point I am usually very tired, and scholarly works make me fall asleep quickly, whereas the subtle English humor so far has kept me awake.

While I still lived at home, my brother would drag Wodehouse books to the home, probably from the library, although I am not sure we did not buy any. The house was already then lined with bookshelves, and is so even more these days. I have nothing to them when it comes to books, and indeed had not even before I gave away most of the novels in preparation for my two moves.  Moving tends to make one re-think what one needs of material things. It also makes one appreciate e-books, which I now buy if available. (Also I have no illusion that my heirs will want to keep books in English.)

Anyway, the Wodehouse books of my childhood was in Norwegian translation, and quite a good one I believe. This is my first time reading Wodehouse in the original.

“The Next Great Awakening” review

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The Next Great Awakening? Let’s hope not.

For the love of Buddha, don’t buy this book as your first Okawa book, because in that case it will probably also be your last. That would be a pity, I think. Even if you don’t believe that Ryuho Okawa is a god from Venus, there is still a reason why he is a bestselling author in Japan. Unfortunately for the expansion of his new religion abroad, Japan is a bit different from the West when it comes to UFOs and such. Or perhaps I am different from both Japan and the West, but let us hope not.

For the new reader, Ryuho Okawa is the founder and leader and god of the Japanese new religion Happy Science. Technically Happy Science (Kofuku-no-Kagaku, more literally the Science of Happiness) is clearly a cult, in that the members actually worship their founder as divine. Most of us would not do that. But that said, this is not your average loon. He is clearly extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, and has read several tens of thousands of books during his lifetime, from different cultures and ages in history. From these he has distilled the tenets that everywhere and in every age have led to happiness, harmony and prosperity. Given the quality and quantity of his work, it is kind of understandable that he feels like he belongs not just on another planet, but in a completely different order of being from the usual “expert” who has simply attended a socialist university, read a few hundred books and never reflected much on ultimate reality.

Mr Okawa’s self-help books are quite thoughtful and inspirational, in my opinion. Unfortunately, this latest book reads like something written by a random jobless person who has spent too much time in the dark and refuse-strewn back alleys of the Internet. Or more charitably, as a science fiction novel set in an alternate history where Erich von Däniken’s space gods were not only real, but are still around and messing with people’s heads.

The plot is that Earth (and other backwater planets) are protected by a Galactic Treaty. Eerily similar to the Prime Directive of Star Trek, it forbids spacefaring aliens from interfering with non-spacefaring civilizations, although small-scale research expeditions are allowed, as long as these happen in secret and with as little influence on the planet as possible. There are two exceptions though. One is if the aliens are invited by the local god, in Earth’s case called El Cantare.

The other exception is if the local civilization is in the process of exterminating all intelligent life on the planet, for instance through atomic war or worse. In that case, other civilizations are allowed to intervene to stop the madness and save the species. Ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Earthlings have been on the endangered species list. There are currently two opinions on how to save them.

A minority, but with a heavy local presence, advocates basically bombing us back to the stone age. Using terraforming tools like tsunamis, volcanoes and mass crust movement, looking like natural disasters to the locals, they are thinking of erasing civilization to the ground. If this is not approved, they will punish advanced societies by inducing large-scale mental disorders. (There is no reference to the Tower of Babel episode, strangely enough.)

The larger faction wants to give humans a chance, by encouraging them toward love and tolerance so that they may refrain from actually using their weapons. The tentative plan is to get the world’s religions to cooperate about their shared values, rather than fight over details. Unfortunately, the more warlike aliens are fanning the flames of conflict, currently between Christians and Muslims, conveniently for the more draconian solution.

If this had been a novel, it would actually had been a pretty good one. Unfortunately, there is nothing to imply that Mr Okawa and his followers don’t actually believe it all, and then some. UFOs and various more or less humanoid aliens are already among us, and more are on their way. We have to make haste to create a civilization that is not only found worthy to survive, but is also able to integrate visitors and immigrants from numerous star systems in a galactic melting pot. The plan is to make Earth into a cosmic “Planet of Love”, where aliens from technologically advanced but culturally less refined planets can come and learn religion and politics.

So there you have it. Definitely a break from the usual self-help books. And there is more to come. Okawa is currently studying the Laws of the Universe, and will be back with a book detailing Truth that surpasses this single planet.

Warmly recommended if you actually believe there are UFOs and aliens on Earth now. Otherwise… well, I suppose you may want to read it if you think Happy Science is a crazy cult and you are looking for indications of this. I fear this will be its most common use. Alas for the many years of hard work that Okawa and his followers have put into making an organization based on universal principles of love, wisdom, self-reflection and progress.

Of course, once the aliens show up, I will have to reconsider…

The aliens are coming! Oh dear.

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Illustration not from the book, but from the movie “Rebirth of Buddha”, also by Ryuho Okawa. As usual it was a hit in Japan, but in the West… not so much. More or less “members only” here. With the very occasional exception. *whistles innocently*

Ryuho Okawa has really pulled out the stops. He is publishing “The Next Great Awakening” in the USA. It stands out from most of his books translated so far by having a substantial section on space aliens. According to Mr Okawa, there have been several waves of these in the past, and there are several new alien races living among us today. His plan is for Earth to become an interstellar Planet of Love. (One may remember his foretelling, already in one of his first books, that Jesus will return to preach the message of love for the galactic age, in a future where tensions between earthlings and aliens will be running high.)

This is unlikely to do much good for Happy Science’s public image in the West, where people are far more skeptical to aliens than in Japan.

I’ll give the requisite thought to loving my alien neighbors as myself once I actually meet them. Until then, I shall have to work on my relationship to you Earthlings. That may well be enough for this lifetime, I fear.

At least this goes a long way toward putting to rest my fears that Ryuho Okawa might be the Antichrist (with a capital A). I cannot imagine the capital A making a PR blunder like that.

Of course, the book is not all about aliens. But I have a feeling that they are going to get most of the attention. That is kind of sad, because Mr Okawa usually has lots of useful advice. He is known to read 1000 books a year, and have distilled from them some of the most useful advice given to mankind through the ages. I have found similar advice in books of religion and philosophy, often decades or centuries old, and more often than not hard to read unless you are an intellectual. It would be a loss if people rejected all of that just because of a few UFOs.

The Thirteen Petalled Rose

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This material world is not everything, not by a long shot, but it has effects that go far beyond the worlds we can even imagine. Or so I have been told.

I have finished reading Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’ book, The Thirteen Petalled Rose. That was fast. Normally the commute bus to work, 45 minutes each way, is my reading time. I got this book in Kindle format so I could read it on my Android smartphone even in the dark. But already it bright enough to read both in the morning and evening, so I can return to the paper books. I must admit I love ebooks though, for their ability to let me highlight freely, without feeling that I am somehow destroying the book. After all, I can read it with or without the highlights at any time. And there was quite a bit to highlight in this one.

There is no denying that this is a Jewish book, written by a Jew for Jews. And I am not Jewish. For that reason, I cannot review it the way it deserves. There are things in there that I cannot and should not understand. It is not that the book is cryptic, far from it. It is one of the best examples I have seen of “luminous prose” in a book of religion or philosophy. (At least if we don’t count Ryuho Okawa, whose books are lightly edited transcriptions of his speeches.) The parts that do not rely on specific Jewish knowledge or experience were surprisingly easy to read, and yet never approaching the level of platitude: Rather, there was a taste of poetry in them. I felt the enthusiasm of the author, seeking to share his beautiful vision of the world and the Jewish life.

But in the end, there are so many things that are simply different in the life of someone raised in a family of observant Jews. There are so many things taken for granted, so many words that have a meaning not easily translated. And when I came to such things, I struggled, then accepted that there are things I am not meant to know. Accepting this, I moved on, taking with me what I could from the text. But there are still treasures left, I am sure, for the intended audience.

While I found the book an easy read, I suspect it may strain the mind of those who are unfamiliar with mystic or esoteric literature at all. This is not a practical outward “how-to”, giving advice on what to say or do in various situations. Far from it. There is not really any commandment in it. Rather it seeks to impart understanding. The reader is, one hopes, able to see the deeper meaning of the things he already does.

It is obvious that Rabbi Steinsaltz is a broad-minded and ecumenical person. While he sees the Jewish people as the priests of the world, he holds every human sacred, and believes that salvation is not only for those who follow his own faith, much less his particular branch of the faith. As such, his book is an inspiration and a light even to the gentiles.

Recommended for the experienced religious reader, of any faith.  Newbies to Christianity should probably hold off until they are thoroughly familiar with their own faith, before reading books of other religions, even this one.

The convinced atheist will almost certainly find this book meaningless. It is written in and by faith.

Worlds!

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I want to hear about heaven and things like that, too. That’s how I end up with books like this one.

“The physical world in which we live, the objectively observed universe around us, is only a part of an inconceivably vast system of worlds. Most of these worlds are spiritual in their essence; they are of a different order from our known world. Which does not necessarily mean that they exist somewhere else, but means rather that they exist in different dimensions of being.”

That certainly sounds like something I could have said. But I did not, at least not as grandly and beautifully as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. In the opening paragraph of his book The Thirteen Petalled Rose, Rabbi Steinsaltz plagiarizes me years before I even started thinking about these things in a non-fiction way.  (I have had an overwhelming urge to write fiction about this great chain of worlds since I was in my 20es, and fought bravely to resist it, which was probably a good thing in that age of confusion.)

I have still only read a couple chapters.  Some of his thoughts are alien in detail, based as they are on the Jewish Kabbalah. I am not sure I am ever going to agree with him in all details.  But in the grand scope, it rings eerily true.  Not just the large number of worlds, but also the way human use of free will have repercussions running up and down the chain of being.

Somewhere here I should throw in the quote by T’ien-t’ai Chih-i: “One thought leads to 3000 worlds” (or “There are 3000 worlds in one moment of thought”). Of course, I have not actually been to 3000 worlds. Well, perhaps in my dreams… ^_^

Since the definition of a lower world is one we create, and a higher world one that creates us, it seems counter-intuitive that our actions also make their way several worlds up from here.  However, the muse in my head that is currently planning yet another fiction on the topic, gave my fictional character the following example:

Two men are playing chess.  The chess board is a lower world, limited in size and scope and complexity compared to the world that created it. And yet what happens on the chess board has some effect on the world in which the players live. Depending on who they are, the news of their chess match might even be followed by people all over the world, thronging out other news and so slightly changing the flow of history.  Of course this change is still small compared to the lower world:  If the chess pieces were sentient, they would remember a world ravaged by war, beyond any world wars our world has ever seen, a costly victory and an utter defeat.  Yet objectively speaking, the effects on the world above theirs is greater, because that world is that much more real.

I want to add something else, that I have also thought about in this connection: Higher worlds appear abstract to us, and this planet the most concrete of anything imaginable; but a higher world is at least as concrete to those living in it, and possibly more so in absolute terms. Huston Smith mentioned this in his introduction to The Transcendent Unity of Religions, but that is not quite the first time it has appeared to me, I think. I am not sure however whether I have heard it from outside or inside me at first. Now that I am in contact with people, on the Net or through books, who also think about such things, it is hard to tell apart. I guess this has its own risks.  Still, I can’t help it, I want to hear about Heaven and such things too!

Confusing thoughts

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Books will do this to you, although mostly when they fall on your head from the top shelf.

Today on the bus, reading Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, I went through the fairly slim part about Kong Qiu, or Confusius as he somewhat confusingly is known in English. I rather hoped for a more complete treatment. But then Ryuho Okawa thinks Confusius is one of the most awesome people who have lived in the last 5000 years, perhaps the greatest after himself (the Buddha) and Jesus Christ. By avoiding an outright religious angle with gods, Heaven, afterlife etc, Confusius’ philosophy was able to last for thousands of years without being twisted by sects trying to conform it to their own fantasies. Religious people tend to abandon logic way too easily for Okawa’s tastes, or even mine for that matter.

Well, it was short, but it was sweet. Armstrong certainly seems to share the admiration for Confusius, but her book has a sweeping range, trying to sum up the whole Axial Age from China to Greece. That is a huge project. I am sure she could have written a book about Confusius if she had the time. I would not mind buying it, I think.

Not that I am saying Armstrong is one of my top authorities on religious matters.  But she is an accomplished scholar and writes an engaging prose. For a grand overview such as this book about the Axial Age, one could do worse. And I think she is particularly well suited for writing about a man who himself did not consider religion “out of this world”, but rather taught a transformation or refinement of the soul through making everyday life a kind of sacred ritual.

Note to self: Read up more on Confusius, if given the chance.  I am not planning to become his student or anything, but a few thousand words more about one of the greatest thinkers of history may be worth the time.

As better men than I have pointed out, the greatest men of history are so rare that one would be considered amazingly lucky to ever meet 1 of them. But in books, we can meet them by the dozen. That’s some superpower!