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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity


 

Jesus Christ

Can One's Virtue, Like a Credit
Balance, Be Transferred to Another? 

Changing Atonement Theories in Church History

The Man Elected to be God, in a Close Vote,
having Failed Nomination on the First Ballots

Truly, I say to you, by no means will you get
out of prison till you have paid the last penny!

 


 

Editor's Note: This article is part of a series; see the 8 link-icons below - each is best reviewed within a wide corpus of knowledge. My research, for nearly 60 years, attempts to get at what's real and true. Concerning priority of the topics, there's a song-lyric, "love changes everything" - so it is with the scientific evidence of the afterlife; its reality changes everything.

Afterlife Bible Hell God
Jesus Christ Clear Thinking Satan Summary

 

 

While visiting a friend, a decades-old graduation photo caught my eye. Two things drew my attention: intense bright eyes, bespeaking an uncommon fury of intelligence; but also, a flash of metal gracing the verdant hue of her sweater, a filigreed gold-cross pendant.

I marveled at this - an anomaly, I thought; a secular high school and a gold cross do not particularly complement. She reminded me of the principled girl of excellent spirit, Jamie Sullivan, in A Walk To Remember...

 

 

I think that this bygone high-school grad was aware of her political incorrectness - you don't wear a gold cross for your senior photo by accident. In her own laconic but subtly defiant way, she was making a statement - one that I shall acknowledge here.

Sincere faith, expressed in humility, is a beautiful thing; an allegiance to Divinity becomes reasonable response to having received the gift of life. Mindful deference, such as this, is not unknown to me, and nothing in this article will diminish such well-placed sentiment. However, as the fisherman Peter once said, faith, mere faith, especially an uninformed, unthinking faith, is but a small virtue; to faith, he said, we must add a measure of knowledge, lest we fall into superstition and illusion.

Too much importance has been assigned to "faith" - often devolving into "believe whatever we teach; believe whatever we tell you to believe" - an anti-intellectual dogmatism posing as knowledge from those who benefit from uncritical assent; with too little importance afforded to Jesus' own teaching,You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind. You might not have noticed, but this New Testament verse is almost never mentioned in most churches.

 

a prayer shatters the late-night stillness: Dear God, save me from this dreadful good

Yes, the "dreadful good" - a phrase from a dying wife's poem which I've featured elsewhere.

In 1996, after suffering for many years from a sense that something was not right with the traditional salvation-teaching about Jesus, I'd finally had enough of this dreadful good. Doctrines concerning the necessity of a Savior dying for our sins seemed all wrong and made no sense to me:

What kind of miscreant or megalomaniac would God have to be to require blood? - the brutal death of his own son! Why do we bow before this "divine child abuse"? Could he not just simply forgive, like any decent person, as he teaches us to do? Would that really alter some cosmic plan?

And what's that you say? You say that "the law" required it of God? Well, I'd always heard that God is omni-this, trans-that, and super-something else, but now you say "the law" is the real power behind the throne, with God as mere figurehead or puppet of "the law"? Who holds the hegemony, God or the law? Is this a "chicken and egg" joke? Which came first and is more important, God or the law? Who or what acted as primal creative agent?

And if a humorless God cannot surmount "the law" as sacred cow, making God a pawn to civil procedure, is this the tribunal of Constantine? - which served as archetype of this kind of robotic thinking. Are there no courts of equity in heaven? What kind of obtuse and bizarro-world concept of God has been created here?

And even if God were some kind of Weird Stone-Faced Person demanding blood, why should the death of another, in a cosmic bureaucratic bookkeeping transaction, be credited to my ledger? Should money in someone else's checking account pay for my bills? Where's the justice in that? "Cooking the books" regarding moral culpability is one thing, but actually turning me into a good person, on the deep inside, is something else entirely. Even if the bogus argument of "substitutionary sacrifice" were valid, show me that it does any good; show me where real change is happening, anywhere in the world, anywhere in history, for true-believers. Assertion is not evidence, and the sickly-sweet claim that we can be purified by third-party efforts is a legal fiction, just empty god-talk.  

Where's the morality in this kind of flim-flam existential accounting? Can we do something bad, court impropriety, and then summarily appeal for sanctuary by way of pious legal-loophole in a religious kangaroo-court? Is this the way the universe works? Might cause-and-effect be rescinded by declaration? What about Paul's "sowing and reaping"? What about Jesus' comprehensive warning of "paying the last penny of debt" for every single untoward word, thought, or deed? - and this dynamic cannot be changed, he intimated, as his polemic was buttressed with an emphatic "truly"! What kind of fairy-tale view of life allows one to redistill reality, sweeping aside consequences, by mere proclamation? But even if, somehow, with a clever ecclesiastical lawyer, this could be technically construed as moral, where's the dignity, where's the honor, in this sort of evasion of personal responsibility for one's own actions and life?

Is there not educative value in facing the music, by responsibly owning the results - good or bad - concerning that which one has made of his or her life? Is not the greater part of the gift of human sentience that of the ability to rise above, to change one's own thoughts, and, thereby, one's course and destiny? History has shown us that even concentration-camp overlords can turn away from evil and become veritable saints. Why should we rob ourselves of the self-deterministic glory of choosing a better life and making better choices?

Can a magic hand-sign, or magic words, by some wizardry of the Nice Young Man at Church, have anything to do with changing my nature? - I mean, deep down at the core of who I am - that epicenter of malfeasance, which, sadly, often craves to indulge in untoward activity.

We are told in the Bible that creation itself serves as a kind of mirror of the mind of God. Yet, I challenge anyone to point to the smallest atom of evidence anywhere in the universe that supports a pseudo-judicial process of "salvation by say-so." Billions have been served this kind of paganized trinket-god conception of Divinity, a shallow and carnival display of so-called grace, a magic-show atonement. But, in all of this churchy theatrics, is human nature being set right? Is society getting better? Where is the evidence? Is the world a friendlier place with all of this "salvation" served up by Big Religion? We might even tolerate a meretricious ecclesiastical pageantry if it were efficacious. But, as Jesus said, where's the "good fruit"? Where is that resultant better world? Is society becoming less violent, less greedy? less manipulative of the weak? more service-oriented? more sacrificing of private agenda? Is the world becoming more like Joshua-ben-Joseph?

No, you say? But why? So many of us billions are now "saved," are we not? We've been washed clean of our sins, The Nice Young Man at Church assures us. We've been sprinkled, wafered, chorused, confirmed, immersed, blessed, incantationed, hand-signed, absolved, sanctified, redeemed, prayed over - what more do we need? God is now finally appeased, they say; his maniacal wrath and bloodlust stayed. A moment ago he could have burned us forever, and for something as trivial as missing a Sunday morning meeting; but now, after a few more magic words, he officially loves me again. Well, how sweet and comforting, kinda gets ya right here. And, in all of this riot of ritualism, this scripted formulary and staged ceremonial practice, do we experience one particle of inward change? by 'change' we refer not to any feel-good emotionalism of the moment but real substantive change of the permanent kind, that which changes you from the inside out. We know the answer too well.

Further, what kind of Unbalanced Person would God have to be, what kind of Stoical and Heartless Figure would rule by such egoic arbitrament? What kind of travesty of spirituality, and insult to intelligence, is this religious operatic melodrama, this showbiz parody of reality, which I am commanded to believe under penalty of "mortal sin" and the "fires of hell."

And, most importantly, and tragically, what kind of gargantuan disrespect is this to the Real God, by painting him as some sort of capricious, petulant, venal Deviant; someone bribable and led by flattery; a severe and rigid monster as candidate for a police offenders' list, which sociopathic conduct, if displayed by anyone on the street - if he tried that stuff on us - we'd be calling 911 for a SWAT team.

And I remember praying in that night of great darkness...

If there is Anyone who can hear me, please, help me to see how things really work in the kingdom of God! Who was Jesus, really? What is the true benefit of his life to me? If he can help me, how does it work? How can I in fact become truly spiritual? - no, I mean, really, not just outward civil conduct and good manners - I want to know how I can become a truly good person, in a real sense, way down deep, and not just told I'm suddenly "saved" with some cheap, legal fiction delivered by church-council ritual, offered with empty god-talk and magic hand-signs as religious stagecraft and thespian display. Who can tell me how I can get rid of systemic selfishness; the insanity that always wants "more," craves to be "right," and covets the chief-seat; the inner neediness, the sick little whispering that chants "I am not enough"; the Little Me, the Small Ego, incessantly clamoring for attention, perversely wishing to be important in the eyes of others -- a cluster of pathologies adhering to my almost every thought.

 

the long road home

Well... I will tell you frankly, though lamentations such as these had occasionally flitted through my head for many years, I had never actually asked, never directly prayed, and with ardent desire, to be taught in this area. But now, virtually immediately, seemingly by chance - but, no, it couldn't be chance, I thought! - I would discover books and teachers giving me exactly what I wanted and needed to know.

Editor’s note: Regarding “ardent desire,” see the “creativity research article” which affords focused intention as causally efficacious to the discovery process.

Allow me to share with you some of the major points of instruction, gathered over the years now, that became, for me, evidential to this discussion.

how can he blame you for being human when he made you human

episode 4, season 2, “The Driver” (1995)

Debra (weeping): I can't do it right all the time.

Monica: I know that. God knows that. How can he blame you for being human when he made you human?

Editor’s note: Absolutely. Monica nails the central issue. The vaunted “church fathers” would have done better asking themselves the simple question, How can God blame you for being human when he made you human? Our task today is to separate ourselves from the ancient “holy doctrines,” the respected lies about God, which purport otherwise.

READ MORE

 

far too little emphasis has been placed on Christ's life and message

From “The New Revelation” (1918) by the great afterlife researcher, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of "Sherlock" fame:

"Christianity must change or must perish… Christianity has deferred the change very long, she has deferred it until her churches are half empty… until both the learned part of the community on one side, and the poorest class on the other, both in town and country, are largely alienated from her. Let us try and trace the reason for this…

"People are alienated because they frankly do not believe the facts as presented to them to be true. Their reason and their sense of justice are equally offended. One can see no justice in a vicarious sacrifice, nor in the God who could be placated by such means… Again, too much seemed to be made of Christ's death. It is no uncommon thing to die for an idea. Every religion has equally had its martyrs. Men die continually for their convictions. Thousands of our lads are doing it at this instant in France (WWI).

"Therefore the death of Christ, beautiful as it is in the Gospel narrative, has seemed to assume an undue importance, as though it were an isolated phenomenon for a man to die in pursuit of a reform. In my opinion, far too much stress has been laid upon Christ's death, and far too little upon His life. That was where the true grandeur and the true lesson lay...

“When I read the New Testament with the knowledge which I have of Spiritualism, I am left with a deep conviction that the teaching of Christ was in many most important respects lost by the early Church, and has not come down to us. All these allusions to a conquest over death have, as it seems to me, little meaning in the present Christian philosophy, whereas for those who have seen, however dimly, through the veil, and touched, however slightly, the outstretched hands beyond, death has indeed been conquered.”

 

 

bite-sized packets of information

Providing a certain sequence of thought, the following sub-article writings, it is suggested, are best reviewed in the order presented.

 

please click on each link-icon

The reason behind the reason for what most people believe.

Why only the virtuous find the truth.

The Day Jesus Became God: How Constantine's church-council vote, 300+ years after the birth of Christ, changed the legacy of Jesus.

 

Roman Emperor Constantine, one of the great despots and butchers of history, murdered his own relatives as rivals; as such, it was safer to be his pig than his son; further, in unparalleled cynicism, Constantine delayed his own baptism until his deathbed. Why the delay? An efficient potentate must engage atrocity, right to the end, for the maintenance of the realm, so why not play one’s “get out of jail free card” in the bonus round? Taken in by his own legal-fictions, he believed his own propaganda that bloody hands might be cleansed one minute before midnight, allowing him to skate lily-white, on a technicality, to endless reward and bliss. Meanwhile, Constantine's efforts to solidify power-and-control over the rioting masses caused him to support, and railroad to implementation, a raft of fear-and-guilt “holy teachings”, playing on the universal fear of death, designed for psychological warfare - all of which, today, Christendom piously promotes as infallible and heaven-ordained. But none of this royal chicanery, of course, touched upon the real teachings of Jesus. Honoring Constantine's doctrines-as-dissimulation would be like enshrining, as eternal truth, the oppressive Third Reich policies of gangster Adolf Hitler.

 

 

The Gospel Of John was written as polemic against the Gospel Of Thomas. The ‘John Christians’ were threatened by the teachings of the ‘Thomas Christians’ and attempted to marginalize this earliest view of the nature and mission of Jesus of Nazareth.

The gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke say that Jesus is man, but John directly contradicts this assertion by saying he was God.

The current atonement theory, the purported means by which Jesus saves, is only some hundreds of years old. Before this, the church taught something else.

The "virgin birth" teaching not only was added to church doctrine many centuries after the time of Jesus, but its entire basis of validity in Matthew rests upon one single mistranslated Hebrew word - just one skewed word - from Isaiah, which, in all of the Old Testament, is never, ever translated as "virgin." 

"Jesus died for our sins" - the problem restated.

"Jesus died for our sins" - the essential problem.

Saved by The Blood? What the passion sayings of Jesus reveal.

The 16 pre-Christian slain saviour-gods believed by their followers to have died for the sins of the world.

Is Jesus a copy-cat savior?

Did Jesus say he was God?

Is Jesus a member of a Trinity?

 

the Catacombs reveal an early church, beautiful in its simplicity, before it became 'barnacled over' with 'complex abstractions'; 'one symbol predominates' in the artwork of the time

catacomb art, mid-200s AD, depicts Jesus as
shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders

From “The History Of Spiritualism, Vol. 2” (1926) by the great afterlife researcher, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of "Sherlock" fame:

"The Catacombs, also, it may be remarked, are a proof of the simplicity of early Christianity before it became barnacled over with all sorts of complex definitions and abstractions, which sprang from the Grecian or Byzantine mind, and have caused infinite evil in the world. The one symbol which predominates in the Catacombs is that of the Good Shepherd — the tender idea of a man carrying a poor helpless lamb. One may search the Catacombs of the first centuries, and in all those thousands of devices you will find nothing of a blood sacrifice, nothing of a virgin birth. You will find the Kind Shepherd, the anchor of hope, the palm of the martyr, and the fish which was the pun or rebus upon the name of Jesus. Everything points to a simple religion. Christianity was at its best when it was in the hands of the humblest. It was the rich, the powerful, and the learned who degraded, complicated, and ruined it."

the early Christians 'talked to their dead'

“An interesting book on early Christian [burial] remains in Rome, by the Rev. Spence-Jones, Dean of Gloucester, deals in part with these strange and pathetic records. These inscriptions have the advantage over all our documentary evidence that they have certainly not been forged, and that there has been no possibility of interpolation. Dr. Jones, after having read many hundreds of [epitaphs], says of these 'graves in this silent city of the dead, computed at three, four, or five million' [that] The early Christians speak of the dead as though they were still living. They talk to their dead.’ That is the point of view of the present-day Spiritualists - one which the Churches have so long lost. The [Catacomb] Christians … dwelt always upon the happy continuance of life.”

 

 

Are miracles proof of divinity?

Do Old Testament prophecies indicate that Jesus is God?

Truly, I say to you, by no means will you get out of prison till you have paid the last penny!

Why Jesus Died On The Cross: the gospel according to Russell Crowe in 3:10 To Yuma!

Elizabeth Fry: "The first thing a person must learn here, if they are to progress, is to lose this idea of self-importance"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Nazi-prison letters: To be a Christian is not to be religious but simply "to be"!

 

there is a saying 'we create God in our own image' but this is only part of the misrepresentation

The great psychologists inform us that unenlightened humankind creates civilization as means to repress itself.

In this self-imposed darkness, the dysfunctional ego alternates between seeking to abuse and to be abused; to rule over others and to be ruled; to use others and to be used.

The Eurythmics sang it for us:

egoic dreams are made of this...

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This

everybody's looking for something
some of them want to use you
some of them want to get used by you

some of them want to abuse you
some of them want to be abused...

And part of that civilization we’ve created – for, as Krishnamurti instructs, each one of us is the “world” and “society” because each one carries the seeds of evil within – part of this civilization issues as popular concepts of “God.”

When we want to abuse others, we conveniently imagine God -- thereby granting ourselves license to deal unjustly -- as harsh, unforgiving, stoically unmoved before the world’s suffering. In this re-creation of “God” we refer to him as “king” or “ruler” or “lord” or “father” or some such image of august personage.

But this high-and-mighty iconography does double duty. When the dysfunctional ego seeks to live as a fearful little child, in non-culpability, hiding under the mantle of a powerful potentate, then, in a switcheroo, the images of unapproachable “All-Father” now serve as shield, a convenient Peter-Pan excuse not to grow up, a reason to simply “believe” rather than to exercise one’s inborn rational faculties.

Popular conceptions of “God” have nothing to do with the real God, but reflect the egoic heart of darkness, which has created all civilization, including ersatz and plastic images of “God”, along with faux versions of ourselves, as well. See more on the “Cultism” page.

 

 

Why I have a cross on my desk.

Bishop John Shelby Spong: Divinity is not the opposite of humanity but an expression of humanity’s fullness.

 

Dr. & Mrs. Carl Wickland, a husband-wife medical team of trance-mediumship, for 40 years, serving confused spirits who did not know that they were dead.

Dr. Carl & Anna Wickland

In 1897 Minnie Morgan, who had lived a wild and profligate life, finally died of morphine poisoning. Wandering in darkness as a spirit, she was helped toward a better realization by the Wicklands. Twenty-five years later Minnie returned to thank the husband-and-wife team and to report of her progress:

July 26, 1922, Minnie Morgan speaking to Dr. Carl Wickland, facilitated by trance-medium Anna Wickland. She explains how her loose living had progressed from bad to worse:

sow your wild oats, throw your sins onto Jesus, then stride proudly into heaven - and other fantasies

"I made up my mind that I would have a good time while I could and then, when the time came to die, I would be ready to go, because at the last I could throw my sins on Jesus and be washed as white as snow. I started out in life with that belief. I said: 'Why can't I have a good time like others? The future will take care of itself.' With that thought many persons go out to sow their wild oats, thinking that when the proper time comes they will be prayed for, and that then they will step into the glory of Heaven… In the way of the world I lived very fast. I went to church once in a while to be sure my soul would be taken care of. I paid money to the church so I would be all right, and then I drowned myself in the glory of the world. It was all right for a while. Each time I had glory, as I called it, I suffered both physically and mentally. I tried to shake it off and go on a little longer. I fell by the wayside. After a while my physical body wore out and I had misery and sickness."

Editor’s note: Minnie’s earlier shocking attitude of expediency, a cynical view of “sin now and be cleansed by a BlackRobe later,” came crashing down for her when she met reality upon entering the spirit world. The venal mindset of Minnie is well in line with many of my childhood, some of the worst, who lived their acid-mouthed religious lives in cavalier manner, believing that the Nice Young Man at Church would wash away, while you wait, indiscretions with a magic hand-sign. Church clergy who teach this kind of hideous immorality risk a reservation in the rat cellar. See scores of such cases.

READ MORE

 

 

Dr. Carl Wickland, Thirty Years Among The Dead, speaks to a religious fanatic spirit-girl who, while calling for Jesus, does not know she's dead.

Edward Randall and Emily French: "I was told He would meet me, but I can't find Him - I am lost."

Did Jesus save the world?

Did Jesus rise from the dead?

 

one does not die in a procession, one dies alone

From “The Vital Message” (1919) by the great afterlife researcher, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of "Sherlock" fame:

“But the commonest failing, the one which fills the spiritual hospitals of the other world, and is a temporary bar to the normal happiness of the after-life, is the sin of Tomlinson in Kipling's poem, the commonest of all sins in respectable British circles, the sin of conventionality, of want of conscious effort and development, of a sluggish spirituality...

fatted over

"fatted over by a complacent mind and by the comforts of life. It is the man who is satisfied, the man who refers his salvation to some church or higher power without steady travail of his own soul, who is in deadly danger. All churches … are noxious the instant that they allow him to think that by any form of ceremony, or by any fashion of creed, he obtains the least advantage over his neighbour, or can in any way dispense with that personal effort which is the only road to the higher places….

one dies alone

"One can get through this life very comfortably following without question in some procession with a venerable leader. But one does not die in a procession. One dies alone. And it is then that one has alone to accept the level gained by the work of [one's] life. And what is the punishment of the undeveloped soul? It is that it should be placed where it will develop, and sorrow would seem always to be the forcing ground of souls.”

 

 

The apostle Paul: "Here is God's secret plan! It is 'Christ in you'."

Father Robert Benson: "Jesus today is an immense force upon the earth-plane"

A vast host of afterlife persons, untold millions, are working to "save" the world.

Why Jesus isn't coming back.

How Jesus came to his cross: his death was not preordained from the beginning.

Edward Gibbon, The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Miraculous events surrounding the death of Jesus might have seemed that the world was ending; however, not one contemporary secular writer comments on this purported chaos which would have rocked all of society.

 

'no immediate healing of a diseased moral constitution by ceremonial absurdities'

Afterlife researcher, Buffalo NY attorney, Edward Randall, working with direct-voice medium Emily French (circa. 1900), in his book “The Dead Have Never Died” reported:

“Having opportunity to speak with one very learned and advanced in the afterlife, I said: ‘Describe, if you please, the spheres in which you live'.”

The conversation led to comments about moralistic instruction on the other side:

Communicator: "They [the Spirit Guides] teach … that, according to the divine moral economy, there is no such thing as pardon for sins committed — no immediate mercy no possible escape from the natural results of crime, no matter where or by whom committed; no healing of a diseased moral constitution by any outward appliances, or ceremonial absurdities; and finally, that the only way to escape sin and its consequences is by progressing above and beyond it [via charitable works and taking personal responsibility for one's life and actions]."

READ MORE

 

 

The missing historical Jesus

In search of the historical Jesus

Other reasons why some scholars deny the historical Jesus

In my opinion, the best non-biblical evidence for the historical Jesus, that he really existed, is from the Jewish historian Josephus.

Dante's Divine Comedy: "abandon hope all ye who enter here"

Stigmata, holy relics, healings, visions, weeping and bleeding statues, levitations, rain-making, dreams, shrouds, answered prayer, visitations, and more: Proof of Jesus?

Why Jesus and Socrates did not write books, while we proceed to fill libraries: "A teacher should not mean but be."

I grew up Catholic, and I remember wondering - why is the Church not so fond of Jesus?

 

Big Religion became the most powerful institution in the Western world by manipulating the fear of death, thereby controlling whole continents and civilizations

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, PhD philosophy, PhD computer science, interviewed by Beshara Magazine:

“[Scientific] materialism didn’t become mainstream without reason. One of its biggest advantages is that in one fell swoop it eliminated the biggest fear humanity has had throughout its history, which is: what are we going to experience after we die? In Christian terms, are we going to go to hell? This fear has dominated human life to the point that the Church could control whole continents and civilizations and became the most powerful institution in the Western world. It is this fear that makes us feel guilty, which imbues us with anxiety and a sense of responsibility for what we do. But if we don’t believe in anything beyond material existence, we don’t need to worry.”

 

 

Aristotle's perfected friendship and the purpose of life

Eric Hoffer: Mass-movement psychology, the spoiled self, and the frenetic search for substitutes

After a dramatic healing, Jesus was accused of using Satan's power. His stern answer is famously referred to as the "unpardonable sin" teaching. But if Jesus saves from sin, why did he say there is a sin that cannot be forgiven? - in this world or the next.

Turning Jesus into a god dishonors him and us

Turning us into machines to be fixed, denying our capacity to choose our own course, minimizes the dignity of what it means to be human

 

 

 

A Wanderer In The Spirit Lands represents channeled testimony from the other side.

The communicating spirit-person, Franchezzo, was a young Italian man who had seduced many women. But then, having met the authentic love of his life, he suddenly died and found himself in the Dark Realms. He recounts his misery and terror, unable to see or hear, as he wandered about the “rat cellar.”

Finally, calling out for help, he was given the opportunity to rehabilitate himself, to atone for his own sins, by entering into a life of severe charitable works, helping those who had fallen into sexual sins as he had done.

In a dramatic way, he would learn the meaning of Jesus' warning about "paying the last penny" for debts incurred during one's misspent life.

READ MORE

 

 

This world is irredeemable. It cannot be saved, wasn't meant to be saved - only transcended. You can't save a butterfly from its chrysalis.

The four gospel accounts present two conflicting versions of Jesus – which is the real one?

Dr. Carl and Anna Wickland, “Thirty Years Among The Dead.” Two Native American spirits (circa. 1924) speak via the trance mediumship of Anna Wickland. They explain how the White's orthodoxy stultifies true spirituality and must be overcome in the next world. See the entire transcript here. Also, see further discussion of the Indians’ advanced standing and leadership roles in the afterlife due to their natural religion allowing them a keen understanding of the Great Spirit.

Beauty: All great theories of science have in common a profound “elegance or simplicity of assumption,” Roger Penrose. This principle relates directly to our discussion of "Jesus Christ."

As a boy, I’d hear pastors speak of the “gospel,” the “good news.” However, a clear perception of what this could mean always escaped me. No one could really tell me exactly what this “good news” was all about and why I should be so happy.

 

'I've been searching and searching for my savior but can't find him'

The following is channeled information via the mediumship of William W. Aber, the Psychic Research Society, as reported in “The Rending Of The Veil” (1898), compiled by J.H. Nixon. Testimonies were offered by numerous spirit-persons by means of full-form visible materialization. A visiting afterlife entity asserts:

“When you pass to this sphere of life, you expect to find all things just as you have been told during all your earthly journey. But alas! How mistaken! No orthodox God … takes you by the hand. No convoy of winged angels meets you here.

"You grope your way in darkness. Your earthly [religious] training has not unfolded your spiritual nature to self-dependence. In spirit you are yet a babe. Your training you received on earth not only was all wasted there, but retards your development here.

"After you have been here a time, slowly awakening from the false relation in which your orthodox training placed you, you meet a friend who has been here long years before you. This friend at last gets you to recognize him. He asks you what you are expecting.

“You say: 'I want to find my God. I want to find my Savior. Can you show me where to go?'

"The friend tells you: 'I have been here a long, long time. I have never seen such persons. Those who have been here for ages tell me they know no such person or persons as you call your God and Savior.'

"You say: 'Oh, there is—there surely must be!'

“You look on and on; and, failing to find your great Jehovah, you begin to look for something—you know not what. You meet another friend, who tells you of your ignorance and your vain search. 'I hunted,' he tells you, 'in vain.'

"You say: 'Oh, friend, you must know. Tell me, that I may go to him!'

"But you finally wake up to the fact that you have been taught wrong, that your whole earth life has been lost! Then you are ready to begin where your training on earth should have begun.”

 

 

The Great Psychologists Speak: Dr. Viktor Frankl informs us that any program attempting to expunge human guilt must treat people as free human beings - able to make decisions, with the concomitant personal responsibility to rise above, to forge a new life, with new and better choices. We must assume responsibility for our own lives, overcome our own guilt and waywardness.

The Great Psychologists Speak: In Freud's "transference" we see the needy inner-child of a grown person, distorting the world to relieve helplessness and fears, seeing things as he wishes them to be for his own safety.

 

The Dazzling Darkness is a concept representing a frame of mind untrammeled by the dysfunctional ego. Therein, freed from base-alloy animal inclinations, one might apprehend not only the identity of one’s true mate but also a realization of the living presence of God in one’s life. READ MORE

 

An ancient Spirit Guide, 3500 years on the other side, asserts that crushing burdens of sin and guilt are caused by humankind’s failure to enter into higher self-realization, a relationship between the thinking mind and the deeper person.

The love story of Elizabeth and Ben, a Christian couple, and what they needed to understand.

Editor's Essay: “Why the world doesn’t need Superman”: Pondering the question of God’s seeming unconcern and uninvolvement regarding the suffering and calamity on planet Earth.

What would it be like to live without repression? - to stand naked, defenseless, before Life in the open sunny air.

 

 

If Jesus lived and taught among us today...

If Jesus lived and taught among us today, he would be branded as a rabid revolutionary, a threat to “good people” and stable society. He would be imprisoned, vilified, banned from social media, a target of fake-news; respectable leaders would line up to offer their outrage and speak against him; and if the paid-for mob got to him first, he would be bludgeoned to death in the streets.

But the greatest outcry of denunciation would come from elites within the Church. They would call him demon possessed, a castaway of God, a tool of Satan, as his teachings would contradict their “infallible doctrines.”

Many, however, would flock to Jesus’ humanitarian ways, his wisdom and keen insight into mysteries, and his dramatic manifestations of spirit-power. This burgeoning popularity, from certain quarters, would infuriate the Church hierarchy all the more, as their monopoly on “godtalk” would be severely challenged.

In secret council, those concerned with losing power, position, and a flow of tithe-monies, would plot how to discredit and marginalize this upstart from nowhere, this arrogant self-appointed teacher, who hadn’t even attended seminary or bible college; and if they could figure out how to get away with it, they would kill him – in God’s service, of course, considering the menace to the unwitting and vulnerable “sheep.”

All this, a replay, as it happened 2000 years ago.

Anyone – you don’t have to be a Jesus – who speaks the truth will be condemned by "party faithful" and materialistic powers-that-be of this world. Anyone who teaches that access to highest wisdom is within you, that God will teach each one of us directly, obviating the need for infallible gurus, will be marked for persecution. Anyone, in childlike openness and humility, without fear and guilt, who follows the truth wherever it may lead, will automatically come to loggerheads with those who insist that privileged ecclesiastical position becomes license to espouse rigid doctrinaire creedalism as final answer.

We – those willing to accept – are all summoned to live a “Christ life” of demonstrating, in the face of adversity, "the truth" by our words and deeds. It wasn’t just for our brother Jesus, and a spectator sport for the rest of us.

See Bill Maher's interview with Latin scholar and senior priest, Father Reginald Foster, at the Vatican.

Maher: Does all of this opulence "look like anything, like anything, Jesus Christ had in mind? When you look at a giant palace like that, does it seem at odds with the message of the Founder?”

Foster: “Well, certainly. That’s obvious.”

 

 

‘you get what you deserve over here, and that peeves us’

The following is channeled information via the automatic-writing mediumship of Mary Blount White, reported in “Letters From Harry and Helen.”

Editor’s note: The speaker on the other side has a zany sense of humor as he explains his situation:

I have a hunch it is not so easy here [to be a success] as it looks at first. I cannot even get a look-in where your brother lives and enjoys working. He is so far above us I feel ashamed. What I mean, selfish cuss I must be, when a chap like him out-classes me so far I cannot even look at him…

On the whole, this is the place for a square deal. You get what is yours, and get nothing more nor less. Some of us are a bit peeved now and then, but one can't put up a kick, as the boss of the works isn't visible, or rather,  between us, you yourself are judge and jury. That’s the slick part of the arrangement. Self accused, you have no escape. You get a true line on your own past, your own true motives, and this innate force within does the rest.  I can't but admire the simplicity and the lack of waste of the plan.

[There is truth in] "Thou, thyself art heaven and hell." Think of the labor saving device it is. The system sets a soul free, leaves it alone, and the contained ingredients do the rest. Can you beat that, say?

Editor’s note: Yes, this “peeves” us no end. We don’t want to be held accountable for our actions. We want a 'get out of jail free' card. We want to hear about “mercy” and “grace.” We want a magic hand-sign from a Blackrobe to make the indictments all go away. This flippant fellow over there, a “selfish cuss” by his own estimation, in a few sentences, has given us a very good overview of the laissez-faire management style of God and the Guides. How does this “slick arrangement” work? Well, it starts here on the good ol’ Earth. It’s filled with evil, brutality, deception, greed. But does heaven send a squad of angelic policemen with flaming swords to clean it all up? No, things are allowed to unfold naturally. Civilizations fall under the weight of their own malfeasance and, by this, natural consequence of living as a “selfish cuss,” we are all instructed concerning the right way to live – by trying everything else. And when we move to the other side, it’s the same plan with no “waste,” no heavy-handed bureaucracy afoot to overtly steer people this way or that. If you want to live selfishly, go ahead, see what it gets you – a slap up the side the head will be the response to one’s own actions. We judge ourselves, we ourselves are our own “heaven and hell.” There’s no outsider, no sky-god to blame. “The system sets us free and the contained ingredients do the rest.” Pretty “slick,” indeed. - For more discussion of this laissez-faire management style see "the 500 tape-recorded messages from the other side."

 

you can have it all laid out in front of you, but it won't make you think 

Concert for George
Royal Albert Hall
November 29, 2002
 

 

Horse To Water

you can take a horse to the water but you can't make him drink, oh no, oh no, oh no, a friend of mine in so much misery, some people sail through life, he is struggling, I said, "hey man, let's go out and get some wisdom," first he turned on me, then turned off his nervous system, you can take a horse to the water but you can't make him drink, oh no, oh no, oh no, you can have it all laid out in front of you, but it won't make you think, oh no, oh no, oh no

 

listen to Sam Brown’s sensational version of “Horse to Water” at the Concert for George