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.

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.

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hey man, let's hear about God realization for a change 

Concert for George
Royal Albert Hall
November 29, 2002 

Horse To Water

'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.”

each gets a chance to say something on how God personally offered a lesson 

"A universal theology is impossible," says the Course In Miracles, "but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary." Paul’s small-group house-churches brought this principle to life in a practical way.

Each person was encouraged to share with the group how she or he had received an insight or lesson-for-living from God. Memorizing or quoting scripture was not emphasized, as the resultant numerous interpretations would only divide the group and then the world into thousands of sects and denominations; instead, Paul instructed,

“Tell us how God taught you personally, even in a small way, this past week. Maybe just a glimpse or brief flash of light. When you searched your own mind, when you meditated and communed with your own soul, what did you see, what were you given from God?”

God has no favorite kids but impartially teaches all, individually, who are willing to learn. God does not offer knowledge with a closed-shop, command-style, holier-than-thou, top-down pedagogy. The letters of John, as well, declare that God, via the spirit, will personally teach us about all the big issues of life (I John 2:27). This is the real "word of God," delivered to each human heart and mind, opened to receive it.

There can be no societal division or separation when religion is approached with this non-hierarchical, non-dogmatic, individual-centered mode of teaching but, instead, a “universal experience” based upon each person’s account of God’s private tutoring.

Editor's note: Paul’s decentralized formulation of religious instruction reflects not only a respect for the dignity of each individual but a Gnostic perspective.

A pastor friend of mine, a good man, when he read the above item concerning Paul’s house-churches, commented with sincerity: “But isn’t there a danger in following one’s own ‘revelation’? How can we know if these messages are from God?” I responded, “Yes, there is a danger. For this to work as it should, one must be very honest with oneself, and not veer into illusion. The dysfunctional ego loves to wear a mask of piety and it will attempt to deceive with thoughts of pride and self-promotion.”

All this acknowledged, let us explore the alternative. The caution voiced by the pastor, in various forms, has been codified as official position in the Church at large: “The people are sheep. They will go astray if there is no representative of God to lead them. Thinking for oneself is the playground of the Devil (if there were such a being). Much better for all to adhere to time-honored doctrine; this way, we all speak the same thing, which promotes harmony and unity in the Church.”

In other words, that “alternative” is to allow someone else to do your thinking for you. Surrender your brains when you walk through the church door. Keep your opinions to yourself; better yet, stifle them, and believe.” The very word heresy means “opinion.”

The so-called “Church Fathers,” writing in the few hundreds of years after the time of Christ, often attacked the Gnostics, authors of “The Gospel Of Thomas” and many other documents (some of which pre-date the canonicals). In the missives of “the Fathers” the Gnostics were lampooned for allowing followers of Jesus to offer their own “revelations” at church meetings, pretty much exactly in line with what Paul promoted in Corinthians. “They trust in their own imaginations,” said the Fathers, “are all over the place with various crackpot ideas and concepts. Who can keep track of them all? This will end badly with a great many splinter-groups representing a hodge-podge of beliefs.”

Strangely, history unfolded precisely opposite to what “the Fathers” predicted. The Gnostics, allowing each to speak, with their many interpretations of how God works in the world, enjoyed relative peace and harmony – while “the Fathers,” the forerunners of Big Religion, would witness, over time, their efforts at strict mind-control devolving into tens of thousands of factions which have divided Christendom to this day, and continue to do.

For more discussion see the article on “The Gospel Of Thomas.”

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'know thyself'

"Know thyself" represents some of the most ancient wisdom of this world. It was inscribed upon the Greek temple of Apollo at Delphi.

And today, a leader in the new science of consciousness, Dr. Federico Faggin – also the inventor of the first microprocessor in 1971 – asserts that the most fundamental characteristic of Universal Consciousness is that of self-knowing. All of cosmic evolution, Faggin suggests, is driven by Consciousness desiring to know itself.

We ourselves are derivatives, "made in the image," of Universal Consciousness, possessing, in embryonic form, all of its major traits.

And isn’t it interesting that, if we self-obfuscate and refuse to “know thyself,” the very first thing that happens to us upon crossing over is to be “sent to remedial education”, dark detention, where we will remain, until we agree, agree with ourselves, to fulfill our primary mandate.

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Oxford professor of philosophy, Antony Flew, 'the most famous atheist in the world,' changed his mind

Antony Flew (1923-2010)

There are many articles featuring Flew’s new understanding. Here is one of them: https://www.bethinking.org/does-god-exist/a-change-of-mind-for-antony-flew

In the professor's own words:

“I now believe there is a God...I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.”

 “Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature.”

“If you had an equation detailing the probability of something emerging from a vacuum, you would still have to ask why that equation applies. Hawking had, in fact, noted the need for a creative factor to breathe fire into the equations.”

Breathing fire into the equations is an extremely important point. In other words, even if Darwinism were granted as much time as desired, even a span of years exceeding the duration of the universe by trillions of times, yet, in all that immensity, no life would be produced. It takes more than time to produce life; it takes some First Cause to have breathed fire into the equations.

Editor’s note: Top computer scientist, Frederico Faggin, inventor of the world’s first computer chip in 1971, also speaks out against dogmatic materialism. In recent interviews, he has repeatedly stated, to the effect: “We have Nobel laureates saying that the universe is meaningless, that nature itself is absurd. Is this logical? The universe and nature were the forerunners, producing us. This would make humans absurd. Or is the preaching Nobel laureate absurd? Modern materialistic science places high faith in chance and randomness as causal factors leading all that we see around us. And yet these same scientists also have great regard for the intricate beauty and complexity of mathematics, and they would be the first to remind us that mathematics reveals a hidden reality, that equations outline the ontology of the material world. Fair enough, but if mathematics draws the veil from the inner workings of physicality, which, they say, is intrinsically random and chaotic, how would this be possible when mathematics itself, the roadmap to physical reality, at its core, is highly structured, highly rule-based, the very essence of order and system? What are we to make of this farce, this self-blindness, an extremely selective viewing of the data, a disingenuous assessment of the nature of things?”

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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.”

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.”

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.

materialism, like an odorless gas, stealthily pervades almost every aspect of society, even the religious domain: believe what people do, more than what they say

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, PhD philosophy, PhD computer science, for many years worked at CERN, the large hadron collider in Geneva.

“It is nearly impossible for any person inserted into a modern cultural context to escape the haze of the zeitgeist and develop a truly unbiased, critical, and personal worldview…

“No society on Earth has a single worldview coordinating the lives of all its citizens, though many a dictator would like just that… [Perspectives such as] religious fundamentalism, material consumerism, showbiz hysteria, political activism, spirituality and New Age, scientism, militant skepticism, and so on. Each of these … entails a particular way to relate to oneself and to reality at large…

  Editor's note: 

“Yet [despite this variety] there is [a certain commonality of belief, a metaparadigm, which would unite almost all of these] – a core worldview – that holds more influence than [other views. This is so] even among those people who outwardly [and often most vociferously] declare their allegiance to different belief systems. I am speaking, of course, of Western metaphysical materialism.

“Materialism subtly pervades … nearly every aspect of our lives. Take, for instance, people who consider themselves deeply religious, holding beliefs about the immortality of the soul and the reality of heaven: they, too, often fear death and resist death as if, deep inside, they actually believed that it represented oblivion. They will pray to a divinity to spare them and their loved ones an early demise. They will subject themselves to horrendous medical procedures to extend life for a few more weeks or months. They will weep in anguish at the loss of loved ones as if, deep inside, they believed the dead were lost forever.”

Editor’s note: Kastrup highlights an Amazon rainforest tribe, the Zuruaha. A study of them was done nearly 50 years ago before the advent of any culturally-contaminating materialistic influence by the West. These primitives so closely clung to a view of reunion with departed relatives -- for them, a greater reality -- that suicide was often chosen. This occurred despite generally excellent health - even at rates approaching 85% of the adult population! The desire to be with loved ones had been so deeply internalized, had come to represent the tribe's metapardigm, that suicide was often viewed as the better way to deal with life’s crises.

“[M]aterialism influences our ‘subconconscious’ reactions, attitudes, and values in many other aspects of life, not only our beliefs regarding the after-death state. For example … the Western love affair with things. It is our often ‘subconscious’ belief that only matter truly exists that drives our urge to achieve material success. After all, if there is only matter, what other goal can there conceivably be in life other than the accumulation of material goods? …

"[This causes] people to work long hours, often having to tolerate unpleasant circumstances, in order to improve their status and financial condition well beyond otherwise acceptable levels. It is also this belief that motivates people to spend hard-earned income on unnecessary goods and premature upgrades. The materialist worldview has caused many of us to project numinous value and meaning onto things.”

Editor’s note: Subtle forms of materialist belief also lead many to be hoarders, Silas-Marner misers in the night, garage-sale addicts, collectors of trinkets and junk, inveterate shopping-channel devotees -- stuffing our lives with sterile things.

Dr. Kastrup explains that an undercurrent of materialism leads us to value too highly the opinions of materialist science. High priests in the temple of only-matter-is-real, today’s physicists and chemists, are granted too much deference as they shape perceptions of reality for the masses. Matter cannot give us meaning and deeper answers. Materialistic science can discover patterns and regularities of the natural world, but it cannot speak to an underlying purpose of the universe, of life and love, of why we’re here and how we should live. As such, we should also be allowing the microphone of opinion to be shared by philosophers, poets, artists, mystics, and spiritualists. Instead, to our great detriment, one that invites societal perdition, our materialistic world listens solely to those who proclaim a metaparadigm of “matter is the true and only reality.”

many of Big Religion’s doctrines are materialistic in nature

How can this be? you might ask. Religion ever speaks of God, heaven, sin, redemption and the like. How can this be materialistic? The answer here concerns thoughts in our head. Thoughts about God, and talk about God, are not the same as accessing the real God. Thoughts are just thoughts, seemingly pious though they may be. The problem with worldly religion, despite its profuse reference to “the spirit”, is that it conceives of God, too often, as some sort of anthropomorphic entity, a “sky god,” living in some spatially-oriented place, sitting on a throne. These concepts are grossly materialistic. God, the Bible says, is Spirit, not “a spirit”; that is, God is being itself, is consciousness itself. And this contamination by materialism also extends to misperceptions concerning what we are as human beings. The religious view, essentially, is Newtonian: we are machines and cannot change. There is no growth, no personal change, in the afterlife, Big Religion is wont to pontificate. And despite all of its talk about change or growth here, in this world, they don’t really believe in change, not as you and I might speak of change, but rather subscribe to a magical “make-over,” which is why third-party sacrificial atonement and redemption is emphasized. All these are but subtle forms of materialism: God is not within but “out there,” there is no power to change deep within, and we cannot grow, not in the ordinary sense of the term, but are like machines, static and stagnant, requiring an overhaul and re-facing. See the article devoted to this topic of religion as a form of materialism.

READ MORE of Dr. Kastrup's work on the “quantum mechanics” page

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

Why doesn't God relieve suffering for mankind? 

The following is channeled information from the other side, received during WWII, via the mediumship of Winifred Willard, reported in “From The Seventh Plane, Inter-World Messages” (1946):

If God can [relieve suffering] for mankind, why doesn’t He do it? Why doesn’t He take control of man’s life at all times, regardless of anything else? Why doesn’t He tell the human how to go and what to do from day to day? Why doesn’t He thus avert so many tragedies and prevent so much wreckage?

It would seem on first thought that the argument is right. Countless men have asked the questions and resented what they called the indifference of God to human suffering. They ask by the millions, why God did not prevent this terrible holocaust. Why did God permit this nation or that, to go wrong; these people to mire themselves in the mud of beastliness? Why does God permit epidemics to go rampant through communities? Why does He take ones so dearly loved? Why does He not sit at the helm and guide all peoples everywhere to safe port on the other side of life?

Do you really think you'd like being treated like an animal in a cage, or a robot without sentience?

The answer is simple in its fundamentals. In His Infinite wisdom and power, God could do all these things. But instead He has given man the right of free will, to make his own choices, to be good and do right, or to be evil and go wrong. He has given nations the same right to their choices. If a nation determines to lower the moral standards and luxuriate in crime and sensuality, that nation is free to do just that. If it prefers to have government of the people, it may. If it elects autocracy and concentration of power, it may follow that path to the logical end. If it becomes a warring nation, lusting on human blood and reaching out in aggrandizement toward ever more power, that nation may go as far as its resources permit.

class is in session

God never takes the reins and makes the human follow where He drives. Infinitely higher is His gift to mankind, the gift of free will. With the gift, He places upon nations and individuals the responsibility of exercising this freedom of will and of choice and then taking the consequences of choice. It could not be otherwise. If nations or local governments permit conditions which breed disease, those nations must pay the price of the working of the law.

suffering is not a required course for graduation, it's just that most people will learn the hard way or not at all

If nations or men forget their highest selves and live on lower levels than are clean and pure and God-like, they may. For they are free agents. But they reap what they sow. The law thus laid down, is never abrogated. The nation which wars for selfish ends and through greed of selfish power, will perish by the sword and be its own undoing.

When things go well, we smugly take full credit; when things go wrong, we egocentrically blame God. It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition.

God does not send war; nor pestilence; nor tragedy; nor sickness; nor any other hard thing. But He has put into the hands of the children of men the freedom of will that enables them to direct their choices and thus to reap their own harvests of goodness and righteousness and peace and joy—or the reverse.

God’s law … knows no difference between high estate and low. It is an impersonal law which is one of God’s greatest gifts to humankind. It makes it possible for the human to hold himself in pride and with conscious greatness as he makes his way through the world, knowing that he is not slave or servant of any, not even of God; but that he is permitted the glorious right to choose for himself…

'Why has this happened to me?' 'Are you not part of the human race which has luxuriated in the short-term benefits of selfishness?'

Does this mean, people will ask, that the individual upon whom trouble descends like a blighting cloud, has done some wrong and is being punished by an angry God? Could it mean that? No! It does not mean that. But the law does not operate with each individual as an isolated case, independent of the group with which he lives and works. It meshes into the community, the nation, the world in which each one finds himself… This law of the universe could not isolate each individual and deal with him through the years as a separate entity…

laissez-faire management style

... it is the out-working of man’s choosing and not of God’s will that the earth has turned red with shed blood because there are those who know no limits of greed for wicked power.

Part I: Touched By An Angel presents 200+ dramatizations of earthly mortals profoundly changed by encounter with a messenger from God. Can we advance spiritually simply by meeting a representative from heaven? If this could be the case, why doesn’t God heal everyone on planet Earth by sending millions of angels so that each one of us might enjoy personal and direct evidence of divinity?

Part II: If an angel sent from God were to bear tidings of a single, most important precept, what would be communicated? Touched By An Angel, in its many episodes, suggests that what's most vital to know is 'God loves you' – certainly this is a true statement, but is there something else, even more fundamental, which might effect real change?

the beauty of the world, a streaming song, even as God’s ‘love letter’ to us

Hina Khalid writes in Beshara Magazine, "Participating in the Divine Playfulness," exploring the theological aesthetics of Rabindranath Tagore:

One of the most enchanting notes of the world’s polyphonic ‘love-call’ is that of beauty, which silently streams through the spring flowers and the serene night sky. Tagore presents worldly beauty as a constantly streaming song and even as God’s ‘love letter’ to us, which many of us have – unfortunately – not yet read. As a result, the blissful encounter of love to which we are called remains unrealised. God could have set forth a regal display of the divine power, Tagore writes, which would force us to turn to Him, but instead He seeks to gently woo us through the innumerable beauties of the world – the delicate dreaminess of dawn and the soft serenity of sunset. Indeed, God takes the ‘risk’ that these unfoldings of His beauty will be ignored by us and even that we will reject this beauty as ‘futile’. But still, He will not compel us in any way.

'this tender abundance,' this beauty born of a spirit of 'excess'

Outlining this tender abundance, Tagore writes that whilst we must acknowledge and align ourselves with the fact that the sunrise heralds a new day – and pursue our daily work accordingly – we are not under any compulsion to discern the dawn as ‘beautiful and supremely peaceful’. Our loving attentiveness to its beauty is thus entirely free, but this [this free-spirited non-compulsory acknowledgement of underlying and sometimes-subtle beauty in the world] is itself a freedom to which we are, in a higher sense, bound [bound or intimately aligned with, in that we ourselves are expressions of God's delight to freely create beauty; a beauty which is non-utilitarian in nature, for God did not create us as private advantage to Herself] – for it is only in our free submission to beauty’s call that we inhabit the infinite truth of human life and come to know that this existence is, in fact, ‘a birth of joy’.

One type of loving response to this divine call of beauty is crystallised for Tagore in the vocation of the artist. Tagore presents art as a joyful meeting of the divine and the human, which recapitulates in and through time the love-infused lila of the primordial divine artist. Like God’s cosmic lila [playfulness], art has its origins in the realm of ‘excess’, because we create art not as a means to an end but for freely delighting in the beauty of the world. In other words, when we renounce utilitarian or instrumentalist imperatives...

[instrumentalism: the variety of pragmatism developed by John Dewey, maintaining that the truth of an idea is determined by its success in the active solution of a problem and that the value of ideas is determined by their function in human experience]

... in and through artistic creation, revealing the ‘wealth’ of our inner life, we reflect the God who ‘takes joy in productions that are unnecessary to him’. The artist offers herself and her art to God in perpetual iterations of re-turning, and utters in response to the world’s call...

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‘truth is a living thing’

In his lectures, Krishnamurti states, “I am a living thing” or “truth is a living thing.” What is this “living thing”?

As K describes, and as we also come to personally know, when we become intensely alert, especially in a mental state of “no you and no me,” when psychological “distance” collapses between “subject and object,” when there is no existential separation, we will experience “sparks”, flashes of insight.

As we sensitize ourselves to this process – what is this process? – we begin to perceive the mind, the essential self, as a seething, roiling, churning mass of cognitive energy, in constant flux and movement. It begins to feel, very much, like a “living thing.”

What does it mean, “truth is a living thing”? Truth is a word for reality, “what is.” Universal Consciousness (UC), not matter, is the ground of all being, the elemental constituent, of the cosmos (see on the "quantum" page). Matter derives from UC. To say that truth is a living thing is to acknowledge truth’s linkage to UC. And what is UC? We could say that it is the mind of God.

We are individualizing units of UC. And UC is not only a “living thing” but the source of what we call life. We can feel, deep within, this to be true, this “living” reality, this vibrant, dynamic, pulsating “living” essence, throwing off “sparks” of insight, as we "open a channel" to the molding, shaping influence of UC.

All this needs to be actualized, reified, for us to truly understand. But once the process is under way, the “sparks” come every day – pop, pop, pop – as UC, the ultimate and quintessential “living thing,” reconfigures us in Its own image.

well, that's just what a cultist would say

Doctor Strange (2016),
Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch)
and Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams)

Christine: “So you joined a cult.”

Stephen: “No, I didn't. Not exactly. I mean, they did teach me to tap into powers that I never even knew existed.

Christine: “Yeah, that sounds like a cult.”

Stephen: “It's not a cult.”

Christine: “Well, that's just what a cultist would say.”

In my youth, after high school graduation, it got back to me that some of my classmates, knowing of my interest in things metaphysical and religious, were reporting that I had joined a cult; even, that I had shaved my head. This really burned me. Today, 50 years later, I smile at this memory and think of a comic routine by Michael J. Fox who, when confronted with two accusations, would vehemently deny one but remain silent about the other. For me, it would have been, “Ha! How ridiculous! I have not shaved my head!”

And regarding the charge of my joining a cult, along with Doctor Strange, I will brush this indictment aside with, “Not exactly.” Technically, I had not “joined a cult” but, rather, had transferred membership from a childhood church to one of my own choosing. Thus, it was very unfair to say that I had “joined a cult.”

Well, as Christine would point out, this is just what a cultist would say.

But here’s the problem: Nobody likes to be called a cult member. Most times, when this is done, it’s just a form of name-calling, of bigotry, of putting someone down and thinking you’re better. It’s what Tom Wolfe meant when he said that "A cult is a religion with no political power." If your church – and we’ll exclude the non-religious forms of cultism for the moment – is rich and powerful, then it’s not a cult, don't you know. It’s mainstream. How can it be a cult if “everybody’s doing it”? But if your group is a minority religion, with beliefs that are a little funky, then you’re a cult. That’s how it works. It's a way of keeping people in line and feeling uppity about yourself.

But this politicized definition of cultism is not what we’re talking about here in these writings. I make people mad by calling their respectable church a cult. But, listen to Christine, this is just how a cultist would react.

Cultism, at its etymological roots, has nothing to do with not being popular, or a lack of lobbying ability, or not drinking the kool-aid. These are contrivances, narrowly construed, that people latch onto in order to make sure that their particular cult is excluded from the definition. Nice try. (See these kinds of cheap debating tricks exposed in my “clear thinking” article.)

Let me make this plain, from another angle. You, me, and your second-cousin – everyone – we’re all headed for a new world. This one’s being given up for lost. And when you get over there, if you like causing discomfort for yourself, then you can continue in the old cultish ways – be they religious, philosophical, political, ethnic, or any sort of group-delimitation suiting your fancy. As we’ve seen, they’re called “brotherhoods” by the Spirit Guides, and there are thousands of them in the next world, all populated by those seeking for a “strong father figure.” You can join any one of them. No one will stop you. Go knock yourself out and, in fear-and-guilt, continue to surrender your autonomy to some “infallible” Dear Leader.

Editor’s note: I recently reviewed Father Benson’s “Life In The World Unseen,” and was reminded of his thoughts on this subject. He reports of those who maintain their old religions on the other side:

Each denomination, of course, holds to its own particular creed and formularies, such as it had on Earth…  if the minds of people are stubborn and they are unable really to think for themselves, then do they remain shackled to their narrow religious views, thinking it to be all the truth, until a day of spiritual awakening dawns for them. Then they will see that their slavish adherence to their creeds is holding them back… they do no harm as they are, here, beyond retarding their spiritual progression. Once they realize what they are doing themselves, and take the first step forward, their joy knows no bounds. They will realize the ‘time’ they have apparently wasted.

Notice the judgment: "slavish adherence," or “unable to think for themselves,” or “shackled to their narrow religious views,” or “minds” that are “stubborn.” Yes, “they do no harm” – except to themselves.

There is one more scene from “Doctor Strange” that might help us:

The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton)

"Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all -- it's not about you."

In these writings, I very frequently reference the “false self,” the dysfunctional ego, and therefore you might suspect that an admonition, “It’s not about you,” would find support from me. Well, certainly, “you” as “egocentric you” or “you, to the exclusion of all others” is to be rejected out of hand. The problem with easy platitudes from a movie script is that sometimes these phrases are presented by those who’ve not really explored any depth of meaning. “It’s not about you,” at the surface, seems to hint at something patently unspiritual, with not a friend in the world. However, there’s a “good” and a “bad” to this.

Cultish organizations are very quick, either in explicit teaching or by subliminal message, to sell a program of “It’s not about you.” This is code-language, however, for “You are unworthy. God could never love you. You are defective. You will never reach the high-bar but for the aid offered by the Dear Leader in your friendly neighborhood cultish group.” This is how people are controlled; specifically, by a heavy diet of the fear of death, and an existential guilt of innate imperfection.

But Summerland society is not constructed on these perverse precepts. While there is a harmony and an order to all things over there, the interests of the individual are not sacrificed for the group. In a very real way, it is “about you” in the next world.

While each sane and balanced person in Summerland takes part in various charitable service projects, these do not define one’s life – because, “it is about you.” Each psychologically healthy person in Summerland is engaged in a personal development and educational program, which might include the arts, math, science, space travel, adventure, parties, personal quiet time, friends, and just doing nothing.

One might say that society over there is comprised not of a federation, not of a centralized authority structure, but more like a loose confederation, a voluntary union, often ad hoc in nature, of uniquely talented individuals – as each of us is – who come together at times for the greater good, but, in the main, are dedicated to the proposition of reflecting God’s glory on an individual level, of manifesting the one-of-a-kind “inner riches,” of simply learning to enjoy one's existence -- which is not that easy -- and is what “made in the image” is all about.

Cults know nothing of this sacred personhood and individualization -- for them, it's all group initiative, with the hierarchy leading the group, of course -- and therefore any form of cultism takes us in exactly the wrong direction, far afield, as per God’s individualized plan for each of us.

But wait. There's another supremely sorrowful reason to avoid the cults. In that darkened frame of mind, you will never find, or get to be with, your true mate, your eternal love. Just ask Christine:

Editor's last word:

Benjamin Franklin, age eighty-four, wrote: "Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe; that He governs it by His Providence; that the most acceptable service we can render Him is doing good to His other children; that the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion."