Article 43
Monday, December 10, 2007
The Ultimate Solution
It is only by grace that we can enter the kingdom of heaven.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:17The real art of spiritual being is not to transcend being human, it is to achieve understanding and harmony between all aspects of who we are.
- Annett Tate
A message from BIG PARTY INTERNATIONAL ...
What is both important and relevent is that each person live his/her own life without trying to dictate the lives of others; for each person to live in peace with the other; for each person to respect the views and beliefs of the other.
Whether there is a GOD or not is irrelevent. Whether any text which is recognised by some as authentic and holy is actually authentic and holy is also irrelevent.
Another person’s false beliefs will not affect someone unless one is so insecure in one’s own beliefs that one has to impose one’s views on others, and tend to see all alternate views as a threat to one’s own.
Live and let live. If you know that God exists or does not exist, live in peace with that knowledge and don’t bug others who think differently.
Those who think alike will form groups because they will be comfortable in each others company and will not have to put up with those who keep questioning them on their views. This “grouping” should also not be seen as a threat.
All peace loving people must work together to secure a part of this world wherein people can live according to their individual values and beliefs without co-ercion and domination.
The BUSH MODEL for the world eliminates all individuality and makes everyone a slave to the state. WE HAVE A CHOICE, but the privilege of having such a choice will only continue to exist IF WE SUCCEED IN CREATING such a place where alternative views are respected.
Religions Greatest Enemy?
By Deepak Chopra
December 8, 2007
Decades after Monty Python came to an end, John Cleese is dapper, intelligent, freethinking, and still funny. I heard him give an impromptu talk and came away with one of his best lines: ”The biggest enemy of religion is spirituality.” The talk was in California among people who immediately applauded. On a certain level its only a quip, because spirituality, in its truest sense, has no enemies. The same CAN’T BE SAID of religion. Nobody needs reminding of that, yet last week two sorrowful EXAMPLES were added to the list. In Sudan mobs marched in the street demanding death for a hapless British school teacher who had allowed her class of seven-year-olds to name a teddy bear Muhammad. That incident ended only through the intervention of two Muslim members of Parliament flying in from Britain to beg intercession from the president of Sudan.
The second, more tragic example came from Iraq. 60 Minutes reported on the few surviving Christians in Baghdad, pointing out that under the screen of civil war, there has been a vicious purge of almost 90% of the million Christians in that country. As churches were systematically destroyed, their parishioners were either killed or forced to flee into exile. One was reminded by both these stories that religion has never needed an enemy outside itself. Or perhaps it has never learned to live without one, which is saddest of all. It would be easy enough to put the entire blame on fanaticism and fundamentalism, yet the question remains: what next?
What would fill the vacuum left if Islam and Christianity both folded up their tents and decamped from all the violence, intolerance, prejudice, and misery that exists in the name of God? Not just atheists but many believers have implicitly chosen secular society as the only solution to religions failure. If science isn’t already our religion, should it be? Rationality seems like a clean alternative to age-old dogmas and creeds.
Personally, I see two great objections. The first has to do with spirituality. It may not be synonymous with religion, but the two arent opposites, either. Countless seekers have made a beginning in church synagogue and mosque. The uneasy relationship between organized religion and someone’s personal search for God is still alive. Second, and more important, I dont accept that the spiritual impulse is an irrational alternative to science. Science has no patent on reason, and in the age of atomic weapons, to praise reason alone is radically foolish. Sanctity of life is being trampled every day in Iraq through technologies of mechanized death invented by objective science. Spirituality stands for higher consciousness, and that includes the consciousness of reason, imagination, psychology, and religion. Understanding the nature of God, which was an objective set by Einstein, requires the use of as much intelligence as any of us can summon.
The subtle trap we have set for ourselves is to equate Islam with the troubles of the entire Mideast. That would be like blaming the Black Death on the Vatican. Just as Europe in the fourteenth century was totally permeated by Catholicism, leading everyone to look to God as both the cause and the solution to the bubonic plague, so today masses of Arabs have no other world view but Islam. An act as innocent as naming a teddy bear has theological import. People threatened by the Black Death thought that their every act also had theological import. We need to see that the Mideast is a place dominated by despots and royal families, where secular education has been suppressed and a freethinking middle class disallowed. In the name of a privileged few, millions of people have been forced to live in ignorance generation after generation. If they cling to an absolutist world view that contradicts reason, what alternative was ever given them?
Which is not to let Islam off the hook, only to say that what spirituality has to offer - the expansion of CONSCIOUSNESS beyond rigid beliefs of any kind is the ultimate solution. The Mideast needs a massive dose of consciousness, but in saying that, the same holds true at HOME.
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Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isnt hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say Im a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
- Imagine, John Lennon
Section Revelations • Section Spiritual Diversions •
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