Other people missbehave, therefore its ok for me to missbehave in self-defense.
Other people commit crimes, therefore its ok for me to commit a crime for justice to be served.
Violence should be answered with violence and never diplomacy.
IF it were in my power to destroy your household from a distance,
then evidently I would also have the authority to govern your life and to say how you may spend your time, upon what you may labor, and for what purpose you should do no labor.
The power to destroy is the only power that the several nations of the world will ever respect.
The force of an argument alone will never be enough to grant me authority over other people's lives.
I can always make my own decisions but I will never have the power to make a decision for you.
If we are endowed with rights by our Creator then such rights as these must be inalienable.
If I depend on an external authority to guarentee my rights, then these rights may eventually be considered privledges and suspended.
For every cause there is a militia or an army ready to fight.
I stand here alone, a person of little to no influence in my community.
And I have no army of the world's young men and women behind me who will be willing to fight and to kill for my cause. I would never ask another person to make such a sacrifice in my behalf. I have no followers and I have no need, the world is not in need of a new religion. But yet I do have many good companions in the world today, many of whom I have never met personally. And those people who would most like to rule the world may still be subdued and made subject to the rule of the meek. Because the armies of Heaven may march for the man of well developed faith, mountains may yet be moved by those armies. It may just take the immanent threat of extinction to have the world's attention focused on one man, but this may be in the nature of the iron rod. And if it is not myself who will wield the rod, then there will still be someone in due course of time. The people in control are surely comfortable about thier own accomplishements and they have enjoyed a good run of the show, but the interests of all the people and the very survival of our species here on Earth has not been served in every case. And if i had great wealth in the world then I should be able to command the labor of many to fulfill my desires. But I have a plan, upon which i have labored long and hard and through it a millenium of peace may be delivered to the world. But it will not be possible for myself to provide all the labor to meet the needs of that plan, every person must be encouraged to make some contribution. But even if all of the people in the world could be unified in one purpose it would still not be enough to complete the work that I have in mind. And therefore I chose to believe that there is a mind and a will and a muscle in heaven to accomplish some work in my behalf, or i should say in our behalf. But I have been advised that I may not break the mechanics of the Universe in order to save humanity. Yet many of the things of which common sense informs us to be impossible may acutally be possible here, manifestation is governed by strange principles. It may not be possible to realize everything that the mind can imagine, and its certainly true that the imagination alone has no power of creation. But if I had an idea for a product, and I may adequately communicate a description of what I want, then other people should be able to assist in the creation therof. And in this way much of our world has been produced, many of the objects we find in common use could in no way be produced by a single individual who was required to work entirely independently. And so I depend upon Heaven being populated by many kinds of persons both great and small, and some that we may easily describe as godly. I will pretend to be a lord to all of the angles and demons alike, until some evidence can be produced. And every other claim to lordship may be considered subjective, until it receives validation. I am still waiting for validation from Heaven, but i need no further validation from the world.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Lesson - Part 2
To the best of my own personal knowledge it would never be possible for God or Heaven to become manifest as a Human Being. However in all of recorded history, there is one man who has made a convincing claim, and his name was Krishna. This man Krishna told some remarkable stories about fantastic realms of reality, and its hard to compare his stories with our own experience of this reality. But Heaven is full of a multitude of persons, we may never know the exact number, but its safe to assume that number may not be encompased by the total number of Human Beings here on Earth. Even our favorite pets seem to have personalities all of thier own, and by some stretch we may even venture to endow every living thing with a kind of personality. However it would be a further stretch of the imagination to endow non-living things with a personality. Yet it has been in several traditions that the Earth itself has a kind of personality, and even our Sun has been cosidered the manifestation of a God. I expect that the Univese is absolutely full with a wide diversity of personalities, we can not account for consciousness but we consider volition and movement as the best evidence for consciousness. In my opinion Consciousness is one of the natural forces of creation, in the same sense that gravity is a force. It is a force which pervades the entire Universe and interacts with all substance and the vacume. Now our Universe is believed to have some absolute begining, and therefore it has some limitations of scope, but we here on Earth may never be able to discern what those limits are exactly. The distribution of substance has some variation, matter forms together in clumps in other words, but its difficult to understand why this would be so. Clearly the substance of creation has coallesced into stars and planets, because this is the place as we find it. The Universe itself and Heaven are one and the same thing, but this Universe is only one of an unlimited number of possiblities. There could be enough Universes in the Eternal Kingdom for absolutely every event to be true, it is often imagined that another universe exists exactly like this one except for one small difference, perhaps you failed log on to the interent and read this Blog in THAT Universe. But even though the number of possible Univereses is uncountable, this one is still unique, and there may not be another exactly like it. But by making the point that this Heaven may not be the ONLY Heaven, we need not be concerned with possible events in other possible Universes because for the time being we are here, we are inhabitants of this Heaven and can never know another evidently. All in all its really quite a wonderful place, and the Earth is still a beautiful planet despite Human occupation. In fact I would go so far as to say that the Earth has been considerably improved by Human occupation, because we bring a higher degree of order into the world for everything we lay our hands upon. And all the works of Humankind may easily be considered works of art, although its hard to see the art in some objects. Just cutting the grass creates a work of art in my opinion.
Now the human animal being a creature of uncountable desires, some desires are still more or less common to all people. We are individual and unique, we enjoy a degree of seperation and yet for many of us there is still not enough seperation. We desire more seperation in many cases, for every person that you could point to, there should always be found one or several other members of the same community for which they want no personal relationship. Some people we would prefer not to give our attention to, our time and attention is limited afterall and we must make some choices. If we are well organized people we will make choices everyday about what matters are more or less important and need our attention. We should all list our daily tasks in a descending order of importance, and while we are choosing to think some jobs are more important, we also chooose to believe that some people are more or less important. Naturally the people that we deal with most often are going to be most important to us, but we would like to believe that some people are unimportant and that we shouldn't have to deal with them. Like it or not, we each bear some relationship to every other person on Planet Earth, of those who now live and all those people who have already lived and died here. For any two people that you can point to, there will always be a common ancestor, the only question really is how far back into history you would have to go to find one. And so for all intents and purposes the Human species is one family and one race, we have blood ties. And this is going to be true if you beleive in the story of Adam and Eve or in evolution, both stories work out to the same conclusion, there is at least one common progenitor for all people. Evidently God does love diversity and yet despite all our differences, there is more than enough similarity.
Now imagine poor Adam, the father of us all, what if he could be here today? What would he say, how would he deal with all his squabbling children? The one true King, takes upon himself the role of sire to the people; but of course it is not possible for a King to appear in the world today who is also the biological progenitor of our species. Personally I would prefer for all good things to continue moving forwards in time and never backwards, but Heaven is such a strange place its hard to rule out the possibility completely. I would like to see a world here on Earth, that would allow me enough days to meet and have a conversation with absolutely everyone. And I would prefer to believe that I could meet my companions without showing prefereces, but I know that I may have some personal favorites. Yes I would like to imagine a world here where everyone would have enough time to entertain a day of conversation with absolutely everyone else, and there should never be heard someone making the excuse of not having enough time! And this is exactly the Earth that God seems to have promised within the vision of John of the Revelations. I prefer to think that this vision of John's is authentic versus mere wishful thinking, because I love the way the story ends. What could be better than a ressurection to immortality? The people will finally have the time to become old and wise, and through the medium of conversation the cause of Justice may finally be served. In fact I do not believe that the cause of Justice may be served in any other way. So the promise of a ressurection is something that I dearly desire, if it could be packaged and placed on a store shelf I would buy it as a gift for my favorite friends, no matter the price! If the children of humanity can be made to live again here on Earth in immortality, this would be the ultimate good and the ultimate victory in my opinion.
But according to the vision of John it would appear that God still has conditions!
Among those several conditions, 1000 years of Peace on Earth must come to pass; and the people of every nation must be goverend by a king once again, a king who will rule with an iron rod! Now obviously it would be a great honor to be chosen to take the part of King for myself, but the personality of the King is not the only person of the vision. According to John's dream, there must also be a great villan who will do certain things and rule the world in his own way. In fact the officers of the catholic church have long imagined that there would have to appear in the world one day an anti-christ. And as the story goes, the propects for that person are not very good, it is said that he will suffer unending torment in the company of the beast and the ancient red dragon within the furnaces of Heaven. This is certainly not a very promising reward for someone who would be fulfilling some neccessary role in God's great plan. It is certainly not a fate that anyone would choose. But it may just be a job that needs doing, and once upon a time i voulenteered. I decideded that i would be willing to pay that price, for a guarentee of the ressurection for everyone else! And I proposed this very thing to God, I would take the part of the Villan, i was willing. And I knew that even the bad guy gets to overcome the world in some way, and I certainly had some desire to overcome the world.
On the day I made that promise to God, I witnessed an event; it was a very private miracle. And since that day I have known that there really is a God, and that he was paying attention to events here on Earth and even to the events of my life. And I guess that for some reason God really does care about us, because on that day i found my way into his heart, it was a personal victory. The events of one day in my life provide the full measure of a successful life, but even so I went on to become a father 3 times over, which is certainly something that I wanted to accomplish in life. Or well, at least I wanted to have sex; the urge can be overwhelming at times for a young man, and I suppose for women as well. I certainly would not say that I have won every one of life's battles, but I believe that victory will always be a possiblitiy and even a guarentee in the long run. I am a firm believer in eternity, and no thing that comes into existence ever truely passes away entirely.
So how can the role of the world's greatest villan, and that of King of Kings be one in the same? Is it possible that the anti-christ, the King, the general of Heaven's Armies, and our judge be rolled up into a single personality? The world has in some sense been promised a day of judgement, that there should be a Lord of Judgement appear in the world with power has been a favorite theme of apocalyptic thinkers. As we all should be aware, in the doctrines of christianity, Jesus came into the world teaching Forgiveness; and he appeared among the people who were most in need to learn the lesson of Forgiveness. Judgement may be considered the antithesis of Forgiveness. Perhaps the world is in need of another great teacher, someone to teach the lesson of judgement. Judgement is natural to human behaviour, its something so common, we all exercise judgement on a daily basis. But in the same sense that Johnathan Livingston Seagull excelled at flight, a trait common to all seagulls; is it possible for one man to prove excellence in judgement?
Please consider this for a moment, the final words of Jesus upon the cross are very well known. Essentially Jesus gave his endightment of humanity with those words, in effect he admited before God that, "Yes indeed the people are ill behaved!" But Jesus said that the cause of the problem was a lack of knowledge, and on that basis he makes his pleae for forgiveness. Jesus very well may have said the words, "God bless these people with much knowledge!" And so it has come to pass, knowledge has increased in the world tremendously, the people have been blessed by God. In fact our knowledge is so diverse and abundantly available now that we should really have to ask the question whether or not the final plea of Jesus is still valid. By all indications the knowledge is now available to the people, and yet the people are still ill-behaved! Perhaps Jesus was wrong in the end, and knowledge was not the problem? Even though factual knowledge may be available, the people still seem to prefer mere belief over evidence. Of course knowledge has become so abundant now that no one person can encompass it all. But knowledge is one thing, and understanding is something else, a little bit of good knowledge can go a long way toward understanding our situation in the world. It shouldn't be neccessary to know everything in order to understand everything. We are each a witness to events in the world and it may seem very difficult to get the big picture, there is simply too much going on. It would seem that we all have enough problems to worry about without considering that there may be still more problems of which we are mostly unaware!
But for every problem there is a solution, and part of the solution is understanding the problem.
Hatred is a problem in our world, because the many people have a will to violence.
And violence may be defined in the broadest of terms, as any application of force.
If hatred may be attributed to one cause, it has defied our ability to identify and eliminate it. Yet I believe that there are some indications that hatred may be subject to an education. We, as individuals can not be held responsible for the content of our education. If we have come to accept certain ideas for truth, and we have instead been decieved, then i guess that truth isn't always obvious.
We should always prefer to believe that we are special, that we belong to the best groups, and that the people who agree with us are the best people. Yet this kind of thinking leads to a denial of basic human dignity, as a concept of who should be deserving of fair treatment. The honorable man is clearly deserving of the best opportunities in life, they deserve our attention - and the dishonorable man deserves none. But for the lack of good companionship in our lives, the developement of healthy personality is handicapped; and despite the fact that friendship should be considered a basic human need, some people go shunned and unsocialized.
The problem of poor companionship has become more and more of a crisis in our world. Children have become mass murderers in the public schools, clearly this is evidence of some serious problems in our society. And it is a problem of exclusion and inclusion, because we exercise our judegement to make choices about other people.
No one is undeserveing of my attention, and i can not decide that one person is more or less important than another person.
Puting such principles into practice can lead a person into situations that many people would consider evidence of poor judgement rather than extraordinary judgement.
But i do care for my own opinions the most, and the opinions of another person may be of little to no significance. Because most people have the expectation of instant gratification, they will make thier observations and walk away. Patience and enduring commitment are hard to come by. All those shallow and destitue people still believe that speration is a possiblity, but in the long run it is not a possibility because we are all companions within Heaven and the Eternal Kingdom.
Now the human animal being a creature of uncountable desires, some desires are still more or less common to all people. We are individual and unique, we enjoy a degree of seperation and yet for many of us there is still not enough seperation. We desire more seperation in many cases, for every person that you could point to, there should always be found one or several other members of the same community for which they want no personal relationship. Some people we would prefer not to give our attention to, our time and attention is limited afterall and we must make some choices. If we are well organized people we will make choices everyday about what matters are more or less important and need our attention. We should all list our daily tasks in a descending order of importance, and while we are choosing to think some jobs are more important, we also chooose to believe that some people are more or less important. Naturally the people that we deal with most often are going to be most important to us, but we would like to believe that some people are unimportant and that we shouldn't have to deal with them. Like it or not, we each bear some relationship to every other person on Planet Earth, of those who now live and all those people who have already lived and died here. For any two people that you can point to, there will always be a common ancestor, the only question really is how far back into history you would have to go to find one. And so for all intents and purposes the Human species is one family and one race, we have blood ties. And this is going to be true if you beleive in the story of Adam and Eve or in evolution, both stories work out to the same conclusion, there is at least one common progenitor for all people. Evidently God does love diversity and yet despite all our differences, there is more than enough similarity.
Now imagine poor Adam, the father of us all, what if he could be here today? What would he say, how would he deal with all his squabbling children? The one true King, takes upon himself the role of sire to the people; but of course it is not possible for a King to appear in the world today who is also the biological progenitor of our species. Personally I would prefer for all good things to continue moving forwards in time and never backwards, but Heaven is such a strange place its hard to rule out the possibility completely. I would like to see a world here on Earth, that would allow me enough days to meet and have a conversation with absolutely everyone. And I would prefer to believe that I could meet my companions without showing prefereces, but I know that I may have some personal favorites. Yes I would like to imagine a world here where everyone would have enough time to entertain a day of conversation with absolutely everyone else, and there should never be heard someone making the excuse of not having enough time! And this is exactly the Earth that God seems to have promised within the vision of John of the Revelations. I prefer to think that this vision of John's is authentic versus mere wishful thinking, because I love the way the story ends. What could be better than a ressurection to immortality? The people will finally have the time to become old and wise, and through the medium of conversation the cause of Justice may finally be served. In fact I do not believe that the cause of Justice may be served in any other way. So the promise of a ressurection is something that I dearly desire, if it could be packaged and placed on a store shelf I would buy it as a gift for my favorite friends, no matter the price! If the children of humanity can be made to live again here on Earth in immortality, this would be the ultimate good and the ultimate victory in my opinion.
But according to the vision of John it would appear that God still has conditions!
Among those several conditions, 1000 years of Peace on Earth must come to pass; and the people of every nation must be goverend by a king once again, a king who will rule with an iron rod! Now obviously it would be a great honor to be chosen to take the part of King for myself, but the personality of the King is not the only person of the vision. According to John's dream, there must also be a great villan who will do certain things and rule the world in his own way. In fact the officers of the catholic church have long imagined that there would have to appear in the world one day an anti-christ. And as the story goes, the propects for that person are not very good, it is said that he will suffer unending torment in the company of the beast and the ancient red dragon within the furnaces of Heaven. This is certainly not a very promising reward for someone who would be fulfilling some neccessary role in God's great plan. It is certainly not a fate that anyone would choose. But it may just be a job that needs doing, and once upon a time i voulenteered. I decideded that i would be willing to pay that price, for a guarentee of the ressurection for everyone else! And I proposed this very thing to God, I would take the part of the Villan, i was willing. And I knew that even the bad guy gets to overcome the world in some way, and I certainly had some desire to overcome the world.
On the day I made that promise to God, I witnessed an event; it was a very private miracle. And since that day I have known that there really is a God, and that he was paying attention to events here on Earth and even to the events of my life. And I guess that for some reason God really does care about us, because on that day i found my way into his heart, it was a personal victory. The events of one day in my life provide the full measure of a successful life, but even so I went on to become a father 3 times over, which is certainly something that I wanted to accomplish in life. Or well, at least I wanted to have sex; the urge can be overwhelming at times for a young man, and I suppose for women as well. I certainly would not say that I have won every one of life's battles, but I believe that victory will always be a possiblitiy and even a guarentee in the long run. I am a firm believer in eternity, and no thing that comes into existence ever truely passes away entirely.
So how can the role of the world's greatest villan, and that of King of Kings be one in the same? Is it possible that the anti-christ, the King, the general of Heaven's Armies, and our judge be rolled up into a single personality? The world has in some sense been promised a day of judgement, that there should be a Lord of Judgement appear in the world with power has been a favorite theme of apocalyptic thinkers. As we all should be aware, in the doctrines of christianity, Jesus came into the world teaching Forgiveness; and he appeared among the people who were most in need to learn the lesson of Forgiveness. Judgement may be considered the antithesis of Forgiveness. Perhaps the world is in need of another great teacher, someone to teach the lesson of judgement. Judgement is natural to human behaviour, its something so common, we all exercise judgement on a daily basis. But in the same sense that Johnathan Livingston Seagull excelled at flight, a trait common to all seagulls; is it possible for one man to prove excellence in judgement?
Please consider this for a moment, the final words of Jesus upon the cross are very well known. Essentially Jesus gave his endightment of humanity with those words, in effect he admited before God that, "Yes indeed the people are ill behaved!" But Jesus said that the cause of the problem was a lack of knowledge, and on that basis he makes his pleae for forgiveness. Jesus very well may have said the words, "God bless these people with much knowledge!" And so it has come to pass, knowledge has increased in the world tremendously, the people have been blessed by God. In fact our knowledge is so diverse and abundantly available now that we should really have to ask the question whether or not the final plea of Jesus is still valid. By all indications the knowledge is now available to the people, and yet the people are still ill-behaved! Perhaps Jesus was wrong in the end, and knowledge was not the problem? Even though factual knowledge may be available, the people still seem to prefer mere belief over evidence. Of course knowledge has become so abundant now that no one person can encompass it all. But knowledge is one thing, and understanding is something else, a little bit of good knowledge can go a long way toward understanding our situation in the world. It shouldn't be neccessary to know everything in order to understand everything. We are each a witness to events in the world and it may seem very difficult to get the big picture, there is simply too much going on. It would seem that we all have enough problems to worry about without considering that there may be still more problems of which we are mostly unaware!
But for every problem there is a solution, and part of the solution is understanding the problem.
Hatred is a problem in our world, because the many people have a will to violence.
And violence may be defined in the broadest of terms, as any application of force.
If hatred may be attributed to one cause, it has defied our ability to identify and eliminate it. Yet I believe that there are some indications that hatred may be subject to an education. We, as individuals can not be held responsible for the content of our education. If we have come to accept certain ideas for truth, and we have instead been decieved, then i guess that truth isn't always obvious.
We should always prefer to believe that we are special, that we belong to the best groups, and that the people who agree with us are the best people. Yet this kind of thinking leads to a denial of basic human dignity, as a concept of who should be deserving of fair treatment. The honorable man is clearly deserving of the best opportunities in life, they deserve our attention - and the dishonorable man deserves none. But for the lack of good companionship in our lives, the developement of healthy personality is handicapped; and despite the fact that friendship should be considered a basic human need, some people go shunned and unsocialized.
The problem of poor companionship has become more and more of a crisis in our world. Children have become mass murderers in the public schools, clearly this is evidence of some serious problems in our society. And it is a problem of exclusion and inclusion, because we exercise our judegement to make choices about other people.
No one is undeserveing of my attention, and i can not decide that one person is more or less important than another person.
Puting such principles into practice can lead a person into situations that many people would consider evidence of poor judgement rather than extraordinary judgement.
But i do care for my own opinions the most, and the opinions of another person may be of little to no significance. Because most people have the expectation of instant gratification, they will make thier observations and walk away. Patience and enduring commitment are hard to come by. All those shallow and destitue people still believe that speration is a possiblity, but in the long run it is not a possibility because we are all companions within Heaven and the Eternal Kingdom.
Lesson
There is God who is responsible for consciousness, and then there is Heaven who is responsible for Manifestation. We must learn to distinguish between God and Heaven. There are many people who believe that it is in God's nature to be entirely free from desire; and personally I believe the idea has some validity. It is difficult for me to imagein a person who is free from all desires and anything at all like a Human Being. Being Human is being filled with an unlimited number of desires it seems. It is common practice to view God as a kind of person because after all the Bible tells us that we are created in his image. But I consider the whole idea to be mere wishful thinking. I suspect that its fair to say that we are all children of God, however I do not think it would ever be possible for us to become 'like' God. But Heaven is a different kind of person entirely, it may be possible for us to become more like Heaven. So what then is Heaven like? Heaven has a mind and awareness of immense capacities, to the extent that it can be aware of every event that transpires within the Universe. And Heaven has a perfect memory of every event since the very begining, such as it is - this is what constitutes TRUTH.
You see the very fabric of space itself is ever-expanding. And even though the vast emptyness of space seems to go on forever, the very vacume itself is still part of manifestation. The vacume extends everywhere; it is inside of your body, it etends to the very core of the Earth and the heart of the Sun. You may say its not true, there is matter here, there is solidity; but much of this percieved solidity is emptyness. The vacume exists around every atom and within it, and all of that space is still expanding. In fact the vacume is expanding absolutely everywhere, and not just at the edges of our Universe an unimaginable distance away. And this stuff, whatever it may be, is very much like video tape in the sense that it contains a record. And there may be found the memories of Heaven within the fabric of space itself. And each and every one of us is connected to that fabric in some way. It has never been well understood how our memories are stored in the Brain, but that these things may be saved by mere matter is an erroneous point of view. It is the fabric of space itself that saves all your personal memories and the Brain that somehow connects and retreives and catalogs those memories.
As I have said, Heaven is a kind of person, and it is a person with the capacity to experience itself in terms of events. In this sense the lifetime of one human being is an event within the Universe and everything that has ever been experienced by one of us is also experienced by Heaven in the exact same way and at the exact same time. Heaven in this way experiences itself in the exact same way that we experience it, and every tragic thing that has ever been suffered by one of us, has also been suffered by Heaven. Therefore our memories are Heaven's memories as well, and even though we each have a personal story and history here, those experiences of ours are not the same thing as 'intellectual property'. In fact our concept of intellectual property is entirely artifical, it is a Human invention and has no bearing upon the nature of reality.
If you really want to know what Heaven is like, I will tell you this...
Heaven is like a man who was laboring in his master's field and discovered a treasure buried therein. He hastily covered up the treasure and hid it away. Then that man did venture forth into distant lands to earn his own livelyhood, so that he could one day amass the personal wealth to return and purchase the land and claim the treasure!
And this treasure which is here on the Earth and has long been unclaimed, is the Human Experience. It is the sum total of everything each one of us has experienced, but of course the story goes on, its still being told. And you may easily ask the question, that if this is in fact the nature of the treasure, how can one man claim it? Indeed is it possible that the Earth itself could be purchased for any price?
I will tell you all that even Jesus himself paid homage to the heavely father which is the King of all Kings, but such a person has never before been seen in the world.
It is believed that Jesus himself was a king to his own people the people of Israel, although they have not accepted him. It is true he is considered a king to the gentile people's as well, and I beleive there is reason to think that he was a kind of king in his day. Among all the many things that a King has ever done in the world, it is not uncommon for a King to make a promise of land. Moses himself was a kind of King to Israel, he was the first King of record, and for the most part he created the record! Moses made a promise of land to the people of Israel which is well known around the world, but he said that it was God who made the promise. Now Jesus made a promise of land as well, the likes of which has never before been made or since. Jesus promised all of the land of this Earth to those people who should be considered as meek, remarkably he did not promise the Earth to the people of Israel, his own people. Instead he identified with the meek persons of the Earth, who may be found among every nation of people.
Its worthy of note that the supposed Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. made a similar promise of land to the mormon people. Such promises have always caused strife it would seem. For some reason Joseph came to believe that the Garden of Eden was here in North America, and at its center the Tree of Life stood in the vicinity of Independence, Missouri. Joseph told his followers that the land of Independence, Missouri was promised to them and that the city of Zion would arise there, and from that place the world would be governed one day. Among the principles that Joseph taught was that his church represented a restoration of Christ's church on Earth, and that the Church should always be lead by a prophet, naturally this is how the true church should be organized in his view. However I believe that in the Jewish traditions it would be a King who is also a priest, that would lead the true church. It should never be a prophet but a King, and we should think that Jesus himself is the prefered King, if he were ever to appear upon the Earth again. Also I do not believe that it would ever be appropriate for a prophet to make a promise of land, that would be the sole domain of a King. But I suppose that Joseph also said it was God who was making the promise, he did the same thing that Moses did unfortunately and it has only caused problems. In my opinion, the one true and most high God would never make a promise of land to one group of people, and therefor show some preference to one national or religious identity. This has only been the cause of division and thus conflict in the world, and why I ask would the one true God have a desire to divide us and to have us at war with one another? I beleive that Jesus himself remarked that a house divided is easily conquered; perhaps God has a desire to conquer us? Here we are fighting amonst ourselves all the time, we may not notice God sneaking in to take charge of things. Clearly it is a common belief that the people are in need of some kind of governance, but If God beleives that the people are in need of governance it does not appear he has ever volunteered to do the job. Perhaps God is satisifed to allow one of us exercise the authority here, God delegates to a King who then becomes responsible for all the work! But if you are an advocate of democracy then you should think its better for the authority to be shared among several people, with checks and balances! It would appear that good governance requires good laws, and Moses claimed that ten were delivered by the hand of God into his hands.
Now a God which is free from all desires should never desire to give us laws to live by. To the best of my own personal knowledge no one has ever recieved written instructions or even advice from God about what we should be doing here. And that includes Moses in my opinion, who's testimony should be considered suspect because afterall he was a mass murderer of his own people. And Moses claimed that God was angry, in fact God was so angry that he even considered destroying all the Israeli people... but somehow, someway Moses talked him out of it. Moses, a mere human being had somehow controlled and moderated God's temper! But evidently Moses himself was angry and in his own words he has 1000 of his own people put to death! Moses controlled God's temper, but he could not control his own temper. And this is not the first time he has been guilty of the crime of murder, for this reason he fled Egypt initially. However Moses had aready read the 10 commandments of God prior to the event of mass murder, evidently he was the only person aware of God's laws at the time because he had broken the stone tablets. But as we should all be well aware, 10 laws could never be enough for the Jewish people, 10 laws would never cover every possible circumstance. And so the Jewish people do love to argue the fine points of law, up until the present time when they now have more than 100 scriptural laws. Jesus is noted as saying that we only need two laws to cover every situation. To love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, and to love God more than that. Personally I feel that less laws would be better, and i am afraid that much of what Moses did, he had done according to the judgement of Moses.
You see the very fabric of space itself is ever-expanding. And even though the vast emptyness of space seems to go on forever, the very vacume itself is still part of manifestation. The vacume extends everywhere; it is inside of your body, it etends to the very core of the Earth and the heart of the Sun. You may say its not true, there is matter here, there is solidity; but much of this percieved solidity is emptyness. The vacume exists around every atom and within it, and all of that space is still expanding. In fact the vacume is expanding absolutely everywhere, and not just at the edges of our Universe an unimaginable distance away. And this stuff, whatever it may be, is very much like video tape in the sense that it contains a record. And there may be found the memories of Heaven within the fabric of space itself. And each and every one of us is connected to that fabric in some way. It has never been well understood how our memories are stored in the Brain, but that these things may be saved by mere matter is an erroneous point of view. It is the fabric of space itself that saves all your personal memories and the Brain that somehow connects and retreives and catalogs those memories.
As I have said, Heaven is a kind of person, and it is a person with the capacity to experience itself in terms of events. In this sense the lifetime of one human being is an event within the Universe and everything that has ever been experienced by one of us is also experienced by Heaven in the exact same way and at the exact same time. Heaven in this way experiences itself in the exact same way that we experience it, and every tragic thing that has ever been suffered by one of us, has also been suffered by Heaven. Therefore our memories are Heaven's memories as well, and even though we each have a personal story and history here, those experiences of ours are not the same thing as 'intellectual property'. In fact our concept of intellectual property is entirely artifical, it is a Human invention and has no bearing upon the nature of reality.
If you really want to know what Heaven is like, I will tell you this...
Heaven is like a man who was laboring in his master's field and discovered a treasure buried therein. He hastily covered up the treasure and hid it away. Then that man did venture forth into distant lands to earn his own livelyhood, so that he could one day amass the personal wealth to return and purchase the land and claim the treasure!
And this treasure which is here on the Earth and has long been unclaimed, is the Human Experience. It is the sum total of everything each one of us has experienced, but of course the story goes on, its still being told. And you may easily ask the question, that if this is in fact the nature of the treasure, how can one man claim it? Indeed is it possible that the Earth itself could be purchased for any price?
I will tell you all that even Jesus himself paid homage to the heavely father which is the King of all Kings, but such a person has never before been seen in the world.
It is believed that Jesus himself was a king to his own people the people of Israel, although they have not accepted him. It is true he is considered a king to the gentile people's as well, and I beleive there is reason to think that he was a kind of king in his day. Among all the many things that a King has ever done in the world, it is not uncommon for a King to make a promise of land. Moses himself was a kind of King to Israel, he was the first King of record, and for the most part he created the record! Moses made a promise of land to the people of Israel which is well known around the world, but he said that it was God who made the promise. Now Jesus made a promise of land as well, the likes of which has never before been made or since. Jesus promised all of the land of this Earth to those people who should be considered as meek, remarkably he did not promise the Earth to the people of Israel, his own people. Instead he identified with the meek persons of the Earth, who may be found among every nation of people.
Its worthy of note that the supposed Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. made a similar promise of land to the mormon people. Such promises have always caused strife it would seem. For some reason Joseph came to believe that the Garden of Eden was here in North America, and at its center the Tree of Life stood in the vicinity of Independence, Missouri. Joseph told his followers that the land of Independence, Missouri was promised to them and that the city of Zion would arise there, and from that place the world would be governed one day. Among the principles that Joseph taught was that his church represented a restoration of Christ's church on Earth, and that the Church should always be lead by a prophet, naturally this is how the true church should be organized in his view. However I believe that in the Jewish traditions it would be a King who is also a priest, that would lead the true church. It should never be a prophet but a King, and we should think that Jesus himself is the prefered King, if he were ever to appear upon the Earth again. Also I do not believe that it would ever be appropriate for a prophet to make a promise of land, that would be the sole domain of a King. But I suppose that Joseph also said it was God who was making the promise, he did the same thing that Moses did unfortunately and it has only caused problems. In my opinion, the one true and most high God would never make a promise of land to one group of people, and therefor show some preference to one national or religious identity. This has only been the cause of division and thus conflict in the world, and why I ask would the one true God have a desire to divide us and to have us at war with one another? I beleive that Jesus himself remarked that a house divided is easily conquered; perhaps God has a desire to conquer us? Here we are fighting amonst ourselves all the time, we may not notice God sneaking in to take charge of things. Clearly it is a common belief that the people are in need of some kind of governance, but If God beleives that the people are in need of governance it does not appear he has ever volunteered to do the job. Perhaps God is satisifed to allow one of us exercise the authority here, God delegates to a King who then becomes responsible for all the work! But if you are an advocate of democracy then you should think its better for the authority to be shared among several people, with checks and balances! It would appear that good governance requires good laws, and Moses claimed that ten were delivered by the hand of God into his hands.
Now a God which is free from all desires should never desire to give us laws to live by. To the best of my own personal knowledge no one has ever recieved written instructions or even advice from God about what we should be doing here. And that includes Moses in my opinion, who's testimony should be considered suspect because afterall he was a mass murderer of his own people. And Moses claimed that God was angry, in fact God was so angry that he even considered destroying all the Israeli people... but somehow, someway Moses talked him out of it. Moses, a mere human being had somehow controlled and moderated God's temper! But evidently Moses himself was angry and in his own words he has 1000 of his own people put to death! Moses controlled God's temper, but he could not control his own temper. And this is not the first time he has been guilty of the crime of murder, for this reason he fled Egypt initially. However Moses had aready read the 10 commandments of God prior to the event of mass murder, evidently he was the only person aware of God's laws at the time because he had broken the stone tablets. But as we should all be well aware, 10 laws could never be enough for the Jewish people, 10 laws would never cover every possible circumstance. And so the Jewish people do love to argue the fine points of law, up until the present time when they now have more than 100 scriptural laws. Jesus is noted as saying that we only need two laws to cover every situation. To love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, and to love God more than that. Personally I feel that less laws would be better, and i am afraid that much of what Moses did, he had done according to the judgement of Moses.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Enduring Incarnation
Every person who has ever lived upon the Earth has a personal story to tell. Of all that a person has experienced, or felt, or said, or done there will be a memory. There are even many facets of our existence here that we could never have been aware of in fine detail. And a person may exist in one of two states, they may enjoy a condition of consciouness or unconsciousness. When a person does experience the condition of unconsciousness they will not be aware of time passing or of any other experience. But even though we may not be aware, our personal memories continue to exist. As soon as a person is born into the world they become a part of Heaven; and the manifest Universe and Heaven are one in the same thing, and Heaven contains a memory of itself. Every personal story of mortal life becomes part of the story of Heaven, and the story itself may endure far longer than the physical body. Now it is probably true that we have all experienced a condition of unconsciouness during our lifetime. We become unconscious at times when we are sleeping, although dreaming may be a form of consciousness even if we do not remember the experience on waking. And its certainly true that many people have experienced a period of unconsciouness due to some physical trauma. Consciouness has generally been linked to brain function; however there is evidence to suggest that this should not be so. There have been numerous cases when a person has been revived from a near death experience and subsequently related a memory of some experience during that period of time. In many of these cases the person was known to be 'brain dead', which is to say that normal brain activity was undetectable. Now I don't know which is more remarkable, that anything could have been experienced at all OR the fact that a memory of the experience was formed. Enough of these cases have been reported to suggest that human consciouness may survive the death of the body, and many people have imagined a realm of unmanifest spirits. So long as the body exists then perhaps the awareness may exist as well; and in a sense the body will always continue to exist even as the substance becomes unformed into so much gas and dust. The physical substance of our flesh and bone is constantly being returned to the environment, and we continuously take in new substance from the world around us the whole time that we live. Some of that stuff that was once a part of my personal self is now in the mattress i sleep on; and some of myself is lost with every haircut and that loss is hardly ever a concern. All of that substance that has ever been part of my body has existed here on the Earth since the world was formed, its always been here long before I was formed, and all this stuff will continue to be part of the Earth long after I'm gone. If the stuff still exists, does that mean that I will still exist? And since the stuff has long been here as part of the Heaven, does that mean I have existed for as long as heaven? Where is my begining and where is my end; it appears that I have many beginings. The seed has the power to draw upon the environment all the substance required to create the form of a tree. And that tree may bear some fruit that I may have eaten, as the life of the tree became part of my life and the begining of the tree was a seed, that begining has become part of me as well. Therefore I think that manifestation is everything that matters, through manifestation we are married to eternity. I may die and pass away from the world and then I may become unconscious eventually; but I have passed this way and the Universe was moved in my passing, and the Universe remembers. So long as my memories endure its possible that I may be awakened once again. I would prefer that my existence not be governed by a principle of reincarnation, in order for reincarnation to work we must relinquish our memories and I don't like that. I prefer to believe in a principle of enduring incarnation.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
A Basket Full of Life
The Earth is one great big living planet, and all the life therof is of a kind. All the living things on Earth bear certain similarities to one another. And it has long been a mystery as to wether or not the Earth is the only living world. Well perhaps it is not a very ancient mystery at that, the people havn't always known of the possibility of other planets. And while the many stars of the night sky have similiarities to our sun, it has not always been imagined that those distant stars and our sun are exactly the same thing. And so it has been a gradual developement over the past several centuries that we have become driven to find proof of life.
There are many people in the world today who support a maned mission to the planet Mars. Now there may or may not be evidence for life to be found there, and clearly if no evidence could be found by a maned mission the matter would still be inconclusive. The evidence we desire may exist there and still not be found, but if it does exist there today it will still be there to find in 100 years. And sending human beings off on an adventure of such a scale as this is certainly risky business. But there are some people alive in the world today who are driven to see this thing accomplished in their own lifetime. It is not good enough for those people to know that mankind's eventual journey to the red planet will be made, the matter is nearly inevitable.
But on the topic of life being found to exist elsewhere in our galaxy, it is not even neccessary to make the trip. It has become a fair certainty that evidence for life will be found with a telescope! And not simply life within our own solar system, but life on a planet circleing a distant sun. All we have to do is keep building our telescopes and the matter will eventually be resolved; it may even happen in my own lifetime, and its very likely to happen within the lifetimes of my children. The problem that has prevented us from seeing that distant planet directly is that a star's light is so glareingly bright that we can not discern the reflected light from a circling planet. But even so the fact that distant planets do exist has been directly observed by detecting a wobble in the parent star. All of those distant planets that have already been detected are rather large, on the scale of one or several jupiters, and of course these are not potential candidates for our kind of life. We need to observe the Earth sized planets and that's proven hard to do, but it is a problem that we may be able to overcome. If a rocky planet of Earth's mass can be observed directly then spectroscopic analysis may tell us what kind of atmosphere that planet has. And if oxygen is detected on such a distant planet, that is proof of life! Oxygen will ONLY be produced into a planet's atmosphere by the processes of life, and therefore the matter may be resolved conclusively.
And from this point i will divert from the topic of life to the topic of consciousness. I would like to prove conclusively that the creation of life and the creation of conciousness are not one in the same thing. In fact consciousness has no dependence on life, even though the formation life may depend on consciousness. Therefore I submit the statement that consciousness exists as a force of nature prior to the creation of life. Consciousness is a force like any other one of the forces of the Universe, like the force of gravity it pervades all matter and even the emptyness of space. And as a force of the Universe it interacts with the substance thereof, and not just the substance of life. Matter is a very peculiar thing, its questionable wether there is any real solidity to it. The volume of a single atom of substance is mostly empty space! And our science of modern physics has revealed a microscopic world of particles, layers upon layers of particles. And all of these most fundamental particles have many peculiar properties, it is even believed that there is a particle for every force. We have pryed a layer of particles out of the protons and neutrons and electrons that make up the basic building blocks of every chemical process. And all these sub-atomic particles only seem to exist in the natural world when we produce and observe them; although it is believed that such particles existed prior to the creation of matter within the first moments of the creation of our Universe. And our Universe does have a definate begining, a moment of birth in a sense. But in order for a solid particle to be produced it has to be detected, and conscousness is required to discern that solidity. The Universe was born in an instant and consciouness was born into it at the same moment. Without consciousness there could be no observer, and without the observer there could be no particles. But particles were produced and subsequently formed into the atoms of hydrogen and helium and perhaps some lithium that became the building blocks of stars and galaxies. And within the chemisty of stars all the heavier elements were formed and the pressure of light was produced. And the heavier elements being produced allows for planets and stars like ours to be produced.
Now its become thinkable that there may even be many more universes, there could be universes that exist and will never interact with our universe. We can imagine such a number of possible univereses that there could be many more much like ours where every possibility becomes realized. And the kindom of God has been described as a mansion of many rooms, and this universe may just be one room in the mansion. We may be forced to acknowledge the possibility of other universes, but it doesn't really matter what we imagine those universes to be like. For the moment and the foreseeable future we are confined to this Universe, this Universe is the only one that should really concern us. Now we must be forced to acknowledge that not only does our Universe have a definate begining, but the possibility that something preceeds it. And that one thing that preceeds the creation of our Universe is the force of consciousness, its source proceeds from outside the known universe. And that force of consciousness is the power and the presence of the one true and most high God. Therefore we live in God's presence at all times and we depend on that power in order to exist as individual persons.
All the forces of creation could have been balanced just a little bit differently, and if the balance of forces was anything other than what it is then the universe we observe around us would not be possible, we would not be possible. When the balance of the natural forces was determined, the possibility of life was also determined. But we should ask, did it really depend on someone making a decision? Is there a creator who chose the form that things should take, or was it just a roll of the dice that came out in our favor? In order for a decison to be made we would have to grant God a personality, but I believe instead that we should grant the Universe a personality. When the Universe was born then also a new peronality was born, a distinct individual with the capacity to experience itself and form memories and to be aware of those memories and have a mind to think. Here I have described the personality of Heaven, without saying much about what it is like. Of course I can not say much about what such a personality would be like, except that is has a complete memory of itself and has observed every process and event that has occured here in Heaven.
An uncountable number of stars and planets have formed and there are more personalitites in heaven. Each star or planet a distinct and unique individual, and we may never be able to discern that they have minds to think with, that they have an awareness to experience the Universe with. But here we are bound to planet Earth and we can not deny that there are many personalities in heaven. We observe the world around us and we observe that we are not the only observer here. Each one of us experiencing the Universe from a unique and limited perspective, we can not deny that the power of consciouness is at work in our world. And what exactly is this thing that wills and the substance of creation is moved and controlled by the power of a mind? If consciouness has no influence with matter then how do my fingers move to type out these words? The physical body of a human being is a large collection of living cells, and cells that move about within the body. Cells that form muscle that may be expanded or contracted according to a decision or a choice. And the indivudal cells come in many different flavors but they consist of atoms. Atoms arranged into a particular pattern, one single pattern is repeated many times over and the cell walls are formed. The substance of the Universe has obtained a very high degree of order in me, and that form depends on there being a diversity of chemical elements.
One single atom is a more or less formless thing, but put two or more of them together and they may take on a definate shape. And somehow or another it is this very peculiar arrangement of matter that brings the force of consciouness into bright and shining focus. But I submit again, the force preceeds the form.
Its just very hard to measure the force of consciouness directly, it can not be quantitized. And its very hard to observe how this force interacts with matter, but obviously it does. And if consciouness is a force which interacts with the substance of life, we should easily conclude that it interacts with all substance. There is nothing particularly special about the substance of one living body as say, compared to the substance of the whole Earth, except that it is particularly well formed. But its possible that a sizable quantity of mass makes up for the lack of fine form, and therfore a personality may be formed. The Earth itself has often been attributed with a personality and perhaps there is more to this idea than simply an enchanting fantasy. The Earth is both a planet and a living thing at the same time, if there is any kind of mind associated with our planet it should prove to be a very interesting mind. Ancient kings of the Earth have believed that the Stars were gods and that they could become stars. In the visions of christianity the stars are presented as both the angles and the demons of heaven. That there may be more personalities in Heaven than we find here on Earth is certainly not a new idea. But I believe there must be substance to a person, there can be no personality without substance. No personality may exist in an unmanifest condition, contrary to the beliefs of many people.
There are many people in the world today who support a maned mission to the planet Mars. Now there may or may not be evidence for life to be found there, and clearly if no evidence could be found by a maned mission the matter would still be inconclusive. The evidence we desire may exist there and still not be found, but if it does exist there today it will still be there to find in 100 years. And sending human beings off on an adventure of such a scale as this is certainly risky business. But there are some people alive in the world today who are driven to see this thing accomplished in their own lifetime. It is not good enough for those people to know that mankind's eventual journey to the red planet will be made, the matter is nearly inevitable.
But on the topic of life being found to exist elsewhere in our galaxy, it is not even neccessary to make the trip. It has become a fair certainty that evidence for life will be found with a telescope! And not simply life within our own solar system, but life on a planet circleing a distant sun. All we have to do is keep building our telescopes and the matter will eventually be resolved; it may even happen in my own lifetime, and its very likely to happen within the lifetimes of my children. The problem that has prevented us from seeing that distant planet directly is that a star's light is so glareingly bright that we can not discern the reflected light from a circling planet. But even so the fact that distant planets do exist has been directly observed by detecting a wobble in the parent star. All of those distant planets that have already been detected are rather large, on the scale of one or several jupiters, and of course these are not potential candidates for our kind of life. We need to observe the Earth sized planets and that's proven hard to do, but it is a problem that we may be able to overcome. If a rocky planet of Earth's mass can be observed directly then spectroscopic analysis may tell us what kind of atmosphere that planet has. And if oxygen is detected on such a distant planet, that is proof of life! Oxygen will ONLY be produced into a planet's atmosphere by the processes of life, and therefore the matter may be resolved conclusively.
And from this point i will divert from the topic of life to the topic of consciousness. I would like to prove conclusively that the creation of life and the creation of conciousness are not one in the same thing. In fact consciousness has no dependence on life, even though the formation life may depend on consciousness. Therefore I submit the statement that consciousness exists as a force of nature prior to the creation of life. Consciousness is a force like any other one of the forces of the Universe, like the force of gravity it pervades all matter and even the emptyness of space. And as a force of the Universe it interacts with the substance thereof, and not just the substance of life. Matter is a very peculiar thing, its questionable wether there is any real solidity to it. The volume of a single atom of substance is mostly empty space! And our science of modern physics has revealed a microscopic world of particles, layers upon layers of particles. And all of these most fundamental particles have many peculiar properties, it is even believed that there is a particle for every force. We have pryed a layer of particles out of the protons and neutrons and electrons that make up the basic building blocks of every chemical process. And all these sub-atomic particles only seem to exist in the natural world when we produce and observe them; although it is believed that such particles existed prior to the creation of matter within the first moments of the creation of our Universe. And our Universe does have a definate begining, a moment of birth in a sense. But in order for a solid particle to be produced it has to be detected, and conscousness is required to discern that solidity. The Universe was born in an instant and consciouness was born into it at the same moment. Without consciousness there could be no observer, and without the observer there could be no particles. But particles were produced and subsequently formed into the atoms of hydrogen and helium and perhaps some lithium that became the building blocks of stars and galaxies. And within the chemisty of stars all the heavier elements were formed and the pressure of light was produced. And the heavier elements being produced allows for planets and stars like ours to be produced.
Now its become thinkable that there may even be many more universes, there could be universes that exist and will never interact with our universe. We can imagine such a number of possible univereses that there could be many more much like ours where every possibility becomes realized. And the kindom of God has been described as a mansion of many rooms, and this universe may just be one room in the mansion. We may be forced to acknowledge the possibility of other universes, but it doesn't really matter what we imagine those universes to be like. For the moment and the foreseeable future we are confined to this Universe, this Universe is the only one that should really concern us. Now we must be forced to acknowledge that not only does our Universe have a definate begining, but the possibility that something preceeds it. And that one thing that preceeds the creation of our Universe is the force of consciousness, its source proceeds from outside the known universe. And that force of consciousness is the power and the presence of the one true and most high God. Therefore we live in God's presence at all times and we depend on that power in order to exist as individual persons.
All the forces of creation could have been balanced just a little bit differently, and if the balance of forces was anything other than what it is then the universe we observe around us would not be possible, we would not be possible. When the balance of the natural forces was determined, the possibility of life was also determined. But we should ask, did it really depend on someone making a decision? Is there a creator who chose the form that things should take, or was it just a roll of the dice that came out in our favor? In order for a decison to be made we would have to grant God a personality, but I believe instead that we should grant the Universe a personality. When the Universe was born then also a new peronality was born, a distinct individual with the capacity to experience itself and form memories and to be aware of those memories and have a mind to think. Here I have described the personality of Heaven, without saying much about what it is like. Of course I can not say much about what such a personality would be like, except that is has a complete memory of itself and has observed every process and event that has occured here in Heaven.
An uncountable number of stars and planets have formed and there are more personalitites in heaven. Each star or planet a distinct and unique individual, and we may never be able to discern that they have minds to think with, that they have an awareness to experience the Universe with. But here we are bound to planet Earth and we can not deny that there are many personalities in heaven. We observe the world around us and we observe that we are not the only observer here. Each one of us experiencing the Universe from a unique and limited perspective, we can not deny that the power of consciouness is at work in our world. And what exactly is this thing that wills and the substance of creation is moved and controlled by the power of a mind? If consciouness has no influence with matter then how do my fingers move to type out these words? The physical body of a human being is a large collection of living cells, and cells that move about within the body. Cells that form muscle that may be expanded or contracted according to a decision or a choice. And the indivudal cells come in many different flavors but they consist of atoms. Atoms arranged into a particular pattern, one single pattern is repeated many times over and the cell walls are formed. The substance of the Universe has obtained a very high degree of order in me, and that form depends on there being a diversity of chemical elements.
One single atom is a more or less formless thing, but put two or more of them together and they may take on a definate shape. And somehow or another it is this very peculiar arrangement of matter that brings the force of consciouness into bright and shining focus. But I submit again, the force preceeds the form.
Its just very hard to measure the force of consciouness directly, it can not be quantitized. And its very hard to observe how this force interacts with matter, but obviously it does. And if consciouness is a force which interacts with the substance of life, we should easily conclude that it interacts with all substance. There is nothing particularly special about the substance of one living body as say, compared to the substance of the whole Earth, except that it is particularly well formed. But its possible that a sizable quantity of mass makes up for the lack of fine form, and therfore a personality may be formed. The Earth itself has often been attributed with a personality and perhaps there is more to this idea than simply an enchanting fantasy. The Earth is both a planet and a living thing at the same time, if there is any kind of mind associated with our planet it should prove to be a very interesting mind. Ancient kings of the Earth have believed that the Stars were gods and that they could become stars. In the visions of christianity the stars are presented as both the angles and the demons of heaven. That there may be more personalities in Heaven than we find here on Earth is certainly not a new idea. But I believe there must be substance to a person, there can be no personality without substance. No personality may exist in an unmanifest condition, contrary to the beliefs of many people.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Packages of Time
A friend of mine was heard to remark that he wished there were packages of time that could be bought from the supermarket shelf, because he never had enough time.
And I told him that there really are packages of time on the supermarket shelves, because he was saving a tremendous amount of time by shoping at the store. If all of use were required to hunt and gather and plant in order to eat, then we really wouldn't have time!
But thats not the way the world works, the people do labor constantly. Money in a sense is the power to command another person's labors. All manufactured goods are valued almost entirely upon the time required to create those goods, and very little is the value of the actual materials. But even the most basic building materials must be wrought from the Earth and refined in order to be formed into something useful. And all that effort is the value of the thing. If I gave you the very same materials unformed, you would not pay a fraction of the price. A pile of bricks and wood is not the same thing as a house. And we all do require some kind of house to live in, but very few have the skill to actually build that house. And getting the skill is also a matter of time, and of course we do not all focus our attention on obtaining the skills to build a house. Its very easy to put a value on physical labor that gives form to the things in our world. Its easy to put a value on the labor requried to provide a service to other people. But in our world some people even manage to earn a comfortable livelyhood just on the basis of having an opinion!
Of course in the matter of such opinions, they can often be said to be educated or expert. But in many of these professions there is very little physical labor involved that can't be delegated to another, there is little more than the process of making a decision in some cases. And yet the whole process does require another person's time and attention, and that time may easily equate to money.
Now of course it is right and good that a person's labor, should it prove beneficial to the community, would entitle that person to services from the community. And we use a medium of exchange to make things work this way, the power of money. But of course we must needs determine what level of rewards are appropriate to the work that has been done. But every person in the world recieves their allotment of time by the same measure, should we really say that the measure of one person's time is more or less valuable? And here we go exercising that judgement again to decided what things are more or less important. Completeing the more important works should be more rewarding of course. If work is less important then it should provide less rewards from the community.
To a large degree we decided which jobs are most important by the demand for that kind of work to be done, and of course the supply of workers that can do the job may be taken into account as well. Clearly not all people enjoy equal means to get work done, even if we don't take qualifying skills into account. A simple skill may be obtainable by any person given enough time. For some people, some skills may very well be unobtainable even given unlimited time to learn. A lot of labor intensive processes depend upon having access to the appropriate tools. And if a person does not have access to the appropriate tools then perhaps they can get access to the knowledge of how those tools are made. Of course the working person may save a great deal of time by having the appropriate tools ready made. But its feasable that the tools would have to be made in order to compelete a particular job.
I want to produce goods, and I have a plan from which they may be produced. But having a plan or schematic or patent is useless without obtaining materials. Now it just so happens that in our world, every parcel of land should be considered to be private property. Some people there are who hold a deed to everything under the land, and there will always be some person who has title to make use of the land. You may not simply go out and cut trees wherever you please in order to satisfy a demand for wood, without there being someone who claims prior rights. Therefore most of the world's material assets are inaccessable. But now please consider who should have greater rights to claim a portion of the Earth's substance than any other? And what body of governing individuals should have the authority to grant such rights exclusively? Without having the means to produce something for lack of materials, potentially useful labor never bears fruit in the world and thus can not be rewarded.
So it is very hard for a person to make their way in the world from scratch. Even the most remote corners of the world are regulated by civilization, there are no more frontiers.
And the people who have all the rights to resources from the land are those who have paid for those rights. And they were empowered to pay those fees by the process of having performed some useful labor. Now those people who are most senior and established hold all the assets. And having control of the assets gives one the right to determine how those assets should be used. Now every human being is a person of many desires, someone else may decide what will be produced and some there are who may provide the labor to fulfill those desires. Therefore someone else may choose how my time should be spent, and what should be produced. My self-interest may be served in some way because I will surely be paid some form of compensation for contributing my part to the greater whole. And therefore humanity creates heiarchys in order to organize a group effort, and one person stands at the top of the pyramid directing everybody else's efforts. And for giving the world such excellent direction, those people at the very top will get the lion's share of the rewards. But please consider, is that person at the top really more important than the person who is cleaning the bathrooms? You can't run a business place without having clean and sanitary bathrooms. Yes we create heiarchys but we easily forget just how synthetic they are and how no one person can be more or less important than any other.
And all the processes of labor and product creation in our world has a tendency to pool the wealth into certain pockets. And of course that wealth represents the power to command other people's labor, but it also represents the power to possess capital assets such as tools and buildings and land, and the various material resources associated with land ownership. Of course i would like to do everything to increase my own personal share in the world's labor, but I have no right to claim another person's time and attention having no money to spend. If I can not increase my share of the money rapidly enough, then perhaps I can increase my share of the material assets. And in fact the actual substance of the Earth is of very little value, perhaps it may be purchased without labor or money being involved. But I'd like to stake my claim to the whole thing in such a way that it clearly overturns any prior agreements made between persons when I was not a party to the agreement. I could perhaps perform the minimal amount of labor that would be required to produce a printed document. Yes I will embelish that piece of paper with all the appropriate legal terminology and it should serve as a deed to all the land, and of course all that lies beneath the land should be claimed as well! Well obviously there is no recognized authority in the human world that could grant such a document, by what authority could such a thing be sealed?
A simple argument could be made for equal ownership of the world's resources, no person should be entitled to a claim upon it that preceeds someone elses. But I'm not really interested in seeing the world divided up into six and one-half billion parcels, I want to claim it myself whole and complete. And in order to accomplish my goal, i would be interested in finding out if there is some person in existence with prior claim to the property. One person with a claim to preceed all the claims of humanity, and then of course to pay the appropriate price to that person. But now what if that person has no need for a man's labor? And certainly one may not take a portion of the material world in order to pay the price of the whole world. But the supreme person has been found and the price has been paid in full, and it did amount to little more than a promise.
Personally I have not many material goods that were not given to me by someone else. I have been employed occassionally in the USA, but the whole time that I did labor for someone else's interests, I also did labor for myself. And I have performed much of the kind of labor which is mostly consisted of making decisions, I have not even produced much documentation of the work that has been done to date. But for all the work that I have done, I have fasioned a thing of value; and that thing is a mature personality. Of course I have not yet recieved compensation for this work, but I still have hope that I might. Often times selling a good product in the world requires the manufacturer to produce the market as well. The people must be made aware that the product is good and beneficial to them personally, so that they will be willing to reward the work that has already been done. I have lived and worked in this world for niegh on 45 years now, I have had many good and some not so good experiences. I have a kind of expertise that is very hard to come by, it can not be had by education alone but in many ways it does depend on some education. As soon as I made my promise to the supreme person so long ago, I have been put on a path to become intimately familure with insanity. A really good fantasy can be a powerful thing to believe in, especially if it makes us seem more important. But whether or not I am more or less important than anybody else, I do know one thing that most people don't. There is a God in Heaven and he's paying attention to events here on Earth, and perhaps he is even concerned enough to act in some cases. Its interesting to imagine what things might become possible if we could have Heaven for an ally, its entertaining even when it produces no results.. LOL.
And I told him that there really are packages of time on the supermarket shelves, because he was saving a tremendous amount of time by shoping at the store. If all of use were required to hunt and gather and plant in order to eat, then we really wouldn't have time!
But thats not the way the world works, the people do labor constantly. Money in a sense is the power to command another person's labors. All manufactured goods are valued almost entirely upon the time required to create those goods, and very little is the value of the actual materials. But even the most basic building materials must be wrought from the Earth and refined in order to be formed into something useful. And all that effort is the value of the thing. If I gave you the very same materials unformed, you would not pay a fraction of the price. A pile of bricks and wood is not the same thing as a house. And we all do require some kind of house to live in, but very few have the skill to actually build that house. And getting the skill is also a matter of time, and of course we do not all focus our attention on obtaining the skills to build a house. Its very easy to put a value on physical labor that gives form to the things in our world. Its easy to put a value on the labor requried to provide a service to other people. But in our world some people even manage to earn a comfortable livelyhood just on the basis of having an opinion!
Of course in the matter of such opinions, they can often be said to be educated or expert. But in many of these professions there is very little physical labor involved that can't be delegated to another, there is little more than the process of making a decision in some cases. And yet the whole process does require another person's time and attention, and that time may easily equate to money.
Now of course it is right and good that a person's labor, should it prove beneficial to the community, would entitle that person to services from the community. And we use a medium of exchange to make things work this way, the power of money. But of course we must needs determine what level of rewards are appropriate to the work that has been done. But every person in the world recieves their allotment of time by the same measure, should we really say that the measure of one person's time is more or less valuable? And here we go exercising that judgement again to decided what things are more or less important. Completeing the more important works should be more rewarding of course. If work is less important then it should provide less rewards from the community.
To a large degree we decided which jobs are most important by the demand for that kind of work to be done, and of course the supply of workers that can do the job may be taken into account as well. Clearly not all people enjoy equal means to get work done, even if we don't take qualifying skills into account. A simple skill may be obtainable by any person given enough time. For some people, some skills may very well be unobtainable even given unlimited time to learn. A lot of labor intensive processes depend upon having access to the appropriate tools. And if a person does not have access to the appropriate tools then perhaps they can get access to the knowledge of how those tools are made. Of course the working person may save a great deal of time by having the appropriate tools ready made. But its feasable that the tools would have to be made in order to compelete a particular job.
I want to produce goods, and I have a plan from which they may be produced. But having a plan or schematic or patent is useless without obtaining materials. Now it just so happens that in our world, every parcel of land should be considered to be private property. Some people there are who hold a deed to everything under the land, and there will always be some person who has title to make use of the land. You may not simply go out and cut trees wherever you please in order to satisfy a demand for wood, without there being someone who claims prior rights. Therefore most of the world's material assets are inaccessable. But now please consider who should have greater rights to claim a portion of the Earth's substance than any other? And what body of governing individuals should have the authority to grant such rights exclusively? Without having the means to produce something for lack of materials, potentially useful labor never bears fruit in the world and thus can not be rewarded.
So it is very hard for a person to make their way in the world from scratch. Even the most remote corners of the world are regulated by civilization, there are no more frontiers.
And the people who have all the rights to resources from the land are those who have paid for those rights. And they were empowered to pay those fees by the process of having performed some useful labor. Now those people who are most senior and established hold all the assets. And having control of the assets gives one the right to determine how those assets should be used. Now every human being is a person of many desires, someone else may decide what will be produced and some there are who may provide the labor to fulfill those desires. Therefore someone else may choose how my time should be spent, and what should be produced. My self-interest may be served in some way because I will surely be paid some form of compensation for contributing my part to the greater whole. And therefore humanity creates heiarchys in order to organize a group effort, and one person stands at the top of the pyramid directing everybody else's efforts. And for giving the world such excellent direction, those people at the very top will get the lion's share of the rewards. But please consider, is that person at the top really more important than the person who is cleaning the bathrooms? You can't run a business place without having clean and sanitary bathrooms. Yes we create heiarchys but we easily forget just how synthetic they are and how no one person can be more or less important than any other.
And all the processes of labor and product creation in our world has a tendency to pool the wealth into certain pockets. And of course that wealth represents the power to command other people's labor, but it also represents the power to possess capital assets such as tools and buildings and land, and the various material resources associated with land ownership. Of course i would like to do everything to increase my own personal share in the world's labor, but I have no right to claim another person's time and attention having no money to spend. If I can not increase my share of the money rapidly enough, then perhaps I can increase my share of the material assets. And in fact the actual substance of the Earth is of very little value, perhaps it may be purchased without labor or money being involved. But I'd like to stake my claim to the whole thing in such a way that it clearly overturns any prior agreements made between persons when I was not a party to the agreement. I could perhaps perform the minimal amount of labor that would be required to produce a printed document. Yes I will embelish that piece of paper with all the appropriate legal terminology and it should serve as a deed to all the land, and of course all that lies beneath the land should be claimed as well! Well obviously there is no recognized authority in the human world that could grant such a document, by what authority could such a thing be sealed?
A simple argument could be made for equal ownership of the world's resources, no person should be entitled to a claim upon it that preceeds someone elses. But I'm not really interested in seeing the world divided up into six and one-half billion parcels, I want to claim it myself whole and complete. And in order to accomplish my goal, i would be interested in finding out if there is some person in existence with prior claim to the property. One person with a claim to preceed all the claims of humanity, and then of course to pay the appropriate price to that person. But now what if that person has no need for a man's labor? And certainly one may not take a portion of the material world in order to pay the price of the whole world. But the supreme person has been found and the price has been paid in full, and it did amount to little more than a promise.
Personally I have not many material goods that were not given to me by someone else. I have been employed occassionally in the USA, but the whole time that I did labor for someone else's interests, I also did labor for myself. And I have performed much of the kind of labor which is mostly consisted of making decisions, I have not even produced much documentation of the work that has been done to date. But for all the work that I have done, I have fasioned a thing of value; and that thing is a mature personality. Of course I have not yet recieved compensation for this work, but I still have hope that I might. Often times selling a good product in the world requires the manufacturer to produce the market as well. The people must be made aware that the product is good and beneficial to them personally, so that they will be willing to reward the work that has already been done. I have lived and worked in this world for niegh on 45 years now, I have had many good and some not so good experiences. I have a kind of expertise that is very hard to come by, it can not be had by education alone but in many ways it does depend on some education. As soon as I made my promise to the supreme person so long ago, I have been put on a path to become intimately familure with insanity. A really good fantasy can be a powerful thing to believe in, especially if it makes us seem more important. But whether or not I am more or less important than anybody else, I do know one thing that most people don't. There is a God in Heaven and he's paying attention to events here on Earth, and perhaps he is even concerned enough to act in some cases. Its interesting to imagine what things might become possible if we could have Heaven for an ally, its entertaining even when it produces no results.. LOL.
The Desire for Longevity
Once upon a time on Planet Earth there were two species of humanity. Up until about 30,0000 years ago the Neanderthal man lived here with us Homo Sapians. The Neanderthal man is considered to have lived here on Earth for about 200,000 years, which is twice as long as Homo Sapians has lived here. And the spread of Homo Sapians likely contributed to the demise and eventual extinction of Neanderthal man. But even though they were two seperate species, they still may have been close enough to interbreed. Now the Homo Sapians species has been roaming about the Earth for about 100,000 years and the people have changed enough, there is enough diveristy within the species for us to say there are many different races here. However our similarities still far outweigh our differences, the truth is there is only one race of humanity. There is just one great big dysfunctional family of man, over 6 billion seperate and individual personalities now in residence. Counting the number of people who have already lived and have suffered from the mortal condition, we could guesstimate that 14 billion human beings now live or have lived. Personally I like to think the number is close to 14 billion because its a number nicely divisible by 7, and i have heard it said that the number of people who have lived is approximately equal to the number now living. So 14 billion is a good number.
And I say that its not only one race but one family, the ties between us are as good as blood ties. For any two people that you can bring together from the wide corners of the world, there will always always be a common ancestor. It may not be easy to determine how many generations of history will have had to have passed to find that common ancestor, but surely there is one. Its a simple fact of life, and it has been sufficiently proven to point of being undenyable. The species of Homo Sapiens currently in residence in the world is a single species and you who are reading these words are part of it. That is our birth right in this world, to be considered one human being among 14 billion. We claim that we may be citizens of one nation or another, we may claim to be a member of one race or another; but I prefer to think of myself as a citizen of the whole Earth without respect for national borders.
Now its very easy to see how we are all different in the world, and hard to see how we are all equal. One person may be more or less intelligent than another easily; a person may be more or less educated than another. A person may have more or less physical strength, or more or less speed, or more or less endurance. A person may have accumlated more or less wealth, and of course one may possess more or less material goods. A person may even enjoy more or less esteem from their community. Yes, its very easy to see how we are unequal. The hard thing is to see how one person may be no more or less important than another person, and I challenge all who read to follow the harder path.
The founding fathers of the United States of American paid tribute to the idea that we are all equals. They even went so far as to claim that each person is endowed with rights by our creator. Now I'd wager that if a mere human being had such divine rights then such rights as those could neither be guarenteed nor suspended by a national government. It is not possible that we may sacrifice such rights as these even when we allow another person to exercise authority in our lives and make decisions that affect us. And certainly the exercise of our god given rights can not be interupted when we become the victims of violent crimes. Basicly we all have the right and authority to make our own decisions, nobody else can make a decision for me even under duress. However as a matter of practical human history there have been plenty of individuals that have been willing to apply some use of force in order to change another person's mind. Unfortunately people have even been killed just for having a difference of opinion, the authorities in the world did not want such ideas to be spread around.
Judgement is something that everybody does on a daily basis; judgement is as much a part of human nature as it is in the nature of birds to fly. Judgement is the process of decideing that one thing is more important than another thing. We have limited capacity to give our attention to any particular topic or problem; therefore we must choose priorities. We apply judgement to determine which of our daily tasks should have our attention and in what order things should be done. And we very easily extend that judement to other people, in order to decided that one person may be more or less important than another person. The people that are more important to us will get most of our attention and exercise the greatest degree of influence in our lives. But remember the harder path says no one person can be more or less important than any other person. In practice there are certainly some people who exercise an amazing amount of influence in the world, and for the most part that depends on a lot of people deciding to recognize another authority besides themselves. And there is a good reason that we should consider some persons as greater authorities on any particular topic because of that limited attention that we suffer from. Our world society is one of many interdependecies, and there are many people who have given thier valuable time to become experts.
Now I am certain that for any person that you might come to know in our world, they will desire a certain degree of seperation from some other perons. For any person that you can point to, they will always be able to name a few other people with which they prefer no personal association. The human animal is a creature of virtually unlimited desires and I am certain that one of the more common desires is for the possibility of seperation. If I had a loaded deck of habitable Earth-like planets in my back pocket and could promise one of those worlds to you, what would you say? If I could sort out the general population of the world into socially compatible groups and then offer each group a world of thier own; then I think the people would absolutely love me. Imagine a special world for all the right thinking Christains, and one for the Jewish people and one for the Islamic believers. One world for all the patriotic Americans perhaps, and another for mother Russia? I would gladly send the people off to their new homes until I would be the only man remaining here on the Earth. Free to possess all the hard labors of humanity that have been done here, because I love this Earth and I wouldn't want to leave it behind. But of course such a degree of seperation is unobtainable for us, and in the long run I do not believe it would serve the best interests of the species as a whole.
There is yet this concept of human dignity to be found in various places around the world. Just by being a fellow human being of ours, each person should be deserving of dignified treatment. What a wonderful idea, if only it could be applied without reservations. Its very easy to see how the honorable person is deserving of our respect; but how about the dishonorable person, aren't they also deserving. In most cases society observes that the criminal has sacrificed thier rights to dignified treatment. What if human dignity were a divine concept and a God given right? How should we be the ones to deny that right to any other person? But indeed humanity has become the enemy to God, the beast of the vision. Has God set the people up to be divided against one another? It would seem that he has. And a population divided is more easily conquered, therefore we should assume that God desires conquest.
Our world has historically been ruled by many kings and its not uncommon for a King to make a promise of land for all perpetuity. Moses was a King of Israel and he promised land to those people, the land which is now known as Israel or Palestine. And then came Jesus who is beleived to be another king, and this king makes a promise of land the likes of which has never before been made. Jesus promises the WHOLE EARTH to those people who should be considered meek! Generally speaking such promises that have been made in the past have proven to be very devisive. But its interesting to note that those people who should be considered meek may easily inhabit every nation of the world. Its very hard to imagine how the meek would gain entitlement to the land; the Israeli people took their land by force, it was easy then as it is today. Now I just need a way to sort all those people who should not be considered meek off to those several Earth like worlds that I have in my back pocket! And if the people can not be seperated from one another then those people who should not be considered meek must be subdued to such a degree that they will be unable to exercise any authority in the world. But then of course I would need to have a way to prevent the meek persons who will now rule the world from being physically mollested by the governed. Its a tall order for a new King.
Personally I like this story of the Revelation of John so much, because it ends with a resurrection which in my opionion would be amazing good fortune for the species. One of the more common desires among the human population is a desire for JUSTICE. It would be nice if Justice were built into the Universe, it could all be automatic without the need for human intervention. But in order for there to be justice then someone must exercise judgement. Now in my opinion, its as good as a promise that there will be a ressurection here on this Earth. And the people will be made to suffer immortality and live here in the world again. Can't imagine how it could ever possibly happen that way, but I still trust that it will. The Universe that we live in IS afterall a very strange place, and many of the things that people have long believed to be impossible happen to be actual possiblities here. Here you will stand again, on a somewhat different Earth and you will be just one individual person among 14 billion or so who have ever lived. And of course you will not have the luxury of being able to complain that you don't have time for a personal relationship, you should have the opportunity to create a personal relationship with every person who has ever lived. What a wonderful situation to consider, imagine for a moment that you will be judged, and not by one judgement but 14 billion times over! You will have you're own personal life story and the opportunity to share it 14 billion times over. And neither will you be afforded the luxury of keeping a personal secret, no thing shall be hidden and no lie or deception will stand unrevealed. Once everybody has had the opportunity to tell thier own personal story everything will come out into the light and then finally there will be justice. If the people really want JUSTICE they should also want the resurrection that has been promised.
And thats how i see the problem of seperation, its a conflicting desire. The underlying priciple of the created Universe is surely a principle of UNITY. From one point all things that have come into existance have come into existance. Of all that substance that you refer to as your personal flesh and bone, it has all the great long while been part of this Earth, long before you were ever conceived that stuff was here. And all that stuff you call yourself, along with all the other stuff from which the Universe has been formed, links back to a single instant in time from which all things were born. We were born here on Earth and there we have our begining, but every one of us personally has many more beginings. Clearly the Universe has begun from simple forms of matter into more and more complexe forms. There is a great deal of diversity here in this place, but if UNITY really is an underlying priciple then how did there come to be so many seperate and distinct personalities. We observe the world around us from a disticnt point of view, and we are also forced to admit that there is more than one observer here, in fact there are many aside from ourselves. And therein lies the Agency of God, the force of consciousness pervades all things and even the emptyness of space.
The Human species being intelligent, being capable of speach and judgement; has classified and named everyting that we have ever laid eyes on. Every force that we have ever been able to observe in its interatactions with matter has a name. And we recognize various relationships between forces and objects. But there is yet a force which we have observed and never named a force, clearly consciousness itself is a force which interacts with matter. And we have easily commited the error that consciousness depends on life, but in my opinion it preceeds life as a force of nature. Consciousness is instead a force which interacts with all matter and has excerted its influence upon the Universe since the very begining. There is just something very peculiar about the arrangement of matter, atoms bond together and molecules are formed. Molecules are formed into cells and cells are formed into living things and there is something remarkable about these forms of matter that focus consciousness. But surely it is there before life comes along and focuses it to a point of experience and mind and personality. Therefore we look around the world that we live in and find personalities, clearly our Universe is well populated by personalities. But human life alone is not the measure or the limit these numbers. Many other living creatures should easily be considered to have personalities of thier own. And of course such life may not be limited to Planet Earth; but perhaps we should consider the possibility of personalities associated with objects that we would not consider to be alive! The Earth is both a planet and a living thing and has long been thought to have a personality of its own. Perhaps we should stop and think of the possilbility of a Universe filled with personalities of many different kinds. Every celestial body may well be endowed, but of course if such person's did exist for all this time they have never communicated with us overtly. And a lack of communication is easily consider by us to be sufficient evidence for a lack of consciousness. Living creatures are animated, they have some muscle to move freely according to one driving will. We have never observed the stars of heaven to have any kind of animation like this. But the stars do perform some labor within our Univeres, and even though they might cease to shine they never truely pass away entirely. But in the labor of the stars and thier passings our kind of life becomes a possibility.
3 Billion years from now, our galaxy the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy will begin to merge more directly. If there happens to be a species of intelligent beings resembling Humanity living here on this Earth at that time it would simply be incredible. Homo Sapians is young by Earth standards, and there are few kinds of life that have managed to survive here more or less unchanged for billions of years. Will humanity be the kind of survivors that can go the distance I wonder? At this moment in time it appears that our great intelligence has handicapped our ability to endure in a rapidly changing world. And of course we are still going about the business of killing one another in the most efficient ways possible. Armed conflict is the norm in our world, thats how we solve problems here, the power to destroy is the power that the people have the most respect for. And so long as that continues to be so, the survival of the species is in jeapordy, our extinction is nearly assured by our own behaviours. In fact I can hardly imagine our species surviving for another 3000 years if the status quo is maintained.
I would like to guarentee this world 1000 years of peace, by which i mean that it should be free from armed conflict. Its a tall order for a new king, especially a mortal king who should not be expected to live so long. But I have considered the problem carefully, and i'm a firm believer in there being a solution if not several possible solutions. For this, all the nations of the Earth must be brought an hour of judgement, and it would make neccessary some forceful persuasion. How to capture the people's attention and get it focused on one leader. Perhaps it will be possible for one man to become the popular hero of the general populations of the world, for the first time in human history one man's life may have global reach. Throughout history certain individuals have shown the talent neccessary to rise in authority beyond reason. Perhaps the world, our world of today, may yet be captured by a King.
And I say that its not only one race but one family, the ties between us are as good as blood ties. For any two people that you can bring together from the wide corners of the world, there will always always be a common ancestor. It may not be easy to determine how many generations of history will have had to have passed to find that common ancestor, but surely there is one. Its a simple fact of life, and it has been sufficiently proven to point of being undenyable. The species of Homo Sapiens currently in residence in the world is a single species and you who are reading these words are part of it. That is our birth right in this world, to be considered one human being among 14 billion. We claim that we may be citizens of one nation or another, we may claim to be a member of one race or another; but I prefer to think of myself as a citizen of the whole Earth without respect for national borders.
Now its very easy to see how we are all different in the world, and hard to see how we are all equal. One person may be more or less intelligent than another easily; a person may be more or less educated than another. A person may have more or less physical strength, or more or less speed, or more or less endurance. A person may have accumlated more or less wealth, and of course one may possess more or less material goods. A person may even enjoy more or less esteem from their community. Yes, its very easy to see how we are unequal. The hard thing is to see how one person may be no more or less important than another person, and I challenge all who read to follow the harder path.
The founding fathers of the United States of American paid tribute to the idea that we are all equals. They even went so far as to claim that each person is endowed with rights by our creator. Now I'd wager that if a mere human being had such divine rights then such rights as those could neither be guarenteed nor suspended by a national government. It is not possible that we may sacrifice such rights as these even when we allow another person to exercise authority in our lives and make decisions that affect us. And certainly the exercise of our god given rights can not be interupted when we become the victims of violent crimes. Basicly we all have the right and authority to make our own decisions, nobody else can make a decision for me even under duress. However as a matter of practical human history there have been plenty of individuals that have been willing to apply some use of force in order to change another person's mind. Unfortunately people have even been killed just for having a difference of opinion, the authorities in the world did not want such ideas to be spread around.
Judgement is something that everybody does on a daily basis; judgement is as much a part of human nature as it is in the nature of birds to fly. Judgement is the process of decideing that one thing is more important than another thing. We have limited capacity to give our attention to any particular topic or problem; therefore we must choose priorities. We apply judgement to determine which of our daily tasks should have our attention and in what order things should be done. And we very easily extend that judement to other people, in order to decided that one person may be more or less important than another person. The people that are more important to us will get most of our attention and exercise the greatest degree of influence in our lives. But remember the harder path says no one person can be more or less important than any other person. In practice there are certainly some people who exercise an amazing amount of influence in the world, and for the most part that depends on a lot of people deciding to recognize another authority besides themselves. And there is a good reason that we should consider some persons as greater authorities on any particular topic because of that limited attention that we suffer from. Our world society is one of many interdependecies, and there are many people who have given thier valuable time to become experts.
Now I am certain that for any person that you might come to know in our world, they will desire a certain degree of seperation from some other perons. For any person that you can point to, they will always be able to name a few other people with which they prefer no personal association. The human animal is a creature of virtually unlimited desires and I am certain that one of the more common desires is for the possibility of seperation. If I had a loaded deck of habitable Earth-like planets in my back pocket and could promise one of those worlds to you, what would you say? If I could sort out the general population of the world into socially compatible groups and then offer each group a world of thier own; then I think the people would absolutely love me. Imagine a special world for all the right thinking Christains, and one for the Jewish people and one for the Islamic believers. One world for all the patriotic Americans perhaps, and another for mother Russia? I would gladly send the people off to their new homes until I would be the only man remaining here on the Earth. Free to possess all the hard labors of humanity that have been done here, because I love this Earth and I wouldn't want to leave it behind. But of course such a degree of seperation is unobtainable for us, and in the long run I do not believe it would serve the best interests of the species as a whole.
There is yet this concept of human dignity to be found in various places around the world. Just by being a fellow human being of ours, each person should be deserving of dignified treatment. What a wonderful idea, if only it could be applied without reservations. Its very easy to see how the honorable person is deserving of our respect; but how about the dishonorable person, aren't they also deserving. In most cases society observes that the criminal has sacrificed thier rights to dignified treatment. What if human dignity were a divine concept and a God given right? How should we be the ones to deny that right to any other person? But indeed humanity has become the enemy to God, the beast of the vision. Has God set the people up to be divided against one another? It would seem that he has. And a population divided is more easily conquered, therefore we should assume that God desires conquest.
Our world has historically been ruled by many kings and its not uncommon for a King to make a promise of land for all perpetuity. Moses was a King of Israel and he promised land to those people, the land which is now known as Israel or Palestine. And then came Jesus who is beleived to be another king, and this king makes a promise of land the likes of which has never before been made. Jesus promises the WHOLE EARTH to those people who should be considered meek! Generally speaking such promises that have been made in the past have proven to be very devisive. But its interesting to note that those people who should be considered meek may easily inhabit every nation of the world. Its very hard to imagine how the meek would gain entitlement to the land; the Israeli people took their land by force, it was easy then as it is today. Now I just need a way to sort all those people who should not be considered meek off to those several Earth like worlds that I have in my back pocket! And if the people can not be seperated from one another then those people who should not be considered meek must be subdued to such a degree that they will be unable to exercise any authority in the world. But then of course I would need to have a way to prevent the meek persons who will now rule the world from being physically mollested by the governed. Its a tall order for a new King.
Personally I like this story of the Revelation of John so much, because it ends with a resurrection which in my opionion would be amazing good fortune for the species. One of the more common desires among the human population is a desire for JUSTICE. It would be nice if Justice were built into the Universe, it could all be automatic without the need for human intervention. But in order for there to be justice then someone must exercise judgement. Now in my opinion, its as good as a promise that there will be a ressurection here on this Earth. And the people will be made to suffer immortality and live here in the world again. Can't imagine how it could ever possibly happen that way, but I still trust that it will. The Universe that we live in IS afterall a very strange place, and many of the things that people have long believed to be impossible happen to be actual possiblities here. Here you will stand again, on a somewhat different Earth and you will be just one individual person among 14 billion or so who have ever lived. And of course you will not have the luxury of being able to complain that you don't have time for a personal relationship, you should have the opportunity to create a personal relationship with every person who has ever lived. What a wonderful situation to consider, imagine for a moment that you will be judged, and not by one judgement but 14 billion times over! You will have you're own personal life story and the opportunity to share it 14 billion times over. And neither will you be afforded the luxury of keeping a personal secret, no thing shall be hidden and no lie or deception will stand unrevealed. Once everybody has had the opportunity to tell thier own personal story everything will come out into the light and then finally there will be justice. If the people really want JUSTICE they should also want the resurrection that has been promised.
And thats how i see the problem of seperation, its a conflicting desire. The underlying priciple of the created Universe is surely a principle of UNITY. From one point all things that have come into existance have come into existance. Of all that substance that you refer to as your personal flesh and bone, it has all the great long while been part of this Earth, long before you were ever conceived that stuff was here. And all that stuff you call yourself, along with all the other stuff from which the Universe has been formed, links back to a single instant in time from which all things were born. We were born here on Earth and there we have our begining, but every one of us personally has many more beginings. Clearly the Universe has begun from simple forms of matter into more and more complexe forms. There is a great deal of diversity here in this place, but if UNITY really is an underlying priciple then how did there come to be so many seperate and distinct personalities. We observe the world around us from a disticnt point of view, and we are also forced to admit that there is more than one observer here, in fact there are many aside from ourselves. And therein lies the Agency of God, the force of consciousness pervades all things and even the emptyness of space.
The Human species being intelligent, being capable of speach and judgement; has classified and named everyting that we have ever laid eyes on. Every force that we have ever been able to observe in its interatactions with matter has a name. And we recognize various relationships between forces and objects. But there is yet a force which we have observed and never named a force, clearly consciousness itself is a force which interacts with matter. And we have easily commited the error that consciousness depends on life, but in my opinion it preceeds life as a force of nature. Consciousness is instead a force which interacts with all matter and has excerted its influence upon the Universe since the very begining. There is just something very peculiar about the arrangement of matter, atoms bond together and molecules are formed. Molecules are formed into cells and cells are formed into living things and there is something remarkable about these forms of matter that focus consciousness. But surely it is there before life comes along and focuses it to a point of experience and mind and personality. Therefore we look around the world that we live in and find personalities, clearly our Universe is well populated by personalities. But human life alone is not the measure or the limit these numbers. Many other living creatures should easily be considered to have personalities of thier own. And of course such life may not be limited to Planet Earth; but perhaps we should consider the possibility of personalities associated with objects that we would not consider to be alive! The Earth is both a planet and a living thing and has long been thought to have a personality of its own. Perhaps we should stop and think of the possilbility of a Universe filled with personalities of many different kinds. Every celestial body may well be endowed, but of course if such person's did exist for all this time they have never communicated with us overtly. And a lack of communication is easily consider by us to be sufficient evidence for a lack of consciousness. Living creatures are animated, they have some muscle to move freely according to one driving will. We have never observed the stars of heaven to have any kind of animation like this. But the stars do perform some labor within our Univeres, and even though they might cease to shine they never truely pass away entirely. But in the labor of the stars and thier passings our kind of life becomes a possibility.
3 Billion years from now, our galaxy the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy will begin to merge more directly. If there happens to be a species of intelligent beings resembling Humanity living here on this Earth at that time it would simply be incredible. Homo Sapians is young by Earth standards, and there are few kinds of life that have managed to survive here more or less unchanged for billions of years. Will humanity be the kind of survivors that can go the distance I wonder? At this moment in time it appears that our great intelligence has handicapped our ability to endure in a rapidly changing world. And of course we are still going about the business of killing one another in the most efficient ways possible. Armed conflict is the norm in our world, thats how we solve problems here, the power to destroy is the power that the people have the most respect for. And so long as that continues to be so, the survival of the species is in jeapordy, our extinction is nearly assured by our own behaviours. In fact I can hardly imagine our species surviving for another 3000 years if the status quo is maintained.
I would like to guarentee this world 1000 years of peace, by which i mean that it should be free from armed conflict. Its a tall order for a new king, especially a mortal king who should not be expected to live so long. But I have considered the problem carefully, and i'm a firm believer in there being a solution if not several possible solutions. For this, all the nations of the Earth must be brought an hour of judgement, and it would make neccessary some forceful persuasion. How to capture the people's attention and get it focused on one leader. Perhaps it will be possible for one man to become the popular hero of the general populations of the world, for the first time in human history one man's life may have global reach. Throughout history certain individuals have shown the talent neccessary to rise in authority beyond reason. Perhaps the world, our world of today, may yet be captured by a King.
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