Disgruntled Heretic Files

Rev 20:12
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and
the books were opened: and another book was opened,
which is [the book] of life: and the dead were judged
out of those things which were written in the books,
according to their works.

Entertaining the possibility that perhaps there really is no "GOD" but common sense and reason, takes some balls- a lot of balls considering we live in a world where the free use of inherent intellect is still humanity's ultimate, and I dare say, "original" sin in the eyes of the "GODS." In looking at the collective picture mankind has painted of GOD thus far, God is everything and all things and yet nothing at all; all at once; both perceivable and imperceivable; tangible and intangible; within all of us, far removed from us. God is male. God is female. God is neither male nor female. God is GOOD. God is EVIL. God is merciful, kind and just. God is callous, cold and full of unquenchable wrath. God loves us. God is sorry he/she/it ever invented us.

Is God ONE? Is God THREE? Is God THREE IN ONE; some three-headed thing we can't possibly comprehend? Is God neither ONE nor THREE but all encompassing Life Energy, having no form at all, except the projections of mans' own imagination? Is God simply Energy or is God a PERSON; a person with feelings and thoughts and passions; prone to petty jealousies, with a temper hot and fierce enough to destroy all of mankind off the face of the earth? Is GOD not ABOVE such petty emotions; far superior to the inclination to be ruled and dictated to by fickle emotion?

Is God a mystery, yet being unravelled or revealed, as mankind evolves from generation to generation; as science and philosophy work together to understand GOD? Why is it that God ever works against humanity in our search to know the unknowable? Why is it that QUESTIONING our origins and seeking truth, has always met with the most horrendous of persecutions by those who say they know God and act in God's stead? Could it be, that it isn't GOD who is being elusive, but rather man, who refuses to accept the fact, that we can't know all there is to know about God? No religion has the monopoly on God, yet all religions, with their own, narrow and exclusive concepts of God, seek to prevent mankind from knowing truth. We are fed myriads of legends, folklore and myths based on ancient ideas, passed off as fact, from the trough of religious ignorance.

We say we are an evolving species yet we are cowards who would sooner bury our BRAINS in the sands of insane superstition, than actually THINK for ourselves. Temples, churches, synagogues and divers other buildings are erected in the names of so many gods that we cannot keep track of them all. Worse than this, is the reality that these same gods are as mutable as the human beings who think to emulate them. To ever attempt to listen to the pious symphony of warring voices is enough to cause ones brain to experience a spiritual migraine which nothing but REASON can ever hope to cure.

Reason, logic, critical thinking, simple addition and subtraction are scorned in religion-land where anything goes yet nothing is allowed to make a shred of sense! In the name of 'God,' in defense of 'the faith,' all human reason is kicked directly in the teeth by the religious; looked down upon as vanity, arrogance, pride and most of all SIN. To think in the land of religion, is a sin, as history proves, worthy of limitless acts of torture and death. Intelligence is a THREAT to the powers that be. Religion is INSANE. Blind faith is suicide to the mind. If faith be in something concrete, tangible and sensible, then how can reason threaten it?

Nobody has the answer to life's unanswerable question: WHO IS GOD? Nobody knows where we really came from nor where we're really going, if anywhere at all, after we die. Nobody. And yet, everyone has an answer. Everyone knows where we really came from and where we're really going. How can it be that we can both know and never know the most elemental truths of our existence, and the "GOD(S)" from which we originate?

I have to accept the fact that I don't know who or what GOD is, nor who and why I am. I have to be brave, or rather, honest enough to say so. Anyone who does profess to know precisely who and what GOD is, is not as much a liar as the product (or victim) of his culture; the culture itself becoming the barrier to thinking beyond . . . the "GOD" which limits him from exploring the unsearchable riches of his own soul.

From within the endless pages of sacred books, the voices of our long-deceased ancesters speak to us of "GOD;" of sorrows, sufferings, triumphs, victories, hopes and ideals; fears and solutions to fears. We cleave to our books as though these very books were GOD. The immortalized words of the long dead resound through our churches, synagogues, temples and sacred places, from generation to generation, pictating GOD in such a way, that we see and yet see nothing of GOD all at once; through the eyes of the dead; through the immortal words of men. In this way, indeed, the word is eternal. But is it GOD? Is it in this way, that "GOD and the word are One"- simply because mankind has made it so?

Our ancesters are as tangible to our minds and hearts, eyes and ears, as if they had never died because of the legacy they've left behind in books either written by or about them. Their perceptions of their environments; their thoughts, fantasies, myths, hopes and ideals of GOD; their ideas of who they were and how they fit into God's master plan, their traditions, their enemies, their friends, their lives are engraved for us on the endless pages of their countless books.

Depending upon where a person is born, the book that guides him is the book of the dead ancestors who once lived where he now lives. In Europe and the Americas, we cherish the Christian Bible. India equally cherishes the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita. China asks Confuscious for wisdom, while Islamic nations have the Koran (Qu'ran) to guide them. Jewish peoples adhere to the Tanach or their Talmud, while still other endless books guide the rest of the nations. All these books are the voices of the dead. Each and every book is sacred, at least to they who adhere to the wisdom of the dead who wrote them. All cultures have their own "gods" that prefer them; that specifically help perpetuate their race and defends them against their enemies. All. And to each nation, their "God" is THE One and Only True God.

Essentially, each person bases his biased and all too often pious knowledge of God on religious/philosophical ideas, passed down to him in books; the long dead voices of "the fathers" ever echoing up through the labrynth of history surpassing time and space, to make their imprint on the current generation. Depending on ones nation of birth, societal protocols and religious indoctrination, the gods of the dead are born in the minds of the living, through the books which have kept them alive. But are they GOD?

In the collective soul of humanity, a myriad of images stand as guideposts in the dark night of our existence. Images decorate the paths of the labyrinth; paths as numerous as there are souls; all of which are equally sought; all of which are equally feared; all of which both deceive us away from and lead us to a conscious conceptualization of "GOD."

GOD consciousness rests, I have to say, almost entirely upon ones culture/nation of birth. We are a species of thinking, feeling, questioning beings, taught from birth never to think, feel nor question whatever GOD it is, whom we are told, both fashioned our being and set us loose upon the rough, unkind terrain of this antagonistic earth. Each of us carve from our environmental/cultural influences, our idea of God, forever suppressing our natural thoughts and reactions to the 'god' of our nation, moulding our thinking and our emotional responses to our ideas of what is and what is not acceptable, according to the teachings found in our books. In our innate desperation to fit into our environment, we unwittingly accept what we are told and try to live our lives according to what is expected of us.

In our desire to find a reason for this seemingly perilous journey called life, we form, from these books, an IMAGE in our hearts and minds of a superior entity whom we can entreat, for all our need. Each generation, in every culture, passes its books on to the next, thus perpetuating the cultural concepts of "GOD." Once a definite image is cultivated in our minds: one which is palletable to our senses, we spend our lives in hapless worship of our perceived Gods- gods whom none of us would ever know of, let alone think to worship, had we not been indoctrinated by our books of the dead.

If I were born in China, Confuscious would guide my intellect and my earthly sojourn would consist of asking Confuscious to tell me what I want to hear. If what Confuscious says grates against the grain of who I am, in the core of whatever I am, then this would be when I would either have to sever the cord of reason, bury my own SELF, (aka- become a hypocrite of the worst kind), or leave Confuscious to talk to himself.

If I were born in Iraq, Allah would guide my intellect and my earthly soujourn would consist of entreating Allah, with endless prayers, rituals and self-sacrifice, for the needs of my soul. If what Allah dictates grates against the grain of my true self; if what he asks of and expects of me does not come naturally to me, then I am left with the ominous option either to abandon Allah (against the GRAIN of my culture- possibly at the expense of my life) or serve a "GOD" whom my soul hates.

And here I am; Western born and bred, clinging to my hand-me-down book, as though the very book itself were GOD. Things I don't agree with in my book, are endless, yet in all my years of attempting to be a faithful follower of the book, I have been what I hate: a hypocrite. I finally realize, if I continue to cling, with sentimental attatchment, to a book which has things in it, that I HATE, then it's my own fault if my life is empty. I should be strong enough to let go of the book and LIVE in the here and now. That is my current challenge but like any other "bookian," letting go of other peoples' thoughts, dictates, perceptions, WORDS, is possibly THE most difficult mountain to climb. But I am working on it.

If I were born in Israel; if I were counted among the 'chosen ones' of Israel's GOD, I would be forced to ask myself what counts me among the cream of the crop to the exclusion of all other human families? If my soul is a soul which craves such exaltation, I would gladly cling to YHVH, (whose name cannot ever be spoken aloud, nor even truly known,) in the vain assumption that I, and I alone, would be given access to the land of promise in the same hereafter, into which every other GOD promises to bring adherants.

If I were still a Chrisitan, I would still believe that regardless who or what I am and have been; regardless what I've ever said, done and even thought, through an unhistorical entity called Jesus Christ, or "The Christ," I am guaranteed entrance into that elusive kingdom of heaven. If I were still a Christian, however, I would not know, that every other religion on the face of the earth, also professes a definite path to heaven. In most cases, the path is an exclusive path, which only they who worship, adore and OBEY the "GOD" of that religion can tread.

All these BOOKS; innumerable, countless, sacred books, that formulate our cultural concepts of GOD, are the reason why our world can never live in peace. Each book exalts one nation and that nation's ancient concepts of GOD, against every other nation, pitting man against man, in an endless war of WORDS. If there is a solution to all this human suffering at the hands of the 'gods', it is this: BREAK FREE FROM THE CLUTCHES OF THE DEAD and LIVE in the land of the LIVING. Get rid of all those damned books and seek the REAL GOD- the One that Created ALL of us; Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Bhuddists, Satanists, Humanists, Males, Females, Blacks, Yellows, Reds, Browns, Whites . . . ALL OF US were NICE people at birth! None of us had one iota of reason to hate another nation or culture, until that other nation or culture's BOOKS rose up against OUR BOOKS! It's not until our BOOKS written by DEAD people in other ages; far removed from us TODAY, took hold of our psyches and caused us to exalt ourselves and fear everyone else, that we LOST OUR CONNECTION to the ONE Creator of ALL.

I don't know that we ever CAN put either a face nor a name on the Eternal Spirit from which we all originate. I think that it's the very attempt to do so, that has given birth to all our books and IS the cause of our hatred of each other. The 'gods' of the nations are not gods at all. They are MEN and they are MEN who think to conquer other nations by ascribing a GOD to their hateful, horrid and selfish ambitions, to use as their excuse to be evil. They wrote down their OWN words and called the words they wrote, the very WORDS OF GOD HIMSELF and they also said that their 'god' was RIGHT and that everyone else should follow their god or PERISH!

In the name of the 'god' of Israel, Israel conquered the ancient peoples and became GOD of the world! In the name of Jesus Christ, ISRAEL was conquered, as well as a third of the world, and ROME became GOD of the world! In the name of Allah, Islam fights against the Christian West, so that IT can become GOD of the world! And so it is. Every nation uses it's manufactured GOD to progress itself at the expense of human decency, 'natural affection,' common sense and REASON.

Now, in this generation, what do we see? We see the Christian West raising its GOD up against the Islamic East. We see the Islamic East parading its GOD against the Christian West. We see the Israelite God being raised up against both the Christian and the Muslim gods. We see the Christian god preaching HATRED of both Jews and Muslims and the Muslim god preaching hate against both the Jewish and Christian gods! Where and HOW can this MADNESS stop!?

BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS! All hail the WORD OF THE GODS OF THE DEAD and go about sacrificing our own BRAINS and human compassion, for the sake of appeasing these 'gods!' Does that make any sense to you? Does it make sense to you that all these nations are demoralized; DEMENTED because we worship BOOKS that dead people wrote?

The solution to the world-wide crisis we find ourselves in, is very elemental and simple. We need to abandon our books that dead people wrote and be brave enough to LIVE and LET LIVE. We can't LIVE and let LIVE when every sacred book on the face of the earth dictates to us from beyond the grave. We are consulting the DEAD on how to LIVE and at least to me, that makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

We are all one. "GOD" is the voice of REASON and wisdom, within us all, but how can we ever hear God's true voice when we are deafened by the thundering voices of the DEAD? Every sacred book preaches love for ones own and hate of other nations. How is this the voice of the ONE ETERNAL SPIRIT who created us all, not to murder one another but to LOVE one another in purity and understanding?

If God is anything, God is LOVE but I don't see LOVE going out to the battlefields to conquer whoever doesn't bow to man's images of 'god.' What I see, is legions upon legions of 'DEVILS' going forth into all the earth in the name of 'GOD', stealing our sanity and destroying our humanity. After all, doesn't every religion agree that man has an enemy? What if we all just open our eyes, drop our egos in the dust and realize that the very 'gods' we serve are the very enemies of both the ONE TRUE GOD and humanity?

In my idealistic mind, I HOPE beyond all human reason, that mankind will finally wake up and smell the sulfer of religion. I HOPE that somehow, some way, the REAL GOD of LOVE and REASON will awaken us all to the truth that it's OURSELVES and not some elusive, external enemy, who are to blame for all the bloodshed and suffering committed in the name of our cultural 'gods.' I HOPE that we will finally have the courage to get rid of the books that imprison our minds and harden our hearts against each other. I HOPE that the prophecies of a world-wide war that will bring us to the very brink of complete annihilation, can be AVERTED! I HOPE that we really will finally "beat our swords into pruning hooks" and our "spears into plowshares." I HOPE mankind realizes, somehow, that the very swords spoken of by Isaiah, ARE OUR BOOKS!

The "truth" we all seek is not "out there" at all. It is within our own hearts. Inside of us all, there is the knowledge of good and the knowledge or evil; the voice of love, light, peace, compassion, honesty and understanding and the voice of self-doubt. When we cling to things outside of ourselves, we do so at the peril of our own reason. The 'word' of God is the voice within us that guides us into doing what is good and right. We need look no further than our own hearts to find the word of God. To look to the dead for the secrets of life, is to trade our LIFE for the hollow echo of the dead. God is a Living Being who is as capable of guiding this generation, as all the generations that pre-existed us. We have a choice to make. Will we finally close the books of the dead and refuse to listen to their warring symphony, thus free ourselves to reach within for "the true light that guides all men?" Or will we stubbornly cling to the books of the dead, thus close our ears to the voice and our souls to the 'kingdom' of the Living?

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