This is a story, not an article. It is part truth, part obfuscation, and part of a continuing dialogue that is taking place all around this world (and others) between and among spirits. If it does nothing more than get you to thinking about stale old beliefs that you find difficult to swallow, that is enough…for now.
God is…
So many writers pen their stories about life, death, heaven, hell, and more. Most know little about any of these elements of life, including me. But I am open to good thinking, original thinking, and to what has the “ring of truth” about it. And so it is with Spiritism—a developing network of communication between here and the hereafter. It is not a religion; it offers no judgments about you or me. It promises only a bit more enlightenment, a little more encouragement, and why we need to drop a lot of old beliefs. It is but a clarifying voice, one that elevates the discourse to reflect our understanding of things c. 2017, far beyond what life was like in the year c. 30 AD, or thereabout. It relies less on parables, similes, and metaphors, and more on reality knowing that today nearly all of us accept television, air travel, instant communication around the world, even space travel to the moon and beyond—things and contraptions that were totally unknown and unknowable 2,000 years ago. Here is an attempt, for example, to deal with a timeless question about God while relying on conversations with more enlightened spirits who speak with great clarity:
Q. If there is a God, why does he or she not appear to us and explain the universe, plus life, death, and eternity? It would save us all a lot of angst, worry, and confusion while it also would put all the snake oil peddlers of this world in their proper places.
A. That used to be my general thinking also, at least until I thought a bit deeper and realized that my thinking could not begin to reflect that of an infinitely wise source. If there is a Divine Plan, and if it is perfect (and how could it not be), then why would I want to question it? The probability that I would even begin to understand it is infinitely small. I can still question everything about myself, and about all that I can see, hear, and can contemplate in this universe. And that will consume a lot of my time and energy.
Moreover, why should I bring half-baked doubts about God into the discussion? Why not begin with the premise that God created us, not vice versa. All we need do is to imagine that it is the year 250,000 BC, more or less. There are many beliefs floating around among the disparate tribes and individuals. We are not sophisticated enough to have yet formed philosophical discussion groups. Indeed, our “grunts and groans” language would not have gotten us much more than an occasional lay and a good ass-thumping when we strayed into the wrong hut in search of nookie. But we keep trying to keep on trying.
After watching our fellow humanoids get their heads bashed in by other humanoids, we, the survivors conclude it is better to form groups of like-minded nincompoops. There is strength and survivability in large numbers, and all that. And as we collect together we find life is a bit easier as we also divide up chores, and use our individual talents to teach each other skills such as how to grow crops, patch up wounds and so forth. Eventually, we establish a set of rules that seem to work for the general welfare. Among the rules is this one: We don't know beans about "truths," but we know what works for us. So, let us set forth a set of tentative principles that we all can live by knowing that we will want to modify them as we go in order to bring new and better thinking to bear on our group's daily living arrangements. And so, we do just that.
Now fast forward 252,000 years. We are still ninnies, but we have survived as a species for a very long time, and due in no small part to our rules and regulations, modified many times along the way. We also had to do a lot of serious ass-kicking every time a tyrant came along and tried to play “king of the world.” We still do not have earthly proof of a God, nor of an afterlife. But now we have a whole lot of new kinds of evidence that there really is a God and an afterlife. We know almost nothing about God except that he, she, or it communicates well with those in the afterlife, but not so much with us in this life. According to them we are here to learn on our own without his or her help. We can ask for comfort during trying times, and that will be granted. But he or she will not stray from a grand plan that is perfect in every detail. Presents and favors are not in the plan. We know this because there are now several million humanoids who have communicated with those in the afterlife. And those on the other side are very much in agreement that life on Earth (and elsewhere) is designed to be a testing ground, or perhaps it is better stated as a learning experience for each of us. What's more, when we die, our spirits all go to the same place where we live together (sans bodies), and we learn more from each other. Once we have gotten a bit wiser (with humility), we return to Earth (or elsewhere) for more experiences. We get battered and beaten around again (less and less as we show improvement) until we die. Then our spirits assemble together in families where each member is at an equal degree of enlightenment so that we can readily draw from each other’s experiences. As these cycles continue we become a bit more enlightened each time. We stay on this treadmill of upward mobility (with many undulations) for as many lifetimes as it takes for each of us to progress from brutes, thugs, thieves, rapists, and murderers until we transform ourselves into something approaching heavenly angels. We "know" all this because almost every person who has ever crossed over and returned tells us the same tale (mostly via out-of-body esperiences). And every person who has ever communicated with those on the other side tells the same tale. And there are now 15 million earthly believers in this thing called "spiritism" that is not a religion. It is a collection of people broken down into groups from all over the world whose notes and discussions grow deeper every day. And there is a powerful consistency in their tales, in their descriptions, in their understandings, and in their commonalities. What we call "science," they add "of this world." What we call beliefs they say "yes, but we on the other side know better, and one of our tasks is to help you gain a bit more enlightenment, at least within your limited abilities to absorb it." There is no such place as hell in which souls suffer for all eternity. There is no Satan. Those are fictional stories told to inhabitants two thousand years ago because that was the level of their understanding then. Most people in those days could grasp symbolisms. They are repeated today by erstwhile theologians for gaining control over others. There are low level spiritual thugs, and very enlightened spirits. The thugs have no authority and no influence at all in the afterlife. All return to the physical life on this planet (or others) at the bottom of the totem pole where they pay a heavy price for their thuggery.
Well, there are many more details to this story, still it is unfolding in a coherent manner. For example, wise spirits on the other side report that everyone of us must attend a meeting with even wiser spirits after we arrive in the spirit world. And we each must listen to, watch, and feel every pain we inflicted on others during our most recent lifetime here. This pain extends outward to all persons, all animals, all vegetation—to every bird, every bee, every flower, every tree, to the oceans, the lakes and streams, to the air and all those persons, places, and things that we touched. We must feel every violation down to the last molecule of our being. Perhaps that is what others call hell. It is our just desert. Come to think about it, it sounds perfect. Why should we be able to get away with anything when we have expectations of enjoying an eternity of perfection? And we may still be sent back to atone for massive violations against our own will and sense of justice, to say nothing of the divine.
All this beats the crap out of religious beliefs, and it makes good sense on its own merits. Knowledge comes to us in dribs and drabs, but truth is still way too elusive for our feeble minds unable yet to grasp godly concepts well. We are better off in developing an acceptance for ambiguity than in believing that self-proclaimed experts have all the right answers. And so it goes. Sometimes those who are vocal in their criticism of "believers" are just as adamant in their disbeliefs. At least spiritists have a lot of data to back up their tentative premises that are growing stronger and deeper every day.
I realize that this is but a beginning to understanding. We cannot know what we cannot comprehend. We must become smarter, and wiser, and with much more humility before we can assimilate more of what is. That is the nature of being imperfect beings.
Hold it. I think I detect spirits calling. Can you hear the voices in my head?
Ron: You might consider doing a Google search of your objections before posting them on my web pages. It would help the lack of scholarship in your comments. You might also take the time to learn the difference between a story and an article. Not all stories are fiction; some are nonfiction. Joseph Smith probably used the John, but that was not his name. Harry Houdini was hardly a man of science. He invited onlookers to come up during his acts of magic and deception and punch him in the abdomen to show off his abs. One fellow stepped up, punched him, and Houdini died about 10 days later from internal ruptures. While medium communications skirt the rules of science, that does not make them false, just as the carefully validated findings of science do not make such findings true. Read Allen Kardec, a skeptic like you, who became convinced of the authenticity of the spiritual connections made with others, not with scrambled thoughts taking place in his head or yours. Above all post your scrambled thoughts on your web pages to show the world you have the conviction of them while welcoming others to comment on them in dispassionate, authentic Reviews. You might also look up the definitions of my last three words in the preceding sentence.
You claim there are 15 million stories of people who experienced, “communication with the other side,” usually through an, “out of body experience.” The stories are considered to be anecdotal, like Moses talking to God, Mohammed coming down from the mountain, and the revelation of John Smith, writing the book of Mormon.
Houdini was very good at punching holes in anecdotal and pseudo-séances supposedly connecting people with their dead loved ones. He was very familiar with all the moneymaking tricks.
The only real dilemma posed by your article (No story in it) is whether or not it is just deserts (the desert of your choice--40 days and 40 nights?) or just desserts (a selection of very bad bitter tasting confections or worse).
I do conjure up much of my fanciful, fantasy stories through dreams I have that I consider merely my brain reshuffling all of my memories and creating long-term ones. If my thinking is dwelling on “spirit” or spiritual matters much of the time, my brain, while reshuffling in dreams will give me revelations, in the form of stories, that reflect what I've been thinking. if I spend a lot of time on websites claiming these kinds of experiences, my dreams will surely conjure up similar ones for me. Why I don't read that crap.
Perhaps fear of the unknown is what keeps most of us nincompoops in line because those just desserts are what we're afraid of on the other side--if only our extreme discomfort. As imperfect as we are, humility is a trait worth nurturing.
Once again, I have read your piece with great interest and thanks for raising our awareness to these important questions. To answer a question that you raise in the beginning, my opinion is that God (a name fraught with all kinds of politics among other things) would never resolve at face value the fundamental mystery that lies at the heart of human existence. To do so would take away the perception of some kind of free will and the ability to invent ourselves according to the parameters of the world we live in. I don't want to say too much, to dissect and analyze what you have suggested here. Enough perhaps to say that the entire range of my own writing, especially the poetry, has been an attempt to come to terms with some of the questions that you have raised here. Coming to terms with who God is, to me, means coming to terms with who we are. The answer becomes a life.
I assume everyone reading this will have a personal reaction which may or may not agree with yours. For me, I keep my sanity in a world rapidly loosing its grip by accepting one scientific fact: existence never goes away. Never goes to "the other side" to the heat of hell etc. For me, the belief suggests a quasi-reincarnation after life ceases to be on earth. By that I believe my ashes (and others) will be thrown into the ether of our cosmic atmosphere, float around for any length of time, but eventually these micro particles will attach themselves to something else floating out there and perhaps find a molecular compatibility that might evolve as we did. After all, existence is everywhere... is infinite. So too might the possibilities of a new iteration of one's early existence migrate to another shore of unknown realities of existence. Bottom line: we are perpetually but a random piece of evolution in waiting.
Are you still angry at God for having lost a loved one due to sickness or unexpected circumstances? This book will give you a better understanding of death, God’s role in it, and what decision is before each of us that would allow us to see them agai
