Few notes on religious experiences
More and more of it seems to be nothing short of TRAUMA to the brain.
Aldous Huxley said that the Medieval Christians frequently experienced "visions" of Heaven and Hell during the winter, when their diets were severely hampered by lack of critical nutrients in their food supplies (vitamin B, vitamin C)--these people frequently contracted Scurvy and other deficiencies, causing them to hallucinate. He also said that Christians and other religions fast in order to make themselves delirious, thus inducing visions and views of these "antipodes of the mind". Today, Huxley says people can reach these states of mind without harm to their bodies with the aid of certain drugs.
Spiritual drugs of all sorts including alcohol.
Fasting (depletion of vitamins and nutrients essential to the brain including sugar and the effect of ketones on brain cells.
Moses... bright light (fire) hallucinations
Paul bright light AND fall on the head from his horse.
All cult induced brain traumas, lack of food, lack of sleep.
Epilepsy, manias are all conducive to spiritual experiences and in fact in the past have highly been mistaken for either demon possession or illumination
Ellen White stoned to the head and it would be interesting to see what sort of traumas the great and the small had to get into their different trances.
One of the things that bugs me most also is that all these trances and visions and tunnels of Light and afterlife experiences are so PAROCHIAL and by being parochial therefore very different if not totally opposite to and from one another. .
The devil’s best kept secret seems to be getting out of the bag more and more, to make us believe he doesn’t exist. Because bottom line is he might never have existed indeed and we just use him to justify our dirty deeds. How many people are used and abused and killed to stamp out the devil?
According to one of those famous books and “trance” writing again, how long is one generation and how long is one supposed to wait for hell to break loose on Israel before the “Lord’s return”? That is another long story of hatred again based on a lot of history and bad blood and two “trance” writing books.
How many years have we all been waiting already and how about them poor suckers before we had any writing at all? How about the billions of poor suckers that always seem to be born in the “wrong” religion or civilisation? Pagans or Barbarians we call them, Infidels and what not.
While we call ourselves The CHOSEN! Well of course, Yeah Right! Aren’t we all? The Faithfuls!
Moses, Jesus, and many fasted for 40 days and I wonder again where this practice came from? Is it the long way around for people with no magic mushroom or LSD or defended alcohol?
Point is there is no prophet, there is no god talking to us now, there is no real miracles that placebo can’t copy like the Egyptian priests, nothing but utter silence from an omniscient, omni benevolent, omnipresent God that does love us and wants our good but apparently we can’t hear it or see it or achieve anything in matter of goodness.
On Aldous Huxley it is said that “In this work he examines the fact that although most people in modern civilization agree that they want a world of "liberty, peace, justice, and brotherly love", they have not been able to agree on how to achieve it. “
Personally I always found humanists and pacifists a little dreamy and deluded but aren’t we all?
And the problem is compounding exponentially as the population is rising to never seen before numbers in the whole history of this planet.
How can you produce harmony among 7 billion when you could not do it with 3 billion or 1 billion or the much smaller world population we had in the whole history.
Hell there could not be harmony and balance with two people on earth and even less with 4 persons on earth which apparently is all we needed to witness our first murder over guess what: a different ritual of worship. Oh what a surprise!
MOST PEOPLE Huxley says? Most people want and love their religion and would kill or die for it in the most irrational and therefore emotional manner possible. And as long as there is religion there certainly won’t be any peace on earth. Dawkins is finding the removal of superstition on the planet of formidable challenge and the source of a lot of grief. Ignorance compounded with geographical Pride is a very bad mix.
Because after all it is pretty well what most of this is:
Geographical pride mixed with anger and fear.
As I am nearing 100 “chapters” of this madness I do realize that all I have, all we have, is questions and no answers and also I am aware of the unsurmountable obstacle of leaving a world with no hopes at all rather than a false hope. The idea that no one is in charge, that all is futile, that like the dog and the ant we will end up as manure to this planet is not very comforting indeed but
WHAT IF it IS ... ALL THAT WE ARE?
Then I’d be left with no answers but better yet no questions.
Sometimes I think Solomon was really close to the reality of our futility and that the best to do really is not to work too much, enjoy our lover and loved ones, enjoy our wine and our food, sit and read a good book, watch a good program/movie and que sera sera.
And maybe leave a few offsprings to keep the madness going.
So hopefully I too will have been part of someone’s good time and my endless dribbling might have been at least fun to read if not sensible. J
No comments:
Post a Comment