“Who am I? If you think life is a meaningless accident, your perceptions of the complex world around you will likely be biased toward seeing the meaningless and absurd. If you believe in original sin and the great difficulties of finding salvation, your perceptions will likely be biased toward seeing your own and others’ failures. Our beliefs about who we are and what our world is like are not mere beliefs – they strongly control our perceptions. We can gain more control by finding out what we believe and how those beliefs affect us. “
— Prof. Charles Tart in his thought-provoking essay “Who Am I?”
Who am I?
The question is an eternal one. If you don’t answer it, you may never be able to distinguish between what your essential self wants and what other people manipulate you to want. Each of us may do best to answer it for himself or herself. Yet the answers given by others do affect the way we approach (or avoid) this question. Several general types of answers have been offered.
The most traditional answer in Western culture is that you are a creature, a creation of God, a creation that is flawed in vital ways. Conceived and born in original sin, you are someone who must continually struggle to obey the rules laid down by that God, lest you be damned. It is an answer that appears depressing in some ways. One the one hand, it can lead to low self-worth and the expectation of failure. On the other, it can lead to the rigid arrogance of being one of the “elect.” Further, this view doesn’t much encourage you to think about who you really are, as the answer has already been given from a “higher” source.
The more modern answer to “Who am I?” is that you are a meaningless accident. Contemporary science is largely associated with a view of reality that sees the entire universe as totally material, governed only by fixed physical laws and blind chance. It just happened that, in a huge universe, the right chemicals came together under the right conditions so that the chemical reaction we call life formed and eventually evolved into you. But there’s no inherent meaning in that accident, no spiritual side to existence.
I believe that this view is not really good science, but rather what we believe to be scientific and factual. More important, it’s a view that has strong psychological consequences. After all, if you’re just a mixture of meaningless chemicals, your ultimate fate – death and nonexistence – is clear. Don’t worry too much about other people, as they are just meaningless mixtures of chemicals, too. In this view, it doesn’t really matter if you think about who you really are – whatever conclusions you arrive at are just subjective fantasies, of no particular relevance in the real physical world.
Psychologically speaking, this materialist view of our ultimate nature leaves as much to be desired as does the born-into-original-sin view. As a psychologist, I stress the psychological consequences of these two views of your ultimate identity, because your beliefs play an important role in shaping your reality. Modern research has shown that, in many ways, what we believe affects the way our brain constructs the world we experience. Some of these beliefs are conscious. You know you have them. Yet many are implicit – you act on them, but don’t even know you have them.
If you think life in general is a meaningless accident, your perceptions of the complex world around you will likely be biased toward seeing the meaningless and absurd. Seeing this will in turn reinforce your belief in the meaninglessness of things. If you believe in original sin and the great difficulties of finding salvation, your perceptions will likely be biased toward seeing your own and others’ failures, again reinforcing your belief in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our beliefs about who we are and what our world is like are not mere beliefs – they strongly control our perceptions. So we can gain more control by finding out what we believe and how those beliefs affect us.
Between the traditional religious and materialistic views of who you are, there are a variety of ideas that embrace elements of each which include rich possibilities for personal and social growth. The common element in these other views is that life and the universe do have some meaning and that each of us shares in some form of spiritual nature. Yet they also recognize that something has gone wrong somewhere. We have “temporarily” lost our way. We have forgotten the essential divine element within us and have become psychologically locked into a narrow, traditional, religious or materialist views.
There is an old Eastern teaching story that illustrates this – the story of the Mad King. Although he is actually the ruler of vast dominions, the Mad King has forgotten this. Years ago he descended into the pits of the dankest cellar of his great palace, where he lives in the dark amongst rags and rats, continually brooding on his many misfortunes. The king’s ministers try valiantly to persuade him to come upstairs into the light, where life is beautiful. But the Mad King is convinced these are madmen and will not listen. He will not be taken in by fairy tales of noble kings and beautiful palaces!
We have a lot of evidence in modern psychology to show how little of our natural potential we use and how much of our suffering is self-created, clasped tightly to our bosoms in crazed fear and ignorance. Yet the ministers do carry a light with them when they come down into the cellar, and they do bring the food which keeps the king alive. Even in his madness, he must sometimes notice this. In the real world, events keep occurring that don’t fit into our narrow views, no matter how tightly we may hold them, and sometimes these events catch our attention.
So-called psychic phenomena are like that. They certainly don’t fit a materialistic view, just as they challenge the traditional religious view held by many that this kind of phenomena only happened thousands of years ago, and are thus to be believed, but not pondered.
Psychic phenomena are disturbing to both the traditional religious and materialistic views of who we are. It is one thing to consider abstractly that our true identity may be more than we conceive, or that our universe may be populated with other non-material intelligences. It is quite another thing, with channeling for instance, when the ordinary looking person sitting across from you seems to go to sleep, but suddenly begins speaking to you in a different voice, announcing that he is a spiritual entity who has temporarily taken over the channel’s body to teach you something!
Now you have to really look at what’s going on. Who is that so-called “entity?” Who is that person who channels? If someone else can have his or her apparent identity change so drastically, do we really know who they are? Can I even be sure about who I am? If you have been conditioned to believe that who you are is meaningless or inherently bad or sinful, you might not welcome this stimulation that the phenomena of channeling gives to the question “Who am I?”
We have many ways of psychologically defending ourselves against dealing with things that don’t fit into our organized and defended world. You could just say, “This person is crazy, or maybe even deliberately faking this stuff.” It’s a good defense, for of course there are some people known as channels who are probably just crazy or deliberately faking it. The best lies usually contain a very high proportion of truth.
You could also just naively accept whatever the ostensible channeled entity says. “Yes, you are Master Shananangans from the 17th planet of the central divine galaxy Ottenwelt. Teach me Master, I hear and obey.” This overenthusiastic acceptance can be just as much of a defense against deeper thinking and questioning as overenthusiastic rejection.
Channeling and other psychic phenomena are having a great impact on our culture today. We can use this impact for personal and social growth if we are willing to think about the deeper implications, and examine the things we take for granted about our inherent nature.
If we just believe or disbelieve without really looking, this opportunity will be lost. Read, reflect, examine your own beliefs, argue, go meet some psychics or channels. Perhaps you will decide that they are “real.” Perhaps you will decide they are not “real” in the ordinary sense of the word, but are somehow psychologically or spiritually real or important. Perhaps you will decide that some (or most or all) of this stuff is really crazy. But in the process, you will learn a lot about who you are, and who we are. Note: The above essay is an edited version of Charles Tart’s foreword to Jon Klimo’s well researched and intriguing book titled Channeling. For a powerful essay inviting you to open to more fluid intelligence and transparency, click here. For excellent evidence that there may be more to ESP than meets the eye, click here.
To debate God, you must first define God. I do not consider myself an Atheist, and if anyone thinks I’m singling out Islam for a good bashing, I have also exposed zionism and chrisitnaity’s lies, fabricated history, hypocrisies, acts of terror and falsehoods. This is where religion has taken us, into a fantasy land of separateness and hate. We mustn’t fear truth, we should fear false beliefs. I am sure there are good people that belong to all religions, but since I started seeking truth and umcovering lies I have become more anti-religion, anti-superstition, anti-dogma, and anti-beliefs based on another human being’s imagination. A belief fills in the gap of not knowing and creates ignore-ance, causes division, delusion, feeds the ego, and induces violence. I really believe religion is bad for mankind. I think it’s time for a new paradigm based on the True Nature of Reality (which is what many of us refer to as God). If you call yourself a christian or muslim you set yourself apart from the rest of the world, do you see where this is going? I believe the entire cosmos and everything in it is of One Self. When we see ourselves as humans, made of stardust, interconnected and that we are each other, we will then end hunger, war, elitism, hatred, crime and so on. We need to understand that religion is manmade for political purposes, and spirituality is growth, not just personally but for the whole creation. I prefer John Lennon’s “Imagine NO religion” myself, but if we’re going to have such large numbers of entranced sheeple, Islam must at least reform. (What is it with people that makes them fear truth and cling to beliefs? We must and will evolve toward real enlightenment when religion becomes extinct). Any anger felt by exposing the truth is based on fear. Follow that fear to it’s root then analyze it and let it go. Love will replace it.
The Muslim religion is obviously built upon the Judeo-Christian religion, but it is also a reaction to said religion, which excluded and vilified the various Arab cultures. Like their Jewish brothers and sisters, the Semitic Arabs trace their lineage to the biblical patriarch Abraham, who is depicted in the Bible as having mated with Hagar the Egyptian, producing the progenitor of the Arab race, Ishmael. While the Jewish contingent interprets this tale to justify its own ethnocentric ideology, Muslims interpret it to fit theirs, claiming that “God” would make of Ishmael’s people a “great nation” (Gen 21:18).
Typically, instead of searching for the truth about this tale, its proponents have turned it into a political competition for global domination. The Islamic world today is much closer to the kind of primitive Judaic society of 2000 years. It is a legal and political system. In the 21st century where many of us live at the apex of the scientific and technological revolutions of the last 200+ years, the “regressive,” overtly superstitious, primitive, religiously indoctrinated and (mostly) uneducated mind has a tendency to look back to the past and to consider some ancient prophet’s metaphysical and legal ramblings to be somehow more “enlightened” or even more “progressive” than that of a modern educated philosophical and political person. This is not a good sign.
Like numerous biblical characters, Abraham is evidently a mythological construct, not a “real person.” As scholar Barbara G. Walker states in The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (5-6) concerning Abraham:
“This name meaning ‘Father Brahm’ seems to have been a Semitic version of India’s patriarchal god Brahma; he was also the Islamic Abrama, founder of Mecca. But Islamic legends say Abraham was a late intruder into the shrine of the Kaaba. He bought it from priestesses of its original Goddess. Sarah, ‘the Queen’ was one of the Goddess’s titles, which became a name of Abraham’s biblical ‘wife.’ Old Testament writers pretended Sarah’s alliances with Egyptian princes were only love-affairs arranged by Abraham for his own profit—which unfortunately presented him as a pimp (Genesis 12:16) as well as a would-be murderer of his son (Genesis 22:10).
“In the tale of Isaac’s near-killing, Abraham assumed the role of sacrificial priest in the druidic style, to wash Jehovah’s sacred trees with the Blood of the Son: an ancient custom, of which the sacrifice of Jesus was only a late variant. Jehovah first appeared to Abraham at the sacred oak of Shechem, where Abraham built his altar. Later Abraham build an altar to the oak god of Mamre at Hebron. Even in the 4th century A.D., Constantine said Abraham’s home at the Oak of Mamre was still a shrine: ‘It is reported that most damnable idols are set up beside it, and that an altar stands hard by, and that unclean sacrifices are constantly offered.'”
Allah—Remake of the Moon Goddess
This description of Abraham’s origins means that Judaism is built upon hoary myths, such that neither of its offshoot religions, Christianity and Islam, can truthfully claim to be of divine or “inspired” origin. As concerns the god of Islam, Allah, Walker (22) has this to say:
“Late Islamic masculinization of the Arabian Goddess, Al-Lat or Al-Ilat—the Allatu of the Babylonians—formerly worshipped at the Kaaba in Mecca. It has been shown that ‘the Allah of Islam’ was a male transformation of ‘the primitive lunar deity of Arabia.’ Her ancient symbol the crescent moon still appears on Islamic flags, even though modern Moslems no longer admit any feminine symbolism whatever connected with the wholly patriarchal Allah.”
Indeed, the Koran verifies Allah’s lunar or night-sky status: “Remember the name of our Lord morning and evening; in the night-time worship Him: praise Him all night long.” (Q 76:23) And at Q 2:189: “They question you about the phases of the moon. Say: ‘They are seasons fixed for mankind and for the pilgrimage.'”
In Pagan Rites in Judaism (97), Theodor Reik states, in a chapter called “The ancient Semitic moon-goddess”:
“All Semites had once a cult of the moon as supreme power. When Mohammed overthrew the old religion of Arabia, he did not dare get rid of the moon cult in a radical manner. Only much later was he powerful enough to forbid prostration before the moon (Koran Sure 4:37). Before Islamic times the moon deity was the most prominent object of cults in ancient Arabia. Arab women still insist that the moon is the parent of mankind.
“Sir G. Rawlinson traces the name Chaldeans back to the designation of the ancient capital Ur (Chur) to be translated as moon-worshipers. The Semitic moon-god was ‘the special deity and protector of women.’ The Babylonians worshiped the goddess Ishtar, who is identical with the great Arabian goddess and has the epithet Our Lady… She also has the title Queen of Heaven, which really means the Queen of the Stars. She was horned and was, as all lunar goddesses, represented by a heavenly cow.
“The Hebrew tribes, or rather their ancestors, were the latest wave of migrants from Arabia. The cult of their god was associated with Mount Sinai—the mountain of the moon. The experts assume that the name Sinai derived from Sin, the name of the Babylonian moon-god. In Exodus (3:1) Sinai is called the ‘mountain of the Elohim. This suggests that it has long been sacred.’
“In the Old Testament, which is a collection of much earlier, often edited writings, the moon appears as a power of good (Deut. 33:4) or of evil (Ps. 12:16). Traces of ancient moon-worship were energetically removed from the text by later editors. A few remained, however, and can be recognized in the prohibitions of Deuteronomy. In 4:19 the Israelites are warned: ‘And lest thou lift up thine eyes upon heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, and be led astray to worship them, and serve them,’ and in 17:3 the punishment of stoning is prescribed for the person who ‘hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven…’ The Lord predicts (Jer. 8:2) that the bones of kings and princes of Judah will not be buried, but spread ‘before the sun, and the moon, and all the hosts of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and whom they have worshipped.'”
In The Origin of All Religious Worship (25-26), concerning Arab astrotheology, which was a continuation of this ancient Semitic lunar tradition, Charles Dupuis states:
“The Moon was the great divinity of the Arabs. The Sarazens gave her the epithet of Cabar or the Great; her Crescent adorns to this day the religious monuments of the Turks. Her elevation under the sign of the Bull, constituted one of the principal feasts of the Saracens and the sabean Arabs. Each Arab tribe was under the invocation of a constellation Each one worshipped one of the celestial bodies as its tutelar genius.
“The Caabah of the Arabs was before the time of Mahomet, a temple dedicated to the Moon. The black stone which the Musulmans kiss with so much devotion to this day, is, as it is pretended, an ancient statue of Saturnus. The walls of the great mosque of Kufah, built on the foundation of an ancient Pyrea or temple of the fire, are filled with figures of planets artistically engraved. The ancient worship of the Arabs was the Sabismus, a religion universally spread all over the Orient. Heaven and the Stars were the first objects thereof.
“This religion was that of the ancient Chaldeans, and the Orientals pretend that their Ibrahim or Abraham was brought up in that doctrine. There is still to be seen at Hella, over the ruins of the ancient Babylon, a mosque called Mesched Eschams, or the mosque of the Sun. It was in this city, that the ancient temple of Bel, or the Sun, the great Divinity of the Babylonians, existed; it is the same God, to whom the Persians erected temples and consecrated images under the name of Mithras.”
Astrotheology at Mecca
One of the sites for this Arab worship of the “hosts of heaven” was Mecca. Regarding the Kaaba of Mecca, that holiest of Muslim holies, Walker (487) writes:
“Shrine of the sacred stone in Mecca, formerly dedicated to the pre-Islamic Triple Goddess Manat, Al-Lat (Allah), and Al-Uzza, the ‘Old Woman’ worshipped by Mohammed’s tribesmen the Koreshites. The stone was also called Kubaba, Kuba or Kube, and has been linked with the name of Cybele (Kybela), the Great Mother of the Gods. The stone bore the emblem of the yoni (vagina), like the Black Stone worshipped by votaries of Artemis. Now it is regarded as the holy center of patriarchal Islam, and its feminine symbolism has been lost, though priests of the Kaaba are still known as Sons of the Old Woman.”
And a translator of the Koran, N.J. Dawood (1), says:
“Long before Muhammad’s call, Arabian paganism was showing signs of decay. At the Ka’bah the Meccans worshipped not only Allah, the supreme Semitic God, but also a number of female deities whom they regarded as daughters of Allah. Among these were Al-Lat, Al-Uzza and Manat, who represented the Sun, Venus and Fortune respectively.”
Arabian Matriarchy
Concerning the nation of Arabia, prior to the encroachment of Islam, it was a matriarchal culture for over 1,000 years:
“The Annals of Ashurbanipal said Arabia was governed by queens for as long as anyone could remember….
“Mohammed’s legends clearly gave him a matriarchal family background. His parents’ marriage was matrilocal. His mother remained with her own family and received her husband as an occasional visitor….
“Pre-Islamic Arabia was dominated by the female-centered clans. Marriages were matrilocal, inheritance matrilineal. Polyandry—several husbands to one wife—was common. Men lived in their wives’ homes. Divorce was initiated by the wife. If she turned her tent to face east for three nights in a row, the husband was dismissed and forbidden to enter the tent again.
“Doctrines attributed to Mohammed simply reversed the ancient system in favor of men. A Moslem husband could dismiss his wife by saying ‘I divorce thee’ three times. As in Europe, the change from matriarchate to patriarchate came about only gradually and with much strife.
“…However, the history of early-medieval Arabia is nearly all legend. Like Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and other founders of patriarchal religions, Mohammed lacks real verification. There is no reliable information about his life or teachings. Most stories about him are as apocryphal as the story that his coffin hangs forever in mid-air ‘between heaven and earth,’ like the bodies of ancient sacred kings.
“With or without Mohammed, Islam succeeded in becoming completely male-dominated, making no place for women except in slavery or in the seclusion of the harem. Islamic mosques still bear signs reading: ”Women and dogs and other impure animals are not permitted to enter.’
“Nevertheless, traces of the Goddess proved ineradicable. Like the virgin Mary, Arabia’s Queen of Heaven received a mortal form and a subordinate position as Fatima, Mohammed’s ‘daughter.’ But she was no real daughter. She was known as Mother of her Father, and Source of the Sun…” ~ Walker
Who Wrote the Koran?
As for the Koran, the Muslim holy book:
“Mohammedan scriptures, often erroneously thought to have been written by Mohammed. Moslems don’t believe this. But many don’t know the Koran was an enlarged revised version of the ancient Word of the Goddess Kore, revered by Mohammed’s tribe, the Koreshites (Children of Kore), who guarded her shrine at Mecca.
“The original writing was done long before Mohammed’s time by holy imams, a word related to Semitic ima, ‘mother.’ Like the original mahatmas or ‘great mothers’ of India, the original imams were probably priestesses of the old Arabian matriarchate. It was said they took the scripture from a prototype that existed in heaven from the beginning of eternity, ‘Mother of the Book’—i.e., the Goddess herself, wearing the Book of Fate on her breast as Mother Tiamat wore the Tablets of Destiny. Sometimes the celestial Koran was called the Preserved Tablet. There was some resemblance between this and other legendary books of divine origin, such as the Ur-text, the Book of Thoth, and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.
“As in the case of the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Koran was much rewritten to support new patriarchal laws and to obliterate the figures of the Goddess and her priestesses.” – Walker (513)
In The Great Religious Leaders, Charles Frances Potter says of Mohammed, “It is very doubtful that he read any of the Bible: indeed, it has not been proved that he ever read anything, or wrote anything. He called himself ‘the illiterate prophet.'” Of course, much of the Koran is based on the Bible, both Old and New Testaments (including a lot of mistakes and mistranslations), combined with pre-Islamic Arab and other traditions.
Regarding the unoriginality of the Koran, Islam expert Dr. Daniel Pipes says (The Jerusalem Post, 5/12/00):
“The Koran is a not ‘a product of Muhammad or even of Arabia,’ but a collection of earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical materials stitched together to meet the needs of a later age.”
Biblical scholar Dr. Robert M. Price likewise concurs as to the pre-Islamic nature of various koranic texts:
“The Koran was assembled from a variety of prior Hagarene texts (hence the contradictions re Jesus’ death) in order to provide the Moses-like Muhammad with a Torah of his own….”
Islamic expert Dr. Gerd-R. Puin concludes:
“My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate….”
Adding significantly to this important scholarship was the discovery in 1972 at Sana’a, Yemen, of thousands of parchment fragments from the Koran, consisting of possibly the oldest extant quranic manuscript ever found, dating to the 7th-8th centuries. Regarding these fragments, the professor who photographed them, Dr. Puin, remarks:
“So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Koran is just God’s unaltered word. They like to quote the textual work that shows the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Koran has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Koran has a history too. The Sana’a fragments will help us do that.”
Concerning the texts and Puin’s conclusions, The Atlantic Monthly‘s Toby Lester states:
“…some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the stand Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God…. What the Yemeni Korans seems to suggest, Puin began to feel, was an evolving text rather than simply the Word of God as revealed in its entirety to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century A.D.”
Others weighing in on the value of the Yemeni discovery have included Dr. Andrew Rippin, a professor of Islamic Studies:
“The impact of the Yemeni manuscripts is still to be felt. Their variant readings and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic texts is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed.”
In this same regard, Islamic history professor Dr. R. Stephen Humphreys summarizes the importance of the study of how the Koran was created and the Yemeni hoard in this quest:
“To historicize the Koran would in effect delegitimize the whole historical experience of the Muslim community. The Koran is the charter for the community, the document that called it into existence. And ideally though obviously not always in reality Islamic history has been the effort to pursue and work out the commandments of the Koran in human life. If the Koran is a historical document, then the whole Islamic struggle of fourteen centuries is effectively meaningless.”
The evidence reveals that the Koran was created over a period of decades, if not centuries, by a number of hands, rather than representing a single, divine “revelation” from the Almighty to Mohammed.
Like that of Buddha, Jesus, Moses, et al., Mohammed’s historicity is questionable. He seems to be yet another religious figurehead invented to create a “state” religion. His “history” is full of fantastic legends, but even if we were to find a “historical person” there, it would not be one of very high or affable character. As Potter says:
“Of women, his taste ran to widows with a temper… For recreation he delighted in cobbling shoes. Perhaps his greatest joy was when he beheld the severed heads of his enemies.
“His dislikes were just as varied. He detested silk-lined clothes, interest charges, dogs, others’ lies, Jews and Christians. He hated poets, and said, ‘Every painter will be in hell.’
“He was inordinately vain. A clever woman poet satirized him. She was slain when asleep with her child at her breast, and the vengeful Muhammad praised her murderer. Once he tortured a Jew to find the location of hidden treasure and then had him killed and added the widow to his harem. Strange indeed was the character of the prophet. How could such a person inspire such reverence and devotion? It is one of the puzzles of history.
“It was not that he developed a great theology, either, for what little theology Islam has, worthy of the name, was built up after Muhammad had long been dead.”
As to how such a character could inspire such reverence and devotion, we would submit that it was because Mohammed and Islam were created by yet another faction of “the brotherhood” for purposes of competition with Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and other religions. As N.A Morozov says:
Behind the creation of such ideologies are usually those who benefit the most, particularly “third-party” weapons manufacturers, since these divisive creeds are forever setting one culture against another.
Despite the unconvincing attempts by well-meaning individuals to assert the pacificism of Islam, the fact is that it is a desert warrior’s religion and was not spread by peaceful means. As Gerald Berry says, in Religions of the World (62):
“Partly because he needed funds and partly because his followers were not skilled in agriculture as were the natives of Yathrib, [Mohammed] organized fighting bands to raid caravans. Having no ties with the older religions, he sent them out even in the peace months. This started Arabia’s Holy War. Mohammed’s whole movement took on the character of religious militarism. He made the Moslem fanatic fighters by teaching that admission to Paradise was assured for all those who died fighting in the cause of Allah.”
”In the end, Islam, which means “submission,” is built upon older myths and traditions and was designed to usurp the power of Christians, Jews and women. While we have no quarrel with all Arabian culture, we do have a big problem with ideologies that are filled with half-truths and lies. Because of arrogance and bigotry, ancient cultures, along with their variety, justice and beauty, have become nearly obliterated. In effect, the Western monolithic religions represent a massive degradation of culture.
”If this planet’s inhabitants would simply become educated to the origins of their traditions in full, we could live in a world of tremendous beauty and knowledge, as opposed to ugly, superstitious and repressive ideologies that are exclusionary and bigoted. Islam arose because of the repression of Christianity and Judaism, as well as an unbalanced female-oriented culture. Like those traditions, Islam is utterly out of balance, and we may all suffer for it, particularly if the predictions come true that Islam will be the most dominant religion in the world in the next decades.
”As previously stated, there are few non-Muslim women or men who would wish to live in such a world. Because of this aversion, we would expect to see in the future innumerable ghastly battles and wars waged in the name of one god or another, as has happened far too often in the past, especially with these monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All told, these three are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, so why are they deemed “Great religions?” The “greatest” thing about them is their death toll.” – D.M. Murdock/Acharya S
72 virgins in the Muslim Paradise is borrowed pagan astrotheology
When Muhammad based his ministry and teachings on Moses, Christ and the Jews theology, he inadvertently incorporated the pagan’s astrotheology system whose remnants can still be found in Judaism, e.g. the “12 Tribes of Israel” referring to the 12 Signs of the Zodiac. Christianity contains far more Egyptian astrotheological concepts but of course it too has the 12 Signs which become in Christianity, the 12 Disciples.
“There are also 72 extra-zodiacal constellations known as the paranatellons. This is why Jesus is said to have officially had 12 servants with 72 others that also carried the message.
The 72 angels on Jacob’s ladder and the 72 nations in Genesis also relate to these 72 decans, 1 for every 5 degrees of the zodiac. It serendipitously takes 72 years to move 1 degree through the zodiacal precession of the equinoxes.
Hence Confucious (6th century BC China) had 72 initiated disciples and Set (ancient Egypt) had 72 accomplices in the death of Osiris.”
The Septuagint, the Torah/Tanakh in Greek was supposedly authored by 72 authors in keeping with the hidden astrotheology numbers.
And of course, the 72 Virgins in the Muslim heaven refers to this same pagan astrotheology number.
The Qur’an tells us: “not to make friendship with Jews and Christians” (5:51), “kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (2:191), “murder them and treat them harshly” (9:123), “fight and slay the Pagans, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem” (9:5). The Qur’an demands that we fight the unbelievers, and promises “If there are twenty amongst you, you will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, you will vanquish a thousand of them” (8:65).
While claiming to be a religion of peace, Islamic doctrine is anything but “peace-loving,” as it constantly calls for the slaying of “idolaters” and “infidels” (e.g.,Q 2:191, 9:5, 9:73), among other harsh commentary in the Koran as well as other texts such as the hadiths. Islam is taken more literally than any other religion. It is actually a political movement/cult. All fundamental religions use brainwashing, so I expect muslims to be offended by truth, just as I expect the same from Christians. I am anti religion, anti belief, anti ignorance. If it floats your boat, that’s you. I have my own theory of reality, based on nature. You religious nuts have a doctrine other humans invented and that has NOTHING to do with god. So, dream on. You have a fantasy movie playing in your head written and directed by men for their own agenda. God is within you, It is your higher Self, you can talk directly with It. Religious nuts are so violent that the Apocalypse will become a self fulfilling prophecy. WWIII might be fought between christians and muslims, and in the name of a loving god!
Female oppression and cultural bigotry is the hallmark of Islam. This religions teaches that there is some separate outerspace god who is exclusively male. In Islam, this god is interpreted through the minds of Muslims as being an Arab or Persian man who hates the Jewish man of the Judeo-Christian ideology. This racist, ethnocentric, culturally bigoted and sexist interpretation of any “infinite” “loving” “peaceful” god would appear to be complete nonsense. Yet, in what seems to be supreme arrogance and megalomania, many individuals would like the entire world to believe it is true. The lunatics are on the path.
Inventing a definition for God is after all what theologians do, and if I were to invent a definition a just and good “God” I think I could do a lot better than the ancient Israelites, Jesus or Mohammad.
“There is no god but man and woman”
Sources & Further Reading
main source: http://www.truthbeknown.com/islam.htm Acharya S
Internet searches and forums
Berry, Gerald. Religions of the Word. Barnes & Noble, 1955.
Dawood, N.J. The Koran. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
Dupuis, Charles. The Origins of All Religious Worship.
Glazov, Jamie. “The Yemeni Koran.” FrontpageMag.com
Potter, Charles Francis. The Great Religious Leaders. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958.
Reik, Theodor. Pagan Rites in Judaism. New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1964.
Walker, Barbara G. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. HarperSanFrancisco, 1983.
What is faith? What path best promotes spiritual growth? Does religion good for us? What is our purpose? How does this reality work? Is to “BE” the better part of believe?
Quotes by Tom from this discussion: “Truth is universal”, “The Truth isn’t owned by an organization or religion”, “The reality we live in is a creative process” (explains why enlightened people from all disciplines are so in touch with the same larger reality?)
Documentary Film: Owned & Operated is a mosaic of the world through the lens of the internet. Showing our lives as consumers, under the thumbs of privileged individuals and their methods of control. The world is awakening, and the experience is something outside the normal rules of social interaction, causing excitement in those who are not served by the current system… and fear in those who are pampered by it.
This documentary attempts to present these events using the video, audio and written content uploaded to the internet by the collective human consciousness comprised of every individual participant.
Oh yes, change is coming… and it will be more dramatic than anybody can imagine.
At this point, we have nine years of hard scientific evidence that disproves the government theory about what happened on September 11. Yet, people continue to be either oblivious to the fact that this information exists or completely resistant to looking at this information. So, the question becomes: Why?
Why is it that people have so much trouble hearing this information? From my work, I think we would be remiss not to look at the impact of trauma…
As we know, the horrors of what happened on 9/11 were televised all over the world. They were televised, in fact, live. We witnessed the deaths of almost 3,000 of our fellow Americans. We know that this had a very severe and traumatic impact on a majority of the population. I, myself, cried for weeks after September 11.
A friend of mine, who is a psychologist in practice here in Boulder, said that her case load increased tremendously after 9/11. People who she had not seen in ten years were coming back into her practice.
So, I think it’s safe to say that collectively, as a nation, because of what happened on September 11, we experienced trauma.
9/11 Truth Conflicts with Our Worldview, Causing Cognitive Dissonance
Frances Shure, M.A. (Licensed Professional Counselor):
Why do people resist this information – the information that shows that the official story about 9/11 cannot be true? What I’ve learned is that, as humans, each of us has a world view. That worldview is usually formed, in great part, by the culture that we grow up in.
When we hear information that contradicts our worldview, social psychologists call the resulting insecurity cognitive dissonance. For example, with 9/11 we have one cognition, which is the official story of 9/11 – what our government told us, what our media repeated to us over and over – that 19 Muslims attacked us.
On the other hand, we have what scientists, researchers, architects, and engineers are now beginning to tell us, which is that there is evidence that shows that the official story cannot be true. So now, we’ve lost our sense of security. We are starting to feel vulnerable. Now we’re confused.
Our Psychological Defenses Kick In When Our Beliefs Are Challenged
Robert Hopper, Ph.D. (Licensed Clinical Psychologist):
9/11 truth challenges our most fundamental beliefs about our government and about our country. When your beliefs are challenged or when two beliefs are inconsistent, cognitive dissonance is created. 9/11 truth challenges the beliefs that our country protects and keeps us safe, and that America is the good guy….
When your beliefs are challenged, fear and anxiety are created. In response to that, our psychological defenses kick in and they protect us from these emotions. Denial, which is probably the most primitive psychological is the one most likely to kick in when our beliefs are challenged.
It’s Easier to Deny the Truth
Danielle Duperet, PhD:
America is a powerful nation. It has never been attacked. We were confident. We felt secure. And all of a sudden, that security collapsed. People started to be fearful with all of the rumors, with all of the news. People didn’t know what to think, which is a very, very uncomfortable state to be in. Eventually, our mind shuts off. Just like when a computer is overloaded, our minds get overloaded. We can’t handle it anymore and we shut down. It’s easier to deny it and move on with our lives.
Frances Shure, M.A. (Licensed Professional Counselor):
What some will tend to do is deny the evidence that is coming our way and stick to the original story, the official story. We try to regain our equilibrium that way. Another thing that we can do is decide to look at the conflicting evidence and be sincere and open minded, and look at both sides of the issue. And, then make up our own mind about what reality is.
We Will Do Just About Anything to Defend our Mental and Emotional Homes
Dorthy Lorig, M.A., Counseling Psychologist:
If we can think of our worldview as sort of being our mental and emotional home, I think that all of us will do just about anything to defend our homes, to defend our families. I see that with people. I saw that with myself when my brother tried to talk to me about it: “Don’t mess with me. Don’t mess with my home. Don’t mess with my comfort with how things are.”
About a week later, I read a lengthy article by professor Griffin about why he believes the official account of 9/11 cannot be true. It was a very well researched article. I was in my office at the time. I sat there and felt my stomach churning. I thought that maybe I was going to be sick. And, I leaped out my chair and ran out the door and took a long walk around the block – around several blocks – and just broke down.
I understand now that my worldview about my government being in some way my protector, like a parent, had been dashed. It was like being cast out into the wilderness. I think that is the closest way to describe that feeling.
I sobbed and I sobbed. I felt that the ground had completely disappeared beneath my feet. And, I knew at some point during the walk that at some point I was going to have to become active educating other people about this. For me to retain any sense of integrity, I was going to have to take some action. I couldn’t just let something like this go.
9/11 Truth Challenges Our Fundamental Beliefs About the World
Robert Hopper, Ph.D. (Licensed Clinical Psychologist):
Many people respond to these truths in a very deep way. Some have a visceral reaction like that have been punched in the stomach. To begin to accept the responsibility that the government was involved is like opening Pandora’s Box. If you open the lid and peak in a little bit, it’s going to challenge some of your fundamental beliefs about the world.
Initial Reactions to Hearing Contradictory Evidence about 9/11
Frances Shure, M.A. (Licensed Professional Counselor):
Following are some of those spontaneous initial reactions to hearing the contradictory evidence about 9/11:
Robert Hopper, Ph.D. (Licensed Clinical Psychologist):
I don’t want to know the truth or I will become too negative and psychologically go downhill.
I’m not sure that I want to know. If this is true then up will be down and down will be up. My life will never be the same.
Frances Shure, M.A. (Licensed Professional Counselor):
Fran, I refuse to believe that that many Americans can be that treasonous. Someone would have talked.
Initial Reactions are Based on BELIEFS, NOT Scientific Facts
But these are BELIEFS. They are NOT scientific fact. But, these beliefs do KEEP US FROM LOOKING AT THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE.
9/11 Truth Contradicts People’s Paradigm
David Ray Griffin, Ph.D., professor/author:
You have empirical people who will simply say: look at the evidence and if it is convincing, I will change my mind.
Other people are paradigmatic people. They have a paradigm. They say, this is the way the world works and I am convinced that this is the way that the world works. 9/11 doesn’t fit into that paradigm. So, I don’t have to look at the evidence. It’s paradigmatic.
And then there is a third type of person that we often call wishful thinkers. I call it wishful and fearful thinking. So, they simply will not believe something that they fear to be the truth. And, I find that to be, maybe, the most powerful factor of people rejecting 9/11 truth and not even entertaining the evidence.
Frances Shure, M.A. (Licensed Professional Counselor):
The Truth is Not Bearable
So, whenever we say “I refuse to believe”, we can be sure that the evidence that’s coming our way is not bearable and it is conflicting with our worldview much too much.
Robert Hopper, Ph.D. (Licensed Clinical Psychologist):
Denial protects people from this kind of anxiety.
A Common Emotion is Fear
Frances Shure, M.A. (Licensed Professional Counselor):
As I thought about all of these responses, I realized that what is common to every one of them is emotion of fear. People are afraid of being ostracized, they are afraid of being alienated, they are afraid of being shunned. They are afraid of their lives being inconvenienced – they’ll have to change their lives. They are afraid of being confused. They are afraid of psychological deterioration. They are afraid of feeling helpless and vulnerable. And, they are afraid that they won’t be able to handle the feelings coming up.
When Presented with the Truth, Those in Denial Become Angry, Indignant, Offended, and Ridicule the Messenger
None of want to feel helpless and vulnerable. So, we want to defend ourselves. And, the way that we often do that is with anger. Then we become angry. And, when we become angry, then we become indignant. We become offended. We want to ridicule the messenger. We want to pathologize the messenger. And, we want to censor the messenger.
Raise Awareness with Gentle Dialogue and Gentle Questioning
Robert Hopper, Ph.D. (Licensed Clinical Psychologist)
So, how can we overcome this resistance in denial? The first thing is to meet people where they are at.
John Freedom, M.A., Personal Development Counselor:
One thing is that we need to raise people’s awareness about this – what I would call gentle dialogue and gentle questioning… It doesn’t work to challenge people’s beliefs or immediately tell them “I know the truth about 9/11.” A good way is to ask open ended questions that lead to open dialogue and discussion about it.
Danielle Duperet, PhD:
One of the ways to deal with the trauma is to find the answers. That’s why I think it is of such importance to have a comprehensive investigation.
Pride is Another Reason People Deny 9/11 Truth
Robert Griffin, Licensed Psychologist:
I believe that to become the type of country that we think we are, we have to face some of the things that are not as we think they are… Thinking that we are above such things – that it could happen in other countries, but it couldn’t happen here – that’s a lack of humility. That’s excessive pride. As, so not being able to see our dark side or our weaknesses is the most dangerous thing.
David Ray Griffin, Ph.D:
The observation that pride is one of the basic human flaws is absolutely correct. This is especially true for Americans because we for a long time looked at other nations and said, “They are in such bad shape. But, luckily we don’t have those problems. We don’t have leaders that would do those things that were done in the Soviet Union, or done in Germany, or done in Japan… This is a type of pride that Americans have.
A feature of American history that makes particularly liable to this pride is this notion of exceptionalism – that America is the exceptional nation. That began from the beginning as this country was formed.
People would say that there was so much evil in the European countries, so much cheating, so much lying, so much using the people for the ruler’s purposes. But not in America! We have leaders who are free from those sins. This has made 9/11 particularly difficult for Americans.
Robert Griffin, Licensed Psychologist:
Everyone can make mistakes. But, our ideals and our principles get us back on track.
John Freedom, M.A., Personal Development Counselor:
9/11 is One of the Defining Issues of Our Time
This is one of the defining issues of our time.
Questioning is Patriotic
Robert Griffin, Licensed Psychologist:
So, we need to understand that questioning is patriotic. Questioning is what we are supposed to do. That’s our duty.
The Real Perpetrators Must be Held Accountable
Frances Shure, M.A. (Licensed Professional Counselor):
When we come to the national level, when something like 9/11 happens, we need to be sure that we have a real investigation into who the perpetrators are. And, then we need to make sure that those people are held legally accountable. It’s part of the healing process on an individual level and the collective level.
What happens to us when we die? It’s a question everyone eventually asks themselves at some point in their life. It transcends racial, social, political, economic and gender lines, making it the one question common to all human beings whether we like it or not.
Yet ever since the first men and woman began pondering their mortality a hundred thousand years ago, the answer has eluded us. What does happen when we die? What becomes of our soul, our mind, our personality – our very essence? For that matter, do we even have such a thing as a soul, or is it all an illusion we have created to give ourselves a sense of permanence and the hope of immortality?
The rationalist answers this query by proclaiming that since we are nothing more than a collection of cells and our brains simply tissue encased within a mantle of bone, nothing can happen to us when we die. The essence, personality, mind – soul – or whatever we wish to call our consciousness, ceases to exist, endowing our time on this planet with no more meaning than that which we choose to give it during our brief sojourn here. This is, of course, the position of the atheist, which is what makes atheism, in my opinion, so easy. It requires nothing because it offers nothing, which strikes me as a fair trade.
To most people, however, this answer is unsatisfactory. It suggests that we are little more than some great cosmic accident and that, consequently, our life has no ultimate purpose, forcing us to contemplate an existence without meaning in a universe that, despite all its beauty and splendour, has no more significance – or ultimate permanence – than a flower that briefly blooms in the spring only to wither and die after a few short days of vibrant life.
I suppose there are people for whom such a prospect is acceptable. It does, after all, tidy things up and make life simply a little game we sentient beings like to play for no particularly good reason other than because we have no choice. Yet something deep within the human heart knows better. We instinctively understand that we are more than the sum of our parts, which is why most people believe their personalities will survive their physical demise in some form and will continue on long after their bones have turned to dust. This, of course, brings us to our second option, which is that the personality/ego/true self/whatever you want to call it does survive the demise of the body to exist – at least for a time – as a separate disembodied consciousness. If this is the case, however, the next question that logically follows is what happens next?
Some believe, for example, that we become ghosts – little more than disembodied spirits aimlessly wandering the Earth, capable of perceiving the physical realm but unable to interact with it in any meaningful way. They can even point to various evidences to support this contention, from reported hauntings to automatic writing, séances, and apparent disembodied spirits caught on film.
While I personally have no problem with the idea of ghosts, I don’t think existing as a disembodied consciousness is truly a viable long-term option for what happens to us. Ghosts always struck me as being transitory; beings stuck on the Earth plane for a time only to ultimately move on and so essentially vanish from our physical realm. As such, even if we are to become ghosts, it will be, at least for the vast majority of us, a brief experience and not our eternity. I suspect we all eventually move on to ‘greener pastures’, so to speak.
Now, however, is where things get more interesting. Most people, regardless of whether they believe in ghosts or not, believe that the essence of who we are – our “soul” if you will – goes some place. Heaven is the favoured destination for most; a place where our conscious personality, no longer shackled to the limitations and burdens of physical existence, survives within a perpetual state of bliss and joy throughout eternity. Some add to this by also embracing a belief in hell; a perpetual state of torment for those who turn to evil and so are doomed to exist forever within a conscious state of agony, regret, and fear.
Both positions, however, suffer from the same problem, and that is that they see our time here on this planet as but a blink of the eye of eternity, with the decisions we make – or fail to make – while in the body having profound and eternal ramifications. Unfortunately, this reduces the physical world to little more than a cosmic hatchery that exists only to birth new souls, each of which will spend a short time in it before winging – or, potentially, plunging – to their ultimate destiny.
While admittedly this idea does manage to make this single life of paramount importance, it also forces one to wonder why a physical realm is necessary at all. If the physical universe exists merely as a vehicle for our creation, why couldn’t the process be circumvented entirely and we be created directly into the spiritual realm – as was supposedly the case with God’s angels?
Why all the unnecessary pain and hardship of a physical existence – especially if there exists the very real danger that we might earn hell through our misdeeds – if the spirit realm is the only destination that awaits us? In such a context, physical existence seems not only pointless but, in many ways, even hazardous.
So where does that leave us? If no Heaven and if no Hell, then what’s left?
There is a third position to consider. It is one that until recently has been largely ignored in the West but has been embraced by literally billions of people around the world for thousands of years. It is the belief that this physical existence is neither insignificant nor transient, but instead is perpetually ongoing. It is the concept that our soul lives on not in some ethereal Eden – or Hades – somewhere, but realises perpetual existence through a process of continual rebirths into the physical realm, making our time on this planet not one single, brief experience, but a repetitive process realised through literally hundreds of lifetimes. It is a timeless belief – one that predates both Christianity and Islam by many centuries – and one that is known by many names in many cultures. It’s been called rebirth, regeneration, transmigration of the soul, even metempsychosis, but is perhaps best known to us today as reincarnation.
Upon first consideration, especially to those who haven’t given the idea great thought, reincarnation may seem to be a foreign or exotic concept, especially to the Western mind steeped in the scientific method and drenched in two thousand years of monotheistic religion. It is something for Hindu holy men to ponder, or New Agers to embrace, but nothing that seems particularly relevant to most Westerners today.
I can easily understand this perspective for it is one I held myself for the first forty years of my life. And the truth be told, it is an Eastern concept – one in vogue more than four millennia before Christ was born and a belief held to by nearly two billion of the world’s population today – making it one of the oldest and most enduring belief systems known to man. In fact, it may be the original post-mortem belief among early humans who probably considered the idea when they began noticing strong similarities between recently born offspring and their deceased ancestors. Perhaps the mannerisms or interests a child displayed reminded one of a deceased loved one or a birthmark mimicked that found on a long-dead grandparent, leading village elders to imagine that the dead ancestor had returned a second time – a not unreasonable assumption in cultures that naturally assumed the soul to be inherently immortal.
Unfortunately, Westerners have traditionally had a tendency to consider foreign or primordial religious concepts as primitive and so reject them out of hand. However, this perception appears to be slowly changing as reincarnationist beliefs have become more prevalent in the West, especially in the last fifty years, and is becoming increasingly popular to ever growing numbers of people.
A Lost Western Tradition of How the Soul Returns
Of course, unbeknownst to most people, reincarnation has always been a part of Western thought. The prospect that the soul repeatedly returns to the flesh flourished in ancient Greece almost three thousand years ago and may have played a far more important role in our development as a civilisation than traditional histories have led us to believe. Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and Pythagoras all taught and believed in some form of rebirth, the foundations of which were later adopted by the great Roman philosophers Ovid, Virgil, and Cicero, along with a host of other great thinkers of antiquity.
In fact, reincarnationist concepts were so prevalent in the centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ, that they played a major role in many of the “mystery” religions of the Mediterranean; religions which were themselves to become the template for other later mystical faith systems of the region. Reincarnation, then, far from being a purely foreign concept was, in fact, widespread and may have strongly influenced the shape and thrust of Greek and Roman philosophy.
Even more of a surprise to many people, however, is the fact that reincarnationist concepts were also part of some of the more mystical branches of traditional Western religion, from the Sufis of Islam to the Gnostics of the early centuries of Christianity, and even within the Hasidic and Kabbalist traditions in Judaism. In fact, at times it virtually flourished and, especially in the case of Christianity, almost became the predominant belief system during the first few centuries of the Church’s existence until it was forced underground by the more traditional, non-reincarnationist branches of Christianity. Its proponent’s writings declared heretical and burned, the concept was so successfully suppressed by the Church of Rome that few Christians today even realise it was ever a part of their own faith.
Why was it suppressed? The obvious answer is because it threatened authority. Western religion is largely dependent upon the belief that man is destined to “die once and then be judged” to maintain control. In promising multiple rebirths, however, reincarnation renders the proclamations of the Pope or the Grand Mufti or whomever was the ruling head at the time transitory and, the truth be told, irrelevant. As such, reincarnation threatened the Church’s very livelihood, making it a very dangerous idea that had to be either suppressed or labelled as heretical in order for the Church to maintain its power base. As a result, the concept remained largely unknown outside of Asia for probably seventeen of the last twenty-one centuries.
Its revival in the West was imminent, however, with the arrival of the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Once the long forgotten writings of the ancient Greeks again became available and one could hold to previously forbidden ideas without forfeiting their lives, such once forbidden concepts as reincarnation became increasingly popular, especially among the intellectual elite of the era. Amongst those who held to some form of multiple rebirths are such notables as Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Voltaire, among others.
Interpreting What it Means to Reincarnate
However, since its reintroduction into the Western consciousness, reincarnation has undergone a transformation. It is no longer the unending “cycle of life” wheel taught by the Hindus and Buddhists, but has become a “school of higher education” designed to bring us to ever greater levels of spiritual enlightenment. This is why when a Hindu or a Buddhist and their fellow Western reincarnationist talk about the subject, it often appears as though they are speaking two different languages. This is because in some ways they are, which is where the confusion comes in.
To the Hindu, the soul is essentially stuck in a never ending cycle of rebirth which can never be broken due to the continual need to balance one’s karma. In effect, with each incarnation into the flesh, the human personality – a by-product of the underlying soul that birthed it – accumulates a degree of bad karma that must be worked off in order to restore balance to itself. Some of this karma can be worked off in life in the form of good works, but this is seldom sufficient to work off the entire debt, which must be accounted for in the next life by having the soul take on an incarnation that may be more difficult so the ongoing karmic debt can be worked off.
On rare occasions, a life may be so exemplary that the person might be born into a higher station (or caste in Hindu parlance) but as a rule, bad karma tends to outweigh good karma and, in being continually accumulated through each lifetime, adds to the growing debt that remains to be balanced and so perpetuating the rebirth cycle. (Of course, if one accumulates too much bad karma, they may not be reborn as a person at all, but could come back as an animal or even, in some teachings, an inanimate object such as a stone. This belief is called “transmigration of the soul” and is also a major element of Hindu teachings.)
Buddhism, on the other hand, while understanding the process of reincarnation in much the same way as does the Hindu, differs in that it teaches that the cycle of rebirth can be broken through achieving nirvana (literally, enlightenment), at which point the cycle is broken.
Enlightenment means essentially to be become aware of one’s true nature and to the realities contained within the Four Noble Truths as articulated by Gautama Buddha over two thousand years ago. These are: first, to be alive is to suffer due to the imperfection of human nature and the world around us; second, that the cause of suffering is attachment to transient things (in effect, craving or desiring things); third, that one can learn to let go of these attachments; and, finally, that the process of achieving enlightenment is progressive and may itself extend over many lifetimes.
In sharp contrast, to many Western reincarnationists, the purpose of rebirth is to learn the lessons we need to learn in each incarnation in order to advance to the next spiritual level which, while having some similarities to the Buddhist concept of slowly achieving enlightenment over a number of incarnations by practicing the Buddha’s Eightfold Path (right view, right intentions, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration), is actually quite different.
The Buddhist does not believe that one is “learning” new lessons with each lifetime, but simply applying the principles contained within the Eightfold Path until craving, ignorance, delusions and its effects gradually disappear as progress is made towards enlightenment. To the Western mindset, attachment is not seen as the source of the problem (though it does generally acknowledge that an obsessive attachment to things can be detrimental to spiritual growth).
Another significant difference between Eastern and Western concepts of reincarnation have to do with the perception of what it is, exactly, that is reincarnating. The Hindu sees the soul – the divine essence of God – as being the generator of each incarnation, with the individual personality or ego a transient expression of that soul.
In marked contrast, the Buddhist doesn’t believe in individualised souls at all, but believes the sense of self is merely an illusion created by our own perceptions – a conscious “memory” if you will, conceived by our assumption that we exist separately. To the Buddhist, we are all a part of a larger, divine consciousness that has simply taken on the very brief “illusion” that it is separate. The Buddhists compare our sense of existence to the waves upon the ocean; just as a wave is a temporary phenomena caused by wind and currents, our personality is equally as transient and is, upon death, absorbed back into the divine consciousness in the same way that a wave upon the ocean is eventually swallowed up by the ocean itself.
In the West, however, the personality – or ego – is more robust and generally considered immortal. To many, the soul and the personality are considered essentially synonymous, so as a result, when we die, our basic personality – complete with all its memories, life experiences, knowledge, and traits – returns in another body to continue its existence. It may not have a direct memory of its past life – though some people claim to be possess the ability to consciously remember their previous incarnations – but it is essentially the same personality starting life over again in another context.
The personality may experience dramatically new surroundings – for example, it may experience one incarnation as an Indian girl who lived and died in the nineteenth century and then return as a Spanish man in the twentieth century – but it is still the same “person” underlying each “role.” Of course, the experiences and environment it finds itself in through each subsequent incarnation will affect the base personality in both subtle and sometimes substantial ways, but this too is a part of the process. This is why the Westerner sees reincarnation in the context of “lessons.” After all, the Indian girl was able to experience and learn only so much in her short time on Earth, mandating that she return again – this time as a Spanish male – to learn those things she either neglected to learn or hadn’t the opportunity to learn in her previous incarnation.
This makes spiritual enlightenment a type of “to do” list that needs to be checked off in its entirety before we can cease the process of rebirth. (What happens after that is equally open to speculation among Westerners: some imagine we come back as avatars or spiritual teachers; others speculate that we start the process over again on another planet, while still others maintain that we move onto other dimensions. Apparently, the options available to the enlightened soul are extensive.)
I wonder, however, if the truth is not a conglomeration of each of these perceptions? Clearly the Eastern concepts of a parent soul that births each and every individual personality has merit, as does the Buddhist belief in the transient, temporary nature of the ego that is birthed. And the Western concept that we reincarnate until we learn what we need to know also has some validity and seems to parallel in some ways the Buddhist idea that the cycle of rebirth ends upon achieving enlightenment – however one chooses to define the term.
I often wonder if we aren’t all looking upon the same phenomena and not simply seeing only those parts of it that speak to us personally. I suspect our understanding of the purpose for reincarnation is lacking in many ways and may never be entirely complete, though I also believe we are making progress in coming to a fuller appreciation for its complexity and sophistication. Perhaps one day East and West will come together and merge their different perceptions and in so doing, form a complete whole that answers everyone’s questions.
Of course, I recognise that such may sound like a contradictory process. After all, how can there be a soul and yet not a soul, and how can the ego be immortal and yet transient? To combine both Western and Eastern concepts of reincarnation would seem to embrace paradox, but I have found it is often within the complexities of paradox that the truth exists. In fact, it is only our limited ability to understand that makes these apparent contradictions paradoxes in the first place.
I wonder if they would still appear as such were we to find the capacity within ourselves to truly understand on a level our current mental capacity does not permit. On the other hand, perhaps understanding these concepts is not done at a mind level, but on a spiritual level, which is a difficult place for many people to go.
Maybe in the end we were never meant to fully understand how reincarnation works, and that may be where the adventure really begins. Perhaps the question of what happens to us when we die was never meant to be answered but merely explored, for it is in seeking – not necessarily finding – the answer that growth can take place.
It may be, in fact, that it is only in abandoning our need to find the answers that we give them the ability to find us. In effect, we may be like the man who is so busy looking for treasure that he fails to realise he is searching for it within the bowels of a gold mine. Were he to but look up and see the treasure that shimmers all around him, he would realise how silly his fervent quest had been all along. Perhaps we need only do the same.
Jeff Allen Danelek’s latest book The Case for Reincarnation: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Soul (Llewellyn, 2010) is available from all good bookstores or via www.newdawnbooks.info.
If you appreciated this article, please consider a digital subscription to New Dawn.
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A native Minnesotan who currently resides in Colorado, JEFF ALLEN DANELEK has been working as a graphic artist and technical illustrator since leaving the Navy in 1984. He has been writing as a hobby for fifteen years, and enjoys presenting alternative theories on increasingly popular subjects dealing with the strange and inexplicable world around us. Danelek is regularly featured at seminars, conferences, and has been a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory and the X-Zone with Rob McConnell. His books include The Case for Ghosts, Atlantis: Lessons from a Prehistoric Civilization, UFOs: The Great Debate, and 2012: Extinction or Utopia: Doomsday Prophecies Explored. His latest book is The Case for Reincarnation: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Soul. Danelek is also a novelist and instructor at Colorado Free University. His website is www.ourcuriousworld.com.
The world of television and modern media has become a tool of de-evolution, propaganda and social control. Since the reign of Edward Bernays and the rise of the Tavistock Institute in the early 20th century, nearly unlimited resources have been applied to understanding how to manipulate the human psyche through television and other forms of mass media. What we have today is an increasingly sophisticated full-spectrum assault on free will and psychological well-being, and we have come to a point where it is no longer even necessary for media institutions to attempt to hide their blatant work of manipulating public opinion, manufacturing consent, and creating winners and losers in the minds of the already brain-washed public.
Here are 6 examples where truth reveals that the impression the media is conveying to a dumbed-down, unsuspecting public differs greatly from what is actually happening behind the scenes. By looking at these examples in a single location, it is easy to see how the mainstream media is pushes ulterior motives on the public, and how important it is to be vigilant when consuming consumer info.
“In the tale of Isaac’s near-killing, Abraham assumed the role of sacrificial priest in the druidic style, to wash Jehovah’s sacred trees with the Blood of the Son: an ancient custom, of which the sacrifice of Jesus was only a late variant. Jehovah first appeared to Abraham at the sacred oak of Shechem, where Abraham built his altar. Later Abraham build an altar to the oak god of Mamre at Hebron. Even in the 4th century A.D., Constantine said Abraham’s home at the Oak of Mamre was still a shrine: ‘It is reported that most damnable idols are set up beside it, and that an altar stands hard by, and that unclean sacrifices are constantly offered.'”
of the Arabs. The Sarazens gave her the epithet of Cabar or the Great; her Crescent adorns to this day the religious monuments of the Turks. Her elevation under the sign of the Bull, constituted one of the principal feasts of the Saracens and the sabean Arabs. Each Arab tribe was under the invocation of a constellation Each one worshipped one of the celestial bodies as its tutelar genius.
“Shrine of the sacred stone in Mecca, formerly dedicated to the pre-Islamic Triple Goddess Manat, Al-Lat (Allah), and Al-Uzza, the ‘Old Woman’ worshipped by Mohammed’s tribesmen the Koreshites. The stone was also called Kubaba, Kuba or Kube, and has been linked with the name of Cybele (Kybela), the Great Mother of the Gods. The stone bore the emblem of the 
“Doctrines attributed to Mohammed simply reversed the ancient system in favor of men. A Moslem husband could dismiss his wife by saying ‘I divorce thee’ three times. As in Europe, the change from matriarchate to patriarchate came about only gradually and with much strife.
eternity, ‘Mother of the Book’—i.e., the Goddess herself, wearing the Book of Fate on her breast as Mother Tiamat wore the Tablets of Destiny. Sometimes the celestial Koran was called the Preserved Tablet. There was some resemblance between this and other legendary books of divine origin, such as the Ur-text, the Book of Thoth, and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.
was the discovery in 1972 at Sana’a, Yemen, of thousands of parchment fragments from the Koran, consisting of possibly the oldest extant quranic manuscript ever found, dating to the 7th-8th centuries. Regarding these fragments, the professor who photographed them, Dr. Puin, remarks:
“The impact of the Yemeni manuscripts is still to be felt. Their variant readings and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic texts is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed.”
Like that of Buddha, Jesus, Moses, et al., 
As to how such a character could inspire such reverence and devotion, we would submit that it was because Mohammed and Islam were created by yet another faction of “the brotherhood” for purposes of competition with 
hipmonkey 