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SAMPLE READINGS
Below are a few passages from the books sold on the website,
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Click on the following links to read the
FREE PASSAGES
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QUEST FOR THE SOUL
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Pages 3: Throughout history, our
search for the soul has been a long and fruitless one. It has a long
and interesting history going back even before the Ancient Romans,
Greeks and Egyptians. Despite this long history, and a large collection
of research data on the soul, we are no closer to understanding the
soul today than we were in the time of Aristotle in Ancient Greece! The
official scientific view is that the soul does not exist. Yet, our scientific
research data strongly suggests that the soul exists even though our
search for a definition of what constitutes life and living goes on
with no resolution and none in sight! Although we can easily
distinguish most living things from nonliving things, we are no closer
today at defining those differences than we were thousands of years
ago.
Pages 5 - 7:
Around of the turn of the century from the 19th into the 20th century,
Sigmund Freud became the first psychologist to be widely recognized for
acknowledging that sexual matters are important to the soul. His ideas
led to the development of psychoanalysis as a means of helping people
resolve psychological problems! He recognized that sexual matters
occupy a large amount of time and energy in our everyday existence.
Even many people who aren't constantly pursuing sex spend a great deal
of time in a losing, usually religious effort trying to stop others
from doing so. Most of the time, mankind's attention is riveted on sex
and food! And, while food tends to be of more concern to people, sex
tends to take up more of our time and thought. We even try to
incorporate the two by going out to eat during courtship, or
"eating" various anatomical parts when in the process of
sexual stimulation and petting! The only time our search for food
diverts our attention from our pursuit of sex is when food becomes
scarce or when we are faced with going without a meal or two. Only then
does our pursuit of sex take a back seat to our pursuit for food. It
turns out that our endless pursuit of sex is a quality of the soul, not
an act of society or of human depravity! Despite our view that sex is
the act of procreation, sex is actually the act of creating, and
creating is the purpose of the soul! Procreation is only a small component
of the creative process. The soul plays a role in EVERY ASPECT of the
creative process! Thus, sex, that is, the creative process, is the main
function of the soul!
Page 19: We
should not understate or underestimate the power of the psyche. Though ignored by psychology, it is
not universally ignored in science.
Some scientists have studied it and both the U.S and former
Soviet militaries have used it secretly for military purposes. While publicly dismissing the power
of the psyche (or of the “mind”) as
“ridiculous”, privately, the military has successfully used
even the most controversial powers of the psyche for its own purposes
in secret military operations.
Once the awesome power of subatomic particles was known, neither
the U.S.
nor the Soviet militaries could resist exploiting the potential powers
of the ego. They are generally
referred to as the “Powers of the Mind”, but they are
actually the combined power of the ego and the mind. The ego exerts this power and the
mind manifests it. The mind acts
randomly and without direction unless the ego is involved, but we are
getting ahead of ourselves.
Without the ego, the mind is an empty sailboat drifting aimlessly
in an ocean of random thoughts.
Pages 29 - 30:
We now know that a spiritual reality exists although we don't call it
"spiritual". We use it to our advantage each and every day,
even as we simultaneously dismiss its spiritual nature. Its existence
has been proven even though we fail to acknowledge it to be what it is,
'spiritual'. You may not believe in its existence even as you read
this, but if you are reading this at night, no doubt you have the proof
in front of you. Electricity, magnetism and gravity are different forms
of spirit. They are abstractions that have no physical reality. Their
existence is perceived and experienced because of the physical
particles with which they interact. Are you using an electrical
appliance at present, or have you listened to a radio, looked at
television, worked on a computer, used a light
bulb or used electricity, magnetism or gravity today? If so, then you
too have unknowingly used spirit today-and yesterday and the day before
that-and you will use it again today, tomorrow and beyond. Even without
electricity, magnetism and gravity, if you were merely to go into the
sunlight, you would still be dealing with spirit. Sunlight and all
light are merely electromagnetic waves-spirit! So, the existence of
spirit is a proven fact. We don't call the different forms of spirit by
that term, but, as the saying goes, a rose by any other name is still a
rose. So, spirit by any other name is still spirit.
Pages 43: Neither
the soul, nor any of its components have any physical existence, but
like electricity, magnetism and gravity, the soul and each of its
components interact with physical matter. Unlike electricity, magnetism
and gravity, each of which interacts directly with physical matter, we
shall see that the soul only interacts with electricity. Subsequently,
the electricity interacts with physical matter, i.e., with living
cells. Thus, the soul only interacts with the body indirectly through
electricity or electromagnetic energy.
The evidence for the
existence of the soul separate from and independent of the body is
overwhelming. The same is true
of the mind and its relationship to the brain. This latter relationship is always
ignored and swept under the table in favor of the more generally
accepted ideas of science which assume that the mind
arises from the processes of the brain, a scientific assumption
with absolutely no basis in fact! The assumption is merely a
groundless, but cherished (and thus widely accepted) belief. This is important because the mind is
part of the soul. Still, despite
their abstract (i.e., nonphysical) nature, there is nothing about the
existence of the soul or its components that disobeys the laws of
physics as we understand them today.
Neither does the soul’s interaction with matter differ
dramatically from that of gravity, electricity or magnetism with matter
except that the soul does not interact with the body
(matter) directly. Gravity,
electricity and magnetism all exert their effects directly on physical
particles, but they obviously continue to exist even when they are not
interacting with physical particles.
The soul exerts its influence over electromagnetic fields
associated with the body, and the latter elicits a response in the
body. Thoughts, for example,
precede the electrical events that elicit the release of chemicals in
the brain or the movement of muscles.
Pages 51 - 52:
Since the mid 1930s, we've been able to study the most likely candidate
for the soul, but since it has gone unrecognized, we've been unable to
make the correlations necessary to form a connection between this
'thing', called the “L-field”, and the potential components
of the soul! If we were to assume that the L-field discovered by Dr.
Harold Saxton Burr really is the soul, then the next logical step would
be to attempt to make a connection between the L-field and the ego,
conscience, personality and mind! No such effort has been undertaken as
of this writing, in part because the ego, conscience, personality and
mind are poorly defined and, in part because psychologists still don't
believe in the psyche (soul). However, the available data (loosely)
suggests that such a correlation could exist, and the data strongly
suggests a correlation between the L-field and the body organs!
Pages 63 - 64: Psychology as we
generally approach it today has more or less become the study of the
mind, but it is actually supposed to be the study of the soul. Psyche is taken from the Greek
word for “soul”, and -ology is “the study
of” (from logos, which
means “knowledge”), so “psychology” is actually
the study of the soul, or at least it’s supposed to be! In their
effort to gain acceptability and respect from their colleagues in the
hard sciences of physics, chemistry and biology, psychologists
officially dismissed the abstract concepts and terms from psychology. These are the terms that set that
discipline apart from other scientific disciplines. At a time when
physics and chemistry were including abstract concepts from quantum
mechanics and modern physics, psychologists were dismissing the very
same types of abstract concepts!
Page 66 - 68:
Dr. Burr recognized a phenomenon he and his associates called the
“L-field”. Although the soul has not been defined as the
L-field, the latter has all the elements necessary to qualify as the
soul. The L-field is a biological morphogenic
field. Morphogenic fields are a concept from
embryology and developmental biology first proposed by Paul Weiss in
the 1920s and independently by F.S.C. Northrop. Morph-
means “form or shape” and genesis has to do with generating or forming
something. So, a morphogenic field is an abstract force field that
forms or gives form/shape to a living thing. It goes back to the days
of Aristotle and his idea of a vital force. In ancient times,
philosophers believed that some force had to exist to direct the growth
of the developing fetus. This force was called the “vital
force”. By the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists had begun to
take concepts and notes from the new science of electricity and
magnetism. By then, science recognized that iron filings placed in a
magnetic field took on a characteristic pattern that was dictated by
the magnetic field. Unable to understand the force that gave living
things their characteristic forms, biologists adopted a morphogenic theory similar to that in
magnetism. The L-field appears
to be a morphogenic field that endows the
body with its characteristic pattern, features, looks and shape in the
same manner that a magnetic field influences iron filings! The L-field apparently influences the
genetic material as the field and the genes interact!
Page 70 - 71: Each component of the psyche has a
counterpart in the physical body. Understanding how these components
relate to the body can be confusing. For example, on the surface, most
individuals assume that the brain is the physical counterpart of the
mind. This belief has lead to
the assumption that, “The mind only exists as a result of the
processes and activity of the brain.” Despite a connection
between the mind and the brain, the ego and the brain are
counterparts. The reproductive system, the skeletal system and the
muscular system are the physical counterparts to the mind. Actually, the ego controls the soul
in a comparable way to that in which the brain controls the body. The mind creates (reproduces) for the
soul and moves the soul from one location to another comparable to the
skeletal and muscular systems.
That being the case, it is highly unlikely that the mind arises
from brain activity because the ego (rather than the mind) is the counterpart
of the brain even though the consciousness of the mind does reside in
the brain. Thus, there is a
connection between the ego and the brain too even though we don’t
know where the ego resides. It
probably resided in the brain as well. We certainly realize that the
muscles, bones and reproductive organs don't give rise to the mind, and
neither psychologists nor neuroscientists assume that the brain gives
rise to the ego! So, to avoid confusion, we should avoid associations
between the psyche and the body until future research has refuted or
more firmly established these associations.
Page 95 - 96:
The mind has three levels of
consciousness: the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the super
conscious mind. Although the existence of the super conscious mind has
been confirmed by Western science (McDougall, 1927, 1928, 1930) and it
has been acknowledged in the East for millennia, its existence is not
presently acknowledged by science.
Super consciousness does not give rise to abnormal psychological
states. It can act on a
collective psyche level involving numerous different psyches outside
the confines of a single, individual psyche or a single physical body. Dr. William McDougall accidentally
discovered evidence for its existence in the late 1920s as the result
of genetics experiments. We will have more to say about McDougall's
experiments later in the book.
Super consciousness may be no more than a Universal Subconscious
that acts collectively outside of a n
individual, but it so, it is distinctly different from the individual
subconscious.
Page 204: So, despite our
skepticism and uncertainty about life after life, the evidence strongly
suggests that spiritual life precedes and continues after physical
life! We may have doubts, and
mainstream science may attempt to explain the data away, but science
will eventually need to come to terms with this idea. Life is eternal.
The body may die, but life goes on!
Abstract realities are permanent and real. They function independent of physical
reality!
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THE SECRET POWER OF SEX AND LOVE
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Pages 10: What has been said has not
been frivolous talk. Embedded in these true stories and italicized
words are lessons, what I have called "Mating Maxims," that
exist even in children, continue through adulthood, and from what
studies on sex in the elderly seem to indicate, will follow us to the
grave. We may or may not admit them to ourselves, particularly in early
childhood, or if you're a parent, particularly not about your child, or
not if you're religious, or in any one of an infinite number of
situations, but they are there all the same, even as children, and
apparently in all children. Maxims such as the UDA principles , the
laws of seduction , the principles of power , and the others that
follow are apparently simple biological principles that change in
character and color from one chronological age to the next, but always
exist and never cease to exist even though we may try to suppress them.
Pages 21: Sex, love and romance
are deeply spiritual "things" that are widely misunderstood
in the West. Much of today's literature on sex is devoid of the true
spirit of the act. Western textbooks and manuals on sex focus on
techniques, displays of passion, the importance of variation in sexual
techniques and little more. What is missing, even from books and
manuals that cover the emotion, passion, intimacy and psychology of
intercourse and relationships, is any real presentation of the truly
spiritual nature of sex or of the trio of sex, love and romance. We in
the West are perhaps particularly guilty of this for two reasons.
First, although we profess a belief in God and religion, our society
focuses upon a scientific foundation that disavows any validity to a
spiritual reality. We acknowledge and admit this reality in church,
then go to our homes, schools, jobs and businesses dismissing the
existence of such a reality. When we actually see spiritual acts we
dismiss them as fraudulent, and yet many of us are equally likely to
accept fraudulent acts as real.
Page 24 - 25: These are not
haphazard rules presented to evoke controversy or stimulate
titillation. They are general statements that reflect natural behaviors
and the laws responsible for them, in men and women from all cultures
around the world. Although colored by culture, these rules do not vary
from nation to nation, religion to religion or culture to culture. For
example, it may be more difficult for a man to have sex with a Japanese
or catholic woman early in their relationship than with an American or
an atheist, but even so, in most cases it will still be true that if
you "Tap her head, her legs pop open" and "A man who
fails to have sex with a willing woman early in their relationship
usually risks losing her." These principles, no matter how
distasteful they may seem, are based on and reflect the laws and
principles of nature and biology, not those of the culture, religion or
national origin that colors them. I do not make the news folks. I just
report it.
Page 26 - 27:
THE UDA PRINCIPLES:
- Women, not men, have the strongest sexual urges.
- Women, not men have the strongest sex drives, that is, women
are more driven than men by sex.
- Women, not men, have the largest sexual appetite.
- The male sex drive is basically focused in the chase and the
novelty of the interaction. It decreases after the first few
sexual encounters and must be renewed by novelty, variety and/or
abstinence from a particular woman.
- Gentlemen, if you don't want to have sex with a woman, don't
put yourself in situations where you'll have to accept it if
offered because it will be offered to you at times that you least
expect it.
- A woman in lust with a particular man is less likely to have
sex with anyone except the object of her lust. The same is true of
a woman in love. The idea
just doesn’t arise in her mind because she is so focused on
the object of her lust or love.
This is also a principle of power because it empowers men.
UDA is an acronym that stands for urges, drives and appetites. We
are speaking of the sexual urges, drives and appetites, of course.
These principles, therefore, are the ones that generally describe the
sexual urges, drives and appetites of individuals. For the most part,
they refer to women because the sex urges, drives and appetites are
greatest in women. This is described in detail throughout the book and
need not be further considered at this point.
Pages 42 - 43: These are the
sexual principles that empower individuals of each sex. They are not
necessarily distributed equally among the sexes, so let me acknowledge
to the ladies that some, perhaps most of the principles of power may
appear somewhat sexist. Unfortunately, I did not make the rules, nature
did! So, I cannot account for their apparently sexist nature. Furthermore,
none of the rules are true for all women, or true all of the time.
Actually, all the sexual maxims apply to both men and women, but none
apply equally to both sexes. For example, some men prefer, indeed,
require, a dominant woman who makes all or most of the decisions, and
some women absolutely hate for the man to have most of the decision
making roles. The Laws of Nature cannot be broken, but as for the rules
of Nature, sometimes there are exceptions even to the exceptions!
(There is even a rule of chemistry that has an exception to the
exception! I can't remember it now, but I believe it's a rule of
organic chemistry.) Nature is not an equal opportunity employer. The
principles of power apply more strongly to women than to men because
women are so strongly driven by their sexual urges, drives and
appetite, and are therefore the ones most empowered by them, although
they generally give up most of their power to the man.
Page 57 - 58:
So, due to the considerable female sex drive, the male's
sexual influence over her actually arises from her enjoyment of sex
with him-how well he stimulates her libido- rather than the promise of
obtaining sex from him. A woman will sacrifice her ego to satisfy her
libido, but with a man ego, not libido, is all-important. Women can
promise a man sex and entice him and, in so doing, exert considerable
influence over him by feeding his ego, but women are motivated by
performance rather than the promise. Good performance opens her mind to
him, colors her perspective of him and alters her view of life in
general and of the entire world. Thus the reason for the wording,
"use their penis as a tool" in the second maxim. While men
are also greatly influenced by sex, the effect on them is much more
transient, it has little bearing on how well she performs (most men are
more than adequately satisfied by virtually any sexual performance, not
so for women) and he is basically interested in the enjoyment of the
sex rather than the pleasure of the relationship, so his ongoing,
overall worldview is much less affected by sex than is his ego for the
moment.
Page 70 - 71: I
expect that these principles will be subject to considerable attention
and scrutiny in our "monogamous" society simply because they
point out that human beings are not really monogamous. Monogamy is an
unnatural state for humans, other mammals and for most animals in
general. In our Western, Christian society many people will have real
problems with these ideas, but despite the problems, there is simply no
evidence that monogamy is a natural state for humans, or that it works,
but it does serve a functional purpose and have distinct advantages. In
nature, most males practice polygamy by having many female mates
simultaneously and most females practice polygamy by mating with many
different males during the course of their life, but only one or two at
a time. A quick look around will prove without question that this is
really the case for 75-95% of all humans as well. Even in societies
where sexual monogamy is strongly encouraged and strictly enforced,
this general behavior is a good deal more common than is evident.
Extramarital and extra-relational affairs follow this same pattern.
That is, men generally have more affairs than women, and may have
several different affairs simultaneously whereas women generally have
only a few affairs, and usually (but certainly not always) have them
with only one or two men at a time. Still, statistically, about the
same number of men as women have affairs. This point is driven home
throughout the book in that virtually all the women described are
involved or have been involved in extramarital or extra-relational
affairs. I'll let this point stand for now.
THE PRINCIPLE OF ENTRAPMENT: A man chases a woman until she catches
him. In other words, a woman sets a trap and the man falls into it.
This is often true even when he is the first one interested in a
relationship.
This is another humorous maxim, the only one in this class. It is,
"A man chases a woman until she catches him." All humor
aside, I think that women are more aware of this than men, but whatever
the case, the maxim appears to be true in many cases.
Page 116: Women
express the true power of sex in nature. Men, it seems, are expendable. Women have insatiable sex urges, sex
drives and sexual appetites. As
far as these three things go, “Men have harems, but women need
them” just to satisfy a woman’s sexual urges, drives and
appetites. Why, then, is the
reality about who has harems the other way around? The answer seems to revolve around Darwin’s
concept of the continuation and survival of the species. One man can impregnate many women (as
they are driven by nature to try to do), but once impregnated she must
nourish the fertilized embryo, give birth to and nurse the young for
some time thereafter. The man is
therefore expendable. Thus,
harems of females with a single male serve nature’s purpose of
continuing the species whereas harems of males with a single female
would not. The harem of females
would grow and expand rapidly whereas the harem of males would
not! Today we have far too many
“civilized” people on the planet, and we’re rapidly
getting more. So the need for
harems of women and even for lots of sex, among
“civilized” peoples
is relatively non-existent, but among the primitive peoples it is
greater than ever and growing as they and their lifestyles and
existence are becoming increasingly threatened and extinct.
Pages 122 - 124: Sexual energy is
among the most potent energies in nature. It is the creative energy of nature,
the energy we always use in prayer. When you pray, if you do so properly,
you are in the active state of creating. As a result, you are involved in
sexual intercourse, the spiritual counterpart of the physical
act—that is, planting a mental seed into the fertile creative
soil of God’s mind (whatever God is), nurturing it and watching
it grow just as a man plants sperm, the male component of the human
seed, into the creative soil of a woman’s womb to fertilize her
egg before the woman nurtures the resultant developing fetus (which is
the developing fertilized seed) and watches it grow. So, when you have sexual intercourse,
“There is a wider range of mental facts involved in this than
mere sexual desire” (taken from Pleasure and Instinct,
p. 82, by Arthur Henry Burlton Allen). You are actually in the active state
of creating, not just fetuses and babies, but thoughts, dreams,
emotions, desires, ideas, drives and much more, all of which can be
used to bring about changes in the physical world. In fact, we shall see that sexual
intercourse can both stimulate and retard prayer and physical change.
On a spiritual, mental
and emotional level, sex is simply the act of creating. A new idea conceived in the mind and
nurtured until manifested into physical reality is exactly like a baby
conceived in a woman’s womb, nurtured for nine months and then
delivered into the world. In
fact, when planned, a baby starts out as nothing more than an idea
conceived in the mind. If the
idea—any idea—is not fertilized, acted upon and nurtured,
it’s ultimately lost to physical reality. Adding faith, that is, strong belief
and expectation fertilizes ideas.
The mental spark of conception that fertilizes an idea could be
anything, but many physical situations of sexual desire are potent
sparks for the conception and fertilization of ideas because strong
emotions such as affection, love, hate, jealousy, anger, fear, passion
and compassion—all very common in sexual and romantic
situations—are great sparks for generating ideas. Few aspects of existence generate
more or stronger emotions than romantic situations. Emotions are creative energy that
generate more energy that can be used to generate ideas, more mental
energy, faith/belief or to physically act on ideas already (or yet to
be) manifested as physical objects or things.
Pages 147 - 148:
So no matter what you do, you are constantly having sex, sometimes
leading to romance, at other times not.
To hold a negative view of either sex or romance, especially
romance, is one of the greatest mistakes possible. Nothing exists without them. Prayer is also an act of sex, but
only ‘romantic’ prayer is successful. In prayer, you prepare the mind
through meditation and fertilize it with faith. This is foreplay. Then, you plant a suggestion, which
is the fertilized seed. This
seed is also fertilized with faith, but should be faith combined with
action. The suggestion is your
prayer request. Then, the soil
of the mind is fertilized with more faith and (if necessary) more
action. Other aspects of the
prayer process include visualization, breathing, relaxation and aspects
of the process discussed elsewhere in the book. Purely sexual prayer (making a suggestion
without fertilizing and nurturing the suggestion before, during and after
it is planted) is both unsuccessful and unrewarding. Love, that is, the entire nurturing
process with a measure of compassion and affection added, is crucial to
successful prayer. So now we can
see sex in another light, sex as an act of prayer, whether we’re
speaking of sex between two bodies, or sex in farming or sex as in
prayer suggestions, it’s all just sex (i.e., the creative
process).
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THE MYSTICAL BIBLE:
Bible Mysteries Unveiled
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Pages 2 - 3: Many of the difficult
or inconsistent ideas in the Bible are commonly sloughed off or ignored
making an accurate interpretation of the Bible difficult at best, or impossible at worst. The following journey
is an escapade through difficult, commonly overlooked or totally
ignored terrain. There will be no attempt to overlook the Bible's
inconsistencies and contradictions, and no crime, sex or violence will
be ignored just because it may be a bit embarrassing or difficult to
explain. In fact, contradictions and inconsistencies will be eagerly
sought in an attempt to show that the authors of the Bible may have
purposely included them so as to help clarify the topic they were
discussing. Thus, it may be a grave mistake to exclude them. Many
significant oversights are considered, such as the fact that God is
usually the culprit behind many acts commonly thought of as evil, that
reincarnation is a major concept taught throughout the Bible or that
the biblical idea of death is not a state in which the soul loses consciousness
nor ceases to exist. All of these points will be considered in depth,
with the aim of clarifying the contents of the Bible. Many concepts and ideas discussed in
one context will be repeated in other contexts, and some concepts and
ideas will be repeated throughout the book.
Page 7 - 8: Few stories have
caused as much controversy as the biblical story of creation.
Well-meaning, sincere individuals often insist that the biblical
creation is an accurate account of events even though the Bible
frequently uses allegory. Many elements of the biblical creation are
especially interesting and informative, and set the stage for other
allegories. As Genesis begins, "...the earth (is) without form and
void,...." This is a chaotic situation
that gradually becomes ordered, illustrating a frequently recurring
change throughout the Bible, that is, the movement of events from a
disordered state to an ordered state and back to disorder, a phenomenon
called entropy. All things in Nature undergo these cyclic changes: nothing
remains the same forever. The Bible is simply a description of the
normal events in Nature.
Page 10:
"The man has become like one of us, knowing good and
evil...."
Genesis 3:22
Taken together, these passages suggest that man is like God, an idea
presented or implied throughout the Bible and emphasized by Christ in
the New Testament. One thing that makes man like God is his knowledge
of good and evil, knowledge of which the Bible gives many warnings.
These repeated warnings appear to be given because any act can be
either good or evil, depending on its context and the interpretation.
This seems to be the whole point behind the story of Job3 and the
passage in Ecclesiastes 3:1-12, both of which show that "all
things prove good at their proper time" (Ecclesiasticus
39:34). These passages indicate that Adam and Eve made a drastic change
as to what they thought of as good and what they thought of as evil
after they ate the forbidden fruit. Before eating the fruit, it seems
that only good existed. Even though both Adam and Eve were naked, it
was "good". However, after eating the forbidden fruit,
nakedness became "evil".
Page 21: Lust goes far beyond
sex. It carries over into eating, thinking, dressing, and many other
human behaviors. The previous passages quoted from Genesis illustrate
that each individual must monitor and control his or her thoughts and
habits before these become extreme (lust). The Bible gives many
warnings about controlling one's mind, and about how people can
perceive things that do not exist and miss things that exist. Eating
the forbidden fruit symbolizes Adam and Eve's loss of mind and thought
control and, that is to say, self-discipline. Their sudden new
awareness of being naked symbolizes an increased interest in and
awareness of physical reality over mental and spiritual reality.
Spiritual and mental realities had become secondary to physical
awareness. In becoming more physically oriented and aware, they began
to concentrate more on how to act than how to think. As a result, the Bible
talks a great deal about what acts are beneficial or detrimental.
Anyone who has tried to diet is aware how difficult it is to control
one's thoughts. It is the thoughts about food that cause people to fail
in their diet. Knowing how to act is of little help, but knowing how to
control your thoughts can completely stop an action. Although Genesis
often speaks of spiritual existence, it deals mainly with rules for
physical existence.
Page 30 - 31: The story of Noah
is obviously a biblical allegory meant to suggest that the flood
destroyed numerous people and animals and that only a few survived. To
house this much food and these many animals, not to mention the number
of people who would be required to feed the animals, maintain their
living quarters or to gather so many animals in the first place, would
require several aircraft carriers at least. Biblical allegories such as
the flood and the creation are meant as inaccurate stories that explain
real events without elaborating upon the exact details of the events.
Such events are presented much as a parent might make up a partially
inaccurate story to explain a real event to a child. The details appear
to be less important than the message of the story itself. In the case
of Noah the messages were that (1) people became evil and corrupt, (2)
a great flood occurred and (3) many, but not quite all people and
animals were destroyed.
Pages 47 - 48: I cannot
over-emphasize this point, and will repeat it again and again
throughout the book; good and evil do not exist! All things, both good
and evil, come from God. There is no such a thing as good and evil to
Him. In His eyes all things are the same, and everything moves towards
a final goal. Good and evil or right and wrong are your own individual
value judgments. Although everything is good and right to God, that
does not mean that everything is beneficial to man. Ecclesiastes and
Job stress the neutrality of God and Nature. Even so, each person
should remember that what is beneficial to one person can be harmful to
another. The good and evil benefits lie in the interaction with you.
Extremes exist in everything, as they must, but God's law calls for
moderation (Ecclesiasticus 31:20 and 27).
Pages 57 - 59: No good book is complete
without a good love story. The Bible has several from which to choose,
such as the story of Solomon and Sheba or that of Samson and
Delilah that we are about to consider. Samson was the Hebrew strongman
of the Bible. He is usually remembered for his immense strength, but he
was also a "judge over Israel for twenty years in
the days of the Philistines" (Judges 15:20). His birth was
announced to his parents by an angel, who remarked,
"...you will conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor
shall touch his head, for the boy is to be a Nazrite
consecrated to God from the day of his birth. He will strike the first
blow to deliver Israel
from the power of the Philistines."
Judges 13:5
One day after he had grown up he saw a Philistine woman with whom he
fell in love. Eventually she was given in marriage to another man. This
made Samson very angry since she had been betroved
to him, so he decided to settle his score with the Philistines. His
revenge initiated a chain of vengeful acts, illustrating how every
action leads to a reaction. Nature's laws also apply to the
personality, although in a somewhat modified form. Whereas the physical
effect of the law must conform to physical limitations the same laws
are subject to freewill when expressed through consciousness. In both
cases there is a reaction to the initial act, but the conscious mind
has a choice as to what that reaction will be. This is the basic
message that Moses presented to the Hebrews when he said,
"Today I offer you the choice of life a good, or death and
evil."
Deuteronomy 30:15
Each person chooses life when they exercise their freewill in such a
way as to bring harmony to nature, and they choose death when they have
brought disharmony. You cannot break the laws of Mother Nature, the female
aspect of God; you can only make them work for or against you.
Pages 69 - 71: As we proceed
through the various aspects of the Bible, you will notice that God is
the source of everything. We have already touched upon this idea
several times in this chapter, but it is not an easy one to grasp nor
is it readily accepted. God is not a source, but the source of
everything. All things, without exception, come from God. We are so
indoctrinated to the idea that good comes from God and evil from the
devil that most will neither accept nor even entertain the notion that
both good and evil come from God. Job states, "If we accept good from God, shall we not accept evil?" (Job
2:10). Even as the book of Job begins we find that God permitted Satan
to torment Job. Notice that Satan remarks,
"'Has not Job good reason to be God-fearing? Have you not
hedged him round on every side with your protection, him and his family
and all his possessions? Whatever he does you have blessed, and his
herds have increased beyond measure. But, stretch out your hand and
touch all he has, and then he will curse you to your face.' Then the
Lord said to Satan, 'So be it. All that he has is in your hands; only
Job himself you must not touch.' And Satan left the Lord's
presence."
Job 1:9-11
As this passage shows, it is not Satan who has power to harm Job,
but rather God who has power over both Job and Satan and who permits
Satan to harm Job. Thus, it is God who "stretch(es) out (his) hand and touch(es)"
Job with misfortune. At most, all Satan does is asks permission to use
the power of God, which he is granted when God says, "So be
it." Another author who noticed this remarked, "Neither the
Satan in Job nor the spirit in Micaiah's
vision can do anything of their own power (of 2 Samuel 24:1; 1
Chronicles 21:1)."5 The two passages to which he refers contain a
paradox. Both passages refer to the same incident, but one states that
God caused the incident whereas the other states that Satan did. Thus,
compare
"Once again the Israelites felt the Lord's anger, when He
incited David against them and gave him orders that Israel and Judah should be counted. So
he instructed Joab to go round all the tribes
of Israel...and
report the number to him."
2 Samuel 24:1-2
with
"Now Satan, setting himself against Israel, incited David to
count the people. So he instructed Joab and
his public officers to go out and number Israel...and to report the
number to him."
2 Chronicles 21:1-2
Thus, 2 Samuel states that God incited David's actions whereas 2
Chronicles states that Satan incited those same actions. Clearly, these
passages either contradict each other or they imply that
"evil" and all the acts that people generally attribute to
"the devil" actually arose from God's power. The latter statement
appears to be correct.
Page 82: Although I certainly do
not wish to be a part of this controversy, the plain fact of the matter
is that many of the details in these accounts are inaccurate and
contradictory. In short, many of these stories are myths. In the past
historians thought that myths and fables were made up stories with
absolutely no basis in fact. However, during the 1960s many historians
began to use the term mythopoeic, a term
meant to acknowledge that myths represent inaccurate, even fictitious
stories that describe real events and which are based upon accurate
facts. In other words, the details of a myth are inaccurate, and may
even be totally fictitious, but the story itself revolves around an
idea that is accurate. In a phrase, a myth is as follows: inaccurate
facts used to explain accurate ideas.
Page 84: Christ's common practice
of speaking in parables is an important example of how seldom upon
which a person can rely on literal, word-for-word interpretations of
the Bible for an accurate understanding of the concepts conveyed. Let
us not fail to realize that there are only two or three instances where
Christ spoke plainly and then only to his disciples. At all other times
he spoke in parables, riddles and symbols. Indeed, Matthew remarks
about this when he states, "in fact he never spoke to (crowds)
without a parable" (Matthew 13:35). Even when he spoke privately
among the disciples they often failed to understand what he was saying
(Matthew 17:9-13; John 21:23) because he also spoke to them in parables
and riddles. If Christ placed so much emphasis on parables, riddles and
symbols, why should anyone insist that every word of the Bible should
be interpreted literally? Such insistence cannot help but be incorrect
in light of what the Bible itself says.
Page 115 - 116: A second biblical
statement of karma and the law of cycles is
related to the Sabbath. This could be called "The Law of Rest and
Replenishment." The Sabbath is a universal phenomenon throughout
Nature. Although much discussion has been centered around which day is
actually the Sabbath day, the Sabbath does not refer to any particular
day of the week. It is simply a transition or a period of rest and
replenishment between cyclic events.
Page 150 - 151: Like any fervent
disciple, Buddha's disciples thought of him as the greatest person to
have ever lived. In response to this praise, Buddha is once said to
have remarked, "You have seen all of the Buddhas
who are to come in the future" to which his disciples replied,
"No." The Buddha said, "Well then, you have seen all of
the Buddhas who have existed in the
past" to which the disciples once again replied, "No."
Finally Buddha replied, "Well then, certainly you know all the Buddhas who exist at present" to which his
disciples once again replied, "No." So Buddha said,
"Well then, you cannot say that I am the greatest Buddha ever to
exist." Buddha's point appears to have been that many Buddhas have come and will come and that all men
are equal in the eyes of God. As Christ taught, "the great must
humble themselves" (Mark 10:43-45). There are many accounts of
Buddha's life, and many of today's writers have pointed out the
numerous similarities between Buddha's teachings and those of Christ.
For those who are interested in further studies, may I recommend THE
GOD OF BUDDHA, by Jamshed Fozdar
and THE GOSPEL OF BUDDHA, by Paul Carus.
Page 173 - 174: People often
wonder why God refers to himself in the plural in such passages as,
"Let us make man in our image and likeness..." (Genesis 1:26)
and "Come, let us go down there and confuse their speech,..." (Genesis 11:7). The passage from Job
clearly shows that the plural reference to God results because he is
speaking to the court of heaven, among which Satan is included. The
Book of Job is one of the very few places in the Old Testament where
the terms "devil" or "Satan" are used, and as
always, Satan seems to represent an aspect of God's dual nature as the
source of both good and evil. We can see this representation most
clearly by comparing 2 Samuel 24:1-2, which gives God credit for
causing one of David's actions, with 1 Chronicles 21:1-2, which gives
the devil credit for causing the same action. The Book of Job uses
Satan more extensively than anywhere in the Old Testament, a mere two
chapters and part of a third. Yet, Satan is used several times more
frequently in Job than in the rest of the Old Testament combined!
Throughout Job, there is no pretense that Satan caused Job's problems,
nor the bitterness in Job himself. From the very beginning these are
attributed to God. As in the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:1-24),
and the confrontation between Moses and the Pharaoh (Exodus 10:27;
11:10; 7:3), once again we can see both good and evil arising from God
in the story of Job as we do throughout the Bible.
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