A Theory of Existence
I see my journey like this: first I was standing in the room called Christianity. My understanding of reality was confined to the beliefs within Christianity. I thought that Christianity was the whole house. But then I learned more and more and figuratively speaking I went onto the roof of the house and I realized that Christianity is just one of the rooms of the house. Christianity, from this perspective, is just one of many ways to try to perceive and describe reality.
Reality actually was not in either of the rooms. Each room was filled with carved mirrors which incorrectly reflected the pieces of truth in each room. I realized that the house was inside of a bigger structure, which itself was inside of an bigger structure (we can’t see it, it’s so big) and so from where I was standing, I just couldn’t see the whole reality. But I had an idea that it was there, just like we have an idea that there are billions of stars even though we can’t actually see them all.
Christianity is a set of statements about reality. My belief is also a set of statements about reality. They are different because my belief about reality is non-religious. Ideas are like building blocks, they can be used to create a different looking structure (depending on who is building it). If you take a set of ideas and give them to different people, they will add their interpretation to them and add their context to them and you will end up with different belief systems.
I do not believe that a God described in the Bible exists: a cruel and petty and jealous (and yet supposedly loving) powerful Entity who controls everything.
I do believe that powerful and strong and good Entities exist. The Entities are a part of all that exists, just like we are a part of it. Life is like a company. I call this company "ALL THAT IS". Company makes stuff, but only by the people who are in it, who are a part of it. Life forms are created by the Entities who are part of this LIFE system. Kind of like trees are produced by the earth and kind of like babies are produced by the humans. There are rules and laws that were set in motion which work like a clock and keep creating life. It's like if you opened up a factory, hired the people, hired the managers and then went away. And now this company keeps making stuff, keeps existing, keeps doing what it was doing. As far as WHO started the "company" or whether it had a beginning, that is unknown. I mean I believe that life is cyclical: it starts, ends and then starts again; and it was like that always. So there was never a period where nothing existed. There was always life.
The Big Bang Theory says that the Universe was born because of an explosion (or expanded having started from a tiny dot, which was very very dense). Where did this dense point come from? Don't black holes produce tiny dense points at the end? So if this dense point was the end of the black hole, that means there was a black hole before. And if there was black hole, that means there was a star before which turned into a black hole...
I believe that the Universe is filled with life. Life on our planet is just starting to thrive (compared to life on some other planets). We are still quite primitive and act as children most of the time and did not yet learn to fully control our emotions. We don't yet act on a very conscious level. Lots of the time we don't know why we did something, what was the real reason. We just do things. We react, like we were programmed to react. And therefore, we are not as conscious as we like to think. Or maybe I mean that we are not as self aware as we like to think. Sometimes we think that we did something because we decided to do it, because we chose to do it. But later we discover that our decision was inevitable. That we are predictable. So it's like we didn't really have a say in what we did. Our body did it for us. And sometimes, our body makes a decision and we're not really fully aware of it and we just act it out, kind of like animals, on instinct. Truly conscious beings or rather those who are truly self aware don't just react to things, they act in the best interest of their body and of others. Their actions are rational and meaningful and controlled. Being conscious is being in control of your body. Being less conscious is just letting your body do what it was programmed to do, to react to its environment in any way, even if it's not the best way.
Some people believe that we have a soul or a spirit (or maybe both, it's not clear). Why do some believe that we have a soul? Maybe it's because we know that there is something there that's not exactly physical, that we can't detect with our five senses. People say: "Listen to your heart". So where is this heart? How can we detect it? Or where are our emotions? Are they physical? So I think that we take this mysterious undetectable thing and give it a name "soul". (or a spirit). But what is a soul?
Your soul is like a step by step instructions of how YOU should act and react. It's like a program which makes your body work. The instructions are invisible, in some sort of an abstract form or something. But your body and your actions and reactions is a visual representation of your pattern, your soul. So your soul is like a design of you. So it's not physical. But it can be manifested physically by your body and actions. Maybe it's like having a blue print of a building on paper and then making it physical by building it.
If someone has a design or a blue print of the house, they can get some materials and recreate a house. If someone had access to our souls (patterns/blue print of each of us) they could recreate us.
One example from math: an equation is a description of how numbers relate to each other, the description of the pattern which they create. You can then graph the pattern and you will see a visual representation of this pattern, some sort of an object or graph of some sort. So in other words, you could see a visual representation of an equation in a graph form.
So, having a body and acting through it is like putting your soul in a graph form. It creates a visual. In some sense, your soul is like an equation. Which can be manifested in a visual form through a body and its actions.
An example related to computers. Each computer program is essentially a written code, a step by step instructions of how to do what. Code says things like: if this equals this, then do this, but if this equals this, then do that, but if you can't do this, then do the following... and so on. Computer understands these instructions and interprets them and produces a visual for us. So when we use a program, we don't see the code, it's running behind the scenes. But the code gets translated into shapes and screens and sentences and graphics for our benefit.
Our soul pattern is running in the background and something is interpreting it and is producing a visual for each of us, so that we get to see bodies walking around and talking and doing stuff.
A soul (YOUR soul) is a description of you and how everything in "you" relates to itself, within itself and also how it relates to others. Your soul is a pattern of you. Your body and your actions is a visual manifestation of that pattern.
So, in this sense, from this perspective, I believe that we all exist as a part of the huge living computer (a complex pattern). And this computer has these little computers (patterns/souls) within itself. And it has the ability to restore, delete or modify patterns (our souls).
I see consciousness as an emergence. It's like in those science fiction movies where people created robots and then robots became conscious. The consciousness emerged somehow.
What is emergence? One example of emergent behavior is birds flocking. They are programmed to follow simple individual rules such as: do not run into another bird OR stay at this angle from another bird. And because each of them follows simple rules, together, as a collective, each doing their own thing, they create something called "flocking" (that's when birds collectively fly and form interesting shapes). Individually they behave according to simple rules. But collectively, they do something more complex. This more complex behavior is the "emergent behavior" and in this case called "flocking". No one told the birds to form these shapes, that's why it's called emergent behavior because it emerges as a result of each bird following a simple set of rules.
The same idea is with an ant hill. Each ant does something very simple, but together they create a complex emergent behavior.
A company creating a product is also an emergent behavior. Each person does its own little part. A receptionist answers the phone. A sales person accepts orders. An engineer designs the product. The assembly person assembles the product. The accounting person keeps track of finances enabling the company to continue to function (or live). And together they create something they could not do individually because they don't know how. So, if the people did not get together and started to function as one, they could never produce this product. If emergent behavior was not possible, they could never produce the product.
Another example of an emergence is a lamp. You build a lamp with all the physical parts and nothing happens. But then you add electricity to this contraption and behold there is light! This light is an emergence. These mechanical parts working together with electricity is what creates light.
And so I believe that in a similar way, consciousness is an emergence of our body. Our body is extremely complex and has lots of processes working together. And together, each part doing its own thing, they create a something that we perceive as a conscious person.
A body is an extremely complicated machine consisting of a lot of different processes.
As people, we learned how to create co mputers, how to write computer programs, how to create mechanical machines, how to create chemical reactions. Our body utilizes all of these processes working together. Our body has a computer (brain), computer code (DNA), mechanical process (of the physical organs of the body), electrical system and the interaction of certain things produces chemical reactions.
Our body not only utilizes these processes, but it has more. It is made of an organic material, which can grow and change; it has been programmed with the sense of touch, taste, smell and hearing and seeing. And it is somehow interacting with the abstract world: ideas/thoughts/words do affect people, make them feel sick to their stomach or happy and ready to do great things.
All these processes, working together, make a person act/think/feel like a human. In other words, all these processes working together give birth to a consciousness. A person consists of many different programs, sometimes one overriding another, sometimes them working in harmony. I believe these programs functioning together somehow produce awareness, what we call consciousness. Awareness is being able to communicate (interact with environment). If you see something, then you are aware of it. If you feel or sense something, then you are aware of it. So the higher level of communication, the more awareness and the more "conscious" the person becomes. So I guess evolving involves learning how to communicate of many different levels.
We believe that animals are not as conscious as humans. And when certain humans start to act like barbarians, on instinct, we call them animals because we are trying to say that they are less evolved than humans because they are not acting wise. So this must mean, the wiser you are, the more conscious you are, more aware of everything you are.
Christians believe that a person has two parts: a spirit and a flesh. It's not exactly clear what each is, but the idea is that spirit wants to do good (and wants to obey God's law) and the flesh always fights against it and wants to do bad. So, per Paul of the Bible, the flesh wins and Paul (as he wrote) ends up doing things he doesn't want to do. (Rom 7:15-18) Paul says that it's the flesh (or the sin which lives in him) that makes him do the bad. (Rom 7:17)
I also believe that there are parts within us and that they fight each other, but I don't see it as spirit and flesh. I see it more as one part is acting based on programming of the body, insctincs, react to things just because you were programmed to react to them. And the other part is about making more rational decisions, which are not based on irrational emotions, but which require awareness of the situation and instead of just reacting, we have to think it through. So this is like "living by the spirit". In other words, it's more evolved living when you don't just act on auto pilot and let your programming take over even if it's bad for you.
call them by different names: consciousness and the auto pilot robotic part. Humans are too complex to be seen as something just from one perspective. But partly, in some sense, a person could be compared to a computer program. Afterall, we do have that process at work within us besides the other processes. A program is a step by step instructions of how one should behave in which situation. Genes have the instructions for behavior of each person. Plus, circumstances/teachings/beliefs rewrite the code. So the code/ the instructions of how one should act in which situation could be changed. We say it like this: this person needs to be reprogrammed.
So for example, if you were programmed to put your SELF first always, you will do so when the situation arises. When the time comes to share your food with others you will NOT share because sharing would mean you are not putting your SELF first and it means that you're not acting according to your program's instructions. Acting according to your programming, according to the instructions encoded in you, is called living on autopilot, letting your robot take over. When you act on instinct (like animals do), you are letting your robot live your life. When you act without thinking, you let your robot part live your life. It's like you fall asleep and it just doing stuff for you. It's programmed to do it. You don't need to participate that much. Your computer-like brain calculates the decisions to be made based on logic, past experiences and encoded programming and executes your action whenever it's time for one.
But you have a second part, consciousness. Consciousness is also a program, but a little different one. Consciousness is the one that is integrated with chemicals/emotions/desires. (And here is a guess: a consciousness may be seen as a virtual program, running inside of a computer (aka: the robot program). Consciousness came to be at one time, it emerged. It's like saying that humans created robots and then robots evolved and took over... So it's like the robot program was responsible for creating the virtual program (aka consciousness) and consciousness can now take over some things. Consciousness is the one who observes your robot behavior and evaluates it and decides whether what you did was right or wrong. People did an experiment. They told someone to push a button and recorded the results. And somehow, as a result of this study, people learned that a person pushed the button BEFORE thinking about it. He did it automatically. And AFTER he pushed a button, then he started thinking about pushing the button. So he acted before he knew that he was supposed to push the button. So it's like his robot part knew and did it. But the other part, the consciousness part just watched it happen. So consciousness observes your actions.
Your consciousness can feel happy about your behavior or can feel regret. If it feels regret, it will try to reprogram the robot part. So there are two programs within you. Both have a set of instructions. So when consciousness feels happy about your robot's behavior, it means that you are acting according to the instructions of the robot part of you, and consciousness' set of instructions happened to be the same, in harmony. When consciousness feels regret abut your robot behavior, it means that you are acting according to the robot part's instructions, but consciousness's set of instructions is not the same.
So there are two programs running in you. I am totally guessing on this: The consciousness program is the one that is being programmed by society/teachings/moral code/circumstances/beliefs. A robot program is written in your genes code. When you are born, your two programs are in sync. Then as consciousness learns and evolves her code changes. Then she starts to feel disharmony between what she wants to do and what the body's robot part does. Consciousness program can't do actions. All she can do is program the robot part to do the right kinds of actions. But reprogramming takes time. So lots of the time consciousness just has to sit there and observe its robot's actions and feel regret (while it slowly is reprogramming the robot part).
There is an expression: "my conscience is clear". That means I don't have anything to feel guilty about. That in turns means that your consciousness is agreeing with the actions of your robot. When your "conscience is not clear" that means you are feeling guilty about the actions of your robot. The 2 programs' instructions are in disharmony.
So if you don't like Katie's behavior, you have to reprogram her consciousness program. And then her own consciousness program will reprogram her robot part. That's why they say: "appeal to their conscience". (I assume that consciousness and conscience are related or the same. Conscience means: inner sense of right and wrong. And your consciousness knows what is right and wrong by comparing what's going on to what her program instructions say SHOULD go on). So if you want to change the person, you have to reprogram their consciousness. To reprogram someone's consciousness, you have to teach them what is right and wrong (according to you, because it's all relative). They accept that set of instructions and then try to reprogram their robot, so that the robot can act according to the new set of instructions. Comparing to Christianity, the flesh part is the robot part. The spirit part is the consciousness. And in order to live by the spirit (Gal 5:16) as Paul of the Bible teaches, you have to renew your mind (Eph 4:23) according to the teachings of Christ. In my belief this would mean: you have to reprogram your consciousness according to the teachings so that your robot would do what your consciousness (aka: spirit) wants it to do.
So for example, if you were raised in a family of thieves, they will teach you/program your consciousness to believe that stealing is ok. So you will steal and won't even feel guilty about it. It's ok according to both of your program's instructions. But then you become a Christian and the Bible teaches you that stealing is a sin and God will punish it. So your consciousness program has received a new set of instructions. Now stealing is wrong. But your robot part is still living according to the old set of instructions. So your consciousness will try to reprogram the robot part. But in the mean time (before the reprogramming is complete) it will observe itself steal and feel guilty and regret about that. (and keep asking God for forgiveness) So this is where the battle takes place: your flesh fights against the spirit. Your consciousness is trying to make its robot to behave correctly and there is a fight, resistance from the robot, it's hard to change. This is why Paul said: by my spirit I want to do good, but the sin in me makes me do bad (or my flesh does the bad). So to translate this: our consciousness has received a new set of instructions, heard Jesus' teachings and wants to be like Jesus, but the robot part is still acting out the old set of instructions.
Christianity teaches that all people are sinful. They don't mean that everything is bad in a person. They mean that a person is not perfect in his behavior. And if he breaks only one rule of the law, then he is guilty of breaking the entire law. (James 2:10) And when he breaks the law, he is guilty in God's eyes and deserves punishment. So basically Christians teach that a human cannot be perfectly good. And if he cannot be perfectly good, then he cannot earn reward (heaven). In my belief, people are not perfect also. But there is no god to send them to hell for that, thank goodness. People are not perfect, because they are still babies, they are still growing, they are evolving. They need to be taught the right behavior. And eventually, they will grow up and be better.
Paul of the Bible also expressed that when you act bad, you are considered spiritually immature, a baby. But when you mature, grow up, you will be more like Christ (aka: better behaved). (Eph 4:13-14 and 1Cor 3:1-3 1 Cor13:11)
So our beliefs agree on this point: bad behaving people are considered babies/immature, and when they mature, they will behave better.
People were programmed to grow and evolve and to eventually reach advancement and become good. The design was good. The intention was good. And it will bring good results. But the problem is this: this good design was designed to create good results through evolution. And evolution always involves suffering, change, resistance to the old and the new changes. The idea is: before you reach the blessed states of being good, you will go through growing pains, suffering, evolution. So suffering is an important step stone in getting more evolved. It reminds me of the Christian ideas that "it is given to us to suffer" (1Pet1:6, 4:12,19) here on this earth. And Paul also said that the temporary sufferings here are nothing compared to the eternal glory in heaven. (2Cor 4:17-18) And it's similar in my belief: the suffering in order to evolve is worth it. Because after you evolve and become good, you will have a bright and very long future of good life, resulting from good behavior. So the suffering for 70 years is like a moment in terms of billions of years of good life.
There is also an idea in Christianity about the perfecting of the saints. Christians believe that God will make them good. And in my belief: yes, it will happen, God or no God, people will become good eventually.
Evolution of the people was part of this design. In my belief, it's not possible to make something perfect if you have never done it before. In my belief, the only possible way to do something is to try it, make errors, then learn from your mistakes and then do better and so on. It's like perfecting. Imagine any person on earth trying to build or create something. There are always rough drafts and then the redoing of the thing and doing it better. Well, life on earth is like a rough draft. The kinks need to be worked out. The bugs need to be fixed.
It's hard to describe what evil is exactly. It's also hard to describe what sin means. They say that it's breaking God's law, but it doesn't explain it that much. But most people see "evil" (or bad) and "sin" as something that's harmful to something or someone in some way. Who is good and who is bad? What is good and what is bad? It's all relative. Some people would seem good in certain situations, during certain times and among certain people. And these same people would seem bad to another group, at another time, in another situation. For example, killing usually is considered a bad thing to do. But when people kill during the war, it's considered a good thing to do. So good and bad is really relative and depends on many factors and has its own definition in different societies. Another example, God said in the Christian belief in the old testament: eye for an eye (in other words it's ok to kill someone if they have done something bad to you). But in this era, it's sin to kill someone no matter what. So did God's definition of Good and Bad change? How can it be? We thought that "good" is always good.... But it's not so. So, first of all, it's hard to say who is truly good and truly bad. In fact, most people have a little bit of each in them. And sometimes these things that look "bad" are not actually bad or at least there is no bad intent.
So "good" is when things are done to benefit others. "Bad" is when things are done to harm others. But even this definition is not good enough. Although Bible uses this definition of good and bad. In the Bible, sin means breaking the law. The opposite of sin is fulfilling the law. And here is what Paul said: "Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Rom 13:10) And Jesus also said that loving God and neighbor is what the law hangs on, the gist of it. Matt 22:37-40, In fact, in Luk 10:27-28 Jesus is saying that if you do this, you will live.
Although no one can love others perfectly. Paul of the Bible expressed the idea that no one can 100% always do good and that's why God saves people by grace, as a gift (Rom 3:23-24, Eph 2:8, James 2:10, Rom 4). The parallel in my belief is this: no one is perfect and therefore people should not be constantly judged and compared to an example of some perfection which does not exist. People should be merciful to each other and accept each others mistakes with grace. We should realize that making mistakes is just a part of the process, part of learning and growing.
Let's take a closer look at how humans act and why they act that way.
So each person comes with a set of instructions inside of them, like the Bible says: the law is written on your heart (Rom 2:15 2Cor3:3). In other words, things written on paper become things written on our hearts (they turn into a set of instructions, a program, which a person then is following). The instructions of their inner program (s) say: do this and this and react this way in this situation and that way in the other situation. If such and such conditions exist, then do the following. The set of instructions instilled into each person come from different sources (genes, teachings, beliefs, events, experiences). And the set of instructions can be modified in each individual person (or is modified throughout time).
When we create a computer program, it seems perfect. (like Windows XP program for example). And in most computers it works perfectly. But in some computers it doesn't work that great. It's the same with people: the same pill can help the majority of people, but can really mess up some other person who is a bit different. So people are very complex machines with all kinds of processes running in them. And these processes have to integrate and work together. And sometimes there are problems and things don't work. For example, there could be a hot tempered gene in one person and it will mess up some of his programming. So the set of instructions will say: you have to be polite to all people. But the hot tempered gene will overwrite them and say: but when someone annoys you, you have to let them have it. So there is a conflict sometimes in the processes and instructions, there is a battle and one of them wins and that's how the person ends up acting.
Some of the instructions are meant for the good, but they turn out bad results in reality. Some of the instructions are meant for the good, but they don't work quite right with another set of instructions just received recently. And so there is a conflict and the person ends up behaving in a strange way or in a bad way.
For example, fear/pain is a good program, it has a good intention, it helps a person to make sure that he survives the longest because fear/pain teaches to stay away from things which would harm the body and shorten your life. Survival of the species is important and so that's why we came with this kind of programming. However, fear or pain gets out of control in some of the bodies and the results are bad. Some people have deceases which make their body hurt too much because something went wrong (out of whack) in their balance of fear/pain programming. Some people have deceases which makes them not feel pain at all and they damage themselves too much. Some people don't feel fear and shorten their lives because they take too many risks. Others feel too much fear and take too little risks, thus end up being called cowards.
So if coward a bad person? I mean they didn't make themselves feel too much fear. And the brave ones didn't make themselves not feel the fear. It just happens. Life makes it happen. But in our society, cowards are looked down upon (as though they have a choice and are choosing to be cowards) and the brave ones are praised (as though they did anything to make themselves brave). Paul of the Bible has understood that no one should have a credit for how they are. They just are. So he said: 1Co 4:7 What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? (He was referring to the qualities/abilities of a person I believe).
The right balance of things would make a perfect person. But the balance is always in a state of flux because different things affect it and influence it and change it. So because we are so changeable and every little thing can throw us off balance, it's hard for anyone to be perfect. And besides that (for some reason) things wear out and break. So our bodies have broken things, broken links in the processes, things that wore out, conflicting sets of instructions interfering with each other, and that throws the harmonious integration of processes out of whack. It's not easy being a human and we do the best we can. And we did not have a choice in any of this. We were born, our programming made us who we are now. The teachings we ran into accidentally further changed our programming. The environment we live in further changes are programming. We are pawns of life. We do what it says.
Do people have a choice? Yes and no. Sometimes someone is wanting to stop taking drugs, but can't. Does he really have a choice if he is not able to stop? Some people want to take more vacations but can't because there is not enough money and there is a sick parent to take care of. Does this person have a choice? No. Some people marry bad husbands because they were too blind to see the truth. Did they have a choice? No, because they couldn't see. The choices that we make are constrained by our abilities, fears or lack of them, beliefs and circumstances.
Take a bitter person who doesn't treat others well. Why did he turn out bitter? Because time and time again life hit him hard. When you keep hitting someone, they learn to hit back. It's the way things work. We have logic to our decisions. If someone is hitting you all the time, then you hit back, you think that life must be about hitting. So it's not like you had a choice. You couldn't understand, you couldn't see, and you thought you were supposed to be in this environment where living beings hit each other.
Take a loving person. He/she didn't do anything special to become loving. They must have just been born with good natured genes, maybe they have a good healthy balance of hormones which make people feel happy, and maybe they ran into good people all their life and learned to do good in return.
The loving people are praised and the bitter people are judged. But it's not really their choice to be the way they are. As many people groups there are in the world, so many beliefs and ideas about what is good and what is bad there are. So the best thing to do (like the Bible teaches) is: "Do not judge (Luk 6:37). Be merciful (Luk 6:35-36) Mercy triumphs over judgement (James 2:13)" In fact, the Bible teaches tolerance. (Col 2:16, James 4:11-12 ) Rom 14:4 - "who are you to judge someone else's servant". But Christians are very exclusive. They are not bad, but they lack an understanding. First of all, they believe that a person chooses to be good or bad. So no wonder they believe that a person should be rewarded/punished.
But on the other hand, we SHOULD teach each other to be good. That's part of evolving, that's how we reprogram ourselves to change our set of instructions and to follow a better set, the one that would make us act better. So we should teach without judgment. And in fact, that's what the Bible teaches as well.
But human nature (our gene programming) interferes with this process (of learning tolerance). Because getting angry at someone who is different is very very easy, it comes naturally. But trying to empathize with them, trying to understand their actions, trying to see their side and trying to put yourself in their shoes, is very very difficult. It's like swimming against the current of the river's flow. It's painful. And we don't want to do it. We just do the easy thing: we get angry. And sometimes we feel the anger is correct and that is called a self righteous anger. The disciples wanted to cast fire on the city which did not obey Jesus. But Jesus didn't get angry, he understood the people of the city. But disciples chose the self righteous easy path: let's just burn them! Jesus said: you don't know of what spirit you are...(Luk 9:54-56, but this is only in King James Bible. NIV omits this statement for some reason). In other words, many people get self righteously angry and think they are acting good, that a supposedly righteous anger is good, but all it is is their hot temper flaring up and their lack of understanding showing itself. And Jesus knew that. So he told people to stop judging by appearances only. (John 7:24) In other words, you don't understand what's going on and you jump to the wrong conclusions. And another example of people judging others without understanding was: take the wood out of your own eye before you can see to take the speck out of your brother's eye. (Luk 6:42) Paul also said: you judge others, but you yourselves are doing the same thing. (Rom 2:1-3)
Humans can be reprogrammed to act differently. But this reprogramming takes time and sometimes other factors have to be present in order for reprogramming to take place. So one can't just say: I will change my behavior tomorrow and act differently. If it was possible, then Paul of the Bible would not say: I can't do the good that I want and I end up doing the bad that I don't want to do. Paul was very devoted to God, and of all the people he would probably try the hardest to change if it was possible. But again, a change is possible, but it doesn't happen on command and it doesn't happen overnight. And it's difficult, so the person has to have enough motivation to want to do it before he can even consider doing it.
There was an experiment: people were trying to breed foxes to make them be born different. Normally, foxes are not tame animals and are not affectionate to humans. But after a few generations of breeding, they finally produced an affectionate fox. The aggressive foxes had more adrenaline in their body. So what we have in our body, the balance of chemicals, determines how nice or not nice we are. But again, we have many processes working together, so it's not just that which determines how kind we are. There are many other factors.
People get angry easily because they don't understand others and they see others' behavior as bad. And they want to do bad in return. And so there is envy and strife and jealousy and fights. Seeing others as bad and wanting to do bad as payback is a bad cycle in which people get stuck sometimes. To break that cycle, one has to consciously choose to stop doing bad even if he/she wants to. They have to force themselves to go beyond instinct and to go against their program and to make a stop to this vicious cycle. Paul of the Bible teaches the same: overcome evil with good (Rom 12:21). He meant: stop paying evil for evil. Overcome that desire. But pay back with good. Because paying back with good "heaps hot coals on someone's head" as they say. In other words, the other person wakes up (so to speak) and starts to feel guilty about doing something bad to the other person and starts to do good also. And so the cycle gets reversed, they start to do good to each other.
Another secret to break a cycle of bad behavior towards each other is what Jesus said: treat others as YOU want to be treated. This always works. But this requires consciousness to make that decision. Someone did something bad to you. And you have a choice: to react according to your robot programming and to do something bad in return OR to think about it consciously and realize that the best thing for both of you would be if you do something good for this person (as you would want this person to do for you).
It was shown in studies that consciousness responds to things slower than your robot part. So that's why people often say things that they later regret saying. That's why they teach: count to ten before saying anything. This is to give time for your consciousness (your thinking) to catch up and to make a decision rather than just letting your robot respond for you. (Or a shortcut to being good is: program your robot to always respond to people politely. So that it wouldn't embarrass you. That way even if you didn't get a chance to think about what you're saying, you can rest assured that your robot part is going to react in a polite fashion and you can feel proud of yourself rather than feeling regret for your actions later.)
PART TWO: SUPER-CONCIOUSNESS (AKA: MULTI-CONSCIOUSNESS)
There is a saying that the sum is bigger than the parts. When you bake a cake, a cake is not exactly a sum of the ingredients, it's something more and something different. Imagine one person who is fighting against the enemy (1 person). Imagine that he will be defeated by the enemy. Now imagine 3 people fighting 3 enemies individually. And these three people (individually) will become defeated. But imagine that the people put themselves into a group and act as one. Now this group is much stronger than just three people individually. This group could be seen as a super-organism. I bet this group will be able to defeat the 3 enemies (provided that the enemies did not put themselves into a group, and did not become a super-organism.)
Imagine that our body consists of different organs. Individually, an organ can't do much by itself. But when you put them all together (the organs) you get this new working machine (a human).
If one human is an organism, then an Entity consisting of many humans is a super-organism. "Many acting as one" creates a super-organism. Acting as one...what does that mean? Well imagine any mechanical process: this part goes here and does this and that part that does and so on... The key is to train people to act as though they don't have their own desires, but to act for the good of the process, to do their part. I think that an "army" is a super-organism. The soldiers are trained to "be in line", to always do what the superior officer tells them to do. So that way, there is harmony and the process is flowing smoothly. If the soldiers start to do what they want, the process falls apart. So whenever you observe a process, AND if it fits definition of life, it's considered alive. So take the plant for example, it changes, it reacts, it adapts, it grows and it dies. It's considered alive even though it's not conscious. Take the belief system: it changes, it reacts, it adapts, it grows and it dies. Then it's also alive. When we observe humans, why do we call them alive? Because they have a body? Or because we observe that they react, change, grow, adapt, die. They also think and feel, which is being conscious in addition to being alive.
So anything that follows a process, and also changes, adapts, reacts, grows, is born and dies is alive (but not necessarily conscious). So our belief systems are alive because they do things, they even force us to do things we don't want. Governmental and religious belief systems have the ability to change our lives, to make us happy or sad, guilty or fulfilled or empty. They also can help us physically, offer assistance or can strip us off and leave us with nothing. They can promote our well-being or destroy us. They are powerful Entities, even though they are not conscious. Scientific belief systems are responsible for our advancements in technology. They created computers and medicine and enabled us to explore space and our body. Scientific systems force us to think and enable our brains to grow. Religious systems focus on emotions and discourage the brain from growing in the reasoning part; but probably enable the brain to grow in grasping the invisible, the mystical, taking leaps of faith into the unknown. So if you belong to a system, remember it can either make you or break you. You should respect its power and learn how to live in harmony within it.
Our body is considered alive although it has rocks (minerals) and water in it. In fact, a bigger part of out body is water. So even though we have things that we consider dead like rocks and water, we still consider ourselves alive. Why? Because we fit the definition of life, we change, grow, adapt, react, are born and die. So it's not the body exactly that we look at when considering whether we are alive or not, it's what we DO that counts. Our body has lots of processes running simultaneously.
What about planet Earth? It's born and it will die eventually. It adapts, changes, reacts. And like a human body it has mostly water. But besides water, it has lots of processes which work within it, like echo system, recycling system, evolution, the system of adaptation, food chain system and so on. And Earth also has lots of things which are alive within in (like living cells in our body), things like plants, animals, people, and lower life forms such as bacteria. It looks like we are surrounded by life, by things which are alive. In fact, we are inside of a living system, living breathing (so to speak) Earth. Humans to earth are like bacteria to our body (or maybe something else, but something like that). And groups of people (and processes of the earth) are like organs to our body. A living system. Everything around us is alive (except a few dead things, but so what, out body has them too and we don't consider the body dead because of it).
So if one human is an organism, then a planet consisting of many humans and much other stuff is a super-organism. This belief says that our planet is not only just alive, but also is conscious. Apparently, there are enough complex processes running in it and of the right kinds in order to have created consciousness to emerge.
This belief supposes that our brains are like neurons inside of a planet's overall brain. So if you look at the planet from a different perspective, with a different set of eyes, maybe you'll see a huge spiderweb of connections, a huge brain spread all over the planet. And this belief says that this is how we are all interconnected and this is how psychics sometimes can read some information about something. Because information travels on this network. And this is how people sometimes feel either a good or a bad feeling about a person even though they don't know the person. It's like they connect to the network and "read" the information about this person.
This network is why karma works. If you do good, you get noticed on the network (or through it) and good things happen to you in return. Not because someone consciously decided to reward you. But because this network is also a system, a process, and this is how it's made to work. Some people need money sometimes and other people come and give it to them, and they say: I had this desire to give you money. So how did they know that a person needed money? The assumption is this: imagine a bulletin board on the internet. Some people come and place their requests there. Others come there and read them and are prompted to respond to requests. The promptings come to them in a form of a desire. Or some stories say that someone was woken up during the night by something/someone and told to pray for someone else. And later it turns out that that someone else was in danger. So it would mean that the person in trouble psychically sent a message through the network and it got intercepted by this other person (or maybe a facilitator of some sort) and so this person would get up and pray. And praying means sending messages to other within the network to come and help in some way. And so that's how it goes (possibly).
So if our planet is conscious, then a galaxy is too. And if galaxies are conscious, then a Universe is too. This belief says that there are many other Universes and they are conscious. They are like super-organisms. They are super smart because they are like a collective brain, which has all the knowledge that exists within their living cells (humans and other life forms who exist within that super-organism).
Humans are a single-consciousness type of an organism. Planets/galaxies/universes are a multi-consciousness organisms. For example, planet earth consists of not only its own consciousness, but each of our human consciousnesses is a part of her/it. So the planet is aware of each one of us within itself and knows us. The Bible says that God knows us and knows the intent of the heart. Well, the planet knows these things. Because we are a part of her/it. We are her in some sense, and not in another sense. So the planet can take care of you if you are a good "cell" inside of its body.
My belief says that multi-conscious Beings are wise and smart (especially when they grow up) and they can only be good (once they grow up). It's similar to the Bible which says that God is good and cannot do evil.
A belief system (Christianity for example) which is alive because it meets the definition of life (but not conscious), "knows" all the ideas that exist within that belief. It knows what its members have ever thought of. So a belief system is very smart and knows much more than any individual in that belief. I guess the belief system can be compared to a library. It stores all the information of that belief. I think that people create a belief by writing their thoughts on the spiritual/mind network and all those ideas are still there. And so psychically, those ideas can be accessed by other members of this network, this belief system. So sometimes a preacher would preach an unusually inspiring message and people would say: God spoke through him. My belief says: this preacher happened to have connected to the network of this belief and "read" some really cool ideas and transmitted them to the congregation.
A super-organism is super smart because all the knowledge of its members becomes its knowledge. So if the super-organism is conscious, then imagine how much more smart it will be than a regular person. So if planet Earth has the knowledge of all the knowledge ever known by the members of the earth, imagine how smart she is. Plus she is smarter than that because all this knowledge, put together, creates even more knowledge. Because each new piece of knowledge enables a person to see even more than before. So knowledge doesn't get added, it gets multiplied! And this belief states that wisdom/knowledge/growing up/maturity makes an Entity good. People are not good because they are ignorant. So in this sense, evil is ignorance.
So, a multi-consciousness Entity is a "collective" brain. So from our perspective (from down here) we could say that a person is an individual brain and Earth is a collective brain (consists of all of us and more).
The question is: do Christian teachings mention a "collective brain" Entity? Yes! The Bible says: We are a body of Christ. We are all members of Christ's body. He is the head and we are the members. We have the mind of Christ. (In other words, we are part of his mind, we partake of his mind). I do not think that Christians see Christ as a collective brain Entity. It's written that Christ is a Spirit who fills everything with himself. But HOW does a Spirit fill everything with himself? By all of us being a part of it. So, imagine that Christ is a planet's consciousness. It's a collective brain, an emergent multi-consciousness, and we are its members and part of its mind.
There are MANY lifeforms of different levels, shapes and sizes. But Christians force things to be incorrect by saying that there is only God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, angels, demons and people. So that whenever something happens, they have to attribute the action to one of the listed ones. But what if the action came from somewhere else? They don't account for that. So some of the parallels to my belief will become convoluted since Christians drastically reduced the "living beings" population.
So ok, Christians have God the Father. So God the Father creates life. It equals somewhat to "ALL THAT IS" from my beliefs. Not well, but in some sense. ALL THAT IS is a system which produces life.
But Christians have something a bit strange in their belief. It says that GOD CREATED the world BY Jesus. As though Jesus was a tool which he used to create the world. So in some places it says that God created the world. In other places that Jesus created the world. And in some others that God created the world by or through Jesus.
In order to understand this better, imagine a company which makes computers, IBM company. Does the company make computers? Or do the people who work there make computers? It's the people. But they are considered a part of the company, they work on behalf of the company. So although the company is not even conscious, it's often said that the company made the computers. So did the people make the computers? Yes. Did the company make the computers? Yes. (Because the company is the name of the collective who made the computers, it's the collective who made them, so it's appropriate to say that the collective (company name insert here) made the computers.) So it was both!
Well, here is how it translates in my beliefs. God the Father is "ALL THAT IS", a system which creates life. Jesus Christ (since he is a collective brain) represents the multi-consciousness Entities. Multi-consciousness Entities consist of living beings like humans and other similar beings. So the system (ALL THAT IS) has created life by using living beings within its system. Like the army kills enemies by the soldiers within its system. Like the company produces computers through the workers within its company.
So in my belief, there were many living beings involved in the creation. And in Job in the Bible it talks about angels who shouted for joy when they saw the earth being created. (Job 38:7) Was it angels or was it the creators I wonder... Was it Father, Spirit and Son who said: "let US make man according to OUR image" (Gen 1:26) or was it the creators who were many living Beings?
How do you describe ALL THAT IS? It's interesting that God of the Bible described himself this way: "I am what I am". In other words, I am all that is, there is no comparison, I am what I am and that's it, I am like a number that cannot be reduced, or like a book that can't be summarized. But even a human cannot be summarized. A human goes through many different states of being and different emotional states during his life time and keeps changing. You could say that a human is: an ever-changing machine. But if you say something more specific, it's like capturing one moment in time and describing a human as that. But it's not even close to reality. And how do you describe humans as a collective? All humans have so many differences... you would have to list all the differences in order to present true reality.
IMMORTALITY / HEAVEN
God of a Christian religion has promised people heaven, immortality, perfect bodies and a great life. Here are some of the beliefs within Christianity.
- There is an afterlife and it's a: a Kingdom of God / heaven / new earth / a new earth and a new heaven
- Jesus went to prepare this place for his followers
- You can't get to that place unless you are born again
- There will be a resurrection
- Christians go to heaven right after dying OR Christians are sleeping in their graves and will be in heaven after resurrection
- Christians will get a new spiritual body, which is immortal and perfect
- Christians will live together with God and see the face of God
- Christians will live on a newly created earth OR in a spiritual heaven
- There are leaves for healing the nations
And here are my beliefs:
- There is an afterlife. It's in a place like a "new earth", which is a recreation of this earth partly, but a perfected version with many more cool features, very technologically advanced earth, a physical existence. On this "new earth", people would evolve and be able to go to different other places.
An additional feature of an afterlife which I did not see in Christianity: I believe that people will live in a technologically highly advanced place and therefore will be able to experience virtual reality. So that would make it possible to be able to explore and experience much more than we can do now, limited by time and space and physical bodies in the physical world. To read more about new earth place, click here.
- The creators who have created life (and us) are working on the new earth as we speak. It's not ready yet. The creation of the new earth depends on this earth. It's like this earth has to happen first before they new one can be created. Maybe this earth is like a first draft. So people have to "sleep" for a while after they die until they can be resurrected and placed on this new earth.
- The only way to get to that new earth is to die on this earth first (like it says in the Bible: it is given to men to die once) and "wake up" in the other place. There has to be a continuation. Who you are right before you died has to be the same as who you are when you "wake up". If you are not the same, then it's like your identity is lost and it's not you anymore. So if a baby dies here, then a baby would appear on the other side (when the time is right). And when an adult dies here, then an adult will appear on the other side and continue his evolving (when the time is right, when the new earth is ready).
- When people die now (since the new place is not ready yet), they go to sleep (as Jesus said: they are not dead, they are sleeping). Some go to sleep in which they are unaware of anything. And others (the psychic ones I guess) go into a lucid dream like state. They dream and they give birth to a reality in their mind in which they exist for a while. After a while they learn that the reality can be changed and they would do so. These people's dreams (or reality while they are dreaming) will be the product of their own creation, their own imagination and expectations. So if they expected to see God and heaven and angels, they probably will. If they expected to end up in hell, they may create a hellish environment for themselves for a while. (Until they realize that the reality can be changed.) While these people are dreaming, we can communicate with them. That's how contact with the dead occurs. That's how Near Death Experiences happen: people's brain has a lucid dream in which they see a reality and then they "come back" and tell us about it. People from different beliefs would most likely have a different kind of "heaven" that they visited because it's based on their own mind. Or maybe it's based on the collective mind of that belief. More about the collective mind is here.
- The creators will somehow put us (our consciousness) into the body that is better than the ones we have now. Good news for me is that new bodies won't get depressed because there are ways to deal with that, not to mention the new body itself will have a good balance of chemicals. Afterall, sometimes depression comes as a result of imbalance of chemicals. So I am looking forward to experiencing how it feels to want to live a life fully, to be happy about life. And the technological advancements will enable people to get healed easily if a health problem should occur. As far as immortality, my beliefs say that people would live a very very very long time. More than trillions of years. But because the Universe (or ALL THAT IS) has a limited space, a system of recycling is necessary. So that those who have lived a very long time are scheduled to be recycled (and to die as an evolved higher being and to restart as a baby, to start a new cycle.)
- We are all existing inside of a multi-conscious Entity, like a planet or a galaxy or a Universe consciousness. And as we evolve (in the afterlife) we will become more and more aware of that Entity (s). When we are not aware, it's like it's not there, it's like it doesn't exist. But when we are aware, ti's like it's there then, it's around us, we are aware of its presence.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ was an incarnation of God. There is a parallel in my belief also. Except I would not call the process "incarnation", but "playing a life through a character". Imagine you are playing a virtual online game. You pick a character to play through and you interact in the game through a character. So is the character you? Well, in some sense it is, but in another sense it's still a character, it's not physically you. You are in some other place, playing through this character. But you act and talk and walk through this character. So in some sense this character is you.
So I believe that the multi-consciousness Beings interact in the life of the earth by "playing" through one of the people. Jesus was such an example. Jesus was a human. But the Entity was affecting Jesus' behavior and did things through him. So that's why Jesus said: the words I speak are not my own, it's the Father speaking through me and it's the Father living in me. Most people are not aware when anyone "plays" through them. But Jesus was psychic and he was able to detect a presence within his mind, he knew that it was not just him there. The multi-consciousness Beings can transmit their feelings through a character also. So the character (like Jesus) can feel what the Entity feels. And sometimes the character may not be aware of which feelings are his and which are not. There is a song called "The same sun" which has these lines: "I will be there wherever you are, And where there are hearts that live together in one soul." It's a strange way of saying things, isn't it? How can two hearts live in one soul? But I think that more than one consciousness can inhabit a mind or a brain and so it's like Jesus experienced how it feels to have more than one consciousness inside of himself.
I think that when Jesus was dying on the cross (he was not dying for sins or anything, it's just that he was killed by those who did not like his teachings), the presence of the Entity must have left him. Either that, or the psychic connection was broken for that moment and Jesus stopped being aware of the presence. Jesus, feeling alone, said: my God why have you forsaken me?
Jesus said that he came from the Father and will return to the Father. Here is how it translates in my belief: The multi-consciousness Entity consists of many different consciousnesses to begin with. But when it plays through Jesus character, it copies Jesus' consciousness into itself. Jesus is added to its multiple consciousnesses and so the Entity feels like it's Jesus (by a small part of itself). So now there are two Jesus consciousnesses: One has become a part of the Entity and that copy of Jesus feels like he is part of the Entity, and the other (the original) went to sleep in the grave waiting for resurrection and waiting to continue its individual journey, evolve and live it's life to the fullest. So in this sense, Jesus came from the Father (The Entity was there before Jesus was even born and when Jesus was born the Entity's personality was in Jesus, as part of him) and Jesus returned to the Father (Jesus, one of his copies, now feels like it's a part of the Entity. ) So that's where this verse came from: the word (Jesus) was God and was with God. Christians believe that Jesus would become one with the Father. So a copy of Jesus was added to the multi-consciousness Entities's other consciousnesses, Jesus became a part of the Entity.
Christian's Trinity idea would have a parallel too: Jesus and God are one, Jesus is in God and God is in Jesus, God is greater than Jesus. Multi-consciousness Entity was part of Jesus in some sense, and they were one because Jesus was being copied into this Entity and the Entity is not a single consciousness and therefore greater than Jesus. So it's like Jesus is inside of this big Entity, while being one with it. And it's like Entity is inside of Jesus, or at least living through him.
So there is a belief that the Church (a group of people on earth who follow Christ) and Christ are in love. A Song of Songs book of the old testament is believed to be speaking of this love between Christ and Church. It is not clear whether the love is between each individual and Christ or between Christ and a group. According to Christian beliefs, there will be a wedding between Church and Christ. It's not clear how it would be though and what a wedding even means. Some perceive it as an allegorical idea.
But anyways, there is a parallel in my beliefs also. Christ represents a multi-consious Entity who lived a life through Jesus. (Remember, that Christians believe that Christ is - the Spirit who fills everything with himself. Also notice that "church" is actually an assembly, a group of people, a collective. So while Christ can be representing a collective brain/multi-consciousness Entity, the church could be representing a collective of people on earth. And earth as a collective is a Planet Consciousness. Some call it Gaia. So in effect, the Entity who lived through Jesus was/is in love with Gaia. So this love is between two multi-consciousness Entities. One of them is our planet's consciousness and the other is some other multi-consciousness. So the other multi-consciousness incarnated through Jesus in order to help its beloved planet to evolve and grow and to make things better, to be a voice in the wilderness so to speak, to be a light in the darkness. Jesus brought a big change to the way things are. Christian teachings are a major part of our culture and many other cultures.
Although I should add that Christianity is NOT exactly what Jesus was teaching. Christianity includes some of Jesus' teachings plus some other additional stuff added later by some thinkers and followers. Jesus' teachings were focused on teaching men to think better, to understand things better and to act more civilized towards each other. But nevertheless, Jesus, or should I say the Entity who is in love with our Gaia Entity, has played a big role in the course of things on Gaia.