The Nature of Existence
As science looks deeper and deeper into the
nature of matter what they have discovered is that matter is made of smaller
and smaller particles. In ancient times it was believed that all existence was made
of four cardinal elements, those being fire, earth, air, and water. From the
surface little more could be known until scientific discovery allowed a deeper
examination. With scientific discovery we were able to determine that all
matter was made of a number of distinct elements, the smallest particle of each
being invisible but chemically distinct. Science then broke all existence down
to the principles of matter, in the form of the chemical elements, and energy.
As science advanced so did our understanding of the nature of matter, and we
discovered that the elements were themselves formed of distinct and discrete
particles; the proton, the neutron, and the electron. With this advance we
began to understand a relationship between matter and energy, a relationship
which led us into the "nuclear age" and gave us the power of mass
destruction. Now, as we delve ever deeper into nuclear physics, we have found
that even the electron, proton, and neutron are made of smaller particles
called mesons and pi-mesons.
Why is it then that we can covert matter to
energy? I believe that if we search ever deeper and find ever smaller particles
we will eventually discover that there is, in fact, no matter at all- that all
matter is energy in a matrix function of a positive and a negative force. More
simply put, all we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste is an energy wave
function based on a matrix of two opposing principles- existence and
non-existence. I believe that a name can be put to the principle of existence
and that name is "Creation". Therefore the positive force is the
"Creative Force". Balancing creation is the negative principle of
"Destruction" as seen in the negative or "Destructive
Force". The dualism between these two opposing forces is what defines our
universe.
Dualism
and the Nature of Man
Just as the universe we live in can be
understood as having a dual nature described by existence and non-existence,
humanity also has a dual nature.
People have a physical, animalistic nature displayed in their animal
instincts and passions. This nature
can be found in the limbic regions of our brains. All animals share this nature with
us. I will refer to this as our
animal nature. But people also have
another nature that transcends their animal nature and controls their
self-centered animal instincts.
This transcendent nature is their spiritual nature, and this spiritual
nature we share with and through God.
It is this spiritual nature that lifts us out of our self-centered
perspective and allows us to see our relationships with the group, and how to
make decisions that work best for others.
This transcendent nature allows us to display altruism, compassion,
charity, and mercy. Because of our
two natures we live in two worlds: the world of the flesh (physical world) and
the world of the spirit (God’s transcendent world). The life of Christ shows these two
natures. Jesus lived in the
physical world as a full human being with all the needs and desires of human
beings. As a human being he had an
animal nature that ruled his self-conciousness. Yet, the spiritual nature of Jesus was
fully transcendent and his spirit was fully joined to God’s spirit, and
God’s spirit was fully expressed in the transcendent nature of Christ. In the flesh, Jesus was fully man, but
in the spirit, Jesus was fully God.
We also can allow our spirits to join fully with God and allow God to be
fully expressed through us by allowing the Christ in us to rule our spiritual
selves. We, as Jesus, can become
the Christ, the anointed of the spirit.
The Nature of God
You might think that with my profoundly
scientific view of the universe I would not believe in the existence of God,
but there you would be wrong, because I have a very profound belief in God. But
the God I believe in is not some patriarch sitting on a throne in the clouds.
To believe in such an image of God is not to make ourselves in God's image, but
to make God in our image. Admittedly for a great part of human history the
image of God was made in just such a way, because people could simply not
understand a God who was not inherently "human" in nature, nor could
they see the God-like nature in humanity for what it was and is. With a more
sophisticated understanding of the nature of existence we can have a more
sophisticated, though never a complete, understanding of the nature of God.
All that we know, all that we see, all that
we understand is made of the "stuff" or "substance" of God.
In the Bible, Moses asks the burning bush who the God he speaks to is, and the answer from God is, "I am that I am."
This is indeed a true answer, for the nature of God is the same as the nature
of existence. The creative force and the destructive force make up the
substance of God, which is the very substance of the universe. All that is and
all that is not in a matrix function of this dualistic principle is God, and
just as we are in touch with each point in our bodies, God is in touch with
each point in the universe, and is conscious of each point. The universe has a
consciousness of self and that consciousness is the consciousness of God.
If I believe in the self-conscious universe
as God, then how are we created in the image of God, as we have been taught?
The answer is that just as God is a "consciousness" we also have been
created as "consciousnesses" though while God's consciousness is
infinite and omnipresent, our consciousnesses are only
finite bits of the total consciousness of God. Our individual consciousnesses
are all small parts of God's total and universal consciousness. Also, as God
exhibits the creative force, we also can exhibit, on a small scale, the
creative force. As God exhibits the destructive force, we can also exhibit, on
a small scale, the destructive force. In short, we are made of small portions
of the stuff of God, and without God we would not exist.
If I believe in the self-conscious universe
as God, then how does god work in the world? God is conscious of each
infinitely small part of the universe and responds to any change in any part of
the universe. All things are connected through God and any force of change
sends an energy wave point by point to each and every part of the universe.
True, small changes exhibit small forces, barely perceptible to other finite
consciousnesses, but God, the infinite consciousness perceives them. Each
thought, each action, each prayer represents a change in the matrix fabric of ourselves and our minds, and therefore a change in the
matrix fabric of the universe, and this change is perceived by God, the
universal consciousness. Just as a wave is reflected back from the shore, so
are the energy waves we send through our thoughts, prayers, and actions
reflected back. If we pollute our environment this destructive force is
reflected back at us by making our environment less able to sustain us and this
is an example of the "retribution" of God. If we do good for others
this creative force is reflected back to us in the love others return and the
good they do us later and this is an example of the "rewards" of God.
In short, God works through his creation, and sometimes through us as parts of
his creation. I should here interject a note that though I refer to God as Him,
God is neither male nor female but is at the same time both male and female,
and sexed and sexless. God is all things without being any one thing in
particular. The lesson is, do not look to heaven for God, but look to the
universe around you. God is everywhere. You can even find God in yourself. You,
yourself, may be the vehicle through which God answers a prayer.
The
nature of the Trinity
How do we understand the trinity? How can God be Father, Son, and Holy spirit and not be polytheistic? As the nature of God is
universal God cannot be physically limited, however man is physically limited
to an individual animal conciousness. Man’s spiritual nature, however,
is not limited as it can transcend man’s physical nature. Man can become spiritually enveloped
within a holy spirit that touches and senses in its entirety the spirit of God. In a real sense God’s spirit can
work in and through man, and if that man allows his individualistic spirit to
be wholly replaced by God’s spirit within him, then in his spiritual
nature that man is wholly God.
Jesus was the Christ, the anointed of the spirit. In his baptism of the spirit, the spirit
of God entered into him and was wholly expressed by him and in him God, the
Holy Spirit, and the spiritual Son of God all existed as three aspects of one
divinity. But, while this is true,
it is also true that there is no God but God and the spirit that expressed itself
through Jesus, the Christ, and is known as the Holy Spirit, was the universal
God. There is no God but God, and
Jesus was the vehicle through which he walked with us and spoke to us, wholly
human, yet, as the spirit working within his human body was God, wholly divine.
Continuing Creation
The Bible tells the story of the creation of
the heavens and the earth, and gives the time taken as six days. But what is a
day to a God who transcends time? A day to God may be a million years in our
eyes. So those who dogmatically hold to the human centered belief that the
world and everything in it was created in six days as we experience them are
putting limits on God which are based on our own experience. By holding to
these limits they create artificial contradictions between religious and
scientific beliefs which hold that what we experience and discover through
science cannot be true as it is not what we were told in scriptures which we
interpret through our own limited filters. But we can neither limit God not creation.
Creation, like God, has no limits. The truth
is that evidence of creation surrounds us, and not evidence of past creation
but evidence of ongoing creation. Have you ever wondered about the nature of
time? Why is it that we experience time in only one direction when the other
dimensions we experience can be traveled both forward and backward? The answer
may well be that the nature of time lies in the nature of creation itself. I
believe that with each moment God recreates the world, that creation is an
ongoing and continuous process. We constantly travel forward in time because
our conciousnesses are on the very leading edge of
creation, a creation of which we are a part.
If we accept that creation is not an event in
the past, but is an ongoing process, then we can also accept that the changes
science documents over time are a part of that process. In short, our concept
of evolution is nothing more than our sensing of ongoing creation. As God
recreates the world He creates change in the things of the world. This is the
change we sense as time, and as evolution. With this understanding we can see
that God not only created the world, but he created the earliest of hominids,
and he created man, and all in an ever-changing ongoing process of creation which
we see around us every moment of every day. I cannot think of anything more
miraculous.
The Fundamental Teachings of Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth preached the Good News, or
the Gospel. Much good and much evil has come out of what Jesus preached, though
he preached good alone. Many in the course of history
have misinterpreted the Good News, or sought deep and hidden messages in it.
Actually, very little of the actual words of Jesus have survived to this day.
In spite of this, everything of great importance in the Gospel has survived and
can be found. What Jesus really taught was not secret as some would say, nor hidden deep in the words of the Bible as
other think. If it is hidden it is hidden in plain sight by its very
simplicity. The "Good News" is that you need no intercessor to reach
God, you can reach God directly, and you can receive direct revelation from
God. The "Good News" is that all the religious trappings, the
ceremonies, the secrets, the mysteries, and the priests have no real meaning or
function in your relationship to God. God is in you and you are of God just as
God was in Jesus and Jesus was of God. The "Good News" is that God's
law is the law of nature and by following the new and positive statement of
God's law for man you are released from the negative law of the "shalt nots" and the
religious codes made not by God but by man.
The Jewish scholar Hillel
in the time before Jesus taught the passive principle, "Do not do to
others that which you would not have them do to you." While this sounds
like the Golden Rule it is not a call for action because it does not tell you
what to do, only what to avoid. Jesus took this statement and made it a call
for action by phrasing it as a positive activist principle, "Do unto
others that which you would have them do unto you." This is a statement
which calls you to join in the work of God in an active sense. It does not call
you to avoid doing wrong, but it calls you to join in doing right.
The sum of the teachings of Jesus can be
found in four statements:
1. God, the creative force, loves and takes pleasure in the creation.
2. We, as parts of the creation, should return God's love of us.
3. We return God's love of us by showing our love of the creation and of
others.
4. We show our love of others by doing unto others as we would have them do
unto us.
These four statements comprise the whole and total truth of the Good News and
show us how to deal with God and our fellow humans, as well as the rest of
creation. Any of the rest of the religious trappings that we add to these
fundamentals is only window dressing.
Original Sin
One of the surviving teachings of Jesus is in
the statement, "Judge not, lest you shall be judged." Which of us would wish to be judged, and in what measure of
harshness. If we are judged, which of us will not be found with some
small fault or defect? The ancient scriptures dealt with this issue in the
story of the Garden of Eden, and this has been taught to us as the concept of
original sin, but many people, taking the story at face value, miss the message
it holds. This is not because the message was written clothed in secrecy, but
because ancient men could not comprehend the abstract concept except when told
as a story. Therefore, it is told that Adam and Eve, the first man and woman of
our kind, were given dominion over the Garden of Eden, and the creator told
them that they might eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden except of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, because if they ate of this tree they would
be condemned. And it is said that the serpent, who was
evil, tempted Eve and said that if she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, she would be like the creator and have knowledge. And it is said that
Eve ate of the fruit of that tree and judged it to be good and gave it to Adam
and he also judged it to be good. And when the creator appeared then they knew
also that they had done wrong to disobey and they were ashamed.
Now let us think about this in other, more
abstract terms. It was not the apple that Eve ate, but the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, not just the tree of knowledge but the tree of
knowledge of good and evil. So by eating of the fruit of this tree she acquired
the ability to judge on the basis of good and evil, an ability she did not have
before. Therefore she could not have known that the serpent was evil, or that
the serpent tempted her to do an evil thing. When they ate of the fruit she and
Adam were able to judge on the basis of good and evil, or right and wrong, which
is seen in the fact that they immediately judged that the knowledge was good
and they had done wrong.
Let us make a further abstraction and
understand that this is not really a story about a man and a woman in a place
called
The Limits of Heaven and Hell
In the end of life we approach a limit and
therein lies the question of heaven and hell. The teachings of Jesus and his
disciples lead us to understand that we are not justified by our deeds but by
our faith. If our we believe our faith has been true we approach the limit of
death and we attain what we will understand as heaven, while if we do not
believe our faith has been true or we believe that we have not followed our
faith, then we approach the limit of death and we attain what we understand as
hell. But what is this heaven and this hell we will attain?
The ancients described hell as a lake of fire
under the earth where evil people suffered eternal torment and heaven as a city
above the visible sky with streets paved with gold where good souls lived in
eternal bliss at the foot of the throne of God. We know now that there is no
lake of fire under the earth to which evil souls are sent. Though the area
surrounding the solid metal center of the earth is indeed formed of molten rock
that is not where hell is. We also know that above the visible sky there is a
limitless space holding the countless stars and galaxies. There is no city of
Some cosmologists suggest that heaven and
hell are different planes of existence outside of our understanding of space
and time and that while our souls exist in this plane they also exist in that
other plane which our physical selves cannot sense or comprehend. While this is
an interesting notion there is no real evidence that we are able to transcend
our space and time and enter into another. Others suggest that there is no
heaven or hell and that souls, which are eternal, are all around us unseen and
unheard and that they either stay in their ethereal plane or are reborn into a
new physical self depending on whether their souls have matured and learned
enough to transcend physical existence. Again, as interesting as this notion
is, I do not believe it to be entirely true. Still other religious scholors suggest that heaven is the eternal presence of God
and hell is the eternal absence of God in the life of our souls, and that the
eternal torment of hell is from our eternal regret at having removed ourselves
from the presence of God. That again is an interesting interpretation, but one
I do not entirely follow. What I believe is that we, in a real sense, make our
own heaven and our own hell and our bliss or our torment come from ourselves,
and that all of this is based on how we approach a limit- the limit of death.
If you have ever been in a crisis situation,
and most of us at some time have been, you have probably found that there is an
odd effect in which time seems to expand and everything begins to happen, so it
seems, in slow motion. In this effect of expansion of time lies the root of
heaven, hell, and eternity based on the idea that death is a limit which is not
reached but is approached by halves.
If one approaches a wall then one will
eventually run into it, but suppose that one approaches the wall not in a
single movement, but by halves. If one moves halfway to the wall from the
beginning point and then again moves halfway to the wall from the second point
and then again halfway to the wall from the third point and so forth one will
never reach the limit of the wall. Now if one's perception of distance is based
not on the concept of the whole but on the concept of the half it would seem as
one approches the wall that distance expands to
infinity. If rather than a physical wall we set as the limit a point in time,
that point being the point of death, and we approach that point by halves as
our perception of time expands, then the limit of death in reference to time
would be at an infinite time and the approach would be eternal.
Now at the time when we approach death, and
we know that death is coming, humans have a tendency to consider their lives
and what they have or have not accomplished, and they look at their lives with
either a sense of fulfillment or a sense of regret. Consider that as they
approach the limit of death time expands to eternity and then we can see that
one will either perceive eternal fulfillment or eternal regret based on how one
believes one has lived one's life as either true to some transcendant
faith or has failed to find some transcendant faith
to follow. If then you believe that your faith called you to treat others as you
would like to be treated and you have faith that you did so as well as you
could, then you will approach that limit with a sense of fulfillment and not of
regret, and you will attain heaven. Otherwise your eternal sense of regret will
be your personal hell. Salvation is, therefore, based on your faith alone.
Back to Baron Fum's Web Page
Back to David Schreur's Page
Back to The Baron's Favorite Links