Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Consciousness
Conversations
D r. M i c e a l L e d w i t h
Conversations
In January 2013 he will be recording five new DVDs to be
entitled Conversations. They deal with how the brain forms
and processes fundamental and crippling beliefs,especially
religious beliefs. Why it is so difficult to change them and how.
Evolution in
Consciousness
Author
Adviser
Mystic
Scholar
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15396401@N00/11463203
f we start with the most ancient the Hindu laws of Manu state: In childhood
a female remains subject to her father. In youth a female is subject to her husband. When
her lord is dead she shall be subject to her sons. 'A woman must
never be independent.' Indeed the sacred texts of the Hindus state
that it is the highest duty of a wife to burn herself after her husband
has died. Some central streams of Buddhism believe that to be
born a woman is due to bad karma. A woman ought to pray to be
re-born as a man in a future existence. The Koran regards a woman
as 'half a man.' Forgetfulness overcomes a woman. They are
'inherently weaker in rational judgment.' Even the great western
thinker Plato quotes Socrates approvingly: Do you know anything at
all practiced by mankind in which the male is not far better than the
female. It's hardly surprising that Plato's pupil Aristotle, the tutor of
Alexander the Great, didn't even accept that women were legitimate
human beings: they were & failed men due to some mishap in the
womb during the conception process.
There is no doubt that the influence of the Church has profoundly shaped our culture in the
West, and that has brought many good things for which we should be profoundly grateful.
But it does not take much research into either the sacred texts of the great religions or the
history of their practice down the centuries to see that they have played a central role in
fostering the disenfranchisement of women. That did not stay within the Church's sphere,
for its religious influence has come to be expressed in most bodies of fundamental secular
legislation and practice around the world, not just in the West.
But I came to see eventually that the facts of the matter were much more complicated even
than this.
This was not an influence that found an unwelcome reception in those over
whom it was exercised. It seemed to me unmistakable that a pro-male and anti-female bias
was buried deep within the human male psyche, independent of and long prior to anything
we would today regard as a religious influence. If this is the case then it should come as
less of a surprise to find so much overt sexism in fundamental religious texts, given the
traditions out of which those religions have themselves grown.
Museum.
Most reputable scholars today will admit that several of those documents are the
precursors of seminal documents that later went to form the foundations of the JudeoChristian tradition, in particular the Book of Genesis which is central to understanding the
estimate of the female in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Genesis is an immensely profound
work despite having been turned on its head all too often by well meaning preachers.
These worthy gentlemen have apparently convinced themselves that it is no more difficult
to read and understand a three thousand year old text from a culture as remote from ours
as is possible to imagine, than it is to read the morning newspaper.
Genesis wrestles with an age-old issue that must at some stage come to perplex every
living person. If we persist in thinking of God and God's relation to the world, in the homely
ways to which we have so long grown accustomed, then we are left with an insoluble
problem, which is what the opening chapters of Genesis wrestles with.
The world as we know it is replete with more than its fair share of suffering, disease, old
age, infirmity, natural disasters, frailty, disappointment, betrayal and ultimately death.
That kind of world cannot have come from the hand of a good God, so either God did
not create the world or something went wrong. Those indeed are the only two options
we have in the mindset I have labeled the Hamburger Universe.
what is really
notable is that the blame for
what went wrong was laid fairly
and squarely at the feet of Eve,
Genesis went for, but
So even if the religions have historically been some of the most sexist organizations on earth
it seems they were more the agencies who exacerbated what was already there than that they
were the origins of it. In turn that would mean that addressing the anti-female bias would
have to be the first priority for any body of teaching that purported to be in the vanguard of
spiritual evolution. It would also have to be the touchstone of its validity.
This raises some serious issues. Less than two decades after the Passion of Jesus, and
some two decades before the appearance of the first Gospel of the New Testament, St. Paul
started to put pen to paper. Over the next fifteen years more than half of the New Testament
as we know it came from his hand, and those writings preceded all the Gospels.
Paul never mentions the quintessential Christian female, Mary the Mother of Jesus, in his
extensive writings. He states women will be saved only through motherhood (1 Tim. 2: 15);
and that they ought to be subject to men. There is little doubt among scholars of the New
Testament that Paul saw in the growing emancipation of women in the Roman world, a
major strand in the breakdown of orderly society, and he believed that Christians should
adhere to the traditional strict lines of family life. Peter says that women should be
cherished because they are weaker, and the context implies he is not just thinking of
physical weakness (1 Peter). Things hardly improved when St. Jerome came on the scene
and justified marriage only because it could produce more virgins. The highest praise
Augustine could manage for women was to regard them as a malum necessarium,; 'a
necessary evil.'
If we look back twenty or thirty years earlier than St. Paul's writings we can see the cultural
and religious background from which Jesus emerged. He had, of course, made enormous
waves among the religious traditions of his day. It was time when at every religious service
the men prayed; ;Blessed are you O Lord who has not made me a woman, or worse,
Blessed be God who has not created me a heathen, a slave or a woman. It was a time
when the women had to sit in separate sections, and when they were not counted in the
votes. It was unusual for them to be taught the Torah. Indeed the writers of the Talmud
added that it would be better to burn the words of Torah than entrust them to a woman.
This very unpromising context is the background from which Jesus emerged, and seems to
be the general background which Paul and Peter wished to perpetuate.
If, as noted earlier, the emancipation of women has to be the touchstone for the
validity of any leading edge spiritual movement for human liberation, then this
raises disturbing questions because of these elements in the witness of Paul and
Peter. But before we ask those questions, we have to inquire if this version
of things was in fact true to what Jesus taught and did, or not, or
whether the structure erected on the foundation he had established
had drifted from his message?
Raising of Lazarus
John Bridges Christ healing the mother of Simon Peter
Jesus ate with women as well as men, which would not have been customary, and spoke
to them both in public and private. In the very early years of the church this trend continued
and some of the earliest gathering places were in the houses of such women. Churches
often grew up on those sites later, and have preserved their names in those locations even
One day an old woman who was listening to his teaching was roughly pushed aside
by one of those spies. He was rebuked by Jesus, and what followed must be one of
the most inspirational pronouncements on the dignity and nobility of woman that
has ever been produced. It merits quotation in full.
It is not good for a son to push away his mother, that he may occupy the place which
belongs to her. Whoever does not respect his mother, the most sacred being after his
God - is unworthy of the name of son.
Listen to what I say to you. Respect woman, for in her we see the mother of the
universe, and all the truth of divine creation is to come through her. She is the fount of
everything good and beautiful, as she is also the germ of life and death. Upon her man
depends in all his existence, for she is his moral and natural support in his labors.
In pain and suffering she brings you forth, in the sweat of her brow she watches over
your growth, and until her death you cause her the greatest anxieties. Bless her and
adore her, for she is your only friend and support on earth.
Respect her, defend her. In doing so you will gain for yourself her love, you will find
favor before God and for her sake many sins will be remitted to you.
Love your wives and respect them for they will be mothers tomorrow, and later the
grandmothers of a whole nation.
Be submissive to the wife; her love ennobles man, softens his hardened heart, tames
the wild beast in him and changes it to a lamb.
Wives and mothers are the priceless treasures which God has given to you. They are
the most beautiful ornaments of the universe, and from them will be born all who will
inhabit the earth.
Even as the Lord of Hosts separated the light from the darkness and the dry land from
the waters, so does woman possess the divine gift of calling forth out of man's evil
nature, all the good that is in him.
Therefore I say unto you, after God, to woman must belong your best thoughts, for she
is the divine temple where you will most easily obtain perfect happiness.
Draw from this temple your moral force. There you will forget your sorrows and your
failures, and recover the love necessary to aid your fellow men.
Suffer her not to be humiliated, for by humiliating her you humiliate yourselves and
lose the sentiment of love, without which nothing can exist here on earth.
Protect your wife, that she may protect you-you and your household. All that you do
for your mothers, your wives, for a widow or for any woman in distress, you will do for
your God.
Gustav Klimt
But we do not have to go as far as ancient Nepal to gain a different view. A treasure trove of
early Christian documents discovered in Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries give us some
amazingly fresh insights into Jesus's relation to women during his ministry. Several of these
New Testament as a prominent prophetic leader and visionary in at least one section of the
early Christian movement, Mary Magdalene. In the Sophia of Jesus Christ; five women and
twelve men are gathered to hear the Savior. Mary is entrusted with the most elevated
teachings of Jesus and has a prominent role in handing on his message. In the Pistis
Sophia; she is also prominent among the disciples and asks more questions than all of the
rest put together. Her high spiritual status is affirmed and she intercedes with the Savior
as some of the disciples are despairing. In the Gospel of Mary the Magdalene is
portrayed without doubt as a woman leader among the disciples. She alone of all the
disciples is not frightened and afraid. She is pre-eminently the one whom Jesus most
esteems. The Gospel of Philip focuses on the special relationship between Jesus and her.
In the Dialogue of the Savior Mary is named along with Jude Thomas and Matthew as
partaking in a prolonged dialogue with Jesus, and she questions Jesus on several matters
as the representative of the group. All of this evidence
should settle the debate we often hear about whether
she was an apostle or not. The real question now is
not whether she was one of the Apostles of Jesus but
whether she was in fact, in the title often ascribed to
her of late, the Apostle of the Apostles.
Some churches still prohibit women from the ministry
and the reason adduced normally is that the pattern of
an all-male priesthood laid down by Jesus is not
something that the Churches are at liberty to alter.
Even when some churches admit female ministers, to
then admit them as bishops is seen as a further major
barrier. But what if the pattern of the priesthood
established by Jesus was entirely different, and not just
that but that the chief among the first such group was
female? Certainly if the primary duty of any true religion
has to be to set about rectifying the inbuilt anti-female
bias in the male psyche, no other initiative could ever
hope to be as appropriate and successful as that.
Nuestra Seora de los Dolores. Capilla del Sagrario de la Iglesia Parroquial de Santa
Mara del Alcor. El Viso del Alcor (Sevilla).
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 'Bloodline of the Holy Grail,' ;Rex Deus andThe Da Vinci Code, have
raised afresh the question of what kind of personal relationship there was between Magdelene
and Jesus. That inevitably leads to the further question of whether there exists any such thing
as a Messianic Bloodline, and if there is, what does it entail? Is it simply a matter of historical
physical descent from this preeminent pair, or would such descendants carry something in their
physical or mental make up that sets them apart?
More than 150 years ago Ludwig Feuerbach remarked that rather than God having created us in
his own image, it is we who have created God in our image. So in all the religions what we are
dealing with in the first place is human-style images of the creator rather than with the real thing.
As far as repression of the female goes those images have to be recognized in the truest sense
as nothing more than the Gods of Men.
Copyright, Miceal Ledwith.
http://www.hamburgeruniverse.com/
Order
Here
Married?
The original meaning of
"Apostle was "apostellein,"
'to bear witness.'
If Magdalene was not alone just a witness,
but the very first witness who saw him at
that time, does it not justify her having the
title not simply of "Apostle" but also that
very ancient appellation often attributed to
her, "Apostle of the Apostles?"
In John 2: 20, 28 and 29 the incident is told
of Jesus returning from his travels to the
house at Bethany which belonged to
Martha, Mary and Lazarus who had just
died. Martha goes out to meet him, but
not Mary. Is it because a wife in mourning
cannot go out to meet her husband
returning from a journey until she is sent
for? That was the Jewish custom then,
and Mary did go out to meet him when she
was sent for.
Mary Magdalene is traditionally depicted with a vessel of ointment, in reference to the Anointing of Jesus.
Enigma:
"a person of puzzling or contradictory character:"
Of all the characters of ancient history that have captured our imaginations powerfully in recent
years, Mary Magdalene must surely rank as the most enigmatic. Her name has been linked to a
vast range of issues that peak our curiosity ranging from the conspiracy theory/secret society
gloss to the sultry insinuations of being the intimate companion of the Savior.
There is little doubt than those who would find the idea of Jesus being linked in a personal
relationship to as woman as inappropriate or even blasphemous, would do well first of all to
examine why they consider hatred of the way God made us to be a primary religious duty.
Mary Magdalene
But perhaps what is even more important is to realize that those concerns that
preoccupy us so much today may not have concerned the contemporaries of Jesus and
Mary nearly as much. Perhaps the contemplation of such a close relationship between
these two persons is such an issue for us today that it actually serves only to obscure
the real importance of the message of both those figures. All the while we merrily go
about working out what really are after all only our own mental prejudices and
gymnastics, but at their expense.
Several acclaimed authors have quoted the famous text from the second century
Gnostic Gospel of Philip: "Jesus loved her (Mary Magdalene) more than the other
disciples and used to kiss her often on the lips" (Philip 63, 64). What they blithely ignore
is the actions of many mischievous termites down the centuries which have left holes in
that ancient manuscript precisely where those loaded words figure in the Coptic text.
There is no word for "kiss" and there is no word for "lips" in the text as we have it. What
those words may have been is anybody's educated guess, but it is certainly not
legitimate research to quote the text as if no gaps existed, for we will fill the gaps with
terms that suit our own interest. Several respected authors have stated that the Gnostic
documents from Nag Hammadi describe Mary Magdalene as the lover of Jesus. There
are no such Gnostic texts.
If you are looking for evidence of a special relationship between Jesus and Mary there is
no need to look to the early 1940's Gnostic texts of Nag Hammadi. You should look to
the New Testament itself.
redactors of the new Testament text did not appear to fully realize the import certain
narratives would carry for the eastern mind, which is the mind in which the very early
oral and written traditions about Jesus were formed.
(The Gods of Men, III, Bleeping Herald, July 2008) I have analyzed the several
references within the New Testament canon which demonstrate beyond doubt that
there was a very special relationship indeed between Jesus and Mary, so there is
no need to look for dusty documents to prove it in texts found a generation ago in
an ancient burial ground of the sixth dynasty Pharaohs.
But one of the issues that concerns me most in the discussion of the Magdalene today
is the fascination with the secret knowledge or teachings which Jesus is alleged to have
given her as "apostle of the apostles."
One of the greatest delusions that has dogged humanity's path on its quest for evolution is the
conviction that there exists a secret knowledge, which if only one could find it, would open up
the doors to all we have ever desired. True spiritual evolution certainly requires true knowledge
about how things are before we can make any progress, and we have certainly been fed with
far more than enough defective knowledge about these matters from those who have decided
to their own satisfaction that they are in charge of our immortal destiny. But knowledge on its
own can never do it. There is no secret knowledge to be given to anyone by anybody which
will automatically lay the miracles of the universe at our feet.
The second century Gnostics were preoccupied with secret knowledge, so it's no surprise to
find their texts have the form they do. If one believes the moon is made of green cheese, or that
the sun revolves around the earth, these are harmless enough beliefs in terms of everyday living
- unless you are instructing astronauts. If you believe we were sent here by God to work out our
destiny by obeying a set of rules, and that Jesus came here to suffer and die because of our
sins, those are relatively harmless beliefs too, unless you happen to be advising people on how
to work out their eternal destiny in this world.
But that being said, there is no secret knowledge that can deliver this to you ready made; there
is only knowledge that will help you to engage that knowledge into experience and that is
where the work of salvation comes in.
spiritually, or whatever term you choose to describe it, does not come from knowledge, but
from what you accomplish using informed knowledge.
Great WORK. Any secret knowledge that was supposed to have existed in certain exalted
circles in the past, was only secret because of a prudence that the great masters used to
prevent the information about how things worked from getting into the hands of those who
would misuse it for their own selfish gratification, usually in the manipulation of others. This was
the sense in which Jesus spoke of "not casting your pearls before swine." In the case of the
Magdalene whatever so called "secret" knowledge was given her by Jesus, was given only to
facilitate and guide her own personal work in the voyage of self-discovery along which mastery
lies. And it would not have been given to her in the context of any personal favor or relationship,
but in terms of what she had already earned in terms of personal effort and discovery of the
path along which evolution occurs. Basically, that consists in confronting and dealing with our
own personal issues that have kept us blocked life after life. It is not about finding any magical
secret knowledge which will deal with it for us.
Secrets
Passion
We have Mary of Bethany, who is the sister of Lazarus. In John's Gospel it is Mary who is preeminent, but in Luke it is Peter. But then Luke was Peter's secretary, and there was no love lost
between them. It was not until the year 591 AD, in his famous Thirty Third Homily, that all of
these female figures were combined into one by Pope Gregory the Great.
demons"
"facing your
The
We would do well to remember that in the esoteric tradition the principal teacher of
Jesus during his time in the Himalayas, between the ages of 20 and 26 years, told him
that when the time of his passion was imminent he would send him a jar of precious
ointment as a sign to warn him to be ready, and to assure him that he was not going to
be alone and abandoned during the time of his initiation.
Mary was the one who performed the anointing.
connection with that same brotherhood and sisterhood, and did this have anything to do
with the Mother Goddess Cult of Magdala?
This is not something I casually suggest. In my DVD " How Jesus Became a Christ" I said that
to my mind the greatest proof that Jesus was in India and Tibet was not just the scrolls that so
emphatically say he was there, the most famous of which were the ones discovered and
published by Nicholas Notovitch in 1893. The real indication, even if such scrolls had never
been discovered, is the well over one hundred major parallels I have pointed out between
the message of the Buddha and that of Jesus, even though the Buddha was five hundred
years earlier. Does that mean Jesus was a plagiarist or the Buddha his inspiration? By no
We would do well to remember that in the esoteric tradition the principal teacher of
Jesus during his time in the Himalayas, between the ages of 20 and 26 years, told him
that when the time of his passion was imminent he would send him a jar of precious
ointment as a sign to warn him to be ready, and to assure him that he was not going to
be alone and abandoned during the time of his initiation.
Mary was the one who performed the anointing.
connection with that same brotherhood and sisterhood, and did this have anything to do
with the Mother Goddess Cult of Magdala?
" All
one-ness and the return, which you find in the Tao Te Ching:
Another striking parallel in the Gospel of Mary is the description of the soul's journey after death
and the trials it has to overcome, and how critical it is to prepare for this. The Egyptian Pharaohs
were preoccupied with this from the first moment of their reigns. This is uncannily reminiscent of
passages in the Tibetan Book of the Dead which describes the encounter with the loving and the
angry God which the soul has to encounter after its departure from the physical body.
But did she also, like Jesus, get those ideas in the
Orient? That is the background against which I would like to present the enigma of Mary
Magdalene
But there is much more to the enigma of Mary than what figures in the four Gospels of the New
Testament, or what is traditionally associated with her sojourn in Rennes-le-Chateau, or as is
narrated in The Golden Legend. That aspect is far greater than any of the others; that is where the
real enigma of Mary lies, and it is one which today's authors have still to notice.
was intrigued to discover well over one hundred parallels between the
teachings of the Buddha and the teachings of Jesus five hundred years
later, just as I was to discover that the seven sacraments of the Christian
Church were all initiation ceremonies of the ancient Egyptian Mystery
Schools. What did that tell us: was Jesus or the Buddha a plagiarist? On the contrary, they
were both channels of a much more ancient wisdom.
If this is the case with such central matters as the teachings of Jesus or the sacraments of the
Church, then what do the levitations of Joseph and the blazing countenance of Teresa tell us?
That they were specially favored by God, who was thereby putting his stamp of divine approval
on them? Or rather are they not far more likely to be telling us something of
ultimate concern about the real nature of God and the true make up of the
human being and of this universe in which we float?
The halo has been understood as an artistic device only, and by the nineteenth century it had
definitely gone out of fashion with artists who were too embarrassed to portray it any more. But
we're still accustomed to think of it as a religious trademark, and in the West, of course, to
consider it the very badge of medieval Christian art.
Even when the halo began to be understood in the West as some form of divine radiance
that conveyed closeness to divinity, it was probably an
import from the Persian Empire and made its way to
Rome with the spread of the Mithraic religion. The
images of the Roman Emperors, like Alexander before
them, began to feature aspects redolent of divinity,
including the halo. Initially this was the practice only
after they had died and were now judged to have been
deified, but it soon came to be used also in the
depictions of living Emperors.
It was only long
after all of this long history, in the fourth century after
Christ, that the halo began to be used by the
organization that now claims the image as its own:
the Christian Church. It belonged to the
By the High Renaissance period most of the major Italian painters had stopped depicting haloes
altogether. Part of the reaction against the Protestant Reformation mandated that they be used
in Catholic Christian art, but usually the painters tried to comply with this by placing a natural
light source behind the subjects head to give the effect of a halo. By the nineteenth century
haloes were definitely gone, unless one were striving to give a medieval 'flavor' to a scene. They
are now found only in images of popular piety with those bleeding Jesus figures of the Mel
Gibson genre.
However, haloes in their origin are neither western, Christian, or even religious, and most
interestingly of all, are probably not artistic devices either.
What then does the luminescence around people like Teresa of Avila and
Joseph of Cupertino really tell us? It wasn't imagined; those images were
included by artists because that is what was actually seen around certain
individuals.
But, even if it has ceased to be fashionable in
mainline art, how is the luminescence of the halo to
be explained and what has it to tell us? In both my
book and DVD on the orb phenomenon, I point out
that doing nothing but
wondering
in
amazement at the
variety of orbs pictures that can appear to us would be as if those
physicians who first saw chromosomes in the blood after the
invention of the microscope simply continued to look, without taking
the knowledge they gained from looking to fight disease and
promote health. If my contention is correct that orbs are seen by
fluorescence, not by reflected light, is it possible that the different
colors of fluoresced light that comes from the orbs really reveal
dimensions above this physical one to which the orbs belong?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/TimothyRias
D-Kuru/Wikemedia Commons
Hebrews 2:7, quoting Psalm 8, says that God made us "a little less than the
angels" but if my hypothesis is true would we not actually be more? Perhaps
the effulgence, caused by the reaching of altered states in remarkable individuals of the past, and
which was made visible and immortalized in the
halo, is the talisman and pledge that we do
If so this would be the path along which our emergence into true
power and ability within ourselves lies. So if originally the halo was neither western, Christian, or
even religious, and was probably not an artistic device either, who would have thought that now
understood in a profoundly different way, it might be the herald for us of an enormous and longforgotten human potential, not too long after we became embarrassed to depict it any more?
Copyright Mcel F. Ledwith All rights reserved.
http://hamburgeruniverse.com/articles.html
The Law of Cause and Effect, which we accept so uncritically that it has
become part and parcel of the very way we think, can be one of the greatest
barriers we meet on the road to manifesting our desires. - Miceal Ledwith
LAW
miceal ledwith
REVERSING
THE LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT
So in all the
In the normal sense of the word a "law" is passed by some authoritative body
such as Congress or a Parliament, comes into effect on a due day, and
presumably can be altered or abrogated subsequently.
The "laws" of nature have nothing at all in common with such usage.
Presumably gravity, for instance, worked fine long before anyone decided to
stick a label on it. And even the most diehard proponents of the view of God
as some sort of human being enlarged; have never suggested that it would be
possible for God at some point to abrogate the Law of Gravity or the Second
Law of Thermodynamics. All down the centuries the natural law traditions have
viewed the "laws" of nature not as regulations promulgated by God acting as
some form of cosmic legislator, but as reflections of something in the divine
nature itself, and therefore unchangeable as long as God remains God.
All of that of course might not matter very much were it not for the fact that in following
out the course of spiritual evolution, to which so many in the world are wakening up
right now, the ways in which we think of such "laws" can radically alter our ability to
manifest what we desire.
wealth, glowing health and long life without disease, or a lasting personal happiness.
Isaac Newton eloquently expressed something fundamental about the nature of reality
in what we know as the "Third Law of Motion:" or more popularly "The Law of Cause
and Effect." To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is absolutely
true of everything we experience, whether it's hitting a golf ball or launching a probe to
Mars.
The earliest form of this was to envisage God sitting up there, seen in some way as an
enlarged human being, who has the ability to grant our requests. Even today most people's
form of prayer is based on this form of assumption. However this flies in the face of another
fundamental "law" which was expressed by Jesus in the form in which it is most familiar to us
today:"When you pray for something, believe it is already yours, and it shall be so." (Mark
11:24). Instead of obeying this "law" we instead beg, implore, desire, hope, beseech, request
and pray that God will grant our request. What this means is that we have stated that the
desired thing is not ours, and given what Jesus taught, we have in effect now issued a law that
it can never be ours as long as we persist in that attitude of supplication or lack. We have to
first become it in order for us to have it. Most assuredly this is one of the hardest
lessons for us to learn on a path of spiritual growth.
Prayers
and it shall be
so." - Jesus
will find dozens of titles assuring us that we create our own reality and
that all we need to do is hold our focus on whatever it is we want and it
will be ours. This also is a very over-simplistic version of this truth, but it
is certainly a major advance over viewing God's main role as some
cosmic form of wish fulfiller.
But even in this shift we still tend to become bedeviled by the "Law of
Cause and Effect." We try to figure out what the appropriate "input" might
be for this "Law of Attraction" to take effect and create the output we
desire.
Unfortunately the law of cause and effect does not operate in the
quantum field, or to put it more accurately it operates in reverse.
In
the art
Be Cause
Nowadays when you go into any reasonably good bookstore today you
Wino and
the Master have
exactly the same
ability to manifest.
There is a time bomb ticking at the heart of all the main western religions and it has to
do with the troubled subject of aliens. The vastness of even the visible universe can be
realized by anybody nowadays by viewing the extraordinary
images from the Hubble Telescope. And when you see that, it's
very easy to realize the depth of arrogance needed to believe
that the human race on this earth is the only intelligent form
life in the entire universe, or that all life would have to occur in
our form of it. To make matters worse we don't seem to be
even living in prime real estate: we are situated in the very
boondocks of what is itself a comparatively rural galaxy. Oh for
the happy times of Galileo and
Giordano Bruno, when the only issue
that troubled the Church was
whether the sun revolved around the earth or vice versa.
Come to My
Mansion...
However, let's take look at some of the main alterations that would have to be made to accommodate
that fact that aliens exist and where they fit into the scheme of things, particularly into God's plan; what
beliefs might have to be jettisoned or adapted, what new ones adopted?
If God is supposed to have "made man in his own image" then in whose image would the proverbial
little green men from outer space be made? And what if we were to discover that our definition of life
was hopelessly narrow and left no room for life forms so different from ours that they didn't need
oxygen, hydrogen, or even a carbon base? And what if the claims of some scientists made earlier this
month came true that within a decade, on the basis of some current research discoveries, they
anticipate being able to artificially generate life, which would have no connection with any life form
known on this earth? Maybe at that stage we would have to realize that the way we have couched the
relationship of God to the origin of life is hopelessly dated and outmoded.
The western religions believe that life began as the result of a specific and personal divine intervention.
Some minor groups even go so far as to maintain that this all happened during a particularly busy week
for God about 6,000 years ago.
The Christian religions of the
west believe that the fallen
state of the race began on the
fatal day a talking serpent
cajoled that famous ribwoman into eating fruit from a
magic tree.
It is equally believed that the
only hope for the human race
now is a rescue by Jesus,
God's only Son incarnate.
Jesus is seen as a savior, not
just a savior but a universal
savior, so that all access to
God by rational and intelligent
forms of life, and access to
their destiny, is possible only
through him, and through his
agents here on earth whom
he has sub-delegated.
Tenochtitlan, Entrance of Hernan Cortes. Cortez and La Malinche meet Moctezuma II. , November 8, 1519
the spiritual literature that forms the body of this earth's religious traditions.
While in general subscribing to these exalted concepts what's remarkable
about us is the degree to which we ignore them in practice. Indeed some of
this allegedly alien literature assesses the human race as far more barbaric
and less evolved than the aliens are. We have grown so unthinkingly
accustomed to measuring everything from a human-centered standpoint that
the bitterest pill of all would be having to accept that at least some
extraterrestrials might turn out to be superior to us.
Creator Myth of Mayan
That superiority to us of course should come as no surprise if they had a technology capable of taking
them to this earth. At that point we should start to fervently hope that their spiritual development had
kept pace with or surpassed their technological progress.
Where would all of this leave Jesus or indeed
God, as they are envisaged in the Christian
systems? Is Jesus now to be demoted from being
the Universal Savior? Or did God separately also
send him to those alien races in some appropriate
local form, just as he came among us a human?
Maybe in pondering what would be the
implications for our beliefs, if alien beings exist, we
can manage to prune, refine and make those
central everyday beliefs of ours more consonant
with the facts. Maybe for far too long we have held
them unquestioned within a system of knowledge
about reality which was seriously deficient?
Maybe the truth is that Jesus did not come here to
suffer and die for our sins to appease God's
vengeance against us? Such an interpretation in any
case doesn't do much for either Jesus or God.
Indeed one might ask have we ever pondered the
hugely negative impact such a picture has for how we imagine God to be, or Jesus to be? What kind of
father would demand the suffering and death of his only son who was completely innocent? What kind of
son would willingly comply with that sentence and at the same time never cease to speak of the profundity
of God's love for us all, which is totally belied by that very picture?
What atrocities and suffering would have been avoided over the last thousand years if such a different view
of Jesus and salvation had held more general sway?
Or perhaps the aliens' ancestors were more fortunate than ours and never had to ward off the
unwelcome attentions of whatever their equivalent of that talking serpent would be. If that were so then
they wouldn't need to be saved or redeemed.
If they did not need this, then by our theological standards they would have to be immortal or at least
extremely long lived, since both the Old and the New Testaments regard death as the result of "the Fall,"
and not part of the original scheme of things at all.
The pictures of God and human destiny in western Christianity were eventually to become exclusively
shaped within the context of sin and redemption, and now Christianity can no longer think outside that
box it seems. As a result nowadays it seems almost impossible to think of Jesus, or indeed of Christianity
itself, except in terms of the suffering and bloodied savior who struggled up the hill of Calvary to die for
our sins. Consequently trying to envisage a race that would neither have "fallen" or be in need of
redemption, actually smacks of the impious to us. Maybe part of the reason might be that we are beginning
to suspect our own race might be in a similar position, and because we sense the catastrophic implications
that would have for our major belief systems.
So if our picture of God and human destiny was totally shaped by the consciousness of sin and redemption
how differently would an alien race, which had not "fallen," picture God? And would they worship such a
God, or is worship just one other downside that comes from the context of our unfortunate history?
If God could and did create other worlds and beings to inhabit them, did he then also create another
heaven for them, or do we have to share with them what we always thought was exclusively ours? Do
they need their own Devil to test them, and do they have a private Purgatory, Limbo and Hell? And if they
do not, why not?
But of course in this imaginative scenario which I put out here for the
sake of pondering the ways in which some very deep matters have
been formulated historically by the religions, the biggest question of
all would have to be not whether there are other heavens, hells or
saviors, or the lack of them, but why there is no mention at all, or
even a hint, of any of this stuff in the Scriptures or in the doctrinal
traditions?
Posing imaginative scenarios like this can often help us to prune and refine our beliefs and tell us where we
have drifted off the mark in the ways in which we have responded to God knows what historical
circumstances down through history. In many ways it's reminiscent of the bizarre and complicated system
of cycles and epicycles which the Ptolemaic astronomers over time had to introduce into their theories to
reconcile their belief in an earth-centered solar system with the actual rotation of the planets. When the
Copernican theories came to be known, the entire paradigm changed and the complexity of the Ptolemaic
system was seen to be useless and redundant. When too many qualifications, complications and mental
gymnastics have to be introduced into any system its time to recognize that the real problem may well be
that the original insights got the matter wrong. If that is the case no amount of subsequent modification of
the original insights will ever rectify the matter.
It's only four hundred years since Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for suggesting that
God might have created other worlds on which intelligent beings would relate to God in their own way. If
the reality of extraterrestrial life ever becomes impossible to deny then the Church will come to mourn
bitterly the loss of that four hundred year head start which Bruno's invitation offered to it.
With all due respect to the new Vatican Astronomer the fact that belief in aliens doesn't threaten belief in
God should be the least of his worries. Almost every other religious doctrine would be
challenged to the very core by that fact. Furthermore, by interpreting the whole reality of God
and Jesus so exclusively in terms of sin and redemption, the religions have maneuvered themselves into
such a corner that effectively dealing with such a major doctrinal crisis would be almost impossible without
jettisoning the majority of its system of beliefs. Maybe this semi-official interview in L'Osservatore, as well
as the similar statements over several years past by the Vatican's official Exorcist, Monsignor Corrado
Balducci, might well be the humble beginnings of an effort to avoid being too blindsided if the worst ever
came to the worst.
A scholarly perspective
2012 Phenomenon
Much
Much ofof the
the material
material circulating
circulating isis either
either disdisinformation
informationororhighly
highlyinaccurate
inaccurateand
andexaggerated.
exaggerated.
They are circular shaped visual phenomenon showing up in hundreds of thousands of photos in a
myriad of different settings, under all kinds of conditions. These mystifying orbs have attracted
attention in both the scientific and spiritual communities all over the world.
ORBS
IS THE VAIL LIFTING?
Some orb enthusiasts theorize that these spherical lights have been
with us for centuries, possibly the source of our belief in angels, fairies,
or other paranormal intelligence. They could be the inspiration for the
halos shown around the heads of spiritual teachers in classic paintings.
With the introduction of digital photography, these bright balls of
energy are no longer confined to religious art and sacred mythology.
DR. MICEAL
LEDWITH
B o t h m e n a re e x p e ri e n c e d
re s e a rc h e rs w i t h e x t e n s i ve
backgrounds in both science and
spirituality.
Heinemann is a physicist and former NASA researcher.
Ledwith, a theologian and former president of Maynooth
College in Ireland, served on the International Theological
Commission at the Vatican for 17 years. Neither Heinemann
nor Ledwith accepted what they were seeing in their photos
without considerable skepticism, and both took painstaking
efforts to validate their results.
Although many critics have dismissed orbs as dust
particles, water droplets, or even tiny insects that have
wandered into the cameras field, the evidence indicates
otherwise.
I devoted a lot of time and research to make sure I was
on solid ground and I wasnt dealing with easily explainable
phenomena, says Heinemann. However, that doesnt mean
fake orb photos dont exist. Although he concedes that it
certainly is possible for natural phenomenon to produce
occasional orb-like effects, he is quick to point out that the
overwhelming number of orb photos that now exist make this
explanation highly implausible.
For the skeptics, Heinemann offers a series of indicators
that can authenticate orb photos. For example, he says, if a
photograph shows an orb that is positioned behind another
object, it essentially rules out the possibility of water or dust
on the lens of the camera. He also classifies as authentic
photographs that show orbs that change size and move from
one location to another in successive shots. Equally hard to
dismiss are photos of extremely bright orbs that are easily
visible without digital enhancement, or orb photos taken in the
same location at the same time by different cameras. The
multitudes of photos that depict orbs in strategic locations
such as at the elbow of a healer or the mouth also defy
logical explanation.
Some skeptics also suggest that orb photos are the result
of image manipulation. However, Ledwith explains, because
the cameras EXIF (exchangeable image file format) log tracks
all changes made to the original picture, it is extremely difficult
to successfully fake an orb photo.
You could
say that person is directing the
flashlight and it is emanating from
that person, but there is so much
more to them than just what you
see.
around and even shining it in your camera.
Spirit Emanations
Are digital cameras the vehicles for providing us with at
least the initial answers to these intriguing questions?
It all remains to be seen, of course both literally and
figuratively.
Ledwith Concludes
...that, Orbs are, basically, at least in the first
form in which we become aware of them, what
you and I would be without the physical body.
He further suggests that, we are living in a
frequency-based universe That means, he says,
that these are beings just outside of our present dimension of frequency.
They belong to a realm where you and I have been many times before we
come back into a physical incarnation.
Ledwith explains the implications of his conclusion through comparing
human beings to icebergs 1/8 of which are above the surface while the
rest is hidden below. The part of us which is beneath the surface exits in
all of the various dimensions.
Does this mean that orb encounters are paving the way to a greater understanding of
the nature of the universe?
Dr. Ledwiths personal collection of orbs is well over 100,000 images.He is the co-author of
The Orb Project. His DVD Orbs: Clues to a More Exciting Universes draws some thought
provoking conclusions about the nature of the universe and our place in it. Dr. Miceal Ledwith
uncommon blend of wisdom be it from the conventional religion text to ancient wisdom
traditions. He is featured in the movie What the Bleep Do we Know? and Down the Rabbit
Hole.
http://hamburgeruniverse.com/
Article courtesy of BellaSpark Magazine and
interviewer Linda M Potter
Trailer
ORBS - Clues to a More
Exciting Universe
http://hamburgeruniverse.com/
trailers.html
Order
Here
Conversations
Coming
January
2013
http://www.hamburgeruniverse.com/
Designed by Karen Elkins/Science to Sage Studio
www.sciencetosage.com