Why do I believe in Reincarnation?

 

First, there is Science.  The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – only converted from one form of energy to another. This means that a system always has the same amount of energy, unless it’s added from the outside.

Your Soul. the part of you that is you, also called the self (and which in fact is G-d)  is energy.  When we are not dwelling in a human body, we exist as energy, which is eternal.

That’s the first reason. The second:

Past life experiences.  Lots of them.  The three that stand out for me the most are:

  • When I was ten my grade school class took a field trip to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.  We were vising the Egyptian room, and I was reading a plaque in front of a mummy.  The mummy was the preserved remains of a boy who had lived in Cairo.  A thought popped up in my head, “I knew this kid.”
  • I was a Realtor for a time when I was still living in Kankakee IL.  I was looking for a house for my own family, and this place popped up on the MLS.  The house is on S Chicago Ave.  It’s an Eastlake home. Eastlake was a contemporary of  Frank Lloyd Wright who took Victorian homes and gave them oriental lines, giving the homes some characteristics of pagodas.

I got the key and took a self-tour through the place.  That was easy, because somehow I knew the layout. It was like I had been there before.

I bought it. Moved my family in and that was that.  The house had six bedrooms, one of which had originally been a Maid’s room, and was at then end of the second story hallway, behind a door blocking the hallway.  Adjacent to the room was a back stairway to the kitchen.  Also on the 2nd floor, a full and a half-bath.  First floor had a small library (with a fireplace), a living room, a formal dining room and kitchen.  There was a lot of woodwork in the style of the time. The basement was finished and had an outside entrance.  The third floor was mostly used as an attic but at one time had been finished as a ball room.

In researching the house I learned that it was built by a Kankakee dry goods merchant. circa 1914.  Had I been him?  Why did I instinctively know the layout of this house?

  • In 1997 the movie Titanic premiered. My partner of the time and my step daughter went ot see it at 41st Avenue Theatre in Capitola.  It was a good movie. The writing was very good as were the performances by the actors.

But I didn’t stay through it.  When the ship’s stern turned straight up into the air, I left the theatre, returned to the car, and trembled for a good fifteen minutes.  I had a deja vu moment:  I saw myself as a young boy, maybe four or five. I was laying in bed. My mother sat in a chair beside me. Water was coming into our room from under the door. We were below decks. Trapped.

I have since tried to sit all the way through that movie. I have yet to succeed.

  • I used to have a recurring dream:  I am walking hand in hand hand with a woman beside a body of water.  It’s near sundown. I never saw her face.   I had this dream continuously, a minimum of three times a week, beginning when I was nine of ten.  In the beginning the woman was a young girl.  As I got older, she grew with me so she was always around my same age.  As I learned more about geography in school, the places the dream occurred in began to become recognizable.  Along the river Seine in Paris. By Lake Michigan.  On an island in the South Pacific. A few times, and this occurred before the debut of the first Star Wars movie, we were walking by some water, but their were two suns setting. That by the way is why Star Wars means a lot to me.

In May of 1999, I was living in Ashland OR.  Ceridwen came up from Santa Cruz to visit me and meet me for the first time.  We had had about a six month relationship by phone prior to this, but it was time to physically meet.  She was with me for a week, then she went back to Santa Cruz, got her ducks in a row, and moved it with me. We’ve been together ever since.

Now, here’s the thing. Remember I mentioned that the dream with the body of water and the woman and the sunset recurred for me at least three times a week since I was age nine?  During the week Ceridwen visited the dream did not occur. Not that I actually noticed, because I had a lot on my mind.  The dream did not recur. The dream never recurred, not ever, again.

So, from say, November of 1962 until April of 1999 I continuously  experienced this dream. That is almost thirty-seven years of my life.  The suddenly, a woman comes into my wife (the third of three wives) and the dream stops. Just like that. Cold turkey.

How do you explain that?


A pantheistic Shema

 

שמע ישראל, האדון הוא אלוהינו, האדון הוא אחד, האדון הוא אנחנו, האדון הוא הכל..

Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord is ONE, the Lord is US, the Lord is ALL.

So, what does this mean?  It is a declaration.  It states that G-d exists, that there is only one G-d, that we are G-d (Thou art G-d), that G-d is everything, that G-d is all that exists.

 


DO NOT DESPAIR!

 

 

Do not despair.

What we are seeing, with the SCOTUS misogynistic rulings , and all the Red states trying to repress the vote, and repressing women, and the daily mass shootings…… all of this is a manifestation of the death throes of the Piscean Age. So you see, it seems like these are all bad things, but in the big picture, the Age of Aquarius is upon us –

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius!”

Watch this piece from David Letterman’s old show.


Fallacies of “The Four Spiritual Laws”

 

 

The Four Spiritual Laws is an evangelical tract written by Bill Bright for the organization, Campus Crusade for Christ.  I first encountered it when I was about 18. I had a bad breakup with my first girl friend, and I was facing my birth date in a particularly vulnerable state.  I had the habit (which I still have today) of doing Yoga meditation.  On this particular occasion,  I sought out something to meditate upon, and found The Four Spiritual Laws sitting on my bedside table.

In my meditative state, I read it. I read it three times, and I said to myself, “Ok, I’ll try this.”  I recited the “sinners prayer” as prescribed in the booklet, and in that moment gave my heart to Christ. I became a “Born Again Christian.”  A “Messianic Jew.”  For the next ten years (in between which I got married and fathered three boys) I studied the Christian Bible (consisting of the Tenach and the “New Testament”), reading through it probably two or three times a year.  Funny thing. By the time I reached my 28th birthday, I had read enough that I now perceived that the whole doctrine of Christianity was utter and complete bullshit.  This was through reading the Bible.  Christian ministers also influenced this, as much of the time they talked out of both sides of their mouth.  The straw that broke the camels back though, was when the Pastor of the church I belonged to at the time, The Peoples Church, said from the pulpit: “People don’t end up in hell for their sins, they end up in hell for not loving Jesus. WHAT!  And I knew he was telling the truth.  Suddenly, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob was revealed to be a narcissist. A mad man. I wanted nothing more to do with this. I became, in that instance, right there in the pew, an Atheist.  Astrologers will tell you that what I experienced is called the Saturn Return. This is when the planet Saturn returns to that point in your chart where it was at the time of your birth, which takes twenty eight years.

But I have digressed. This missive is about the fallacies contained in the booklet, The Four Spiritual Laws.

Law # One: G-d loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.  Really, there is nothing wrong with this idea. Of course G-d loves you! YOU ARE G-D! We’re all G-d. So, let’s move on to the second law.

Law # Two: Man is sinful and separated from G-d, so we cannot know Him personally or experience His love.   The first fallacy is that G-d has a gender. G-d is composed of multiple genders and trans genders.  The second fallacy is that we can be separated from G-d. How can you separate yourself from your self?  The only way to do that is to break yourself apart. This is strictly an intellectual exercise.  What is sin? Sin is doing bad stuff.  Sin is practicing wrongfulness to G-d, which in essence is doing harm to another human being, or to Nature or yourself.  But people do bad stuff all the time.  Christians will say that the bad things are enumerated in the ten commandments.  Jews will say they are enumerated not only in the ten commandments but throughout the whole of the Torah.  That’s too complicated in my opinion.  Sin is harming yourself, another human, or nature, which is the same as harming G-d, which is the same as harming yourself.  The first, and very worst sin: Not recognizing that you are G-d.  If you would just embrace that you and everyone else on this planet is G-d, you would never be able to sin again.  We would eradicate war, poverty, ignorance and disease. So the whole premise that man is sinful is a lie. The premise that we are separated from G-d, is also a lie.

Law # Three: Jesus Christ is G-d’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him alone we can know G-d personally and experience G-d’s love.  The “provision for man’s sin” is for a man or woman to come to the realization that we are G-d. That’s it.  So that is the first lie here. The second is Jesus: there is ample evidence that Jesus never existed. The history goes against the existence of an historical Jesus. There are a ton of contradictions between the four Gospel accounts.  Here’s a few: the town of Nazareth did not exist during the time period that Jesus is alleged to have lived. There is no record of Herod sending his troops to massacre any children in Bethlehem.  There is a record of a man named Jesus being crucified.  In fact there are hundreds. Jesus was as common a name among Jews in that time as it is is among Mexicans today. Not a single one of them had their crimes inscribed on a sign hanging at the top of the cross. The Gospels themselves are not “eye witness” but in fact were written over fifty years after the alleged crucifixion (Note: In that time period, the majority did not live much past 35). There is a ton of this kind of stuff.

Law # Four: We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know G-d personally and experience His love.  The problem here is an impossible exercise to experience something that the normal human being experiences every day of their lives.  1) You can’t receive someone who never existed.  2) We know G-d personally and experience their love simply by breathing. YOU ARE G-D! G-D IS YOU! There is nothing you can do to change this, except, denying that it’s true.

 


It happened at Kirtan

 

 

Went to Kirtan a couple weeks ago. It was the first one held in two years indoors. Last summer we had a few outdoor Kirtans at Redwood Park in Arcata. This was the first back at Om Shala Yoga Studio. Only four musicians, but maybe the rest will return once things get more established.  The event attracted a pretty good crowd. I counted about 60 people.

It was good. Very, very good.

Then something bad happened. Well, maybe not bad, but very inappropriate. After the end, a lady started circulating a petition for “health choice freedom.” Only it wasn’t about a woman’s health choices. It wasn’t about abortion. It was a petition against mask and vaccine mandates.

I had to hold my tongue when she approached me. You know, I’ve written about this in the past. Back at the height of the pandemic, it was my opinion that the Govt. build some new internment camps.  I would -propose that a fleet of vans be sent out and go door to door, equipped with nurses and National Guardsmen.

The Nurse knocks on the door, “Hello how are you? Have you been vaccinated?”  “Yes, I have.” “Very good. Have a nice day.”

Next stop, “”Hello how are you? Have you been vaccinated?” “No, I haven’t.”  “I can vaccinate you right here, right now.”  “Great, let me have it!.”

Next stop, ““Hello how are you? Have you been vaccinated?” “No.”  “Ok, I can vaccinate you right here, right now.” “No, I don’t believe in that.”  “Ok. No worries,” and then the nurse signals to the National Guardsman to take the person, or persons, into custody. They are taken to an internment camp to live with other unvaccinated people.

I know this isn’t probably a very popular idea, but, “the good of the many outweighs the good of the few.”

But I didn’t confront this woman. Not at Kirtan. I wasn’t going to counter an inappropriate act with another. So I lied. I told her I had signed it at Safeway. She kind of gave me the stink eye. I think she knew I was lying. Well, I wear this red string around my left wrist. It’s to ward off just such a thing.

But – you know? Kirtan is sacred space. Politics should be left outside the door.

I have spoken.


Manifesting the Star Trek future of Earth

 

It’s simple really.

Each of us has to realize, and embrace, the fact – the scientific fact – that we are G-d. We are G-d manifested as the collective of humanity. We are not individuals. We are an interdependent collective. Once we all realize, and embrace this, we will manifest the Star Trek vision of Earth’s future.

 


Mooji, Eckhart & The Awakened – A Facebook group (Maybe a Cult?)

 

 

This group describes itself as: “…an advanced group for those who are attracted to knowing the true nature of reality, especially those taught by Mooji, Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts, Adyashanti, Rupert Spira, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj and others with the same non-dual theme. Let’s try to keep postings and or discussions on Oneness (Non-Duality), or the integration of the (Non-Dual) Truth into our everyday lives.”

So I posted the following memes. ALL of them were rejected without comment or explanation. Why?

Michael Soham. He’s an admin and “group expert.” He is also apparently the one who approves all posts. He is also the most frequent poster, including many, many, many memes attributed to himself. He’s an egotistic putz, so wrapped up in his own spirituality that he makes a complete mockery of the teachings and the teachers.

This was my last post. I am not surprised that it was not allowed:

This groups description states, “This is an advanced group for those who are attracted to knowing the true nature of reality, especially those taught by Mooji, Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts, Adyashanti, Rupert Spira, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj and others with the same non-dual theme.”
 
Well, this is exactly why I was attracted to the group. I like to contribute things. I see it as almost a duty, and most Admins expect this behavior. I’ve contributed several memes to the group, all of which, I believe anyway, kept with the guidelines stated:
“Let’s try to keep postings and or discussions on Oneness (Non-Duality), or the integration of the (Non-Dual) Truth into our everyday lives.”
 
Now, three posts were quotes from Osho. One was a quote from Stephan Gabriel (who, incidentally, is a local (Humboldt County CA) Guru, and I believe a member of this group). What was wrong with these posts? Do you not like Osho? Is Sri Baba Ram Stephan not famous enough? If wisdom is quoted, does it really matter WHO said it? Or, perhaps, I am the one who is not worthy. I can accept that. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.

 

What usually happens when I have strong disagreements with Admins, is that I block them and maybe start a new, related group. Here is the new group: Thou art God!


About the Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh

 

He is also known as Osho.

I recently completed watching the Netflix Documentary, “Wild. Wild, Country.”  It is a very well done. six part series, concerning Osho (The Bhagwan Rajneesh) and his attempt to establish an intentional community in rural Oregon in 1981.

I’ve always felt that the man was very wise, perhaps even a Boddhisatva, I can really relate, as I too dream of just such a spiritual community to be established here in the Redwoods of Northern California.

The documentary interviewed lots of people who were involved, on both sides of the controversy.

My take: Osho’s first mistake was trusting Sheila. She was probably alright in the beginning, but she very quickly became bat-shit- crazy, and ultimately it was her and only her who was responsible for the demise of Rajneeshpuram.   First, the last place you should try a project like this is rural Oregon. The people are there are backwards, redneck, racist Xians.  They would never accept brown people practicing any form of Hinduism. If Rajneeshpuram had been established in California, there would probably have been no problem. Take for example the intentional community called Ananda. It’s a successful version of Osho’s vision, that has thrived for some fifty years.

Now Osho had some other things that would not be acceptable to redneck racist Christians:

  1. He wasn’t a Christian.
  2.  He wasn’t white.
  3. He wasn’t an American.
  4.  He believed that sex was a sacrament – something that should be enjoyed and even something that can be used to further ones “enlightenment.”  (I believe that also, and I always have.)

So those were the main “sins.”  He was accused of a lot of stuff, but it was Sheila who did the bulk of the dirty deeds. Osho was not aware of this stuff.

The worst thing, I think, was the way the Government broke him.  Osho was a old man with deteriorating health.  When he tried to flee the country aboard a Learjet, that plane had to refuel, and it was in Charlotte North Carolina where the aircraft was being refueled that agents of our Government captured him.  It took four hours for him to fly from Rajneeshpuram to Charlotte NC. but the US Marshalls took him from facility to facility in shackles for three weeks, which was clearly reckless and abusive. In the end he pled guilty to all charges because he just didn’t have the physical stamina, at his age, to fight anymore. Shortly after he returned to India he passed away.

Osho was a saint. Our Government, and the rednecks of Oregon, made him a martyr.

I bring this up because after posting a meme of one of Osho’s quotes, my middle son asked me if I had seen another documentary about what happened in Oregon.  I was never able to find that particular video, but when Netflix released this one, I jumped on it.  Now, up until this time I have refrained from posting any Osho memes, because of my middle sons concern.

Well, that’s not going to happen again. Osho was innocent. He as for all intents and purposes a saint, a very wise holy man, and from this time forward I will post his memes.

Namaste!

 

 


The Rabbi’s Story

 

 

It’s a High School class of about fifteen boys and girls.  The Rabbi says, “Today we’re going to examine some of the creation stories in the Torah, and specifically Genesis.”

“The stories of Adam and Eve and of Noah and the Ark are metaphors.  They represent events that happened, but not in the way they are presented.”

“Let’s start with Adam and Eve. They are living in Eden. They disobey Hashem, and they get kicked out. What really happened?  Eden was a planet between Mars and Jupiter. Today, all that is left is an asteroid field – the remains of what was once the planet Eden.  Adam and Eve represent mankind, and what happened is that they, through technological advancement, blew it up.”

“So mankind relocated to Mars.”

“This is the Noah and the Ark story.  On Mars mankind destroyed the atmosphere. This happened, as it happened on Eden, over many thousands of years.  Once again mankind had to relocate and this is how we ended up on Earth.”

“The Ark, the space ship that brought us from Mars,  is still with us. Most nights you can see her, as she orbits the Earth.  Today we call her the Moon.”

Let’s look at some facts about the Moon:

  1. The moon’s rotation aligns almost perfectly with its rotation around the Earth, we only ever see one side of it that is the near side. The far side remains hidden. It is one of the most surprising facts about Moon that you don’t know. This is unique to our Moon. None of the other moons around the other planets in our solar system behave this way. But, artificial satellites also do this,
  2. The moon doesn’t orbit around Earth’s equator, like many other planets’ moons. It’s inclined 20-30°.
  3.  Large lunar craters, generally assumed to be formed from meteor impact, are generally too shallow and have flat or even convex bottoms. They hypothesized that small meteors are making a cup-shaped depression in the rocky surface of the moon while the larger meteors are drilling through a rocky layer and hitting an armored hull underneath. The fact is that no craters are more than 144 feet deep anywhere on the moon.
  4. Between 1969 and 1977, seismometers installed on the Moon by the Apollo missions recorded moonquakes. The Moon was described as “ringing like a bell” during some of those quakes, specifically the shallow ones. This phrase was brought to popular attention in March 1970 in an article in Popular Science. When Apollo 12 deliberately crashed the Ascent Stage of its Lunar Module onto the Moon’s surface, NASA reported that the Moon rang like a bell for almost an hour, leading to arguments that it must be hollow like a bell.
  5. There are other things as well. See https://oursolarsystem.fandom.com/wiki/Spaceship_Moon_Theory for more information.

“Why was this space ship left in orbit?  Why wasn’t it sent into the sun, like the spaceships in the Science Fiction TV series conclusion of Battlestar Galactica?  There are a number of things the moon does for the Earth, including slowing down it’s rotation, regulating the tides and others.  My guess was that when man kind arrived here, they found that the Earth was not quite inhabitable, and found that their spaceships parking spot in orbit made things a lot better.”

“What’s my point?  “Everything has happened before, and it will happen again.”  Man made climate change is destroying our home at an alarming rate. We’re doing it again. Only this time, where will we go?”