In 1902 William James published a book entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience, which was compiled from the Guilford Lectures he delivered in Edinburgh Scotland in the 1890s. His audience was academic and scientific, and tended to believe too little rather than too much, according to James. Although his ideas are over 100 years old, they are still relevant. He proposed that we would do well to pay attention to the effects of the religious experience on the lives of those who practice it. He speaks of applying the test of common sense to evaluate the actions and practices of those who profess certain beliefs, and if those human activities pass the test, then so do the beliefs that inspire them. If not, then the beliefs also will be discredited. In fact, he notes that religions do fall out of favor as soon as they cease to fit the needs of the humans who attempt to apply them to their lives. He was criticized for applying empirical practices to the study of religious expression, lest religion itself be encouraged and make even more of a public nuisance of itself. I suspect there might be some in this community who could agree, at least partly to such a criticism.
James writes:
“Religious fermentation is always a symptom of the intellectual vigor of a society; and it is only when they forget that they are hypotheses and put on rationalistic and authoritative pretensions, that our faiths do harm. The most interesting and valuable things about a man are his ideals and over-beliefs.”
I would invite you to apply these tests to what I have to say today, and do not judge me too harshly as long as I do not cross the line by “putting on rationalistic and authoritative pretensions.” And I would ask one more thing of you, and that is to take what I have to say and put it to the test of your own discernment. I ask you to take it into your heart, and notice how it feels in that space. If it speaks to your heart through a sense of warmth or a feeling that it fits for you, then I would invite you to consider it further. If not, then it would be best, I believe, to set it aside without judgment, for it may speak to another.
I am hoping that my reflections on cosmology and my sharing of my own spiritual journey will be of some value to you today.
I must admit that to share details of my spiritual journey with you today is just a bit frightening, due I suppose to my sense that many of my beliefs will be in the minority in this community. A couple of months ago, Rev. Charles Stephen delivered a sermon here entitled “Is Secularism the Will of God?” In that sermon he quoted a New York Times article that reported a recent poll where the majority of respondents in the United States said they believed in angels. The backdrop of the presentation of this piece of information was that of the gullibility or irrationality of such beliefs.
Rev. Stephen stated:
In the secular world responsibility for what happens lies in human hands. This belief is greatly different from the ancient belief that the gods are everywhere and cause everything. Our secular society has gradually broken away from the belief that ancient customs were magical or sacred and that the institutions of this world were ordained by deity. To be secularist is to see institutions, governments, churches, mosques, temples as created by human beings. It is to see ethics and rules as human creations.
My particular brand of spirituality does the same, and I am here to share it with you. I do believe in angels. I believe in fact that all of us are creatures of light, and that we are the Magicians of the Gameboard of Free Choice. I suppose I ought to back up a little here and get a bit more into cosmology. I offer the following as a creation myth. I would also like to acknowledge that my understandings have been significantly influenced by the work of Steve Rother.
Imagine that in the beginning there is only the Oneness. We could if we wish call the oneness God or Goddess, or the Watchmaker, or Universe. You might imagine the Oneness as a circle with no beginning and no end.
The Oneness has no ability to view itself so it bends itself around. Where it meets itself, sparks are set off, that appear to live outside the Oneness for a finite period of time. But of course, they are never actually separated from the Oneness due to the fact that it is a Oneness. However, by having a finite existence these sparks develop a perspective that allows them to view the Oneness, which was the whole point of the bending exercise. This goes on in many varieties and flavors. Each big spark could be a Big Bang. Little sparks could be various creatures of light, angels if you will.
At some point, these angels are hanging around and someone comes up with an idea of creating a special Gameboard, where angels would enter, but would put on a special veil that makes them forget who they are. Something like a virtual reality game where the players get so caught up in the game that they forget that they are really sitting in a booth somewhere. Or perhaps like the movie the Matrix, where this whole world is actually a very sophisticated computer program that we are plugged into without our knowledge.
Except, in this case, we are actually powerful angels of light, or Love, sparks of the Oneness, sparks of God. Once we put on the veil and enter the Gameboard we forget our power; we forget that there is no separation between our existence and the existence of “so called others.” We never in reality leave the Oneness. What happens, however, is that by putting on the veil, and taking on these dense physical bodies, we enter a world of polarity. Not only do we forget who we are and our inseparateness from each other and the Oneness, we also enter a time stream with the arrow pointing in one direction, from the past to the present to the future. We begin to see things as opposites. We begin to see the world and our experience in it as a world where there is good on one side and evil on another, which is of course not actually possible in the Oneness. To quote a more familiar creation myth, we have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We see up and down, light and dark, male and female, straight and gay, liberal and conservative, here and there, right and wrong, helpful and unhelpful, day and night, religious and secular.
Let’s go back to those angels coming up with the idea of the Gameboard of Free choice. The angel critics of the idea ask: “What would be the point of such an experiment?” And the angel proponents of it reply: “Let’s see if we could, in spite of the veil, in spite of being caught up into polarity, let’s see if we could re-member who we are and connect with each other and love each other. Let’s see if we could create a world on the other side of the veil like our world here. Let’s see if we could create heaven on earth. And the critics would say: “That is preposterous. We would get so caught up into the many experiences of polarity that we would probably destroy ourselves.” And the proponents would say: “So what if we do? It would be a challenge anyway, and who knows maybe we could succeed. If not, that’s O.K. too at least we had another adventure.”
And so they (we) decided to try the experiment, and the Gameboard of Free Choice (planet Earth) was built. We came in and have been living here ever since, lifetime after lifetime, trying out this and that, but always keeping to the rules. We had to put on the veil at birth, and could not take it off until death.
We did find however, that these dense bodies could not contain all of who we were, so when we were born, we kept part of ourselves on the other side of the veil, to watch and learn, and this could be called our Higher Self, or our Guardian Angel. And any of our friends or spiritual family who did not incarnate at the same time as we did, could also hang out to watch and learn, perhaps offering encouragement from time to time with subtle hints.
Of course there is no morality or ethics on the other side of the veil, there is only the Oneness, Only Love. From the perspective of the angels, all choices are honored. We, my friends, here at this moment, we are the Magicians of the Gameboard of Free Choice. Charles Stephen rightly praises the secularist for seeing institutions, governments, churches, mosques, and temples as created by human beings and for seeing ethics and rules as human creations. The cosmology I have presented here does the same. Of course it is we who have created all this. It wasn’t the gods who did it, except that we are the gods who do it.
I have a difficult time deciding if this cosmology is deist or theist or something else entirely. In common usage, a deist believes in a God who started things out and then became disinterested. A theist on the other hand has some belief in the creator being active in human affairs. In the cosmology I have described God remains active because we are all a part of god. However, theism seems to assume a separation between us creatures and the creator, which is not present in my cosmology. So I will leave it up to you to decide, or perhaps it isn’t really that important, simply another of our many struggles with polarity.
What is left for me to discuss, however, is what effect, if any, such a cosmology might have on our perceptions of each other and of the world. I would maintain that all the benefits of an atheistic secularism, or secular humanism, remain with us. It is still up to us as humans to create or destroy, to love or to hate (more exercises in polarity of course). At the same time, I believe there are benefits that are not evident in secular humanism. I will outline some of them as follows:
1. When I encounter a fellow human being, I am aware that I am meeting a fellow angel, a comrade of the universe, another part of god. Any conflict or difficulty that we might have is an illusion, unique to this illusion of polarity. Such conflict can possibly be there as one of those hints to help me to re-member who I am and to learn to love in spite of the veil. And so why not engage in this conflict with love in my heart, and hope in my soul that I might take another step toward the creation of heaven on Earth?
2. Since I too am a spark of god, I need not waste precious energy in putting myself down, in wallowing in guilt, or in regretting mistakes of the past.
3. When Fear enters my field, I need not embrace it unless I want to, if I can only re-member how incredibly powerful a creature I am. Nothing can possibly hurt me since I am fundamentally a creature of light. I chose to enter this Gameboard of Free Choice because I wanted to experience everything. This opens up the possibility of frustration being my delight, and excruciating pain my joy.
4. Many of us including myself have a difficult time refraining from making judgments about others, sometimes hurtful petty judgments. If I can re-member, however, that there can be never be any fundamental difference between myself and another human being, because we are all angels of light, and from the perspective of the other side, there are no judgments, then perhaps I can free myself from the tyranny of judgment.
5. Living as we do in this world of polarity, it is easy to get frustrated, or even to step into despair, especially when we see how cruel and heartless we are capable of behaving toward one another, toward Grand Mother Earth, and toward our fellow creatures. If I can re-member that whatever cruelty I witness or hear about, in some lifetime I have done something just as terrible, then I can perhaps step into compassion not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators. We are in this project together. We will succeed in creating heaven on earth together, or we will not succeed together. Three is no possibility of some being “saved” and others “condemned.” We may, if we wish, decide to punish the perpetrators on this side of the veil, but there is no punishment on the other side, because there is no real separation.
6. It is easy to see this world as not having enough. There is not enough food for all of us humans. There is not enough time to get what I need to do, done. There is not enough money to call a full time minister. There is not enough love in my heart to love everyone. There is not enough patience in my soul to parent four children. Etc. Etc. However, if I re-member that I am a Magician in this Gameboard of Free Choice, then I might re-member that I can create whatever I want here. I do take thought and I create emotions. I routinely, without even thinking about it, transform life forms such as plants and animals into my own flesh and blood. I am a powerful magician. I can think a thing, and then I manifest it in my life. I can set a goal in my mind, set it in motion in my life, and create it through interaction with others. I can take light and create matter. Any limitations to this process are created by me due to my difficulty in seeing beyond the polarities and limitations to which I have become habituated.
At this point, some of you may be thinking, this is wild, perhaps even interesting, but “Do you really believe all this stuff?” I want to answer first of all, that it might not matter whether I do or don’t actually believe this stuff. If I can act as if it were true, what might happen? Wouldn’t some of the effects described above be positive developments?
Secondly, because we are living in a field of polarity, I have to assume that whatever metaphors or stories I can come up with, will not be exactly accurate. When I described the angels’ argument about whether to start the experiment, I was, for example, using polarity thinking. I cannot conceive a universe without it, so it permeates even my description of the Oneness.
Thirdly, although these beliefs may seem fantastic, I do not think they are any more fantastic than what physicists and mathematicians have been coming up with lately. For example, can you believe that this universe is actually made up of 11 dimensional realties, but we are only able to perceive four, three of space and one of time? Or how about the notion that this entire universe is a three dimensional bane (something like a hologram) set on the edge of a multi-dimensional reality? Or that all matter is made up of tiny strings of energy, that it is only the direction and spin of those strings that distinguish starfish from stars, and that these strings also spin in other dimensions that we are unable to perceive? Or that there are an infinity of universes, each with slightly different natural laws? Or that every time we make a decision, the universe splits into two with one universe carrying out one decision and the other, another? All of these ideas are legitimately proposed theories in physics or mathematics (although I do not claim to be presenting them accurately or precisely here).
I would close today with a question as to whether I have crossed the William James’ line of not putting on rationalistic and authoritative pretensions. If not, then I would invite you again to use your own discernment and place these ideas on your heart to see if they resonate there. If so, then I would invite you to reflect more on them. If not, then I would invite you to leave them alone, but without judgment, for although their flavor is not suitable for your palate, they might be suitable for others. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you today.
References
James, William The Varieties of Religious Experience, Signet Classic,
Penguin Putnam Inc.: 2003 [Library of Congress 2002033819] The quotation
is from
the
Introduction by Peter J. Gomes, page xvii, , and it is a quote of James from
another source.
Rother, Steve — please see his website at lightworker.com.