Mystic Messiah: A Chapter From Born Again To Rebirth Focused On The Person Of Jesus

I say by Nut, the brilliant, the great: This is my son, my first born, opener of my womb; this is my beloved, with whom I have been satisfied. – 2400-2300 BC Ancient Pyramid Texts, Hymn 1

The life of Jesus is one of the most debated, celebrated and argued subjects of all time.  What can be said about someone who changed the face of the world by his presence?  At times, Jesus showed supreme compassion and love, at other times he claimed to be God himself. I’d like to discuss some aspects of his life and existence that seem to be little talked about. If you have followed so far, you will not need this chapter to definitively tell you whether or not Jesus was the Son of God, sacrificed to save your soul, but this book would be incomplete without direct attention given to Jesus.  No matter what you believe about him, his life was full of mystery and magic and life lessons that we can all benefit from without necessarily believing him to be God incarnate in the fashion that the New Testament paints him.

Very little time is really spent giving detail to the beginnings and upbringing of Jesus.  We are almost expected to gloss over it without a thought, but this era is full of mystery and amazing possibility and should be examined with a little more thought in order to ascertain how Jesus became the ageless figure we know him as today. Let’s start from the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (NIV)

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.  When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.  “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.  He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.  When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.  On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

The story is well known, but the first thing that we notice is the presence of the Magi.  Who were these Magi from the east?  Since the Bible puts them front and center, they must have had special significance, because they are the first point of validation of the kingship of Jesus, or his extremely special nature.  Since the fourth century BC, the Magi were generally considered adepts of the great Persian alchemist and magician, Zoroaster.  This singular detail brings up a question of spiritual authority, which we covered earlier;

By whose power do these people operate, by God or by Satan?  If by God, then does this validate the use of magic in the Zoroastrian tradition?  And if by the devil, then why would their presence be allowed to stain the pages of the Holy Bible?

This is an important question for Christians to ask because the Magi are absolutely foundational in the initial validation of Jesus as the Christ.  According to Old Testament law, witchcraft, divination and alchemy are all forbidden and yet we have the adepts of Zoroaster front and center in the life of little baby Jesus.

Let’s look at this from a philosophical standpoint and imagine what it would be like to be the Magi searching for this newborn king.  The Magi were of enough renown to have audience with King Herod and were obviously very advanced in their knowledge of astrology.  If the Magi stopped everything they were doing to follow a star and find this new king, would they not possibly bring gifts that instilled their vast and ancient magical knowledge?  Doesn’t it seem unlikely that they would only bring fine oils, incense and treasures to a world-changing king?  It seems highly plausible that these Magi would bring magical texts for the young king that would educate him in their ways.  When we later see the miracles that Jesus performs, it makes sense.  He demonstrated a vast understanding of, not just the world as the Jews of that time saw it, but of eastern and Egyptian thought. With this in mind, let’s take a look at the next pivotal event in the life of young Jesus;

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

From this point on, Jesus is raised in Egypt, the home of the very first monotheistic religion in the world.  If you look at the quote from the Pyramid text at the beginning of this chapter, you see a familiar concept, “this is my son…in whom I am well pleased” The Egyptian theology is a keystone of the life of Jesus. Concepts of being reborn and being a singular son of a monotheistic God were traditions of Egyptian thought long before Jesus was born.  Any short study into the life of Pharaohs will reveal this fact.  Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten who ruled around 1340 BC claimed to be the Son of Aten, the God of Gods.  When you look at the parallel between Osiris and Jesus, the similarities in concepts of rebirth, victory over the grave and being Lord of the afterlife are quite compelling.  So now Jesus is perfectly placed in the presence of the ancient Magi and is now living in Egypt, the ancient home of religion.  Jesus lived in Egypt until the age of twelve, returning to Israel after King Herod died.

Now imagine this for a moment, you are Jesus.  You’ve been told the story of your birth and the visitation of the Magi and being of the Hebrew faith, you’ve been read the prophecies about the messiah.  You’ve likely received ancient and special knowledge from the Magi.  They would have equipped you to the best of their understanding.

Let’s think about this seriously for a moment.  If you were told you were going to be the savior of the world, wouldn’t you do everything you could to learn the great teachings of the east and Egypt, especially if those teachings were placed in your lap?  With these details in hand, it seems to point to Jesus having access to Egyptian and Persian teachings in the area of magic. Jesus’ life and times were important astrological events that both Persian and Egyptian astrologers would undoubtedly recognize as very important. Many aspects of Jesus’ life were beyond his control.  He could not, for instance, choose where he was born, or by whom he was born of.  In traditional Christian teaching, we’ve glossed over some very important aspects of his life and have built a belief system out of it.

When we witness the amazing works that modern magicians can perform, we know that they are not God, even though their deeds are often otherworldly.  We know that there are healers in every religious tradition in every corner of the world, from witch doctors in Africa, to psychic surgeons in Mexico and even faith healers in Christian traditions.  In this day and age, we have a mixture of all of the things that Christ did, even resurrection from the grave. When we consider the experiences that Jesus went through during his 40 days in the desert, we see a common theme in the transformative process of any great spiritual leader.  As I have described before, shamans and medicine men go through a harrowing wilderness experience in which they are carted into a spirit world and exposed to all forms of torture at the hands of strange beings.  In the fourth chapter of The Gospel of Matthew we see Jesus going through this experience;

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

At the very beginning of this chapter, we see that Jesus is led by the spirit to be tempted by the devil.  This denotes a pre-meditated plan to go through his vetting process as a spiritual leader.  The fact that he fasted for 40 days also is of great importance.  As I said before, one of the ways in which a shaman comes to a great spiritual state is through austerity.  Through starvation and absolute submission to the spirit world, a leader shows his reverence for the realm beyond and is submitted to whatever torture is set before them.  This is not a coincidence, but is a tradition that Jesus would have known of from his understanding of Persian and Egyptian wisdom in the realm of magic.  In this state he is brought face to face with the great tempter and must get through these tests before fully coming to his own as a spiritual master.  Roughly 500 years prior to the arrival of Jesus, another great spiritual leader went through this same universal process that many spiritual greats go through.

In the story of the Buddha, Siddhartha refused to leave the base of the bodhi tree under which he was meditating until he had reached enlightenment.  Here in this state of self-refusal and deep meditation, Siddhartha was also confronted with the pleasures of the world, offered the kingdoms of the world, but Siddhartha refused it all, knowing that all of these offers were illusory.  The devil of East Indian culture, Mara displayed all of these temptations before Buddha.  Only after Siddhartha was forced to look at and deny his very ego was he able to reach enlightenment. So here, these world-changing spiritual leaders are led along a parallel path before truly beginning their spiritual work.  In each case, the leader is capable of many glorious miracles and healings and supernatural power of every sort.  There is a primary difference between Siddhartha and Jesus though; only Jesus claimed to be God.  In John 8:53-59 we see this claim with clarity;

(The Pharisees said) Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”

Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”  At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

The significance comes when he says, “before Abraham was born, I AM”.  This is because he says the word for God, a word that was unlawful to say directly.  He directly said that he was God.  From my perspective, it’s easy to understand how Jesus came to believe this.  His life was started with the appearance of the greatest wise men of the age worshipping him; he was raised with this knowledge and an otherworldly gift to accomplish great deeds and miracles and everywhere he went, people gathered behind him.   In short, I believe that Jesus really thought he was God, but what he really meant upon this proclamation was not fully clear at the time of his crucifixion.  Another valuable thought in this discussion is the idea that Jesus simply knew that we were all God in the sense that we were an extension of the sensory portion of the ethereal God and he was to be our patriarch of this realization.  Like drops of water in the ocean, Jesus understood that he was both a drop of water in the ocean of God and as a drop in the ocean was also the ocean itself.   This dual message is very Gnostic in nature and was way too advanced for its time in the west, though accepted broadly in other cultures of the east. Robert Bauval & Graham Hancock had this to say about the Gnostics in their book, The Master Game:
In 1945 a great hoard of hitherto unknown Gnostic texts from the early centuries of the Christian era was found at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. Since the translation and eventual publication of these texts in 1977 it has become apparent that Christianity’s relationship with Gnosticism goes back to the very beginnings of the Christian cult in the first century AD. Likewise, it is now obvious, and widely accepted, that, ‘Christian Gnosticism’ was not some offshoot from the mainstream of Christianity. On the contrary it was part of the mainstream-perhaps even the major part. If Gnosticism was part of the mainstream of Christianity, why don’t we know about them or incorporate their thoughts in modern Christian doctrine? Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock continue:
And then something happened. From the beginning of the fourth century AD, as it acquired state power, the Church undertook a radical change in direction. The freethinking and sometimes anarchical approach of Gnostics began to be frowned upon, their allegorical interpretations of the scriptures were dropped in favor of literal ones, and persecutions for heresy began almost immediately. A little history shows us that the side of Christianity that we see today is the side that won out by literally killing off the other side. The victor writes history and so it has been even in Christendom. By 325 AD, the Council of Nicea had put together the Bible the way they wanted it to be and excluded Gnostic theology and teachings; teachings that painted Jesus in a much more eastern light. What did the Gnostics believe that was so different? The Gnostics believed that the God of the Old Testament was an evil demigod and not the true God of spirit. They believed that the physical world was a literal hell and that the flesh was doomed to pull the real you into perdition forever. They practiced extreme austerities and denied themselves any sort of pleasure, knowing that it would lead them towards more fleshly desires. In essence, they were devout believers that Jesus came to show us an example of how to live this life; that he was a phantasm of the true God of creation.

They believe that his death and resurrection were to simply show us his power and might as an illustration of God’s victory over the fleshly world. The Gnostics were against violence and were therefore easy to kill and persecute once the Christian church had the spears of Rome at its disposal.

And so we see that there was more than one perspective on the Old Testament, a Gnostic Christian perspective that in my mind more closely reflects what our sensible humanitarian natures are agreeable to. One perspective says that the God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. This is the traditional view based on what has been passed down, first in Catholicism and now to Protestantism. The other view is just as relevant if you wish to be a purist about who Christians really were in the first 3 centuries of its existence. This is the view that the God of the Old Testament was indeed a blood soaked monster who wished to enslave humanity in subservience and reverence to him. This makes sense when you see words like ‘Jealous’ repeated in Old Testament prophecy and scripture. These traits seem all too human to be truly divine.

However we believe it, Jesus' claim was in a context that was unacceptable to the powers that were, and this was the reason why they eventually sent him to the cross.  After this statement, Jesus knew that he would die as a martyr, but did he perhaps still have the upper hand?  Was he, as the greatest real magician of all time capable of performing the ultimate act by surviving the crucifixion?  

I know that this may be a hard idea to swallow, but if you look today at the works of street magicians, you can see feats similar to these.  Popular magicians like Criss Angel can perform amazing feats that are astonishingly Christ-like in potency.  You can see him walk on water with people all around him.  You can even see him get run over by a steamroller while lying on a bed of broken glass.  Imagine now that a person of this skill level could do all of these things in reality.  If you look at the nature of his beginnings, I think that you can understand how this is possible.  

Imagine that Jesus was a true healer in the shamanic respect and a Magi in his understanding of himself in the timing and placement within the universal order.  Imagine all of those traits all held in one man who truly thought that he was God in a sense that was completely foreign at the time, even to his own disciples.  If this were really the case, then what seems impossible, the survival of a Roman crucifixion is possible and in his case, probable.

After his greatest feat, his disciples who learned many of his ways and understanding were able to perform similar miracles and deeds by the same understanding.  This was all a proof to them that Jesus was truly that he said he was.  They believed in him so strongly that many became martyrs for this belief. Though many often associate it with the most pious of ways to die, we must understand that martyrdom is not proof of truth.  If that were the case, then extreme Islamic suicide bombings would be proving their beliefs to be true.  

I believe that the very best guess about the source of Jesus’ power was ancient magic from Persian and Egyptian sources, or that he was as the Gnostics said. It is my strong opinion that Jesus could have easily been an adept of the magic and teachings of the Magi and a learned and naturally skilled shaman, evidentially the greatest that ever lived. This is how he accomplished everything he did. This also meshes very well with Gnostic concept that Jesus was actually a far advanced incorporeal being that materialized in order to perfect his process of becoming one with God fully as the creative force and best example of our own eventual journey to oneness.

Salvation in the traditional western Christian view is necessary because we are guilty criminals in the court of God. The crucifixion represents the suffering and death that Jesus underwent to acquit us of our condemnation. To the Gnostic, the crucifixion was a gory horror that should not have been flaunted as by their competitors of the early church. The waving of the cross, to them was a new form of idolatry that held people firmly in the evil demigod’s world of fleshly distraction, worrying about the tearing and destruction of the body and not the message of freedom.

To the Gnostics the crucifixion was the final representation of what we can accomplish if we follow Christ’s lead. In other words, the real God that Jesus represents in the Gnostic mind is one who wants peers, while the traditional western Christian God wants groveling supplicants and slaves. In a moment that often is overlooked, Jesus himself tells us which he prefers in John 15:15 (NIV): I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
In this passage, Jesus relates us as equals, not as slaves or underlings. I’ve already explained the difference between what it means to be a part of God, therefore to be God, yet not be God in the entire sense. This mindset brings encouragement, reverence and motivation to me while freeing my mind from the burden of fear brought on by the evil demi-god of the Old Testament. If you can follow that thought, then you can understand how Jesus Christ relates to us with world changing power without the greatest guilt trip ever laid on humanity by the western Christian version of the story.

In the Far East, there are great masters, who even after they have lived and died still provide guidance to spiritual seekers today.  Jesus is considered to be one of the greatest masters of all time in this spiritual respect and appears to people of every religion around the world.  There are many other ways in which we can speculate about how Jesus did what he did, but the stars did not lie when they guided the Magi.  We know this assuredly because we are still talking about him today.  People still worship him as God, but with a misunderstanding of the nature of God and our place with God.  Indeed, there is much to be learned from the life of Jesus, but it does not necessarily mean that he was the Son of God in the way the New Testament claims.  

Finally, you only need Jesus to be the Son of God, sacrificed for your sins if you buy into the rest of the biblical text being the inerrant word of God.  I have already presented the evidence, both empirically and philosophically to bring serious doubt to the concept biblical concept of sin, salvation and hell.  But when you see his deeds and his great teachings, they should be appreciated and applied as your heart guides you along your own spiritual path.  Jesus might have been like a stone thrown into still water, causing ripples in every direction. His disciples being close to him rode the wave of his power and eventually losing His essence as the years made the ripples smaller and smaller, ran with their version of his story until the water again became stagnant in the mire of human error and the collection of earthly power.

God & The Transcendental Object At The End Of History

Preparing a moka pot of coffee this morning, I decided to continue my reading of Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The primary thrust of the book is to show the world-wide correlation of all holy texts from tribal tales to what we consider canonized texts of antiquity. There is indeed a unifying theme of the human experience, the drive toward religion and the seeking of a personal quest for enlightenment.

Terence McKenna once spoke of what he referred to as the transcendental object at the end of history as the unifying vision that all seekers see in the hallucinations of mushrooms, LSD, DMT, Mescaline and Ayahuasca. He described this object as the same thing, but looking different. In describing this monolithic object, he cited the mathematical concept of a free floating cone in blank space. He added that if we were to imagine this simple object viewed by many, we would see that no two people would see it in the exact same light, shape and form. In fact the view of that simple object would not be the same for any two people. It's almost as if they were not seeing the same object at all.

And so, we understand that our views are very different even though we may bear witness to the same experience.

In my psychedelic and spiritual visions, I have often seen a massive rolling curtain of eyes, holy and mystical, floating in an endless sea of stars and bejeweled with every fine thing the eye can view. It was not a view of god per se, but a view of things as they are in a way the the two natural eyes cannot perceive. I've thought this for a long time now, that the objects we envision are metaphors to help us along in our path.

I wanted to see god, but instead I saw the whole universe bursting with galaxies swirling and mathematical theoroms played out like a symphonic movement of sound and light. It took some time for me to realize that I was indeed seeing god, because god is everything.

Jospeh Campbell says this about the matter of god and our perception of it:

"We do not particularly care whether Rip van Winkle, Kamar al-Zaman, or Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Their stories are what con- cern us: and these stories are so widely distributed over the world—attached to various heroes in various lands—that the question of whether this or that local carrier of the universal theme may or may not have been a historical, living man can be of only secondary moment. The stressing of this historical ele- ment will lead to confusion; it will simply obfuscate the picture message. What, then, is the tenor of the image of the transfiguration? That is the question we have to ask. But in order that it may be confronted on universal grounds, rather than sectarian, we had better review one further example, equally celebrated, of the ar- chetypal event."

In other words, to be hung up on the religious event as an historical fact is to miss the point entirely. See again his quoting from the Bhagavad Gita and compare it to my description of my own psychedelic experience:

The following is taken from the Hindu "Song of the Lord," the Bhagavad Gita. The Lord, the beautiful youth Krishna, is an incarnation of Vishnu, the Universal God; Prince Arjuna is his disciple and friend.

Arjuna said: "O Lord, if you think me able to behold it, then, O master of yogis, reveal to me your Immutable Self." The Lord said: "Behold my forms by the hundreds and the thousands- manifold and divine, various in shape and hue. Behold all the gods and angels; behold many wonders that no one has ever seen before. Behold here today the whole universe, the moving and the unmoving, and whatever else you may desire to see, all concentrated in my body.—But with these eyes of yours you cannot see me. I give you a divine eye; behold, now, my sover- eign yoga-power."

Having spoken thus, the great Lord of yoga revealed to Arjuna his supreme form as Vishnu, Lord of the Universe: with many faces and eyes, presenting many wondrous sights, bedecked with many celestial ornaments, armed with many divine uplifted weapons; wearing celestial garlands and vestments, anointed with divine perfumes, all-wonderful, resplendent, boundless, and with faces on all sides. If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One. There in the person of the God of gods, Arjuna be- held the whole universe, with its manifold divisions, all gathered together in one. Then, overcome with wonder, his hair standing on end, Arjuna bowed his head to the Lord, joined his palms in salutation, and addressed Him:

"In Thy body, O Lord, I behold all the gods and all the di- verse hosts of beings—the Lord Brahma, seated on the lotus, all the patriarchs and the celestial serpents. I behold Thee with myr- iads of arms and bellies, with myriads of faces and eyes; I behold Thee, infinite in form, on every side, but I see not Thy end nor Thy middle nor Thy beginning, O Lord of the Universe, O Universal Form! On all sides glowing like a mass of radiance I behold Thee, with Thy diadem, mace, and discus, blazing everywhere like burning fire and the burning sun, passing all measure and difficult to behold. Thou art the Supreme Support of the Uni- verse; Thou art the undying Guardian of the Eternal Law; Thou art, in my belief, the Primal Being."

It is as if we see things like god in whatever way we will best understand, though we see it so differently, it is the same object at the end, timeless and wonderful. Campbell provides further detail:

"The disciple has been blessed with a vision transcending the scope of normal human destiny, and amounting to a glimpse of the essential nature of the cosmos. Not his personal fate, but the fate of mankind, of life as a whole, the atom and all the solar sys- tems, has been opened to him; and this in terms befitting his human understanding, that is to say, in terms of an anthropo- morphic vision: the Cosmic Man. An identical initiation might have been effected by means of the equally valid image of the Cosmic Horse, the Cosmic Eagle, the Cosmic Tree, or the Cosmic Praying-Mantis.

"The Song of the Lord" was made in terms befitting Arjuna's caste and race: The Cosmic Man whom he beheld was an aristo- crat, like himself, and a Hindu. Correspondingly, in Palestine the Cosmic Man appeared as a Jew, in ancient Germany as a German; among the Basuto he is a Negro, in Japan Japanese. The race and stature of the figure symbolizing the immanent and transcendent Universal is of historical, not semantic, moment; so also the sex: the Cosmic Woman, who appears in the iconography of the Jains.

Symbols are only the vehicles of communication; they must not be mistaken for the final term, the tenor, of their reference. no matter how attractive or impressive they may seem, they re- main but convenient means, accommodated to the understand- ing. Hence the personality or personalities of God—whether represented in trinitarian, dualistic, or Unitarian terms, in poly- theistic, monotheistic, or henotheistic terms, pictorially or ver- bally, as documented fact or as apocalyptic vision—no one should attempt to read or interpret as the final thing. The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey. "For then alone do we know God truly," writes Saint Thomas Aquinas, "when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly think of God."

"To know is not to know; not to know is to know." Mistaking a vehicle for its tenor may lead to the spilling not only of value- less ink, but of valuable blood.

Finally, we see that the transcendental object at the end of history is indeed another version of this story; a newer form of the old revelation that continues to carry us without our former religious trappings into a vision of the eternal and divine.

These are wondrous confirmations that can unify humanity if properly understood. If we truly understand that dogma is cement trying to float in the sea of all that is ever changing. The key is to float with the change and know that it is still THE experience to be visaged, the thing to know, the thing to believe. Breaking apart the cement that we are in and stepping away from dogma in this sense draws us closer to the transcendental object, the mono-myth, the one true God.

Just as Krishna revealed himself to Arjuna as Arjuna would best understand, so does the true God reveal itself unto us in whatever form we may recieve best.

This to me is a miracle and a fine example of the endless love that the universe (a term I interchange with God) has to share with us.

What a marvelous experience this life is, what a great chance we have to learn from each joy and sorrow, understanding that we are a part of God just by nature of our very existence. Though we may see things so differently, we are all viewing the same timeless event unfolding.

Your Body Isn't You.

There is a misconception among most people that they are the bodies that they inhabit. Even those who say they believe that they have a soul in the traditional religious sense seem to act as if they will have male and female genetalia once their body is cold and rotting in the ground. In the canonized bible, there is much concern over the flesh. The horrible things that happen are bloody and painful to the flesh. Even hell is reputed to be a place where your flesh eternally is melted and burnt.

Doesn't this strike anyone as weird? Our bodies are a vessel, a sleeve, a meat bag. In other terms, our body is a vehicle that our eternal self is driving. When we are done with our trip here in life, we will step out of the vehicle and keep on truckin'.

Even the mechanistic materialist would have to agree that the thing that makes us 'us' is still a series of electric impulses that ceases to be when we die. At the very least, the essence of our being is not entirely the physical aspect.

So, if our gender and our color and our good or bad looks end with our meat bags, then that means that the 'us' that is somewhere there inside is genderless, colorless and free of the trappings of the total vanity that is the human experience.

So what is a man if a man has his genitals removed? What if his legs are cut off? What if nothing but him remained but a brain in a jar, kept alive by weird science? Would he still be a man? Likewise with a woman, we know that these are wiring settings our bodies have. In light of successful trans-gender treatments, we can even see a person change totally.

We are on the cutting edge now as body parts including vital organs can be made with stem cells. So when a heart is replaced, lungs, genitals, anything, the you that is still operating as you is still there.

Doesn't it make sense then that some people may be wired in such a way that their predelictions are counterintuitive to the stereotypical male or female form? We have transgender children now who clearly favor one gender over the other, being ostracized by schools because their parts are not standard equipment.

The quest for equality with reference to gender, love and homosexuality is the quest to decide who is the 'right' kind of human. To me, the answer to this question is that we are not just our bodies. We are more, we are unique and beautiful in all our different forms. To treat someone as less because you think they should be some other way reveals your conceit and ignorance to the true nature of humanity.

Of course, we possess these bodies for long periods of time, but the timeless things that carry on are our love, compassion, understanding and wanderlust for exploration of all that is.

Your body isn't you. And other people's bodies are not your property either. When adults consent to love one another, that should be the end of it. See the person inside if you can't stand the sight of them in the natural until your vision changes. I hope it happens soon. This world has enough bullshit in it than it needs without the added force we put upon those unlike us.

It has to do with everything, because as long as we look at people as the bodies that they have, we can degrade them, stomp them down, kill their children and destroy their lives. Undoing this perception of self and what it means to be human is a step to healing.

The Banned TED Talks of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake & Graham Hancock

Below, you will find the Banned TED talks of two men I highly admire; Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock. Their talks both challenge many of the accepted norms of science and therefore are not always well recieved by Dawkinsian materialists who presently rule the current scientific landscape.

I'd like to show these with minimal commentary so you can see for yourself if these ideas are too wild to be considered in a public forum.

Please review these videos, then see the message by Graham Hancock below the videos.

The Following is directly from Graham Hancock:

Open letter to Chris Anderson, Curator TED Conferences.
From Graham Hancock 15 March 2013

This letter is a reply to a letter to me that Chris Anderson has posted here on the TED blog page (http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/) and that I have also responded to in the same place. For convenience after posting my open letter below, I also post the full text of Chris Anderson's letter to me.

(1) My open letter to Chris Anderson, Curator TED Conferences, posted on the TED blog page at 09:50 GMT on 15 March 2013

Chris, your reply is very strange and does no credit to you in your role at the Curator of the TED Conference or to TED as a whole.

Quite simply the issue is this: TED has defamed me by making a number of accusations against me in this public forum on the TED website – accusations that are highly damaging to my reputation as an author and public speaker. I have asked you to substantiate those allegations which surely should be a matter of the highest priority to you if you have a genuine commitment to science and to truth. Yet instead of doing so you dodge my reasonable request for substantiation by telling me you are attending an event in DC, posing a number of irrelevant questions to me, making a reference to Wikipedia, and asking those you see as my “supporters” to “calm down a little.” This is all sleight of hand. All that is required of you here on the public record is simply to substantiate the grave allegations that TED has made against me in the introductory remarks to this page of the TED blog, or, if you cannot substantiate those allegations then retract them and apologize. Your present tactic allows the allegations to remain in the prominent opening statements to this blog page while you “reach out to see” if any of your advisers are “able to go into more depth” in answering my specific questions and while you yourself “sign off” until Monday.

This is not good enough and I demand that TED – either in the form of you personally or those “advisors” you refer to – either substantiate the defamatory allegations you have made against me forthwith or remove those allegations at once and post a full, public and unconditional apology.

I note that the text of TED’s introductory remarks to this page have undergone some editing since they were originally posted. Therefore I will set out again the allegations TED has made against me in these remarks as they stand today (at 09:50 GMT and as confirmed by a screen shot I have taken), and my reasonable questions in which I ask you to substantiate these allegations.

(1) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “…he misrepresents what scientists actually think. He suggests, for example, that no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.”

I would like TED to identify where exactly in my talk they believe I say that “no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness”? Also in what other specific ways does TED believe I misrepresent what scientists actually think?
The only passage I can find in my presentation that has any relevance at all to this allegation is between 9 mins 50 seconds and 11 mins 12 seconds. But nowhere in that passage or anywhere else in my presentation do I make the suggestion you attribute to me in your allegation, namely that “no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.” Rather I address the mystery of life after death and state that “if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask are materialist, reductionist scientists. They have nothing to say on the matter at all.” That statement cannot possibly be construed as my suggesting that “no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness,” or of “misrepresenting” what materialist, reductionist scientists actually think. I am simply stating the fact, surely not controversial, that materialist, reductionist scientists have nothing to say on the matter of life after death because their paradigm does not allow them to believe in the possibility of life after death; they believe rather that nothing follows death. Here is the full transcript of what I say in my presentation between 9 mins 50 seconds and 11 mins 12 seconds: “What is death? Our materialist science reduces everything to matter. Materialist science in the West says that we are just meat, we’re just our bodies, so when the brain is dead that’s the end of consciousness. There is no life after death. There is no soul. We just rot and are gone. But actually any honest scientist should admit that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science and that we don’t know exactly how it works. The brain’s involved in it in some way, but we’re not sure how. Could be that the brain generates consciousness the way a generator makes electricity. If you hold to that paradigm then of course you can’t believe in life after death. When the generator’s broken consciousness is gone. But it’s equally possible that the relationship – and nothing in neuroscience rules it out – that the relationship is more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set and in that case when the TV set is broken of course the TV signal continues and this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions – that we are immortal souls, temporarily incarnated in these physical forms to learn and to grow and to develop. And really if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask are materialist, reductionist scientists. They have nothing to say on the matter at all. Let’s go rather to the ancient Egyptians who put their best minds to work for three thousand years on the problem of death and on the problem of how we should live our lives to prepare for what we will confront after death…”

(2) TED says of my presentation: “He states as fact that psychotropic drug use is essential for an “emergence into consciousness,” and that one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture.”

I would like TED to identify where exactly in my talk they believe I state as a fact that psychotropic drug use is “essential” for an “emergence into consciousness.” I would also like TED to identify where exactly in my talk I state that “one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture.”

Having carefully reviewed my presentation several times I can find nowhere where I make such statements.

(3) TED states that there are many “misleading statements” in my presentation.

I would like TED to indentify where exactly in my talk these alleged “misleading statements” occur.

(4) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “He offers a one-note explanation for how culture arises (drugs), which just doesn’t hold up.”

Again I would like TED to identify the point in my talk where I state this. Do I not rather say (between 1 min 06 seconds and 1 min 54 seconds) that some scientists in the last thirty years have raised an intriguing possibility — emphasis on POSSIBILITY — which is that the exploration of altered states of consciousness, in which psychedelic plants have been implicated, was fundamental to the emergence into fully symbolic consciousness witnessed by the great cave art? I can cite a wide range of respectable peer-reviewed scientists who have suggested this possibility and I do not see how reporting their work, which I have every right to do, can be construed as offering “a one-note explanation for how culture arises (drugs).” Besides is every talk that touches on the origins of culture obliged to consider all possible factors that might be involved in the origins of culture? How could any speaker be expected to do that in one 18-minute talk?

(5) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “… it’s no surprise his work has often been characterized as pseudo-archeology.”

Of what possible relevance is this remark? Many different people have characterised my work in many different ways but at issue here is not what people have said about my work over the years but the actual content of this specific TEDx presentation.

So there are the damaging and defamatory allegations TED has made against me in its website, and here again is my request that you either substantiate these allegations forthwith, or withdraw them and apologize to me prominently and publicly, allowing no further time to elapse to worsen the harm and damage you have already done.
Signed Graham Hancock, 15 March 2013 at 09:50 GMT

(2) LETTER FROM CHRIS ANDERSON TO GRAHAM HANCOCK posted on the TED blog page on 14 March 2013 to which the above open letter is a response:

Graham, greetings, and thanks for engaging here personally. We’ll try to get you some more detailed comments early next week. I’m currently tied up at National Geographic in DC helping launch the TEDxDeExtinction event (which, by the way, is an indication that we have no problem with radical scientific ideas per se.)

I understand why you’re upset at the talk being pulled off Youtube, but we’re quite serious in saying we’re not censoring you. The talk will live here as long it takes for this conversation to work itself out, and perhaps indefinitely. I must say, you’re a compelling speaker and I personally enjoyed the talk quite a bit. I can understand why you and your books have attracted a huge following.

It would help your cause to let this whole discussion calm down a little. You seem to have whipped your supporters up into a bit of a frenzy. There’s no conspiracy out to get you. We just have certain guidelines for our TEDx events that weren’t fully implemented in this instance, and it’s OK to have a public discussion about that.

So here’s a suggestion. While I reach out and see if any of our advisors is able to go into more depth in answering your specific questions, perhaps you could help me understand why your work is widely characterized as pseudo-archeology, as in the current version of this wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoarchaeology
Is that a distorted description of your views? Is mainstream archaeology simply misguided? Or is there some other explanation?

Do you agree that we should have *some* form of guidelines for our TEDx organizers as to what constitutes credible science, or do you think our approach should be let anyone put anything they want out there and just let the public decide?

I’m signing off now till Monday, but truly I would value your and your supporters’ help in turning this into a more constructive discussion.

Thanks, Graham.

END OF TEXT OF LETTER FROM CHRIS ANDERSON, CURATOR TED CONFERENCES posted on the TED blog page (http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/) 14 March 2013.

Friend Graham Hancock on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/GrahamHancockDotCom?fref=ts

MORE IN REGARD TO TEDx Whitechapel:

Amrita Bhohi, Stefana Bosse and Jennifer Tessler, the open-minded, good-hearted organizers of the TEDx Whitechapel event at which I gave the “War on Consciousness” presentation that was subsequently censored by TED, have asked me to make clear that they are independent and not connected with TED and that the decision to delete the presentations by myself and Rupert Sheldrake from the TEDx Youtube channel (see earlier statuses here) was TED’s alone and had nothing to do with them. On their facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TEDxWhitechapel?fref=ts) they write as follows:

Dear lovely TEDxWhitechapel community,

You may be aware of the controversy sparked over the past week as a result of Rupert and Graham’s talk being taken down from the official TEDx youtube channel. We would like to make clear that it was not our decision to remove the talks, but that of the TED HQ team, after an investigation by their scientific board. The only place where they can now be watched is on the TEDblog (http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/) which is open for discussion. 

As the TEDxWhitechapel official organisers, we would like to express our perspective on the matter. This past week we have been in communication with both Rupert and Graham as well as the TED HQ team in the U.S. We strongly believe that this is an important opportunity for this seeming confrontation between opposing factions of the scientific community to come together in an open space, express and challenge their own views and in doing so, enrich the entire global TED community.

The theme of our event was to ‘Challenge Existing Paradigms’ and as such, we fully support the ideas presented by our speakers and believe that they are making valuable enquiries in their respective fields. We are also aware that some of the content of the talks are highly controversial within the scientific realm.

We perceive this is a wonderful opportunity for a constructive, live and open discussion to take place, which represents the power of new ideas to challenge existing thinking and spark a community of curious souls to engage in ideas with each other in an open and inclusive way. 

In the spirit of ‘creating the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible’ which was felt so strongly at the event, we invite you to participate in this discussion, by either posting on their blog (http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/) or sending your opinions directly to TED. 

With love and in hope for building bridges

Amrita, Jennifer, Stefana

End of post from Amrita Bhohi, Stefana Bosse and Jennifer Tessler, the organizers of the TEDx Whitechapel event – see here for their facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/TEDxWhitechapel?fref=ts

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New update 3/19/2013

Just when I thought TED had seen the error of their ways and were trying to fix things (see my post here: http://www.facebook.com/Author.GrahamHancock/posts/10151559299442354 ) I receive an email from TED Curator Chris Anderson telling me that yet another of their famous Blog pages has now been set up, this one apparently as a special standalone ghetto for discussion of my “War on Consciousness” presentation. This tactic helps to distance TED from the PR debacle they created for themselves by axing my talk from their Youtube channel in the first place (where it had attracted hundreds of comments and 132,000 views). Now not only is the presentation cut off from the discussion initiated by all those original commentators (and their ability to share it) but it is also cut off from the new discussion that followed exposure of TED’s censorship and shoddy methods – here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/ and here:http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/18/graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake-a-fresh-take/

I’m left reeling by this continual slicing down of my presentation and its context which is nonetheless cleverly done so that TED can say, effectively, “we’re not censoring the presentation because it is on our website.” Well yes, but in such an obscure place that pretty soon no-one will be able to find it, the whole debate and furor will be forgotten and TED will be able to move forward as though this never happened.

Anyway for those with the energy to keep this hot potato hot, here is the new page that TED have created as a secluded ghetto for my presentation:http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hancocks-talk/ . So far there is no link back or forward between the two previous blog pages and this one. I have asked TED to provide such links as a matter of urgency and to make them prominent. I expect they will do so but this will only slightly reduce the problem, not solve it.

You will note when you go to http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hancocks-talk/ that in order to actually post comments you have to click the link near the bottom that says “Join the conversation here” which takes you to yet another page!! And when you get there you will find that you can no longer post full-length comments, as on the two previous Blog pages created by TED, but only rather abbreviated ones.

In this way, little by little, I fear that TED will succeed in making the problem they created vanish like a puff of smoke. But just in case the public doesn’t allow them to get away with that disappearing act they have imposed a time-limit on this new “conversation” which they will close in less than two weeks from now. I guess the big powers like TED always do win in the end since they control the agenda no matter what we the people try to do.