Читать книгу CURSE of the HOLY ARK - Ted Miller III - Страница 11

We all left that meeting with Andrew’s words in our minds and the highly professional bound text of his study in our hands. His discourse about the dawn of divinity did seem to shake the foundation of today’s church congregations. Most all of the chosen twelve were quiet except for words of praise about Andrew’s meeting. What started out with a laugh certainly finished with a solemn note of self discovery. For it seemed that the truest truths had been forgotten by our post-modern minds, as we attempted to forge but one nation under God with bigger and better business in control.

We would continue to explore the world’s religions the next day when we would hear from Simon Peter discussing the labyrinth of lies and the longevity of other ancient faiths of God-seekers. During this point of departure we would hope to see into the hearts of these ancient followers and maybe even feel the spirits that guided their lives. His assignment started with the religious forces that were first formed sometime about 5 to 10,000 years B.C.

After a quiet evening of discussing the current day’s problems of what to do with Saddam since his capture and what happened to his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and where might Bin Laden be hiding and why in the world we couldn’t protect our country’s own inbound flights from other nations who were not being as diligent as us with airport security, the next morning the twelve writers and I met again in yet another location deep within the bowels of the ship.

Upon being seated in a Spartan room with but functional chairs and one table bolted to the deck, we were informed via the intercom by a non-decrypted voice that this particular section of the ship was designed to resist any attack from conventional weapons or W.M.D.s, including germ warfare. The group being more sober and solemn than normal was wondering why such accommodations would be necessary and then the intercom provided the answer by replying to the unasked question. “Should any country attempt to release any form of W.M.D.s”, the voice said, “then we only wish to assure you that every possible precaution has been taken to ensure the safety of you and your family or guests. Although we hope nothing of this nature ever transpires between warring nations, we do believe it is best to be prepared for any contingencies.”

It was then I realized that my masters were responding to the group’s conversation of last night. My only question was, were they attempting to frighten us or forge our mutual forces to a fighting nature? Nevertheless the meeting was called to order by me and the ball of authority was passed to Simon, who opened his remarks by stating, “Here I stand amongst the lions of our industry and yet I have no fear of being bitten.” After our laughter subsided, he continued on. “All of you know that I used to be a news correspondent in the Middle East. When I was stationed in Cairo I used to have to worry more about being stabbed in the back by another network reporter who wanted to steal our U.P.I.s headlines than getting cut up by the enemy.” As he took a breath and flashed his boyish smile he said, “So I just want to say how great it really is to work together with the leaders of this industry whose critical acclaim cannot be surpassed.”

“This assignment of researching the roots of religion is right up my alley because during my stint as a director of public affairs, I got to see the truth presented in many shades of gray. I learned that nothing in life is an absolute black or white, except the love I have for my wife and my two teenage children. Although my kids might think otherwise, my wife knows that the main reason I have succeeded in writing is because she met me in the Persian Gulf where writing was much rougher than in our home in Georgetown. So now I know I have it easy. Much like my first novel, I too am an unlikely, but very willing participant in this project. You all may be asking yourselves what all of this has to do with the dawn of divinity? But before I dropped out of graduate school to cover the Democratic National Convention, I learned how to best know a subject, was to first know something about the teacher. So there you are. To quote a great source … I am who I am.”

The Popeye the Sailor joke went over some of our team’s heads, and others just smiled at the godlike simile. At this point he passed out the thick synopsis which summarized the roots of today’s religious forces.

“The origins of religions were developed throughout the Paleolithic and Neolithic epochs and provided the frameworks for systematic religious cultures, which in turn culminated in the birth of the three major monotheistic religions which dominate today’s opinions and faith. The history of God is long and diverse, but I will try to lead you through the ideological sequence from primitive to modern man.”

“Yesterday Andrew spoke very well about mankind’s loss of preternatural powers which allowed our ancestors to perceive spiritual realities, and the fact that every single tribe had its own high God to protect and work with. Today I wish to try and explain how these tribal cultures and contributions were absorbed into civilizations. When mankind lost their ability to speak directly to God, they instead started listening to the shaman, prophets or saints of their individual societies. Thus this began the discovery of religions.”

With a smirk or smile in his voice he next said, “Obviously the study of the history of religion is not a new subject, but it is for me. I won’t pretend to be a biblical scholar, so all of this is a new and intriguing study of what really still remains a mystery to most of us.”

He scratched his thick head of hair as he said, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I go to church sometimes and don’t tithe. I do give to charities on holidays. My agent already takes ten percent of everything I make, and the local, state and national governments take fifty percent more. For me to give up another one fourth to any church of the forty percent remaining for me and my family, I will need a miracle as the proof that I need to participate.”

And after a poignant pause he said, “And to tell the truth, what I have read so far doesn’t convince me that any church owns the commercial rights to God.”

He continued on, “Pre-Christian religious beliefs and their forms of worship were first collected and compiled during the conquests of Alexander the Great about 350 B.C. After this library was burned to the ground more information was gathered during the Rassinien session in 90 A.D. and the 397 A.D. synod at Cathage.” In the interest of antiquity in 1486 the De Omni re Scibili was published by Pico della Mirandola which spawned the next 300 years of scientific studies of religious thoughts. Missionaries then came in contact with the cultures of China, India, South, Central and North America which further expanded the ethnology studies of myths and gave impetus to many discoveries of the various religious heritages of humankind. With scholarly interests now at a feverish pitch in quick order many stelae, sarcophagy, pyramids, Rosetta and Mesha stones, tombs, coptic codices, cuneiform and the Dead Sea scrolls were next deciphered and gave up the secrets of the dead.”

Simon seemed to gather up his strength as he said, “The mythograms of millennia past now spoke to our forefathers of the time before words were written. Totemism told us of the personification of natural forces and of collective consciousnesses which ensured divine intervention. These earliest clans’ common stories are often believed to be the roots of a set of basic beliefs which shaped the future foundation of religion.”

Simon put down his notes as he continued. “The evolution of religious thought was taking place on all the world’s continents at approximately the same time. About 5,000 B.C. the Aztecs and Mayans conducted sacrificial rites to combine the forces of the universal and eternal causes of divinity. In Mesopotamia a divine being of all beginnings gave their peoples a triad of great gods to begin the quest of immortality. In Europe Neolithic cultures built sacral houses and sanctuaries to house their past spirits. The Mediterranean people’s cosmogonist myths signalized and thanked the supernatural powers that protected them and allowed their crops to prosper. Siberian cultures flourished and produced symbols and ideograms to witness the presence of their official goddess of worship. Mega-glyphs and monuments were raised in England and Ireland to honor their astral cults. Pre-Vedic religions in Pakistan and India built superb cities dedicated to their deities. The North American Indians constructed their snake dwelling mounds as examples of their cultural evolution and their search for sanctity. The Sumero-Babylonian man raised great and complex buildings as they interwove the Semite and Sumerian writing, art and religions. Their cuneiform tablets, which are man’s first written history, portray the divine being divided between the personal and transcendent. These first sacred stories contain various versions of the creation of mankind and preach that the human condition is subordinate to the God’s service. In Egypt towering pyramids were raised towards the splendors of heaven and the mysteries of the sacred character of the prime mover. In China their cultures created a cosmology of contrary and complementary principles to attest to the existence of the God of the heavens and the Lord of above. Indo-European religions of India bore witness to the vedic Gods, Varuna and Mitra, who ruled the cosmic order and spiritual sovereignty. During the second millennium B.C. in Iran, the message of Zoroaster was a revelation received from his supreme god named Ahura Mazda whose central theme was man’s choice between good and evil. About this same time in Mesopotamia, God appeared to Abraham and chose him to accept the total ties of faith and become the leader of the Israelites. A few centuries later Y.H.W.H. revealed his laws to Moses and his Ten Commandments gave birth to three sets of religious values. Thus Jews, Christians and Muslims all recognized the validity of one monotheistic God who rewards virtue and punishes vice.”

He took a deep breath as he explained, “The human historical experience is filled with God’s revelation of the mysterious and divine. The nature of all the sacred is that man is governed by a transcendent God who demands faithfulness of his followers. The choices you make will either lead to sacred salvation or a painful period of punishment.”

As he put his hands to pray, Simon continued. “Although we all probably learned this in Bible school, what I didn’t realize is that from the time that mankind created his earliest symbols and signs, the intent has been to communicate the invisible to the visible. When mankind chose to communicate other than in words, which in turn led to today’s religious writings, it was only intended to be an extension to allow others their symbolic experience of the sacred and profane.”

“What was important to them was to pass the message on. But next cultural achievements were absorbed and an enduring effective government of the gods took place in the temples. Myths became but faint memories, as each of the books of wisdom was updated and usurped within the unification of the founding churches. The sacred stories of today do have their roots in our primordial ancestors’ memories, but the stems and leaves bare no fruit of the original events.”

He looked around the spartan room to make sure he still had our total attention. “Early symbolic actions had sacramental values that focused our forefathers’ attention to sense they were surrounded by the unseen. Today we have traded that spiritual source for a scientific society. Facts and figures are favored over faith. What used to be an essential component of daily life, is now just a trip to a Sunday school service. Although we have learned to measure the unseen powers of the magnet, radioactivity or electricity, we still see only the results of the power and not the true source itself. As unseen and unknowable as air, faith too is something that only when it is missing do you feel smothered. Our ancestors, however, had an affinity with all of their surrounding. The cavemen weren’t worried about the exact date that the world was created. They were instead inspired by the mysterious mutual forces inherent in every single aspect of life. They were not seeking an explanation of this state of enlightenment; they only wished to express and preserve for their peoples this state of mind in their artful stories, paintings and carvings.”

“I got goose bumps last night at the bar when Judas told us of his moving cave wall painting that has never been matched by a big silver screen presentation. This simple fact alone tells me that I have been desensitized to my surroundings. I now only see, instead of sense the life I led.”

“In our ancient world men and women imitated the actions of their gods to obtain a life beyond the mortality of their mind and muscles. A similar spirituality surrounded our entire world. Each culture’s achievements were attributed to their gods. The links between their divine worlds and their physical surroundings were tightly interwoven and perpetually celebrated to keep each in balance. Political stability was only gained by the effective management of their gods. Civilizations could collapse and cultures would disappear if their deities were not appeased. To help the people remember, poems were read about the creation of gods, the chaos that followed and final state of the surreality of the sovereign. Temples were raised, laws were made, celestial celebrations were conducted, men prayed, and rituals bound everyone to all that really mattered.”

Simon put down his notes and started walking around the table as he spoke. “God talked to mere mortal men like Abraham. He even assumed human form as a friend. This divine epiphany that crossed the boundary between the two worlds was not considered uncommon. The Bible and other great religious books speak often of these types of encounters. Angels walked amongst men and women and gave them words of encouragement, or assignments to complete, or in some cases even children. This was a world of many messengers whose manna would be an inspiration to the masses. People of all different faiths would choose a particular conception of the divine not for some abstract reason, but rather for the simple reason that the deities’ words of reason worked wonders for them. The existence of God was not debated. It was a known fact.” He closed his eyes as he said, “God spoke and you listened.”

“Nowadays it seems that only on T.V. or within the theater is the place that angels or God shows up to dispense advice. For example, on the popular T.V. show called “Joan of Arcadia”, whose title is an obvious play on words about another Joan of another time and place, the producer published her own list of guidelines to the show’s writers that they must keep in mind while composing their scripts. Let me read her rules to you:

1  God cannot directly intervene.

2  Good and evil exist.

3  God can never identify one religion as being right.

4  The job of every human being is to fulfill his or her true nature.

5  Everyone is allowed to say “no” to God, including Joan.

6  God is not bound by time. This is a human concept.

7  God is not a person and does not possess a human personality.

8  God talks to everyone all the time in different ways.

9  God’s plan is what is good for us, not what is good for him.

10  God’s purpose for talking to Joan, and everyone, is to get her (us) to recognize the interconnectedness of all things – i.e., you cannot hurt a person without hurting yourself; all of your actions have consequences; God can be found in the smallest actions; God expects us to learn and grow from all our experiences. However, the exact nature of God is a mystery, and the mystery can never be solved.”

“Our current state of demything the idealization of the past is also popular in print and other media presentations. The idea of God revealing himself is not new, but indeed has retained its popularity for thousands and thousands of years. I was up all last night discovering that the origin of religion seems to be more of an absorption, than an act of astral affirmation of one or another church’s superiority of defining the sacred. In the same manner that commercial T.V. has expanded their message into evangelism, earlier religions also reinvented the words of other forefathers.”

“From day one the message of the myths has been changed or corrupted by church or countries meant to be assimilated into the new cultures. These supreme guides all show how to gain your soul’s entry to the blessings of the beyond. All speak of the creation of the world, the cruelness of the sovereign and the quest of immortality. An example of the plagiarism is that that the flood myths are extremely widespread throughout every one of the theosophy studies and share the same symbolism’s of destroying a degenerated world which then is to be recreated and restored to its original integrity. Another is how the injunctions and promises of many books of prayer treat sacrifices as a means of spiritual transmutation. The secret revelations of the magical mysteries that discovered the presence of God are contained in the writings of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islamism, Catholicism, Shintoism, Judaism, and Christianity. The heresies between heaven and hell are echoed over and over again in every religious book, and it does seem as if God’s words have been spoken to each person in the language of the lands he best understands. The freedom of choice between good and evil and the punishment of the wicked, while the reward of the virtuous, is indeed in the collective memories of all religious forces.”

“I have discovered the parallels of the Ten Commandments are found in many religious volumes and in the book of the dead the prayer so reads:

I have not committed evil against men.

I have not blasphemed God.

I have not done violence to a poor man.

I have not killed.

I have not caused anyone’s suffering.

I have not cut down the income of the temple.

I am pure. I am pure. I am pure. I am pure.”

Simon seemed to try to look into the insides of all our heads to explain. “The mythology themes of the theologies share the commonality of the creation of the cosmogony, the birth of man, a paradise without pain, the fall from God’s grace, a progressive state of degeneration, a flood, a dispersal of nations, and the consequences of trying to climb back into heaven.”

He told us the non-variables of religions are creation, chaos, and change of mankind’s belief of the deity. Another was man’s ability to fulfill his longings and return to a grace of state with his sacred sovereign. A third was to provide role models whose messages are meant to be imitated. And the fourth and final was always the choice between good and evil.

As he took a deep breath he next said, “Thus our souls are balanced and judged on our own freedom of will and our behavior during the course of our sacred experience towards purgatory, enlightenment, eternal damnation, or recycled in reincarnation until we correct our faults.”

“Do we need a church to tell us this? Each faith has subtle differences and profound similarities. God is infinite and ever changing. Why shouldn’t His church do the same? Change is the only constant in our cosmos. Accept it. Use it.”

“But how do we recreate the contact between our present consciousness and our primordial subconscious mind?” “I believe,” he said, “that the freedom of our imaginary sphere is imperative to influence our psychic growth to recreate our world in the shape that the Supreme Being intended it to be.”

He paused again as he picked up the ball.

“As we trace our steps from standing on two feet to the invention of fire and becoming flesh eating hunters who turned into food gatherers which next became herders, farmers, and then writers and readers, we have witnessed a belief turned into a representation that has grown into institutions. But I have also discovered that during these four millenniums another constant is that when religious ideas cease to be effective, they die away and the dust is collected and recycled into a new religion.”

“In closing I wish to say the lesson we learn today is simple. Our sacred past senses have been transformed from transcendentalism into trendy theologies which are trapped behind the temple’s doors.”

He raised his voice to make the point. “God was here before any church and will still be here when the church’s doors of dogma are cast aside.”

Simon returned to his chair. “I hope that I am not ranting and rambling on, but I have been up all night long thinking about this presentation. Besides that, for what we are getting paid our boss deserves a little overtime.”

As a smile crossed most of the writers’ faces, he continued on. “In our contemplation of a new celestial world I feel we must create a culture that is at one with the forces of earth, wind, water, and fire. Our collective intelligence and imagination must will an awareness of astral ascension to help guide our ways of work and worship being welded together as one. We must allow the Lord to break out of the cults of the churches. God must speak and the faithful will listen and follow His living words. Forget about the facts and figures. It is time to change belief into faith.” As he closed his eyes, the last words I heard him say were, “Nothing less will do.”