Introduction
Discussions and speculations about the nature of Divinity have historically been the province of theology and religion. Despite the erudition of such writings, the average person is often actually puzzled as to the true nature of the ultimate Reality, and in today’s world, there is little personal time to study or contemplate the subject in depth.
In general, God is pictured as being ‘up there’ and, although accessible by prayer, does not really exist at the same level as perceived worldly phenomena. In everyday life, the sense of ‘reality’ is primarily based on sensual validation plus conceptual and emotional elaborations. For many people, God is primarily a belief system and as such is subject to the vicissitudes of the individual psyche over one’s lifetime. Thus, the subject may be neglected for decades or may be compartmentalized to Sunday morning only. Many people merely decide that they will seriously get around to dealing with the subject later on in life.
Historic Depictions
Almost universally, as was mentioned, God is imagined and pictured to be elsewhere, such as being located within the heavens and therefore at some actual physical distance. God is depicted in art as being large in size, situated against stars and clouds, with perhaps some angels and cherubs floating nearby. Classically, the depiction is a similar to that of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, with God having long hair, being large and somewhat elderly, and suspended in space, perhaps reaching down towards man in ancient times.
God as a Concept
The concept and definition of God as ‘Creator’ rather than timeless Presence and ever-present, constant, ongoing Source results in conceptual limitations whereby God is defined in terms of time and causality and thus conceptually linked with the linear, observable daily world. Time itself is a cognitive and perceptual illusion and merely a projection of consciousness, as previously stated (Hawkins, 2001). This realization has been confirmed by expansions of advanced quantum physics theories (Lynds, 2006), which conclude that without consciousness, no independent universe even exists (Stapp, 2007; Rosenblum and Kuttner, 2007).
God is considered to be not only a ‘what’ but also a ‘who,’ as well as a ‘when’, with personality characteristics that are primarily anthropomorphic (human-like), and particularly so as depicted by the Old Testament. God is therefore seen as having all the failings of the human ego—anger, vengeance, primitive, retaliatory, jealous, and judgment, along with benevolence, if pleased. Such a God is also seen as somewhat capricious in that people are seemingly created as grossly unequal and yet responsible for their defects, even though they are created as deficient (ignorant). Thus, mankind requires both God’s Mercy and Salvation.
Out of these anthropomorphic projections arises an image of God about which the human is understandably somewhat ambivalent in that God is perceived as benevolent but, paradoxically, also capable of even throwing one’s soul into Hell. Thus, God is perceived as being loving but also limited and likened unto one’s human parent. This, of course, was looked into by Sigmund Freud who discarded the idea of God as being merely an anthropomorphic projection from the infantile unconscious. While he threw out false depictions of God, he then made the mistake of concluding that a real God did not exist, which was an error, that is, the fact that anthropomorphic depictions of God were false did not disprove the Reality of Divinity. The seeming unfairness of human destiny is countered by more sophisticated religions such as Buddhism and Hindu, which teach the laws of karma.
Fear of God
While the anthropomorphic depictions result in fear of God’s judgmental anger, another source arises out of conceptualizing God as the Source and cause of all earthly as well as human calamities. Thus, God is seen as the author of storms, droughts, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. In primitive societies, this led to attempts to assuage God by human or animal sacrifices, and in Incan, Mayan, and most other primitive religious rituals, sacrifices were made, often to bizarre extremes. Animal sacrifice was also widespread and innate to ancient Hebrew and other cultures. In today’s world, the same primitivism is seen in Islamic worship of suicide and killing of innocents or ‘infidels’ to please God and thus win Divine favor as well as heavenly gifts and indulgences. The same type of thinking is involved in the giving of alms or sacrifices to please God. The concept that God can be pleased, angered, placated, ‘bought off’, or flattered by worship is an elaboration of anthropomorphism. As with other religious practices, the important quality is the intention and faith that are involved.
God As Creator
The defining attributes of God have been classically described as omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. God is the primary origin, source, and therefore, the Creator. The human mind thinks in terms of causal sequence over periods of time. It presumes that time, sequence, and causation are ‘out there’ in the perceived linear world and therefore represent reality (the confusion of Descartes’ res interna [cogitans] vs. res externa [extensa]). This conceptualization is further confirmed by the sequential nature of mental-image processing. Thus, the mind constructs a ‘timeline’ with a beginning and an ending, which requires a ‘primary cause’ of origination and authorship.
God is considered to be a primary ‘first cause’. Creation is pictured to be a sequential linear process, as described in Genesis, by which the universe is the caused product, and time is set. The conceptual limitations inherent in this logical progression were pointed out by Immanuel Kant in 1781 in Critique of Pure Reason, and later elaborated consequent to the emergence in quantum mechanics by Stephen Hawking who, in 1993, included the pragmatic value and usefulness of ‘imaginary time’ in theories of quantum gravity.
The Old Testament cognitively separates Creation from the Creator by virtue of dualistic languaging of subject, object, and transitive verb. Thus emerges the common ‘roll of the dice’ concept that is concordant with the ego/mind’s style of processing.
Beyond limitations of conceptualization, it is seen that creation is actually outside of time. Thus, ‘then’ and ‘now’ are bypassed by the realization of eternity as alwaysness, with no beginning and no end; no past, future, or now; and no progression of time because what actually progresses is merely human witnessing. The witnessing is sequential and experienced as being placed in the unfolding of time and potentiality. ‘Existence’ itself is a selective interpretation because, in reality, the universe and Divinity are unitary.
God is the Source and ever-present substrate rather than the ‘cause’ of the universe; therefore, evolutionary creation represents the consequences of the unfoldment of the infinite potentiality of omnipotence into the actuality of existence. The enfolded universe of the Godhead emerges into beingness and the unfolded universe of life and existence. In this transformation, existence does not require the confirmation of witnessing. The universe is the content of which Divinity is the context and Source. Thereby, it can be seen that essence is not ‘cause’ but permanent, ongoing, everpresent primordial Self-existent Reality.
It can be intuited and said as well as comprehended at a high abstract level that All Is and has its existence by virtue of Divine Ordinance. It is a reflection of God’s grace whereby the enfolded potentiality manifests as the unfolded linear observable universe (Bohm, 1980.) Thus does the Godhead of infinite potential actualize as existence so that the linear emerges out of the non-linear. Classically, elaborations of the above are the subject of ontology, the branch of philosophy concerned with the science of being. The biblical interpretation is expressed in the Gospel of John, Chapter 1, which states that in the beginning was God as the Word (Godhead), out of which emerged all of existence, including the Light of Life and human consciousness (calibrates at level 1,000). Thus, God is both Source and Creator.
God and Creation in Terms of Modern Science
In quantum mechanics, the active physical world is revealed to be the consequence of the ‘collapse of the wave function’ from potentiality (wave principle) to physical manifestation as ‘particles’ via the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, whereby consciousness and intention are the catalysts. This propensity is increased by the calibratable power of the consciousness level of the intention. Inasmuch as the consciousness level of God is infinite and beyond time or limitation, Creation and its evolutionary appearance (emergence) are absolutes. Thus, out of the ‘Godhead’ of infinite potential by virtue of ‘God’s will’ (omnipotence) arises the manifestation (omnipresence) and the omniscience of Infinite Consciousness whereby all is known forever.
God As Experiential Reality
The intellectual depictions of Divinity arise from mental images and the constructs of mental processing of linear logic and meaning. Thoughts and ideas about God are intellectualizations that are consequent to the consciousness calibration range of the 400s.
Completely independent of such intellectualizations, human experience throughout time has included awareness of the presence of God as contextual power, the Divine nature of which is an overwhelming revelation from beyond mind itself and transformative in its profound impact. As spiritual evolution progresses in the individual, spiritually transformative events may occur, and by consciousness level 540 to 570, they often become frequent and form a recontextualization of one’s subjective experiential sense of the reality of life.
By consciousness levels 540 to 570, spiritual concepts are no longer merely intangible but begin to emerge as the very experiential fabric of life itself. Sharing of such experiences with others of a similar level of consciousness brings about corroboration, and one finds a common ground that is experientially substantiated. In such spiritual communities, God’s ‘Will’ is accepted as influential, present, innate, operative, and omnipresent (e.g., context). It is thus part and parcel of the subjective phenomenal world. The presence of Divinity is comprehended to be all encompassing and thereby becomes termed ‘the Higher Power’ of faith-based groups that seek to increase conscious contact with God through prayer, meditation, and selfless service. From humility, it also becomes apparent that because of one’s own personal limitations, one is responsible for the effort but not the result, which is up to God’s Will.
As the payoffs of the ego are refused and surrendered, its grip on the psyche lessens, and spiritual experience progresses as the residuals of doubt are progressively relinquished. As a consequence, belief is replaced by experiential knowledge, and the depth and intensity of devotion increases and may eventually supersede and eclipse all other worldly activities and interests.
Experiential Validation of God As Primary Reality
Spiritual evolution gains momentum as it becomes the primary focus, and its progressive stages have been described rather specifically in the series of books by this author, including The Eye of the I, I: Reality and Subjectivity, and Transcending the Levels of Consciousness. Descriptions and testimony as to subjective states of realization of the presence of God have been recorded throughout history and restated in the author’s Discovery of the Presence of God: Devotional Nonduality, as well as in Chapter 17 of Truth vs. Falsehood. In all the books cited, evidence as well as experience of Divine Reality have been corroborated by consciousness calibration, first described in Power vs. Force (Hawkins, 1995).
In addition to the cited accumulation of confirmatory evidence, students and study groups worldwide over recent decades have added further information and contributed a mass of concordant, supportive group and individual experience reflective of advanced awareness (Grace, 2007). Notable among all the spontaneous contributors has been the lack of personal ego investment, and many such reports are actually anonymous in the typical form of “George P. from New Zealand,” or “Mary S. from Germany.”
The subjective experience of spiritual realities has been universally reported by mankind throughout all time and subsequently documented and confirmed by consciousness calibration, which is currently ongoing and conducted by widely separated individuals and groups.
Impediments
The reality of Divinity can be rejected at any and all levels by individuals, groups, or even whole cultures by virtue of free will. The underlying motivations are personal as well as social/psychological and actually represent the evolutionary nature of consciousness, both individual as well as collective. These are influenced in turn by both individual and collective karmic propensities. In the individual, spiritual awareness is influenced by tradition, intelligence, education, and personal experience, including emotional and family relationships. Also influential is the availability of integrous spiritual literature as well as adequate teachers. Degrees of personal motivation also reflect the influence of other factors, such as age, personality, psychological typology, aptitudes, talents, and Jung’s balance of introversion versus extroversion.
Certain attitudes may obstruct the emergence of spiritual awareness, such as the predominance of narcissism, skepticism, doubt, mistrust, negativity, as well as opposition, defiance, and even paranoid orientation as discussed in Chapter 13. In addition, there is immaturity or delay of spiritual evolution. Religious or spiritual disappointments also may occur due to unfortunate experiences with religious figures or even dismay in public examples of failures of religious integrity, such as church scandals.
In addition to personal factors, there is the overall cultural impact of the media, including their wellfinanced, organized attacks on religion and spirituality to the point of trying to eliminate even mention of the word ‘God’. These antireligious or antispiritual movements are based on the narcissistic appeal of trendy political positions of secularism that paradoxically become a new, oppressive ‘religious fervor’. The secularist movement is further supported and energized by philosophical systems of postmodernism and relativism, all of which calibrate below 200 (see Truth vs. Falsehood).
During maturation, people may have alternating periods of either attraction or aversion to religion and religiosity at various stages of their lives. There is the defiance of childhood, the rebelliousness of adolescence, and then preoccupation with the responsibilities of marriage and raising children. These are subsequently replaced by the concerns of older age and the confrontation with the limitation of the temporality of human life because in later life, it becomes a priority. Under the pressure of the anticipation of the inevitable, there is a resurgence of faith and hope, not only just out of fear of death but also out of acceptance. The Reality of God then becomes an expectancy, and fear and doubt are replaced by the peace of surrender to God’s will and human destiny.
Other Depictions of the Ultimate Reality
Monotheism (Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic) tends to result in a depiction of the Ultimate Reality as a definable entity as though it were a unitary super-personality with specific characteristics that are suprahuman. As a specific entity, God is then pictured to be located in space, time, and even location. In addition, as mentioned previously, God is then further defined with anthropomorphic (human-like) attributes, such as motive, will, intention, preferences, and predilections. Thus, any of these may also be refuted, and the ‘nature’ of God is thus subject to theological debate and intellectual hypothecation.
Unfamiliar to monotheistic cultures and religions are the older depictions of the Ultimate Reality as understood by the cultures of ancient India or the Far East. These arise not from historical mortal depictions but from revelations from the essence of consciousness itself. Thus arose the revelation of Krishna, the Buddha, and the rishis and sages of the ancient Vedas. These are references to the ultimate Revelation as a consequence of Enlightenment.
The knowingness that arises from within is innate, accessible, experiential, and beyond definition or description as the primary, confirmable, universal substrate power and energy out of which arises the possibility as well as actualization of existence. This ultimate Reality is revealed via the search into the substrate and source of consciousness itself, which is the ultimate nonlinear context beyond all definition. Thus, via the pathway of Enlightenment, there is no separate relationship of ‘you-God’ vis-à-vis ‘me-human’. This is the meaning of the Advaita (nonduality) terminology of Self as compared to self. This is the illuminated core of the mystic by which the ultimate nonlinear Reality is self-revealing when the obstacles of the linear ego have been relinquished.
Mystic revelation is the inner pathway of the contemplatives of Hebrew and Christian (“Unio Mystica”) tradition and the Sufis of Islam. It is the ‘pathless’ way of Zen and the core of Buddhism as well as the Hindu tradition of the classical yogas. The Presence that is revealed and realized is beyond description, depiction, or nominalization and is therefore beyond dispute, agreement, or theological discourse. Devoid of definable qualities, the ultimate Reality is also beyond nominalization or characterization and outside the constrictions of linear concepts such as causality, space, time, or location (Grace,2007).
The pathway of radical subjectivity reveals the intrinsic core of consciousness itself, which is beyond hypothesis as it is the primary substrate and source of the capacity for experiential awareness. Thus, the hypothetical is ultimately answered by its transcendence.
The nondefinable nature of the core of Reality results in the previously mentioned impossibility of definition or nominalization. Thus arise such references as the ‘Buddha nature’, which is seemingly paradoxically impersonal yet the very substrate of the experiential. This nondefinable quality is an ever-present, necessary, all-prevailing, a priori condition whose closest corollary in Christianity is indicated by the term ‘Godhead’, out of which arises the term ‘Creator’ when applied to the existence of the universe.
The realm of the describable linear arises out of the indescribably nonlinear Source. The Realization of the ultimate substrate core of all Reality is consequent to the condition termed ‘Enlightenment’, which is thus the province of the mystic whose inner state is characterized by the term ‘ineffable’. It can be confirmed experientially and corroborated by consciousness calibration research and is beyond intellectual comprehension or definition. It is therefore beyond the intellection of hypothetical propositions or argument. (The above calibrates at 1,000.)
The resolution of all intellectual doubt is experiential, and the means is described in Discovery of the Presence of God.
Resolution
Hypotheses about the existence and nature of God have been the subject of discourse and debate by the greatest minds of Western culture over the centuries. The discourses collectively display a massive erudition as well as brilliant intellectual acumen, together with the collective wisdom obtained by intensive effort and dedication. The integrity of the greatest thinkers of all time is obvious and inspiring.
To this impressive human effort of Western civilization, modern man also has access to the accumulated wisdom of the Middle and Far East. Even in modern China, Confucianism forms a supporting matrix to a giant and rapidly evolving society. India, the other giant emerging culture, has an ingrained Hindu cultural/religious fabric that reflects the distillation of many centuries of collective wisdom. In America, the Native culture of its earliest inhabitants had universally discovered the Great Spirit, and widely separated aborigine cultures of Africa and South America also worshipped deities.
Ancient Germanic tribes as well as the societies of pre-Christian Greece and Rome all had gods. Thus, it could be said that, although differing in depiction, mankind has collectively understood that Divinity is the Source of life and existence.
Thus, the atheist is faced with the dubious intellectual task of purportedly refuting all mankind over all of human history. Despite pretenders to the task, none has ever succeeded in doing so despite intellectual pretenses. This failure is due to the inescapable fact that that which is not provable therefore cannot be disproved.
The prudent mind would conclude that the reality of Divinity is a tentative probability whose resolution invites further clarification by the evolution of consciousness itself. The ultimate resolution occurs on a higher plane and in greater dimension than the limited realm of the intellectual, which is confined to the consciousness levels of the 400s. By self-honesty, it is discovered that intrinsic to the mentalizations of the 400s is an innate unconscious, blind pridefulness. Every ‘thinker’ secretly believes that their mind is really superior to that of everyone else. That is the psychological basis of the ‘feel good about yourself’, wonderful ‘You’ generation a la Time magazine’s cover (25 December 2006).
The mind’s illusion that it is capable of actually knowing reality is not the result of just ordinary pridefulness but is instead an intrinsic defect of the construction of the mind itself as a consequence of its evolutionary development. Biological life had to have certainty, and the organism sampled the environment (e.g., via the function of the ‘experiencer’ aspect of the ego). Thus, to survive, faith evolved in the accuracy of sampling the linear domain. However, the linear processing function of the ego apparatus did not acquire the capacity for discovering the reality of the nonlinear dimensions of existence or reality. Thus, only after eons of evolutionary time did the human consciousness evolve to discern context from content. That capacity is still absent in eighty-five percent of the human population in the world today.
The resultant limitation means that the majority of mankind requires reliance on its most advanced members to explain the nonlinear Reality that is the context and source of existence. Thus, the value of consciousness calibration is that it opens the avenue to higher knowledge (discernment of essence) that would not otherwise be available. Just as the telescope expands the range of human vision to the otherwise unseen and undetected, consciousness research reveals truth beyond ordinary perception and holds untold and as yet undiscovered benefits.
Recovery from Innate Limitation
The basic purpose of spiritual work and dedication is to transcend the innate evolutionary limitations of the ego and thereby access and develop the nascent capacity of consciousness itself, which bypasses all the limitations of the ego/self. Truth then presents itself by virtue of Divine Grace. Divinity reveals Itself to those who call upon It (calibrates as true) in God’s time. The pace of spiritual evolution can seem slow, but spiritual endeavor is never futile. Progress can become very sudden and very major in dimension and impact.
Problematic Religious Doctrines
Due to the proclivity for error and suggestibility of the human mind, segments of major religions have been pirated by splinter groups that use the name of a bona fide religion to give credibility to separatist offshoots, which often represent the exact opposite of the claimed religion. This is most obviously represented by the endless religious wars as well as the historic Inquisition.
Religion is relatively easy to politicize, and thus, “In the name of God” all manner of horrific militant ravages have massacred millions of people for many centuries. These are commonly in the form of ‘holy’ wars, from the historic Crusades to the centuries-long militancy of the Ottoman Empire to modern-day Jihadists (cal. 30), Islamic terrorist triumphalism (cal. 90) based on Wahhabism (cal. 30) and apocalyptic Islamic legends (cal.70), such as the return of the 12th Imam, the Madhi (savior). Importantly, Islam’s texts (e.g., the Koran) make no distinction between religion and the State. The religion is the State (the ‘House of Islam’).
Interestingly, all apocalyptic visions calibrate between 60 and 70 and arise from Carl Jung’s archetype in the unconscious of the ‘Shadow’, or Freud’s ‘Id.’ There are the periodic personal reports of ‘lower astral’ visions that are repeatedly visited by the minds of human beings in altered states of consciousness (e.g., trance, demonic possession, psychedelic drugs, temporal lobe brain dysfunction, and psychotic, post-convulsive, and hallucinatory states). These repetitiously reappear over the centuries and often result in survivalist communities and formation of extremist cults with messianic charismatic leaders.
Religious Deviations
As previously noted in Truth vs. Falsehood, there are sections of possible error in traditional scripture in world religions. These were not diagnosable before the discovery of consciousness calibration; thus, potential error went undetected. The New Testament calibrates in the 800s, but the Book of Revelation is at the extremely low level of only 70 (as is the calibration of its author, John).
The Koran overall calibrates quite high as it is monotheistic and devout, but thirty percent of its verses calibrate below the level of truth (200), and fourteen percent are severely below level 100. There are also negative depictions of God in the Hebrew Old Testament, and savage depictions of Divinity occur routinely in primitive religions (e.g., Incan, Mayan, and Easter Island).
The above paradoxes are classically explained as the consequence of the attack of evil energies/entities in their struggle for survival (Luciferic, Satanic, plus their leading edge of the energy of confusion). The Buddha noted that he was beset by demons as he neared enlightenment, and Jesus Christ sweat blood while under similar duress. Also notable is that many spiritual teachers and gurus calibrated high in their earlier lives and then crashed and fell to low levels (e.g., power, control, sex, money, and vanity). The ‘temptations’ are also reported in autobiographies of the lives of saints of different denominations.
Because of the above-cited traps for the unwary, classical scriptures over time can include serious error, which, when cited as justification for destructive actions, have grave consequences for naïve religionists. The major reason such error escapes recognition is that the capacity for ‘spiritual discernment’ does not occur until consciousness calibration level 600 (classically termed the “opening of the third eye of the Buddhic [etheric] body”).
Religion as the Basis for World Conflict
The narcissistic core of the ego is voracious in its endless search for aggrandizement via conflict. Religion has thus been a favorite topic for dispute and endless violence down through the centuries. Although peace is a primary principle of major religions, war in the name of peace has paradoxically been a prominent theme from the zealots of Judea to the assassins of Iranian Shia to the Protestant versus Catholic violence of Europe and the current Islamic conflict and violence.
The recurrent excuse for even the most horrific extremes of violence has been the time-worn slogan “The end justifies the means” by which any action can be rationalized by clever rhetoric. Terrorists strive for the role of heroic ‘liberator’ by which victim and oppressor become reversed in the game of playing Robin Hood.
Terrorism is a tactic used through the centuries by religious groups as well as individuals (e.g., the unibomber, Weather Underground terrorists, the “Black September” group, ‘animal rights’ and environmental activists, Arafat, Castro, and more). Center stage in today’s world is the incitement to violence by the terrorist bin Laden ‘in the name of Islam’ where again, as throughout history, the ego tries to disguise hatred as religious holiness via presumed deification by the pirating of the name of God. At the end of World War II, it was the religious Shinto zeal of the Japanese that required the dropping of the atomic bomb to bring the war to an end.
While the dangers of messianic apocalyptic triumphalism may be limited to cult-like splinter groups, in the case of world leaders, the danger is widespread in a nuclear age when a messianic, narcissistic, megalomaniacal leader may try to trigger such a vision via major destruction to human life ‘in the Name of God’ (e.g., “Kill all infidels, wipe Israel off the map,” as per per the threats by the president of Iran, which calibrate at 80).
Prominent in today’s world is the promulgation of the downside of Islam exhibited by the ‘Sharia’ of Islamic law, which calibrates at level 190 and results in the stoning of women to death, the beheading of infidels, and mass killings, all of which rather blatantly contradict the promulgated depiction of Islam as a ‘religion of peace’.
Islamic Triumphalism
By virtue of hegemonous territorial and political militaristic expansion since the year 623 A.D., Islamic violence over the centuries has invaded a great many countries and territories worldwide, including whole continents (e.g., the Ottoman empire), plus numerous civil wars. By threats of violence and civil disorder, it currently holds most of the countries of Europe hostage as the Muslim immigrant populations grow unimpeded as a consequence of bureaucratic ‘accommodation’ and surrender to genocidal threats and riots. Infiltration is assisted by endemic apologetic secularization, which silences Judeo-Christian resistance. As mentioned previously, Islam (the ‘religion of peace’) is currently at war in many countries worldwide, including America, which awakened to the threat after the 9/11 disaster that killed more Americans (all civilians) than did the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
While the United States focuses on military measures, it seems to be increasingly aware that the ‘elephant in the living room’ is the glaring reality that the real threat to Western civilization is ideological (Bush, 2007) and currently operative as “Cultural Jihad” (Phillips, 2006). Militant Islam has adopted the almost identical specific strategies and techniques that were utilized during the rise of the Third Reich: propaganda, indoctrination of youth (The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion), glamour of militarism, assassination, intimidation, and expansion of militaristic industry, including specifically the basics of nuclear armament.
In the United States, as in much of the West, apologists focus on the sheep’s clothing and side unknowingly with their very own enemies. Islamics despise Western liberals and view their apologist rhetoric as despicable weakness (Lenin’s ‘useful fools’). Hollywood elitists especially typify the sordid corruption of the ‘Great Satan’.
Hamas TV aired a children’s cartoon program of Mickey Mouse chanting, “Kill the Jews and Israel and Americans with ak-47s.” Children then scream, chant hate slogans and propaganda a la Joseph Goebbels’ World War II Nazi style (Beck, G., CNN, April, 2007).
The problematic paradoxes of the life and teachings of Muhammad, as well as his writings in the Koran, have been the subject of intense study and criticism over the centuries by numerous scholars (Warraq, 2003). The Koran’s contradictory divergences have been explained as the consequences of his temporal lobe epilepsy and sexual opportunism, as well as politically motivated goals, which resulted in the frequent changes he as well as other authors made in the Koran and its many revisions. Again, thirty percent of verses calibrate below level 200, twenty-five percent below 150, and fourteen percent below level 100. (See Chapter 16, Truth versus Falsehood.)
Major criticism of Islam originated from Hindu scholars who viewed Islamic extremism as the result of Imam’s repetitious use of classical induction techniques to create a trance state called ‘Wahi’. (Elst, 2006; Saraswati, 1875).
Also noted by numerous scholars were Muhammad’s opportunistic, constant reinterpretations of Koranic verses to accommodate personal, political, and militaristic goals and opportunities. The result was that many verses are completely contradictory.
The many changes resulted in the dictum of ‘abrogation’, which means that the later verses in the Koran take precedence over earlier ones. Also of importance is that the Koran does not differentiate political from religious concepts, and thus, politics and earthly dominance are innate (Sultaw, 2006). Thus, the Koran divides the world into the ‘House of Islam’ versus the ‘House of War’ (non-Islam). Therefore, by religious doctrine, Islam is at war with the rest of the world. The Koran also avoids rationality and specifically deplores reason and rationality as “dangerous to faith.”
There is widespread agreement over the centuries that Muhammad went into delusional trance states (Goel,1999). Swami Vivekananda, as well as many other scholars, emphasizes the importance of recognizing pathologically altered states of consciousness with religious content (reviewed by Warraq, 2003). The diagnostic differentiation between true spiritual states and mental aberrations is detailed in Truth vs. Falsehood, Chapter 17.
In clinical practice, such states are seen quite commonly with temporal lobe epilepsy with grandiose delusions and messages from God or archangels, etc. (During fifty years of clinical practice, the author was the psychiatric consultant to many religious and spiritual organizations.) In the state of true spiritual enlightenment, there is no ‘other’ entity as an informant inasmuch as the all-pervasive Self is the Purusha (teacher) by virtue of its Allness.
A general consensus from all the above scholars, as well as spiritual teachers and advanced mystics, is that fanatical religious extremism is the result of induced altered states of consciousness (cal. 90) and post-hypnotic automatization as is characteristically revealed by the typical pathognomonic monotone voice and speech patterns of many male and female Islamic spokesmen (cal. 100; brainwashed syndrome). They make guest appearances on television programs as spokespersons for various euphemistically titled Islamic-American organizations and recite memorized, indoctrinated, programmed propaganda that contradicts everyday worldwide events (see Kusher, 2004).
These clinical observations and conclusions also provide an explanation for the often bizarre and irrational behaviors of extreme religionists, which are devoid of reason or social reality testing, such as declaring that events witnessed by millions (Nazi concentration camps and extermination of Jews) ‘never happened’. Absurdity is primarily seen in the mentally ill or people in a post-hypnotic suggestion state.
Islamic Sharia states all nonbelievers are infidels that should be put to death (Gelenter, 2007). Nonbelievers represent the House of War as denoted by the Koran.
Criticism of Islam accelerated after the 1989 declaration of ‘fatwah’ against Salman Rushdie who stayed in hiding for decades but was then paradoxically knighted in 2007 by the British Crown. It is not just the extremists but the Koran itself that repeatedly instructs Muslims to ‘kill/behead’ nonbelievers. The basic truth and camouflaged reality are revealed by the verifiable fact that the social impact of Islam in the United States currently calibrates significantly at level 190 (as do publically funded, supposedly secular schools that ostensibly merely teach Islamic language and culture.) The calibration level, however, reveals the concealed motive.
The Western world is confronted daily with trying to apply tolerance, forgiveness, and compassion to provocation by violence, threats, and relentless attacks, both verbally and physically. Islamic crowds shout “Death to America,” terrorists blow up airplanes, kill civilians by the thousands (9/11), and kill other thousands around the globe. As reiterated previously, Islamics are at war in many countries, and more actions are being planned or have been thwarted (e.g., planes and subways in Britain).
Sharia law is famous for its extreme cruelty to the weak and innocent (to women, children, and even dogs). Even the most abject, self-abasing apologists are hard pressed to maintain a façade of excuses via pseudosociological and psychological rationalizations, such as childhood deprivation, etc. (bin Laden is a multimillionaire). Note that chivalry calibrates at 465 and Islamic ‘honor killing’ calibrates at 90 (as does atrocity). Apologists ignore the devastating effect of carefully programmed indoctrination into cultish worship of death rationalized as the will of Allah. Such indoctrination is now practiced in twenty-five percent of the mosques in the United States, which collectively calibrate overall at level 190.
It is also significant that Islam has practiced slavery for centuries. The Islamic slave trade resulted in the origin of African blacks being sold in the Caribbean Islands and transported to the southern United States. When, in the end years of the eighteenth century, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson complained to the ambassador from Tripoli, they were told that the Koran entitled Muslims to enslave infidels even as a duty (Hogan, 2007).
There is a counter-movement to Islamic violence led by such personages as Irshad Manji, author of the book, The Trouble with Islam Today, and the PBS documentary, Faith without Fear. She herself, however, by promoting peace, is considered to be a heretic and lives behind bulletproof-glass windows. For example, there arises the satire that “Islamics threaten to kill anyone who says it is not a ‘religion of peace’” (Goldberg, 2007).
By paranoid projection, Western society, with America as its symbol, becomes ‘the Great Satan’. It is important to note that Muslim children are not educated except to memorize the Koran and read The Learned Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is a fallacious hate manual (cal. 90). Overall, by Western standards, Arabic society itself is still primitive, nonindustrialized, and primarily still tribal in nature.
The pirating of religion by militancy has been, of course, demonstrated in Christianity in the European wars between Protestant and Catholic regimes and more recently by the armed conflicts and terrorism of the IRA in Northern Ireland, as well as the Sunnis versus the Shiites in the Middle East, and the PLO in Palestine. Terrorist organizations and modes of operation are examined in detail in the scholarly Thinking Like A Terrorist (German, 2007).
A major factor in the Western world’s failure to deal successfully with Islamic culture is the wide disparity in cultural presumptions about truthfulness of statements and declarations. In Sharia law, it is not only permissible to lie when to do so benefits Islam, but it is also actually an obligation to do so. This is incomprehensible to Western culture where truthfulness of communication is a presumption unless proven otherwise. This major factor explains the dismal failures of Westerners in negotiating with Islamic countries.
Westerners believe in ‘fairness’ and the preservation of life, whereas Islam relies on violence and death as per the Koran’s admonition to kill nonbelievers (“desecration of holy Arabic soil by infidels”; “cut off their heads” wherever you find them). This principle has been militarily active since the year 623 and continued down through the centuries of the Ottoman Empire. It is active in current fatwahs and in ongoing threats of nuclear annihilation.
Because of naïveté, Americans did not grasp the real meaning and significance of bin Laden’s videotaped broadcast to the United States in September 2007 where he invited ‘America to convert to Islam’. That was a very major danger signal for, by Islamic law, if infidels are invited to convert and fail to do so, it is honorable to kill them. That invitation was thereby a crucial and critical formal step that cleared the way for major aggression against the United States. If an infidel agrees to convert, their life can be spared, but they owe a money tribute. (bin Laden's public statements in September 2007 calibrated at 35, at which time the President of Iran was invited to speak at a major university.)
From all the above can be seen the very wide gap between conceptual and experiential realities. Thus, the Western mind, steeped in the morality of the Sermon on the Mount (cal. 955) by Jesus (in the Book of Matthew), cannot really grasp such a wide disparity, and the dangerous disparity is further obscured by the camouflage of relativistic rhetoric and childish idealizations. There is a very wide disparity between devotional faith and its substitute by frenzied fanaticism.
Confrontive to Islamic theories is that God created all human life and not just Muslims, who are numerically in the minority of the world’s overall population. Thus, via Islamic law, the Muslim world is obliged to kill the majority of mankind. This worldview calibrates at consciousness level 20 (absurdity). Such a disparity is explicable as the result of Muhammad’s temporal lobe epilepsy and consequent fall in calibration from 700 to 130.
It is helpful in trying to comprehend all the above disparities to remember that falsehood is not the opposite of truth but instead represents its absence, just as darkness is not the opposite of light but the consequence of its absence.
Paradigm Disparity
The human sense of reality is aligned with the dominance of levels of consciousness. By esoteric analogy, the Western world and Judeo-Christian culture are aligned with the heart chakra (Love, forgiveness, tolerance, kindness, and protection of the weak, the innocent, and the powerless).
In contrast, Sharia law is centered in the solar plexus (dominant aggression), the spleen (violence, hate, killing), and base chakra (sexualization of heaven). These are not compatible world views. The teachings of Islam are directly the opposite of the Sermon on the Mount. (See Lindberg’s Political Teachings of Jesus.) Notable also is the Islamic teaching that God (Allah) hears only prayers that are in Arabic.
While the Koran includes recognition of Jesus as a great prophet, it completely ignores and rejects Jesus’ teachings and instead teaches the rectitude of slavery, the killing of innocents, and intolerance without forgiveness. Thus, there is no common ground or shared sense of reality from which to bring about accord. Islamics consider appeasement as despicable weakness which results in contempt and perceived powerlessness that merely invites further aggression. Thus, the selection of verses from the Koran can be used to justify all forms of violence and extremism.
Reason As a Limitation of Western Society
A major constriction to understanding extremist behaviors is the Western world’s presumption that behaviors are based on logical, rational motives that are capable of being identified and thereby countered. Thus, some ‘purpose’ is hypothecated to explain extreme behaviors (e.g., teleological reasoning). In actuality, there is no ‘good’ or ‘purpose’. Violence is its own reward; it is just being what it is, just as being hateful always finds some excuse. Killing sprees are innately gratifying just in their indulgence. They are just being what their nature demands. The killer kills merely to kill. There is no ‘motive’ or rationality.
The above is exemplified by the Islamic Taliban’s blowing up of the great Buddha in Afghanistan in 2001. The statue was one hundred fifty feet high, fifteen