The Meaning of Life

Work? There is so much pleasure in work. I would not have believed it, years ago—or has it actually, already been decades? A world away from this, now. Here. It is surely personal, the theory of what may matter, and I think not that the judgments of a dream can ever be distilled into a logic without passion. Where is life without passion? There are antiseptic actions which do concoct a steady reasoning, it is true, but never would they have been initiated without some investment of the heart. To be useful to this world: this is finer than any reproductive urge, by far, in quality’s name. All is vanity, and chasing after wind… except work? That which rearranges entropy so that life is possible; that which formulates beauty in the design of the physical world, letting imagination spill into it.

And then there is love, of course. Some (many?) short circuit the question of what meaning may be by leaning with all our body weight on those overused four letters. Yes, I know what you say when you say that the meaning of life is love. Of course it is. But do you have any idea of what you’re saying when you say exactly that? In my own surveys, I have always thought that you do not need to believe in God in order to believe that God is love. And that love is so simple, we’ll never understand it. And more: love costs. Do you believe that love is measured by how much work it inspires? What is love? It is like a nothing that is an everything, like how time causes all things to happen, and is actually not doing anything of itself at all.

This is how we start. It is always thus: here, now, this—me. From there, everything that may be accomplished comes to pass. With that, and sorrow. Is it true that the house of wisdom is a house of mourning? Even if that equation exaggerates the issue, I conjecture that anything more than a surface meaning of things must dip into such dim wells, and remember their flavor. Then to say that the meaning of life is simple, dead simple: if you are alive, you already know it. Or no, you do not? You do not know it just as a fish does not know what water is. I remember back, in a dream, when the Lord asked me, “What do you want?” Whereupon I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “That means you are lost.” The worst place to get lost—in yourself.

At the other end of my soul, the fantasy won’t let me be… that of EUTOPIA. Not Utopia, which means “nowhere”, but with that initial “e”, it is “the good land”. Some people, when they believe that some task is impossible, they say, “that’s Utopia”. In a perfect world, yes? Except that things don’t have to be perfect to mean something. We deal with imperfections every day, and we make them work somehow. Destiny appears often rough hewn. It might be true that we become who we are in the dreams we forget, that the Process is a mystery—and perhaps there are reasons for that. Two shapes which are random cut fitting together with fantastic symmetry. The messianic age, which people of Jewish persuasion point out did not happen in the time of Jesus of Nazareth, actually seems to be happening now: as a thousand years is to God a single day, it were two days that the messiah had lain in the earth, to emerge with God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven: it is happening now, these two days later in that cosmic scale. The beginning is near. The beginning is here.

Would you believe me now if I say that I am a scientist? Indeed, in my brash university years I was known as a devout atheist. Much has happened from there to here, but let this pique your curiosity: if you claim yourself a skeptic, I say that you do not doubt enough. What is it if you start not to take logic for granted? When you do not hold that truth need be true, false be false? Impossible? Idiocy? Truth must always be true, and the opposite? What if there is something more primal than these? And if I tell you that God only exists to me from my point of view, and not necessarily yours, does that invite a better perspective of me?

We don’t notice that miracles happen every day simply because they happen every day. This is a clue to how the world works. Science, where we get a bundle of clues, tells you what is true, whether you believe it or not—if the things in question are within its jurisdiction. You can go overboard with that, where we enter a realm called “scientism”, in which we believe only science has any valid answers in any school of thought. Still, such a position is arguably better than fundamentalism, which claims that the universe was made in 6 24 hour days, and that somehow Adam and Eve were the parents of everyone who has ever lived. But are both extremes missing something very simple? Is it that life itself is its own meaning?

I need no reason to be because I am. Is the purpose of life… to be alive? This certainly seems to be true of the animals, and perhaps further, the plants and fungi, even the algae and bacteria. Animals seem to get by just fine, without any hint of existential crisis. Humans, on the other hand, my thinking is that even the meanest, basest of us, they will come to a point where they look in the mirror and ask, “Why am I here?” It is not enough for us just to be. In my understanding, “religions” like Buddhism actually stop at that point: they tell us that we should be content just to be. To meditate, to sit without any need for validation. Enlightenment, then, to find the state of being that perhaps the flora and fauna seem to take for granted? In my idea of things, I think, no—this solution seems less than satisfying.

The world has been described as a powerful play; it is indeed an epic current that drives into the new spacetimes at breakneck paces, if one indeed opens one’s eyes at the billion actions at every moment, in all the places where the tumblers are flipped, and we all channel that awesome river of rivers into the unknown, and so it becomes known, the fantastic reality. See, if you have eyes to see.

Understand: we do not wish to renounce this world. We do not wish to be lifted from the stresses and troubles that present themselves to our attention. We do not wish to evacuate ourselves of sweet sensations, just because we can. EUTOPIA calls us: the land of justice. We do not desire to move ourselves into the desert to be favored of some deity; we want to make something of what our forebears left for us. We want to be fruitful, and multiply. Go to your nirvana, if you have had enough of blue sky and fields of golden grain. I desire to remain attached to all the people I have met and loved. I wish to value the coins of silver I have collected. We are so close, right now, to the promise we have read about, scarce to hope. Truly, it is at this time now, here in this waking universe, that there is a path there from here. That all we need is to keep going on the direction we are generally moving towards. That all it requires of us is work. Not magic. Not miracle. Not blood. Just sweat.

What gives anything you do meaning? You get a birthday gift that is just what you wanted, and it means something to you because it is apparent that the giver put a lot of thought in it. What would make a life mean something, then? Perhaps we should modify that big question: “What is the meaning of your life?” or even, “What is the meaning of your life to you?” Is the meaning of life to achieve some goal you have set for yourself? Is the meaning of life to make some difference in the world? Would that not give meaning to your life? Significance. Purpose. And you know what? that has everything to do with love. Because in the final analysis, love is all there is. What are material things, after all, if they are just things? That perfect birthday present: there is love in it. Love = meaning. That is what we name when we say that the meaning of life is love.

But that’s not enough, do you not see? What might be the question we really ask: “What is enough?” What is enough to make life have meaning? One is tempted to think that it is a different thing to different people, that the buddhist monk who has reached enlightenment has found the meaning of life, or that family man with a good job, loving wife and 2.5 kids, 1.3 dogs, a big house in a great neighborhood, hybrid car, etc., etc., has found the ultimate answer to all those esoteric questions that those of a deeper mind have been wrestling with for millennia. If only it be enough… Because you have heard stories told, felt that desire when driving home from the store, that outside temptation not to turn left onto your street—that curious urge to just keep driving, and not look back.

Thus it is usually told that riches will not give you the meaning that you might be seeking through it, nor pleasure, nor power, nor esteem. Because what is enough? It’s never enough. Then there are the paths that are said to give you inner peace, so that whatever you do have, that will be enough. A lot of people (a lot of people) will refer to a God-shaped hole in the heart, that what is required to find all the meaning in life that you could possibly want is to find the infinite, and to house That within you. …and we’re back to “God is love.” One might be tempted to take this as perhaps a fundamentalist would (in a perfect world): that “love” is actually talking about a material substance, and that God is made up (entirely) of this one substance. A love transcendent. In addition, a corollary: since we are made in the image of God, that we are made in the image of that love, that love transcendent.

Jesus! One thing that most people overlook when talking about the Son of God, maybe because it’s thinking a little bit backward, is that if we are to believe the account of Him (that he dined with “sinners” and infuriated the rich and powerful, ultimately to end up dead while having committed no sins Himself)—if this is correct, then from the example that He is, we can therefore conclude that God (or Dad, as He called Him), is also good. The thing about the triune God is that to keep with the Judaic “God is One”, it means that the Son and the Father share the one nature that God is. To be the Son of God means that He is God, and in fact in the Gospel accounts, this is the blasphemy He is charged with, “this man says he is God” (which is punishable by death). It is well known that when there is a certain way that religious leaders act in their relation to God, this changes the nature of God for everyone within that leader’s influence. “God is love” is not in the Old Testament. Basically, He needed to show everyone Himself what Dad really was like. The picture, before Jesus, had been an incomplete one.

Understood there are millions of people who believe in God who don’t believe Jesus was His Son, and perhaps even more who don’t think there is a God at all, but when you bring up the topic of the meaning of life, you cannot ignore them. It is also understood and there is some agreement with philosophers (a- and theist) that there is ultimately no meaning without that there is a God. For instance, if in the far, far future, the universe experiences the death and dissolution of everything, what has it all been for? Even not considering that, there is something to be said about the thought that we are part of something larger.

God is love. These are arguably the most profound words ever writ. There is no ineffable: God is love. Better than anything Jesus is supposed to have said; and I speak no heresy here, for He said there would be greater deeds done by those who followed after Him. There you go. Even if you do not believe there is anything like a deity anywhere, you understand the sentiment. You understand the dream that is being had. It is the best possible thing in all the worlds anywhere, and here. Because you know, if it’s somehow true: if God really is love, then there is a reason for everything, however horrible things may be or become, or have been: nothing is in vain. And is that it, what some of us really want when we ask for the meaning of life? Just a steady voice to tell us that everything is going to be alright…

And just like trying to put all one’s eggs in love’s basket, we mayhap should not press upon the idea of God to solve everything for us. Even believing in Him, He gave us all our own conception, of our own selves and of the world. He gave us the capability to be autonomous. The parent’s duty is to make the child independent! Remember this simple thing: that if you have known love, you have known God. Believe it or not.

So, in one sentence, state the purpose of all humanity. You have 5 minutes. Go. OK, one hint: it is love, but you can’t use that in your answer. Because reasons. And you know, if you’re full of God and/or Jesus, you don’t even ask. (The reasons are because this is an unfair question.) The answer must be immediately recognizable as correct, and will last as the definitive of all answers for everything for all days, up to and including the end of days… Does nothing come to mind? There’s a reason for that! Like we all are made in the image of God, all answers are a shadow of the ultimate of answers. From the One Answer one may solve all the questions ever to be created, just like “because God” is trivially the answer to all mysteries.

The meaning of life is a secret no one knows, because it is too obvious. It is a secret that is not a secret, knowledge like the comprehension of zero. (There are zero matadors killing zero bulls, every one of them dressed in red.) What is love? In this is the secret most plain: love is work. Did you not know? Have you not heard? That fluffy, hazy, clouds-in-your-eyes sensation of being in love may be what some people think that all love is, or should be. Indeed, some scholars have denied the equivalence of “love is God” for just such a reason. But that love—love transcendent, the One Love—it is both in the natures of all the basest ideas of love, and higher than time. There is nothing greater.

The meaning of life is the proof that there is magic in the world. We all once knew, we all once believed, that anything was possible. Remember? That one moment when everything was right with the world, that one time when everything made sense… And it didn’t last, a transient strawberry that tasted so fine when you were on the ledge of a cliff, with a tiger above you and a tiger below… But o, its taste was sweet! You could not handle the meaning of life if it revealed itself to you in the everymoment; there was a soul who saw the infinite light which was the barest trim of His glory, and he knew what it meant that one could not see God and live. The meaning of life will never make sense if you seek after it, and surely will not unveil itself if you do not look for it. You know what it is. Remember?

Was there a promise you made to yourself, when you were so little, that you would never forget what it was like, just then, that you would always understand, like how you imagined all the grown ups never knew. That was how it seemed. And now, caught up in the world, did you forget? The rationales that came in the growing up, that you could never have imagined when you were that little, the responsibilities heaped upon you that could not have been thought of back when—excuses, excuses! You are still that little. Will you make that promise again? Because the meaning of life is to realize that: that you are a small child in the face of the unfathomable deep of the cosmos. This is where you fear God, for that is the beginning of wisdom. For you do not comprehend the Infinite, and you never shall; the Know is deeper than that unfathomable deep. Or how you might imagine is the depth of nonexistence. Love is deeper.

Did you hear? Love is deeper. Let death die. The meaning of life: love is sweet poetry. And true love? Does your love last forever? That is true love’s only qualification! The meaning of life: love is an electric dream. When love lit our senses (I remember you)… We have never been here before, exactly where we are now—any second time, it is not the same river, and it is not the same you. The meaning of life: whatever the cost, love is free. When we complete the circuit, everyone in the world loves everyone else, and we become not just a collective mind, but a collective spirit, a collective soul, a collective heart: this is EUTOPIA, which is landing as we speak. This is when the world loves us back (as you sow, you know?). And the meaning of life? The meaning of life is all that we forgot that did not forget us. And that, my friends, turns out to be Infinite.

When in the dream, we reach for something we know is there, in the ether—a missing part of us, perhaps, some treasure from our childhood, maybe, priceless but ephemeral—and we wake and forget what seemed so crucial, to our very existential significance and essential quality of our being—gone. Perhaps death is not sleep, after all, but when we awake to discover that what we had held so dear in that dream which is life… is not so very much of anything, after all. Even love. We love perhaps as fools love, love that is folly. Have all of us known what it is to love beyond our means? Yet love, even in folly, has its place in the Physics.

There is so much pleasure in work. Whatever you do, if it makes the world go in the smallest part, do you understand the word, “worthy”? Of worth. It means something. What makes life mean something? In general, right? Well, what is love? Is it not the one billion faces of possible kindnesses acted upon? Surely there are more, in fact. We do not have to gather all such things in a heap to comprehend what is there. Most of us, for the greater parts of our lives do not think anything of getting up and out of bed in the morning. The meaning of life is there, just there. And you know what makes some people rise and shine? That sense of purpose. Of work to do. What is the meaning of life? Get to work. Do something. At that point, and only then, are you worthy enough to ask if there is something more. What is the meaning of life? That which is the meaning in life. Nothing more, nor less. Sometimes it is small, sometimes it is great. Don’t count out the little things. For most of us, what saves us are the small things. And you wanted maybe some universe shaking Reason to Be? Be careful what you ask for; that’s a lot of work you’d be signing onto.

What about love? You are not worthy. God is love. And one thing we true believers understand is that in the proper definition of God is One who is unspeakably good. In fact, many of the misconceptions of Him are indeed because of that aspect of Him. He makes the sun shine on both the virtuous and the vile. Why hasn’t He done anything about the problem of evil? Why haven’t you? He has a plan, and it’s called Judgment Day. You don’t get to judge without that kind of knowledge. Love is always right above you, possessed in that heart where Heaven touches down into this sphere of dirt. What is it that is expressed in a better and truer way in the poor and humble rather than the rich and spoiled? We forget—nay, we never have known—that which is infinite in its goodness, and infinitely as gentle. It seems so rare when it is upon you, like no one has ever loved before you like you love now. You are right. And yet, it is in the reach of anyone who decides to open themselves to what is possible.

Do you not yet see? Yes, the meaning of life is love, but you do not understand what life is, and you understand even less what love is. Even when you are so sure you have it, have it all… You would yet be hard pressed to see the reason why some things in the world happen as they do. After the Holocaust, there were Jews who decided: it is too much, I can no longer believe. No one could blame them! And what do we say to them? What is the meaning of life? Where was the love in that horror? And yet, if you believe that there truly is a meaning of life, like we have always understood what that might mean, if there is a God—He will make good on that pain, even that pain.

What is the meaning of life? God is love. You do not need to believe in God (or even love!) to believe this. Just like you wanted the meaning of life to be. Get to work, and enter into this world a citizen of EUTOPIA. This is what you were meant to do. Do everything out of love. Believe. And if you do not believe, hope. There is always hope—when you believe this, it will be true!

To love is to be found. No one is too lost. Dream a dream bigger than what you are. Love, no matter what. At least try. Light is not an illusion. Darkness does not exist. And the game of life can be won when you decide never to be defeated.

 

Blade Runner Blues

In my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven, I have a chapter trying to put some evidence as to why you might want to believe me when I say the wild things I say. I basically call myself a prophet in the line of Philip K. Dick, and rely on the one very precise factual thing that the Halospace relayed to him to back the validity of his prophethood. The big problem I have in getting people to listen to any of what I say is that I have at one point been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. A huge red flag, n’est-ce pas? Though actually, what the “psychosis” really always has been, in fact, is that I took an acid trip back in July 1991 that I never really came down from. Which doesn’t really help with my credibility either. Heh.

Normally, even with that going on, I have been able to hold down a well paying, professional job as a software engineer. I also have for the best part of 14 years been doing some serious research into artificial intelligence—but there, people who do that (especially on their own) have been known to be a bit kooky, too. And then, there have been certain “episodes” that have come over me, the last of which was so consequential I named it separate from the rest as “The Event”. Which was the reason behind me writing the Memoirs and another book of mine. They basically happen when I stop taking meds. There was something that happened to me back in 1991; like I broke something in the psyche, having some component of it actual physical damage. And now I routinely talk to angels.

When Philip K. had his initial “divine” experiences, which he labeled by date 2-3-74 (Feb. to Mar. 1974), he would occasionally think to ask, “Am I nuts?” And perhaps that was one of the saving graces of his sanity. And maybe he tried not to take what had happened, what was happening to him too seriously, but he knew it had been something major. World shifting, if it was only it was his specific world that was doing that shifting. Though there was definitely something in the air about that time, for in August of that year we saw the resignation of one Richard Nixon, of the highest office in the land. Phil said nothing about having caused that in any way: he did read it as something of a seismic break in the cosmos, however, as in the thinking of some mystics: “as above, so below”.

Phil wasn’t crazy enough to put away. At least, except for his drama where he tried to kill himself—using pills, which one might have foreseen to a body that was used to a variety pharmaceuticals that that was not going to work. He did think he was being visited, though, sometimes from familiar spirits, sometimes from benevolent strangers, sometimes he contended with the darkness. But to give root the whole experience of the last 8 years of his life, in 2-3-74, a pink light had told him of a specific ailment his son was suffering from, and which had been undiagnosed. And when he went to the doctor about it, dadgummit if he hadn’t been spot on.

Other things, though, much of what he was trying to figure out, that’s a lot more scattered. He was sort of all over the place. And it was not like he could go see a doctor to verify any of the things he was claiming. Stuff he even tried to distill, like at the end of VALIS, a friend of mine (who is a wholehearted Dick fan) called it “gibberish”. But the original contact, that diagnosis from the pink beam of light (which seems, upon reading, more like he had been struck by something, then “saw [pink] stars”)—how is something crazy, if it’s true?

I have my own little miracle, and it’s easy enough to brush aside, just by saying, “he’s lying.” But at least don’t think I’ve somehow misinterpreted the event. But one of the characters floating around in my own head, “Mother Nature”, she pulled a lever or something, and you know, I’ve been severely nearsighted most of my life—and suddenly I could see 20/20. That’s not something hallucinations can do! And like I said, there is no reason for you to believe me; I have been told by the higner-ups this happened just so I would have my own root to the experiences of mine. But there you go.

My deeper connection to Dick is to claim something which he himself might deny. At times, he called the entity that he had contact with, after 2-3-74, Thomas, meaning “twin”. He also called whatever it may have been, Firebright, Zebra, Elijah, the Holy Spirit. Myself, I think he was confused. It was nowhere near just one entity, even at a time. And how it may be this is quite a tale, but I’m Thomas—his twin. Yep, the concept is really out there, but I have my reasons why. When all this started for me, in my own date/signifier, 10/7/88, after I had been struck with the light of God, I saw a cosmic egg split, one part light blue, one part pink; and the light blue entered me, and the pink floated off. It took me about 25 years to put together that occurrence with the whole “Thomas” phenomenon.

I have read a bunch of his theories of everything. And I have my own, based on Christian myth, including J. R. R. Tolkien’s Ainulindalë, which may not count as Christian myth, per se, except that he was one. I have written about the whole thing elsewhere, and has much to do with the War in Heaven, why I wrote the books I wrote, the climax of which I call “The Event”. But all of it, the story, the theology, the philosophy, the blame, the beginning and the end, the world, the victory, the answer, the mystery, and the tragedy: there is just one idea at the heart of it all. God did not invent pain.

Sure, I’m crazy, I’m tripping: you talk to people in your head and you think they’re something other than an hallucination. Correct? Well, let me say that I can see it from the “normal” perspective: in the past, you did a lot of drugs, and perhaps they triggered some latent psychosis that you had in your genes, your makeup. You’re still on medication, right? The “episodes” happen when you stop, right? There you have it. Open and shut case.

I suppose if you believe that all those throughout history who claimed to be sent by God—if you think they’re just crazy or ignorant, or a mix of the two—if you lump me in with them, I really can’t complain. Philip K. Dick belongs with them: he belongs with the prophets; he was the prophet that fit the times, which was, in two words, “sensory overload”. Too many people, too many things going on, too many “realities” to keep track of: the prophets of old knew about Israel, and maybe who was attacking them. That was about it. Now we know what’s happening in places like Japan, like right now. And I’m not even talking about this now, with cell phones; the 20th century had live television. And before his day, how likely would he have been to find out what was in Dogon mythology?

I must tell you, you have nothing you will lose out on if you don’t believe me. I’ve found out that as well. For one, Jesus will save you even if you’re not Christian. There are reasons to be one, but that isn’t among them. And if you don’t believe there is a God at all, it might be meaningless to tell you He didn’t make pain to afflict all the generations to come. (There’s more to the story, but that’s the main stab.) You will find, however, that this is a solution to the problem of suffering, and if you take that problem out of the problem of evil, that becomes just a question of free will. What a lovely day.

And I am a prophet, too, of my own day, this day. In two words: “beyond reason”. What is my prophecy? “The Beginning is near.” We’re nowhere near the end, as the song lyrics go. You might ask, why would God bother with a couple of druggies like Phil and me? Drugs, maybe some drugs more than others, are like knocking on a door in the sky. Most of the time, what comes back are streams of sunlight, or sometimes rain; but every once in a while lightning will strike, and Heaven help you if that happens. For then you will intimately understand the ways of electricity, for better or no. For then art though in the very eye of God.



For the full story, from Heaven to Hell and back, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.

The Radical Vision

Why should we do good? In being good, to understand there are others in this world, who are just as alive as you, and make that fact matter to you—why do that? Why should we care about others, or even believe that they are as real as you? Why shouldn’t we take care of number one, and only this self? Surprisingly, it may come down to one philosophical question: do you believe that there exists the concept of logic? And not necessarily such as called formal logic, but even when emotions drive their own logical process. Just to make sense. Do you believe somewhere that you are the most important thing in the world? Or another tack: do we do good for a reward? For surely the evil do evil for reward. What makes one so different from the other, then? We know that evil does it at the expense of others, while good does it for the sake of others. But why is it we should be selfless rather than selfish?

So there might be three modes of the soul: out for one’s own self no matter what, for one’s self as much as others, and out for others at the expense of oneself. The first, the logic involved is merely to ask, is it good for me? A yes or no to that one question might even determine their idea of right or wrong. The second involves a certain balance, and negotiation. The logic might be, does the world agree with my action? And the third, he thinks nothing of oneself, just that the good is done. It comes down to the answer of that one question: “Am I the most important thing in the world?” And perhaps it is telling that Lucifer’s great sin was that of pride. In that world, undoubtably Jesus Christ, Son of God, was the most important of all; Lucifer, against all logic, denied that. At the other end of the spectrum is the humility of a saint, not to think of oneself at all, for surely, there’s a great big world out there that’s better served. And then one reasons that the middle of the roaders (probably most of us), can accept the argument that we are not the end all be all of existence, but we’re don’t want to be ignored, either. And then to ask the three types, “1+1=2, correct?” will get an “of course” from types three and two, but the first—he may not acquiesce something even that simple, that obvious, if it isn’t in his best interest. And that is to admit no logic but his own, which is no logic at all.

We have the choice in which way to think and act. We have been empowered to think this, given the freedom and the confidence: if all we were able to do was scrape out a living, we would scarce have the luxury. It is no small thing. And so we distill it to pretty much the purest choice there can be. Order or chaos? Reality or delusion? Meaning or senselessness? Reason or insanity? This is what it means, that choice, to accept that there is something called “logic”, “reason”, “understanding”, and that it makes sense. Of the world, of reason itself, even. To choose otherwise is like killing logic and feeding off its carcass. That would be to say that such things exist to serve you, and have no external reality. And did you think it, in which I imply that to be the most logical is to be the greatest of the saints? I leave why that might be as an exercise for the reader. But what if what Jesus Christ died for, the salvation of everyone who could be saved: what if the question of “are you saved?” doesn’t rely on what you “believe”, except for this state of your soul: that the question literally becomes, “can you be reasoned with?”

If what you now know is to think that you are fully aware of the world, or aware enough, it is a fully conscious thing you do: choose. How solid is your logic, what you know are the rules you should live by? Are they absolute, or do they wrap to fit any desire? Then, back to the original question: why be good? Of course, ultimately, I cannot answer that for you. Free will is not an illusion, and the choice must be real, and a personal one. As one of the good guys, though (I try to be, at least), let me just say that there is a truth and it’s on our side. It is the nature of logic, n’est-ce pas? And as one of the good guys, I must give you the main reason to choose the right over the wrong. Simply put, we’re where the love is. Really, if you decide anything is higher than sheer, unbounded love, we can sorta do without you. Like if you think yourself so darn important. If your heart is filled only with thoughts of yourself, it has no room for love to dwell within it. And as for reward, the good guys have the love that is true and unfiltered. In the most extreme, not even needing that we receive it from others…

We can do one better than our reasoning ending in love. Let’s start our understanding of all the world with these three words: God is love. And there is no higher. I like to say, even if you don’t believe in God, you can believe that God is love. There is no better concept that you can have God being, and there is no subordinate thing that you would have love be bound to, for true love is beholden to nothing. God is light, God is mercy, God is justice: it’s all covered by those three words. And it matters not that the world is sometimes a rotten place to live in, just that you believe that there is something better that we can strive toward. Do you believe that it is just not worth it? God is there for you, if you truly have nothing. Consider that. And then there is the Son of God: Jesus Christ is known as the Logos, which is often translated as the “Word”, but might be more correctly be understood as “Holy Reason”—logic. It all does fit together.

Why do good? It is the only way you will understand love. Those that refuse all logic, it is not that God won’t forgive them, but that they sabotage the mechanism by which they may be forgiven. Basically, they kill themselves rather than admit that God is love. They cannot be reasoned with. And if you think this is a funny way to determine a soul’s salvation, we recall that that we are not necessarily saved according to our works. And salvation is not necessarily to believe in Jesus Christ, for he says, “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things I say?” [Luke 6:46] What does he say to do, above all else? Love. It is the way and the reward: to be able to negotiate something away from yourself, and give it to another.

Christianity always had fantastic elements to it. But of the miracles Jesus Christ was supposed to have performed, it is only necessary to believe in one of them, the “sign of Jonah”: the Resurrection. According to Paul, without that, our faith is in vain, so for now, let’s just say that it is true, and Jesus Christ came back from the dead. And maybe also that his cosmic significance might be stated that he was the Logos—the logic of within and without. Preaching was to spread that logic. We forget, these centuries on, how it was such a radical vision. Way back, there was a certain way to be, a certain way to act, to believe. Then he came, and said to love your enemies. And that he who is without sin cast the first stone. This was the manifestation of the God who is love. Prophets before him said to give justice to the poor, and decried those who were in power. To worship God by one’s actions, and not by lip service. But this is the myth we came to know: when Jesus Christ came back from death, he came back as every one of us. He saved all the world.

You see, logic is a certain type of faith. Einstein at one point wished he had never called his theory “Relativity”, because everyone kept saying how it made everything relative. This was the opposite of its intent, that the laws of physics were the same relative to everyone and every place. We believe that if something is true, then it is true everywhere that the context of the truth is valid. If this were not the case, that would be pandemonium. Literally (or close to literally). And it turns out, the power to negotiate the truth is all that the Savior needs to save us, save any of us. Because if you can be reasoned with, you can be a part of the Logos. You see? This is the Resurrection. What about all those Christians telling us that we need to believe in Jesus to be saved? Our idea of Christ is of that Logos, which is the logic of love, as above. In this way does it follow that anyone, anywhere, anytime, can be saved by that Jesus, who is everywhere, being the Logos—the means by which anything exists—who in the beginning was with God, and who is God. Why did he tell all his followers to spread the message to all the world? Because it is true that in hearing the message and accepting it, they might be a cell wherein Holy Reason dwells, just like that. He saves us in any wise, believer in the Resurrection or not, but by the Message may we in life walk by that great light, the light of Jesus Christ. And that is not a negligible quotient.

Why be good? We might find it is an awesome thing. We often find ourselves facing an evil world. And to be able to do good in such a world, a thousand no’s to your one yes: surely there is reward, even in the attempt. For we are made of the choices we make. This you know. But when we see that God is love, believer or un, we understand that the ideal for which we reach… we bring the dream into existence. When we love it is how heaven touches down in the waking world. And mingles. Forget all the visions and proclamations, forget all the miracles, forget all religion entirely. Love is real, whether you believe in it or not. It is how we share the dream. How close heaven has always been to where we are.



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.

If God Is Love…

What is love? You know, I thought I knew. Once I wrote that love is sweet poetry, and that seemed to cover all the bases. But God is love, right? God is sweet poetry? Even were you to say that Jesus Christ is God, perhaps the most benevolent of representations, you cannot say that this is sweet poetry: look when he says that you will see him coming among the clouds at the right hand of Power. Poetic, yes, but not exactly sweet. Nor so sugary how he overturned the money changers’ tables and drove them out with a whip. That definition is not without limitation, indeed.

If one might consider a more pragmatic approach, someone wrote to me that love is merely an emotion that basically evolved in us to facilitate propagation. That it is an “invention, not a god”. But that person did not see it analogous to something else that arose from evolution: intelligence. And that emerged within a Darwinian system out of utility, if not necessity—yet when it came about, just look around you to see what that brought about. The buildings, streets, the civilization! Books, music, electric light: the accomplishments of intelligence is that once we reached it, we touched upon something greater. And so it might be with the idea of love.

Yes, it helped us evolutionarily, one can argue. It helped us help each other, first the closest family, then friends, then more abstract structures, like community and country. People have written papers about how selfless love is a benefit rather than a detriment, that helped the human race to survive. But what they do is describe the Mona Lisa by its chemical constituents: you may have a point, but your point misses the whole purpose of the thing. You look at a painting and it moves your soul. Behind that is the reaction of synapses, the release of seratonin, a host of soft machine mechanics clicking into place, as it were. And we may just find out exactly why this sort of pattern and color makes you react like you do. None of the explanations, however, is truly the experiencing of the painting.

And you know what? As we developed intelligence, we found we could look higher that us, greater, which as far as we know no other species does. They don’t have these minds of ours. We can conceive of transcendence, that as we crawled up from the mud and got ourself a mind to think on high, God was waiting there for us to arrive—on ground high enough to survey such landscapes. Want to make a guess as to what we conceived was up there, when we gazed toward heaven?

To answer Tina Turner (“What’s love got to do with it?”), I’d say love had everything to do with it. That’s what this potent little fragment tells us: God is love. Einstein wanted to know what it was, the mind of God; and that’s it, to know true love is to know the true mind of God. Really, what scientists want to know is the purpose of things, and that is the ultimate purpose to everything. Yes, yes, I know what he was thinking was to codify the fundamental architecture of existence, but I tell you, love had something to say about that architecture. Before the mathematics. This is the love I am talking about when I say that God is love: something so transcendent. What we can comprehend of infinity, that which is the absolute highest of all things. There can be no better.

Love is empty, waiting for you to define it. Love is full, if ever you need it you can dig deeper for it. Love is making someone’s dreams come true, and even if love is not an action… it is that action. Strange in simplicity, it is this theory that makes sense of everything, yet the theory itself is impossible to grasp; and making perfectly sensible the weirdest of phenomena… And then, it is none of the above. I have no idea what love is, for I know what love truly is: love is sweet poetry… of the soul? Humbug. God is love, and that is a little more than sweet poetry.

(What is love? I once had an idea, of the concept of ineffability, or indescribability: that there were some things in heaven and on earth for which words are not enough. And I thought, bull cookies. There is no ineffable: God is love. For if even God has a description that fits, how can anything else escape definition?)

If you speak of the greatness of love, they will say, what are you really talking about? Love is just a sense of goodness that makes you want to do good things to people. And I will say, oh, selflessness? I will tell you that selfish love is greater than mere selflessness. Does selflessness inspire you to write songs of being possessed by another’s beauty? I will say that love does have friends, but you have never met the ringleader. Just like you have never met yourself.

Do you still think you have a handle on what love is? I will say to name it and I can probably find a counterexample that is also love (if you hadn’t noticed in my reasoning, above). One last time: God is love. What that ends up meaning is that love is what we can comprehend of infinity. Yes, there is light, and the Word, but these are naked if they do not wear the bearing of love. Like powerful weapons with nothing to aim them to their target. And that which is infinite will have subtlety that dreams would die to have. Love, baby: only by doing it do you have any idea of it, because God left things undone for us so we’d have something real to do. Love is the answer we always knew was there, somewhere; love is the purpose we always knew we were meant for; and if these being love were certainties, all I could possibly say, then, would be: what is love?



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.

Greater Than the Mystery of Death

Since I’ve been writing I’ve gotten some interesting comments. Some are conventional Christians who don’t seem to “get” what I’m doing. They either don’t read or misunderstand what I’m writing. Truly, they are stuck in narrow ideas of what is right and what is to be believed, and any other, any strange type of thought is basically Satan. Others are different, their polar opposite, as in, “I don’t believe in the fairy in the sky.” And this, which inspires the writing here: that the idea of God, etc., is “a bunch of mythological stories that have no place in 2015”. This side… it is more of what I can relate to. And I think I have an answer to its line of argument. I do not have an response to the other side, those who are stuck in doctrine, what traditional religion affords. In my experience they cannot be reasoned with, for they think that God is with them. But the atheists: these most likely have had religion pumped into them, and have had cause to reject it. Yes, they can be pig headed, too, but I think it is with them that Jesus himself would have sat with. And if the conventional Christians asked why, it would be, “The ones who need a doctor aren’t the healthy but the sick.” [Mark 2:17]

First let’s look at why conventional Christians are so annoying (including Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who actually bring the Annoying to where you live). They can be forgiven, if you think about it. In their mind, the only way that anyone will go to Heaven when you die, the only way anyone can be “saved”, is if they accept the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he came back from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. Maybe one might also add that we’re waiting for him to come back. So in being “annoying” as I’ve said, in their mind, their imposing their beliefs on you is the greatest thing that they can do, because the possibility exists that with their proselytizing that they are saving your immortal soul from an eternity in the flames of Hell. At points, I have taken to be of the Annoying. But I snapped out of it, and my reason is scriptural: Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” [John 6:44] I would find other reasons, later.

So, am I positing that the traditional notions of how salvation works—that the mechanisms are not in fact what they have been believed to be? Or even further, is the thought itself about God and Jesus an archaic notion that we have outgrown? Can we evolve religious thought to the point where they are relevant to the here and now, some two millennia after the Blessed One left the building? One wonders if we are not working along the lines of the Ancient Aliens mode of thought. Basically, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I watch that show, and it seems for every single “extraordinary” occurrence, we invoke the idea that ancient extraterrestrials are the most likely cause. Science teaches us that we should suspend judgment until we have verifiable evidence that a certain thing is true. The claims of many religions—are they a part of the same general conversation as those claiming that the ancient gods were actually aliens from a distant star? Some skeptics call themselves “Pastafarians”, and they say their god is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, telling you that your belief in “higher powers” are just as ridiculous. Are we at something of a crisis point in religion? For to any awake spiritualist, the FSM people really do have a point.

The last crisis in God, in my reckoning, happened to the Jews in 586 BC. This was the beginning of the Babylonian captivity, when the great temple built by Solomon was destroyed—where in fact the Jew’s God, Yahveh, was supposed to have had His dwelling on earth. But instead of that being the end of their whole belief system (for it usually was thought that if one people defeated another, it was one god triumphing over another), their faith, in fact, became stronger. Much stronger. Before, though they professed to only worship Yahveh, there has been found in the archeology of where they lived, many idols—of other gods. But after their exile in Babylon? Zip. None. They believed it was because of those other gods that they were allowed to be so captured, so they paid attention to that first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” And that was the other point: it was actually God acting through the Babylonians as His intermediaries that God brought judgment upon them. Yahveh was not only now the God of the Jews, He was the God over everyone. And that was how it played out in the last crisis.

Perhaps this new crisis doesn’t seem anywhere near as severe as that last one. This one I would say has its source in the repercussions of the Enlightenment. When Nietzsche famously said, “God is dead.” This was when we stopped believing in fairy tales, one might put it. Rationality had gotten in vogue. It was as if we had been carrying a load, going down the road we had always been going down, when suddenly we asked, “Why are we doing this?” And sought instead to unburden ourselves. We looked at the idea of God, and of religion, and a lot of us decided that it didn’t make sense. Not anymore. Not when we had better ideas of why things were they way they were. We started seeing more and more naturalists, those who saw explanations for things in natural order as opposed to “because God”. It has been, so far, a very fruitful way of looking at the world, a view that has given us our current state of science and technology. And so there we have it, why that person had deigned to remark that the idea of God had no place in this current age, well past the Enlightenment. We should stop looking for that fairy in the sky.

This is the crisis now. As Julian Huxley put it, “Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire Cat.” He does seem to have a point, no? Who used to cause lightning? God. Now? It’s just a large charge that travels that path you see, usually from the ground up. What used to be there when you looked up? God in His Heaven. Now? God is definitely not looking down on us from there. There’s mostly empty space, sad to report. We have moved, most of us who still believe, we have moved the “real” Heaven into a completely separate dimension, which mortal eyes seldom travel to. The functions and trappings of God have been invaded… by science, it would appear. Or has it? Couple interesting points, one being that when Jesus ascended into the sky, he disappeared into a cloud; he did not do a “rocket man” sort of stunt and keep going. And the other is that Paul says there is the seen world, and the unseen world, and whereas the seen world is temporary, the unseen world was the one that would keep going. Things like these two are mysteries that can perhaps survive whatever science throws our way. Especially if science can actually make sense of them as they are described in our holy books.

But maybe they have a point. Maybe a God who tells us to kill every last single living being in a city because of their sinful ways—maybe that kind of God we can do without. Maybe it was good way to go back then, when we were without even a Roman road system in place, but now? We don’t look so adoringly at whoever it is that has us kill people, for whatever reason. But nowadays, if He’s not telling us to enact things like that, what is it that He is doing, way “up there”? Why exactly do we need Him, again? Maybe we need another way of looking at things. Could it be, that as He abandons the closer spheres, as He seems to move out of our focus, does He draw us—our imagination—out into the far expanse in following where He retreats to? Let those who have eyes see. So, as we look back to what happened in the previous crisis, is this the next quantum leap that we utilize to solve things, to rescue God from irrelevance, a natural next vault? The idea of God, we to place it properly in the frame of new paradigms. Because however far out we go, might we find that He is already there, having waited for us to figure it out.

Even were there no mystery to the world at all, you know there still would be one that will defy all efforts to codify? We ask, what is love? For the most profound words that ever was written, anywhere, throughout history and into the furthest future, is the minimal sentence in 1 John: “God is love.” C. S. Lewis wrote about that phrase that we should understand it doesn’t mean, “love is God,” but I beg to differ. I think that that is precisely what it means. As Oscar Wilde put it, “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” There is nothing real but love, no matter how tangible that thing might be. Now, seeing that we say of some phenomena that it is not “because God”, then God retreats from the science—when there is no mystery, there is not God, it seems—but that most profound statement will ensure that there will always be somewhere God has His space: “God is love.” Because if you say you know what love is, I will ever say you are a fool in your simplicity. And that is not the good simple, for it is that love itself is so simple, we’ll never understand it.

As far as God’s seeming brutality, one looks to the Book of Job for an answer, for one thing. It is Satan who brings disaster to Job, but at the end, when God finally speaks, He merely asks, who are you to judge Me? Satan is not mentioned at all. It might most possibly be that something was going on “behind the scenes”, as it were, in the seeming cruelty behind some of God’s decrees. There is certainly mystery there, and we may never fully understand it. And look at the Son of God: was not he himself cruelly put to death? He says that he is doing the Father’s will, yet is it not the Devil who orchestrates the whole affair? Can we see some sort of pattern here? God means for all this to happen! But—and this is an important but—He knows how all of this will turn out! Out of the horrors that avail themselves of this world, the pain will have an end. It is so written. And back to where God directly orders to kill: I will not cop out and say that God makes up for it to the victims of those orders. There is another possibility, that that, along with other stories about God in the Bible, were not meant literally that they happened as written. Perhaps another cop out. My thoughts: He works with the tools that exist.

His message to the early Hebrews, by ordering mass killing? I am no one to be trifled with. This establishes Him among the ancients in a way that nothing else could. Yes, to our modern sensibilities it is cruel, perhaps evil to do things in this way, but do we call the lion who kills his prey evil? Who are we to judge Him? Back to Job again. Where were you when He fluctuated the original wave that caused matter to coalesce in just that certain way, for the stars to align in subtle gravity, back at the Big Bang? Because as God became larger in the first crisis of faith, in this one, He takes His final size: greater than the billions upon billions of galaxies where in each one are billions upon billions of stars, each burning nuclear light—all that is a mote in His eye. Do you understand the concept: infinity? You know, you can; it’s in those three words: God is love. Isn’t that His way, though? Love is the chiefest and best way to know infinity. To know the mind of God.

It is what Lucifer failed to understand: you cannot kill God. And as our perspective on the Supreme Being shifts, so that He appears different to us than in generations past, one might say that we have now more or less a “grown up” picture of Him. When this race, the human race, was young, we were fed with milk. And now we are ready for the solid food. We are finally at the point where we understand what it means: civilization. Everyone as equals, with all due basic human rights. We have (right now!) the means by which the entire world may be fed. Verily, the prophet quoth: “The Beginning is near!” And perhaps it needs to get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. Now, watch as the idea of God grows up, for it may be that we do not need Him in the Age of Gold that tantalizingly peeks out at us at the horizon’s edge, but the world will only make sense if He is in it. God is waiting for us to understand the world enough that we don’t use Him as a placeholder. To see what it is, His true function: God is love. Even if you don’t believe in Him at all.



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.