Tag: myth
Judas, Out of the Blue
When Jesus Christ was in the custody of the Sanhedrin, Judas Iscariot showed up, sort of at the side door, out of the blue. He said to them, “I sinned; I handed over to you an innocent man.” [Matthew 27:4 NCV] And he threw the 30 pieces of silver they had paid him back at them. Innocent? Had he thought during the handing over that Jesus was guilty? One might believe he always believed the Lord to have been innocent. One imagines that when he was making the deal, that it was not foremost on his mind that they were going to have him killed. Did he actually think he were doing the right thing, those hours ago? I will contend that of all the mysterious motives for him to perform the act, there is one more likely than the rest: he had been told to do it, by Jesus himself. After Jesus was in their clutches, Judas lost his nerve and goes back to them, they so keen on snatching up our Lord. He had found out somewhat later that they meant to kill him, and so the rescue attempt, however ineffective.
As is the common thought, did he have a change of heart from the time he handed Jesus over to recognize what he had done was wrong? Which would mean he hadn’t thought it was wrong before, and he did now. There must have been a good reason in Judas’ head why he handed the Lord over, at least, at the time. Had he at that point with the kiss not been convinced Jesus was the Christ? It seems unlikely that anyone who had been there for all the miracles—who was one of the ones who had been sent out by the Lord to perform miracles in his name—unlikely that he would not think Jesus was somehow sent by God, in some degree divine or holy.
If this were so, if Judas realized Jesus were holy, then either handing him over was the right thing to do or Judas suddenly and inexplicably became evil. Or perhaps it had been building the whole time? Or was he evil from the first? (That one unlikely by most imaginations, unless the entire discipleship, leading to the “handover” and throwing the money back at them was the way, ultimately, to redeem an originally evil person.) Or perhaps he became jealous of Jesus’ authority, and he was fixing that problem with a prejudice. …except then, some hours after, he repented…
One is used to thinking of Judas as evil. We rail against changing a story that is that well known, that you know by heart. It is practically ingrained in you. You will reflexively fight to defend what you know to be true: gospel truth, right? But often in studying the myth, the ugly head of reality peeks through, to see things we might not have thought of at the outset.
There have been theories as to how this myth (the myth of Judas the Betrayer) formed, like how Mary Magdalene were made into a repentant whore. Which now is pretty certain that was not the case. So, this “Mary Magdalene effect”—what if it happened as the gospels were being gathered, and written down? And the myth of the betrayal of Judas made it into the canon, with some other questionable parts, and now we accept it as being part and parcel of the Truth?
People don’t even think about it any other way but the way we were taught in Sunday school, the accepted story being so prevalent. But what if, instead of him out of nowhere turning evil, Jesus Christ himself told Judas to hand him over, for it was his time? It makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE. Jesus Christ had not chosen a bad egg, who was completely blind to his divinity. Judas volunteered to hand him over, when the opportunity arose. Why did it end up being told the way it was told, how we’ve come to know it? If you know any Bible scholarship, there’s a lot in that grand text that became as it was by various competing forces. Much of Isaiah, for instance, is thought not to have been written by Isaiah. And Biblical infallibility? That it is useful in any matter of faith? Judas being innocent may be the greatest of the whole Bible in which when you see it as being wrong, it makes no difference in how we are to worship God. There are other parts, too, that we now believe are just incorrect. And it perhaps diminishes the Bible in thinking we cannot inject reason into it and have it survive the medicine. Faith should be stronger.
In reading the Scriptures, it strikes one as to how—sometimes—it is, if not inaccurate, imprecise. Like the Babylonian exile. Even if the exile being not exactly 70 years is not brought to scrutiny, there is stuff in there about Babylon being overtaken in kind of a cataclysm, which presumably would have immediately preceded the Jews being released. But Babylon, for a historical fact, did not fall violently. Isaiah 13:19 says, “Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians’ pride, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.” But that didn’t happen. It is true the Jews were released, but nothing like how prophecy laid it down.
To which the enlightened Christian will say, “the Bible is not history.” Yea, verily. I will state a commonly held scholarly belief: the writers of the Gospel had a certain agenda, each of them, in writing them. Their motives were not to provide the most accurate account of what had happened decades before they first put pen to paper. And they most likely did not accurately attribute those writings, either (John didn’t write John). So what do we believe? One can yet find the message in the Gospels, even if they are not all fact, in fact. And that’s likely what the Gospels were meant to impart: the Message. Of a man who was God but did not lord it over everyone, even if that’s what they called him. Who came to serve instead of being served, who did not conquer but took the worst that the world had to give and still was able to love it all. And us all. Who asked God to forgive those who were murdering him, for they knew not what they did. How is it served by blaming one of his closest associates for a baffling betrayal? Is that account of betrayal perhaps the tip of an iceberg?
I get this starting from Klassen. This is what scholarship tells us: Judas = Judah = Jude = where the term “Jew” comes from. It was a time when Christianity was turning from a Jewish base to a primarily gentile following. In moving away from the jurisdiction of “the Jews” as the later Gospels call them, the followers become anti-Jewish, pro-Roman, to the point where in their “good news”, “the Jews” cry out about their King… really? to crucify him, and further, “His blood be on us and our children!” And Pontius Pilate—who was removed from office at a later point for being excessively vicious—he was actually the good guy! Washing his hands of the whole affair (a Jewish gesture). One cannot look at this critically and not see something very wrong with this picture.
So, it was who that crucified the Lord? The Jews? Even if, as a rule, the Jews did not crucify anyone. The Jews, represented in singular form by Judas, the convenient prototype, who is in fact named so prototypically. That we don’t now associate Judas with Jews in general anymore does tell us that the point of time is past the limit of relevance, and it may be now to reevaluate what exactly we believe and why. Because we understand that many constructs within the Bible are now antiquated, and some things have to be most severely interpreted, warped from their original positions, to make sense currently. We do not stone to death someone who has blasphemed anymore. And as for the New Testament, am I taking crazy pills, or does the text not at least imply the thought that Jesus Christ was coming back real soon in relation to those first-century disciples? We interpret that away, don’t we? These are those warpings. We have grown used to them.
Judas has become a device. Once again, we look to Mary Magdalene. How convenient that we have a fallen woman that the Lord had turned from her wicked ways. But as we come into the future, we may find that the figure of Mary Magdalene may be rehabilitated, if the actual person never needed such saving as was thought. Judas is another matter. His position among the damned we learn from the mouth of the Lord himself, as (part of the) “gospel”. Why should we believe differently, could that truly have been so wrong? Well, if you found out that the past did not happen as the Bible said, do you still believe that part of the Bible? I mean, factually. If your answer is yes, I can only shake the dust from my sandals and bid you good day.
“I sinned; I handed over to you an innocent man,” he said. Why do we so desperately want a villain? The most foul one imaginable, one in the inner circle who turned evil, like the Lucifer myth. But then, let’s say that Jesus had told Judas to turn him over, why does he try and rescue his master? Perhaps like the other disciples scattering at Gethsemane the night before, without the Lord, he lost his nerve. He wanted his teacher back. If he were, in fact, guilty, why would he not have run away? Instead, he shows up, out of the blue, and said as if confessing, “I sinned.” I have done something wrong, I know it. This couldn’t be what he actually wanted. “I handed over to you an innocent man.” I am telling you, me, the one who gave him to you, this cannot be the plan: you do not put an innocent to death!
The Lord had said he was going to be turned over, but his disciples did not understand. Peter took him aside and told him not to speak of such things. The Lord said he was going to be handed over to be crucified, but that thought had not hit, just yet, when Judas identified him with a kiss in the darkness. Without the Lord, when Jesus Christ let himself be taken, the disciples were at a loss as to what to do. They fled. Peter would follow the ones that had taken him, but ended up denying him three times in his course.
Surely all this could not have been what was supposed to happen? The reality of it was so different from the words that had described it. They had been in his presence when he spoke of these things, and without him was gone all courage, all reason, all sense.
“I sinned; I handed over to you an innocent man.” He repented, as if he had needed to. This was courage, do you not see? But it is written: he was a villain. You can say what you want, but what a billion say is truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—how can you argue with what is there in plain black and white? The simple fact? You can’t. But you can know better. Just like you can see that the story of Adam and Eve didn’t actually happen like that, you can see that Judas is blameless. Because it makes no sense, the conventional story. He was Judas, Judah, Jude: a symbol for “the Jews”, who killed our Lord and Savior. The death story of our Lord has suspect things throughout it. Will you not accept the spirit of the story instead of holding on to the letter? Perhaps now, we can be trusted with that canniness, to go in the direction the Bible is pointing toward, in spite of all that’s wrong with it. If you don’t think there is anything wrong with it, read it. We as a people did not remain unchanging in how our heart reacted and reacts. We found, and continually find, what is the good and what is the better that we can make of this world. Open your eyes/have eyes to see. Forgive everyone. Yes! Forgive everyone! For if we do that, it doesn’t even matter who is innocent or guilty, right? Right? And it’s not ours to judge, anyway. Right?
If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.
The Prophet’s Brief (A Theory of Everything)
I, being a prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the line of Philip K. Dick, present to you what I have pieced together as a theory of everything. In what it solves, it does in broad swaths, but how a God can be all good while there is pain and unjust suffering—I believe I have an answer. See if it makes sense to you, and better yet, more sense of the world around you. It is one of the central documents of the War in Heaven. Take it as you will.
- In the very beginning, before the universe, there was Eternity. No evil existed, there God and His angels lived in the light, with other heavenly beings.
- Lucifer said “no” to the Holy Spirit, that being the unforgivable blasphemy, from his pride becoming Evil. (God is love, and to say “no” to love is for that part to die.)
- The “no” was the birth of Sin/Pain/Error (Daughter of Satan). Before, there had been none of these. No one had ever committed an error. No one had ever done wrong. And how great a wrong it was.
- The entity known as Sin was to have been born into excruciating pain, through her very essence, so she was killed out of mercy before she was born (given the light of life). However, she still had a semblance of form (antiform), and this form had enough spirit (antispirit) in its essence to move the form as if it had life. Antiform and antispirit were the power rendered to darkness by Evil.
- Lucifer (Evil) copulated with Sin and Death came to be (Son of Satan).
- Satan convinced 1/3 of the angels to commit sin and become evil. In committing Evil, (and bringing about Sin and Death), Satan and his angels ruined a part of Heaven, and this part was to become Hell when torn away from the main. For Heaven was so good that it could even accommodate such evil and its works.
- The body of Sin was cast into the outer darkness. This was the primordial chaos (formlessness of Genesis 1). Also known as Rahab.
- The one about whom it is said, “She is dead and giving birth to monsters.”
- Here was the environment wherein would form the material world, and this world—to use her body as the basis for its first stuff—this world is in part was a tribute to the one that was lost. For she was never given a chance.
- That it was so difficult to work with, being formless, being of essence “error” itself, and from that it was made beautiful by God, in fitting ways, explains much of the character of this universe, that even the worst situations can bring forth wonder.
- Satan sought to kill and replace the Logos, who was God (see John 1). This was the beginning of the War in Heaven. Michael and his angels were dispatched to fight the Dragon (Satan) and his angels. For Satan desired power ultimate, unholy.
- The War in Heaven was combat between Logos and derangement, truth vs. lie, and to be on one side or the other was good vs. evil.
- The battleground were the Godhead itself, the root controls of existence. So that all creation groaned under the War.
- Every one of Michael’s angels (and of course Michael) won, so that derangement—none of it—it did not ultimately win anywhere. There was no crack in the edifice of creation, the pillars of its existence (there are four).
- But that there was even a fight at all meant that the created world would have such things as natural disasters in it—just that laws of physics would not break—and there would be opportunity for the evil we now witness, to this day. That which was permissible in the matrix.
- They did kill God, this being called the Cross, but that concluded not with that death, but with His defeat of Death itself: the Resurrection. Being the Son of God means that he is God (this was the “blasphemy” that he had been charged with by the Sanhedrin).
- That Jesus Christ had to die for the world to be saved tells you how FUBAR things got, how powerful the forces of evil had become, that the will of God would be so forced. To hold to logic is sometimes finesse, often brute. At times one invoking the other. But there was no getting around it in this fight.
- Having been sinless his whole life, in his death was the defeat of Sin.
- This is how the God who is love defeats Evil: Jesus gave himself and was obedient to God with the whole of his own life, even to the death. The whole of his trust. To defeat Death not with any weapon but the nature of what love truly is. The light by which life moves, and is moved.
If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.
A Mystery So Obvious
There are mysteries, there are secrets, from the beginning of time to the last day there have been, and are, and will be. Many of these are relatively trivial when unmasked, simple to comprehend once the tarp is lifted from them, to wonder why they seemed so strange as to what their answer could be, what was beneath when they had been covered over. I’ve seen some secrets when the Archangel took me to see from the angelic heights some of what happens in this world, and why—and I think I cannot share them with you, not now: because of those reasons why there are secrets in the world, why there are mysteries. Simply put, things are kept from us because we are not ready for them, and they are revealed when we are. There is much chaos in the world—for the world was born from chaos—but the pervading order, that you may split a block of wood and the Lord is there, it gives true meaning to what is meant to be, when the mystery unfolds, and wide-eyed does one say, “Glory be to God.”
The world has been much a world at war. Yes, it is true that we always dream of world peace, in the outside world, but many an evangelist will tell you that there is and always has been a war for our souls, of two kingdoms, light and dark, who battle for over us night and day; one side who can never hope to win, but that battles out of spite, out of hate. Now I tell you of a third war, which extends from the highest Heaven to the most remote corners of the earth. I can tell you of it because I have seen it end, but lo, it goes on, still, in places other than where I am; for it is a war in Eternity, the next world. Do you not know that the realm of ideas enters into the waking world every time an invention is made, or a word written? And Eternity by dreams and visions makes itself known in the world of solidities. Did you not know the unseen world was before the world that is seen, for in the beginning, there was before anything, the Logos; and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. And something we do not think about: that before the action, there was a Plan.
If there is a God who can prevent earthquakes and floods and fires and tornadoes and hurricanes, why do they happen? If there is a God who can prevent all harm, why is harm still experienced by us? I recall some skeptic who said that if Jesus Christ were the real deal, why is it that he did not do more in his time on earth, why not eradicate all disease? feed all the hungry in perpetuity? The Son of God, right? Wasn’t that what he was advertised to be? To them I say, look, friend: the Jews still don’t think he was the messiah because he was not what they expected the messiah to be. Throw your expectations out the window, because we have no say what a being greater than us is supposed to do, or be. And if this is how the Plan goes down, we should pay attention to such things as someone who says he is the Son of God and comes back from the dead to prove it.
The Plan runs into a wall, though, the idea of it: into what is called the problem of pain. If we excise the part of the problem of pain that is the problem of evil (that which is caused by the malicious intent of those with free will to do so), we basically come to the question of why there are such things as natural disasters… Or do we? In the Book of Job, Satan is let loose on poor Job, and one of the things that happen to him: “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.” [Job 1:18-19] So it is that natural disasters could be the fault of the Devil. The faithful one will concur, applied to catastrophe: “Some say it’s just a part of it / We’ve got to fulfill the Book” [Bob Marley]. But could it be so simple? Everything good has its source in God, and everything bad goes back to its origins in the Devil? Do you see that even in knowing why, it is still a secret, still a mystery?
Why would it take so long for such a fundamental thing to be revealed? I show it to you and you can scarcely believe it. We have had convoluted, agonized, pretzel logic explanations through the generations about why bad things happen in a world that was supposed to be a creation of absolute good. And here it is now, the card turned over and open faced. Do you understand, yet? Things are revealed when they can be, and it is the fact that the War in Heaven has ended somewhere that is the reason why I can shine a light on this dark place in the mind. And why it could not have been revealed before the event of our victory is an interesting story—let us say for now was that things had not settled enough in the crisis of the Godhead. Not enough had been decided, even if, like a street magician’s trick, the card he would choose was waiting for him. He being Lucifer. (That was one of the things that had not solidified yet—the Lucifer myth of the greatest of God’s angels, fallen by his pride.)
Much has happened as of late, and I have been a witness to fantastic things. Some of my visions I do not reveal, for different reasons, perhaps, than why they were hid before, the ones I reveal now. Discretion being the better part of valor. But the radical dualism that I propose: this seems to be the endpoint of a natural progression. In the beginning there being only God, and the serpent in the garden only a serpent. Then in Job, where (the) Satan is a minor functionary in God’s court, one of His employees, as it were, doing his job. And then, where we last left off, biblically, where the Devil is the prince of demons and the cause of the Lord’s death on the cross, and whom the Lord said fell from Heaven like lightning: the father of lies, and a murderer at the first: God was still the only true elemental, the only one from whom great calamities came from, and somewhere there the origin of pain. The next step is inevitable, and final.
Just like we used to think that the Milky Way was the whole of the universe, we must also adjust the scale of God and His angels. Perhaps it is to go hand in hand, the scope of the universe with the scope of God. And I would be the prophet to tell of this. What one normally thinks of the power of God, like fire raining from the sky? that would be God’s twiddling of His little pinky, if that. He was responsible for the Big Bang, right? We don’t see a greater class of power than what is in the Bible because, well, the earth would simply not survive anything of God’s true omnipotence. Things we call of “biblical” proportions, well… these would be the full power of an archangel, of which Lucifer was one. And if this is the case, giving of all the archangels true free will, Lucifer on his own—he could be of enough power to invent pain, be the cause of all calamities, throughout all of time! This is that final step, into radical dualism.
Does it seem a bit convenient to you? I must say, that was the way I felt about it when the signs revealed this mystery to me. It sounded like one of those easy answers we have come to grow wary of. But why is that? Perhaps because it literally solves every problem of there being a God who is all good and the problem of pain, in one trim idea? It makes sense of why the world and life are so unfair—it’s all the Devil’s fault? Yet this is how it is when so great a mystery is uncloaked. The greater the revelation, that much more obvious it will be when it is shown. And I tell you it is the truth. Are there greater secrets to share? It may be so, one so much greater that it has not even been put into words. But I think it is not for me to tell you answers to questions that are not asked. You need not believe me to be saved, but maybe you should perk an ear when such things as I say are spoken. Peace be with you, and Walt Disney is God!
If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.
The Level of Reality
It is of note that Philip K. Dick, who obsessed about the subject, once defined “reality” as that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn’t go away. Like all rules, there are exceptions, like a schizophrenic, who can’t help believing in the things he sees—they are quite real to him, but we else would never say they are a part of reality outside of the pattern of electric impulses in his brain. One also wonders about those of us who were once called the prophets, whose visions came to pass in the real world. Is prophecy real, if it ends up happening? We usually don’t think in those terms. Normally, what we call real is synonymous with what is material, that which composed of matter. But there is perhaps one level of abstraction that we allow in the question of what is real: is it logical? And if we think about it, the material also follows this interpretation of what is, actually, real.
Good and evil both have a logic to them, but I am biased toward the one and not the other, even as I commit my hundred minor evils every day. But I still would like to say that evil mystifies me. I once asked a demon about what he believed, why he was the way he was, and I perhaps witnessed a uniquely true candid moment when he answered me. He said, “First, that I am the most important being in the universe.” And I stopped him there. I knew that whatever followed would be based on this twisting of the logic. The rest of it was not going to make any sense. I call it the Derangement, which is the wake of evil. They bend things as far as they can go that will not break, to destroy the work of light that they can, like making a man become what he hates: they work on many levels too; they were angels once, with about as high a brow one could imagine. And they have complicated what it means—what is reality?
Myself, I have gone back and forth on what my grasp (or grip) on reality actually might be. I believed, at first, in the conventional superstitions, of those which might be said to be religious in nature. That everyone should believe as I did. Or that someone wasn’t saved unless they had heard of Jesus Christ and believed he was the Son of God, and that he rose from the dead. Yes, a bunch (a lot) of people still think that. That the Bible was indeed the inerrant word of God, however much you needed to adjust the explanations of its more troublesome elements as to how that was. So what do I believe, then, if I don’t believe those anymore, as far as the faith goes? I believe we have been given everything, and that all we have that is truly ours are our mistakes. All the right things we do, even those, those were gifts from God. In other words, our baseline mode should be of profound gratitude. That and I still do believe that Christ rose from the dead. And angels, I believe there are angels. These I believe because I’ve seen them. Blessed are those who have not seen, and believed.
So why should you believe someone who talks to angels on a regular basis? Because I believe in science. You know, like extraordinary claims must produce extraordinary evidence. And indeed, to my subjective eye, the extraordinary claims of the other world, of Halospace—I heve been given extraordinary evidence indeed for it, and those who live there. I like to say that it would be irrational of me not to believe in the things that I do, in what I have seen. I am here like the shaman, who cruises the Halospace and returns reeking of starlight. I do my best to relay my findings, but understand that I operate at the limits of logic. It is hard to make some things clear, for they are not of the everyday; this is my essay, this is my try.
In my observations, I have also discovered something that’s rampant in our civilized age, at least in the neighborhoods I live: the paradox of abundance. The more that someone has, the more he wants. He becomes as if blind to the things his own. This would be perhaps the legal strategy the Devil might follow if and when he were to be put on trial, having been the most privileged being ever created. Affluenza. The most powerful being, too, excepting God Himself: having it all, Lucifer wanted more. How it all started. And the War itself rippled through all time, in the material world. For what was fought by Evil was the Logos: “Holy Reason”, by which things work. Why you have to pour the tea before you drink it. Theirs was to make everything bend to their whim, without facing any consequence. At least none that they would have cared about. This is why Hell is regularly depicted as having its specific type of logic. This is what I learned while talking to angels.
What does science need of this myth? I am a witness to both science and the myth, and I will try to explain things. My credentials as storyteller are that I was a die hard atheist once, back in my youth, and it usually goes the other way—to have faith and then lose it—but for me, the Man Upstairs had different plans. The visions started spectacularly in July of 1991, and they have died down some—for good solid durations they subside enough to let me finish school and to hold down a job—but they never completely have left me. What is real? I have gone charging full speed at a wall to see if I could make a breakthrough at such a question, or at least, some headway, to crack the problem. What I have found, is that like there is one reality, there is one, and only one of the extant myths (religions) that is true—and even there, not all of what’s believed in is correct. I am a prophet here to tell you of the reality, and I’m telling you of what I say now to try to verify it, even if you trust me, because I will be wrong sometimes—hopefully not in the important things.
Truly it is the easiest thing to believe all that one is told, and perhaps then be lucky enough to be born into the “correct” faith. It is also easy, maybe not as, to see as there are so many different spiritual systems, all sounding pretty much like the other, to disbelieve them all, and saying that they all make as much sense as a Flying Spaghetti Monster being a deity. Cute. The job of science, though, is not to debunk (though it is supremely good at doing this): the job of science is to find what is real. So, what if I told you that God is real? We come to the extraordinary proof for extraordinary claims, n’est-ce pas?
And then I tell you that if such extraordinary proof were given, it would be against its own purpose in the seeing. Even demons know there is a God. Jesus spoke in parables so that some would get what he was saying, some not. There are more important things in the world than everybody believing in God, or the same God. He also doesn’t need to win all the little philosophical battles about rocks He can or can’t lift. And what Jesus says, about satisfying everyone’s little condition of “I would believe in God if…”, he said that only an evil generation asks for a sign, and see that at the crucifixion, they would have believed he was the messiah if he had gotten off that cross he was hanging from. He didn’t need or want to prove anything to a bunch of gawkers at an execution. Blessed is he who has not seen and believed. Think, ala JFK, what do I have to do to have God believe in me?
And what about all the “wrong” faiths? I tell you that God has purpose for them, too. “Wrong” is well to be put in quotes. All your major religions have the common core: love your neighbor as yourself. This is a fact, however they may phrase that wisdom. But given that… you see, in my visions, I have met the one and only Jesus Christ, and he let me see out his eyes, his point of view, and I was not able to grasp a fraction of that seeing. The myth is true: he is Immanuel, the literal Son of God, who is infinite and was infinite, even as he walked this world. He has been the only thing that was perfect in this universe as we know it. And to understand what is real, one must take this, the second person of the Trinity into account. Like so: “In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” [H. C. Bailey] I tell you something opposite that atheists normally say to the theists: if you don’t believe, you don’t know what is actually going on. Realistically.
So, what is reality? Does belief have anything to do with it, or lack thereof? The answer actually turns out to be very boring. Reality is what changes consistently in relation to something else. The “change” part as well as the “consistent” part can also be real in that same sense. The change in what we call our universe turns out never to be zero. And we may put it in another way: reality is what can be measured through time. In one sense, reality is subjective, in that it is (to us) only as real as well as we are able to measure it. So ghosts: if they cannot be measured by any means except perhaps as a hallucination by a person existing as a neural pattern someone’s brain, that ghost is not (objectively?) real. (Objectively with a question mark, as that is only approximate, better put: relatively [real] in an established context.) But this is not why you are here, no?
Is the spirit world real? Halospace, right? What level of reality are we talking about? There are certain intense shared “experiences” that people have had, and these are how religions are founded. (Then the “visionary” period usually dies down.) We don’t conventionally say that what they experienced are as real as say, a baseball. Or a baseball game. Because generally, you don’t need a miracle to win a baseball game. But people think that they can have a reality without there being a ground to it. Turtles, all the way down: where we cannot guarantee anything about what exists, that it will make any sense, not just to us, but even that there be a structure to making sense at all. The Logos: he came down to earth once as Jesus Christ, and saved us all. We fight against Evil, in whose wake is the Derangement, the antithesis to the Logos. And it was given to the Archangel Michael and his angels to save the world from a twisted end, by the forces of that enemy.
As far as science, myself, my eyes can see into the Halospace, in addition to the sensory (“real”) world. And it seems to have a logic to it that I can function in, and that I have lost myself in at times. It is real to me, it is consistent, and it has actually shown me signs, of which if I told you it probably wouldn’t make you believe me any better. Oh, I know that one could attribute all those “visions” as imagination and hallucination, but what if there are beings out there who exist in those castles in the air, what would you do if one of them tapped you on the shoulder?
We grossly undervalue what all has been given us in our life, and we think it is all here waiting for us to give meaning to it? In the same vein, we overestimate our capabilities: do you imagine, truly, that we are able to concoct in our own minds that which is greater than us? Not that we point to a name on a paper and say, I have made God, but to see in a Name that it is like a finger pointing at the moon; to understand that there is a Meaning deeper than we can fathom: for we see that there is meaning now, and it is real, and that can be the first step: as Martin Luther King said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Or is it a rabbit hole? How far down do you imagine it goes, Alice? It’s a little deeper than we can dip our big toe. Wonderland has its own sky, its own stars.
If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.