Finger exercise and preparatory study for The Gospel of Thomas

(Writer unknown)

 

Is it possible, he thinks, that people haven’t seen, acknowledged or said anything real and important yet? Is it possible, that people had a thousand years to watch, to think and to write down, and that people let those thousand years pass by as if it was a school-break, in which they eat their sandwich and an apple? Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible that, in spite of inventions and progress, in spite of culture, religion, and wisdom, one has remained at the surface of life? Is it possible that even this surface, which would have at least been something, has been covered with an incredibly dull material until it looks like salon furniture during the summer vacation? Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible, that the entire world history is misunderstood? Is it possible, that the past is inaccurate, because people have always told about their masses, as if they spoke about an assemblage of many people, instead of speaking of one, around who they stood, there he was strange and died? Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible, that people deemed they ought to catch up with, what happened before they where born? Is it possible, that people had to remind each single one, that he was originated from his ancestors nevertheless, so that he knew and shouldn’t let himself be fooled by others, who knew something else? Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible, that all those people very precisely know a past, that has never existed? Is it possible, that all realities are meaningless for them: that their lives end, not connected to anything, like a hanging clock in an empty room? Yes it is possible.

Is it possible, that people know nothing about all those girls, who do live? Is it possible, that people say “the women”, “the kids” and “the fellows”, beyond every expectation that these words have no plural since ages already, yet innumerable singulars? Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible that there are people who say "God" and suppose that this is something one can have in common?---Now look at two school children: one of them buys a knife, and his neighbor buys one just like it, on the very same day. And a week later they compare their two knives, and by now they are barely similar: so differently they have developed in different hands. (Of course, says the mother of one boy, if you wear out everything right away.)

Well, and is it really so hard to believe, that people might have a God, without using him? Yes, it is possible. But if all these things are possible, even have a scrap of possibility, then for all the world something must happen

 

The next best, that had this alarming thought, must start to do something about what’s been neglected; whomever it may be, how little appropriate he may seem: because after all, there’s no one else.

 

This young and unimportant stranger will sit five stairs high writing, day and night, yes, he should write and with that it will end.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke (a)

 

“Everything has already been said”, the cynic says, “but there’s never been listened”, the optimist says,

 

Freek de Jonge (Dutch comedian) (b)

600 Million starving people, millions of refugees, traffic victims, plagues of cancer, heart- and vessel diseases, venereal diseases, full hospitals and prisons, alcoholics and drug-addicts, civil wars, 500 billion dollar for arming, fear of imminent total destruction, murder and manslaughter, abortion, suicide, divorces, unemployment, handicapped, environmental destruction, conflicts everywhere, hate, discontent, loneliness, fear,  grief, and pain, doubt, despair, aggression, worries and troubles, blood, sweat and tears. On all sides this society is bursting out, just as nature is disordered in droughts and floods, storms, earthquakes, crop failure, spreading deserts and other natural disasters, as people call it.

 

And still there are people, who talk about society, endangered world-peace (peace?) and progression and they swear each other, that it’s not that bad, that there are so many good things, that they are quite happy and that mankind is so intelligent nowadays, that it will turn out okay. While they maintain a chaotic and nonsensical worldview, in which you simply get born, get sick and die. In which people simply get in an accident, you simply get cancer, and simply get stabbed. Except when you achieve something, get in a higher position or possess a lot, then it’s called your own merit. A bizarre world with  a bizarre “God”, inequitable, random and incoherent.

 

However, there is a way of seeing, where everything DOES make sense, nothing happens without a connection, everything is understandable and coincidence doesn’t exist. It’s a clear seeing, in which every event, how insignificant it may seem, has a clear meaning in the all-embracing connection. It’s actually so simple, that at the moment you see it, you can’t imagine how you have been mistaking for so long. Just then you’ll see:

• that this, and all other cultures, and everything they’ve brought forth are only a mistake,
• that mankind took a dead end road in a distant past, on which for centuries, generation after generation humans have taken their painful journey,
• that all the bloodshed, sweat and tears, spilled to finally create this sick society, were in vain,
• that human beings belong in nature and not above, next to or opposite it,
• that all churches and religions originate from a self-created human- and god image,
• that all theories, opinions and convictions are only figments,
• that cleverness and scholarship of mankind is born out of ignorance,
• that all achievements, inventions and creations from generation to generation have served a goal, but not mankind,
• that all the great, respected and famous ones of this society were wrong and mistaken and still are,
• that money, possession, wealth, success, honor and fame really doesn’t make happy, even far from it,
• that each human being, no matter how he joins this bizarre game, is therefore responsible for its own misery,
• that people do indeed create their own hell,
• that everybody intends to be good, but out of ignorance they think, say and do stupid things.
  

But that also means, that there is a very simple solution for all those complicated problems, because in simplicity a problem dissolves naturally. So than a life without pain, grief, fear, misery and insecurity IS possible. Than, what all theologians, philosophers and society transformers kept for impossible, bizarrely, exactly because they thought they were theologians, philosophers and society transformers, absolute bliss IS feasible, and even simple. By a different way of looking, the past can be undone, through which the end will be like the beginning. The box of Pandora, that is open from the cradle of every culture including today’s, throwing up disasters and destruction, could be closed again. If you don’t take eternity as an endless length of time, but as timelessness, than he lives eternal, who lives in the present (1). So eternal life isn’t an utopia, it’s only not compatible with life in a culture, and you may say, that little children live an eternal life: no sense of time, like grown ups call that.

 

There’s a carefree life put aside for everybody, if he is willing to admit for himself, that he was wrong up till now; had and proclaimed convictions and opinions, that he held for true, while they weren’t. Thought things were important, meaningful  and just, that actually were unimportant, meaningless and unjust. Only by putting behind your past, not almost, but radically, you can find yourself into the present again. Reality and life are so much different from what people say and think about reality and life. Reality exists, and life can only be lived. And everything you think about it is too much, unimportant and useless.

 

But there are still so many people, who find themselves important because of what they do in this world, or being so appreciated by others, that they believe themselves, that it’s a whole lot they achieve. So many, that think they’re doing fine and that they are on the right track, convicted of their own rightness.

 

And if you try to show exactly these people, how inconsequently, how contradictorily, how shortsightedly they’re living, hell will break loose. They don’t care, unlike the ones, who are stuck and desperate, the ones who are willing to let go of their own interests and prejudices, for a happy world, the wretched of this society, the denounced and all, who are left behind. They do care for another world, although they don’t believe in it anymore. They got so little to lose.

Some 2000 years ago, in a society as chaotic and unrighteous as this one, when employees still simply were called slaves, and people slaughtered each other with lance, bow and arrow, instead of bombs and rockets as in this era, there were people who loosed themselves from society. They no longer wanted to play those crazy and complicated power-plays which only produced victims. Like the Preacher says:

"There is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt".

And it's still the same. They turned back to the simplicity of only being human, and tried to show others you can never stop power by using power. But they obtained no hearers of the men in power, the men in control, powered by weapons, knowledge or money. For that reason they wrote a lampoon, nowadays known as The Sermon on the Mount. They had found out in their struggle with the established priesthood, it would not be they but especially the slaves, the poor, the underdogs, the oppressed, the losers, the loners, the illiterate and so the children being all of that, who would be accessible to them in hearing their joyful message for the foundation of a world of freedom, equality and fraternity, wherein no man would rule over another. In that time they were convinced of the idea they could turn people around and finally there would be a righteous world. A world of whole, righteous, honest men; a community of holy ones spread across the whole world.
For that reason it is written:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".

And really not: blessed are the learned, the know-betters, the literate and the developed ones, all those who have filled their heads with their self-constructed theories, convictions and other forms of knowledge. Unless they empty their heads, they never will understand this pronouncement; those who think all men are equal but are convinced they are more equal than others. They still have difficulties understanding this line.

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted".

And not: blessed are they who conceal their tears, who convince themselves they are happy, although they know better, those who blame their misery on others or their circumstances, those who resign themselves to their fate, because they are convinced pain, sorrow and illness belong to life, and those who think there are so many good things in society and unrighteousness is normal and inevitable.

"Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled".

And not: blessed are the egoists, the servants of their self-interests, the maintainers of the gap between the rich and the poor, those who have their parties while the world is burning and the poor are croaking everywhere, those who driving at their own honour and vanity.

"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy".

And not: blessed are they who vindicate their own rights: the fighter, the strong, the mighty, the aggressive one, the ruler; those who use knowledge like power, the eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth thinkers who call war peace. And that is the world we live in. It is a world upside-down.  Those who let their left hand know what their right hand does, the rich who present from their luxury, alms to the poor in order to quiet their conscience, the helpers who need the victimization and misery of others to boast their self-respect

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God".

And not: blessed are they who wash their dirty hands in innocence, the blinded, the alienated ones, the theorists or thinkers. Those who ignore their dark side, who don't extinguish their dishonesty, the self-deceivers, the followers of their heads and passions.

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God".

And not: blessed are the compromise-makers, who commit themselves to compromising with every compromise, the armed peace-makers, the defenders of the status quo, who don't defend life, but properties, traditions, convictions and self-interest.

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for their is the kingdom of heaven".

And not: blessed are they who are persecuted for their faith, convictions, self-conceit or group benefit, traditions or other luggage they cherish in their brains.

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall speak all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake".

And not: blessed are you if you are esteemed by society, whether the establishment or your own group, for your achievements, intellectual luggage, vanity and creations.

Fundamentally, this society is very comparable to the chaotic situation of that time. The foundation of every culture is someone having power over another. In that time the simple ones proclaimed the good tidings. Nowadays, it is the rich, the complicated theologians and other clergies, who vainly try to understand the meaning and don't realize they have to be deaf for it. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a theologian to understand the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount. What the misunderstanding of that message has brought us, you can see everywhere around now.

A remarkable and tragic confusion of ideas

 

In the early Jewish philosophy the creation was considered as a continuous happening, like a lamp only keeps burning if it’s continuously provided with power. The “Logos” or the “Son of God” is the Dunamis, the creating force through which the whole creation continuously comes to being or existence, with the inanimate material to it’s own character and all creatures to it’s own nature. God speaks and it is, and that’s why the word of God is the Logos. Philo says about that: “Higher than the word is the speaker” and therefore the Logos is called the firstborn. The Taoists of old called it Tau, the creating and form determinative force. God is the architect and the Logos the master builder and creates the humans, ‘ο κατ’ εικονα ανθροπος, the authentic human being, as you can still descry in little children, who still live true to their nature. Philo once more: “There are two temples of God. One is the cosmos, in which the firstborn is active as a high priest. The second temple is the soul filled with the Logos. In there the priest is the true human being”. So a true human is a human being who lives according to one’s nature or the will of God and doesn’t interrupt the Logos. Spinoza speaks about living according Reason. Nowadays we may say, listen to your inner voice or your conscience. If you do that without compromises you’ll finally coincide with your Self or your Logos and than you are the Logos and the Logos speaks through you and than again you’ll be the Son or Daughter of God. It’s impossible to obey Gods will and your “own” will at the same time, because it’s impossible to float along with life and to steer your life at the same time. That’s why Buddha says that desire is the root of all suffering, so no desire, no suffering. Your character is your unnatural, additive and what we call second nature, is incompatible with your Logos.

 

Wisdom writings are timeless because they describe connections in the eternal present, since past and future only exist in your head. If you realize that all writings were written by complicated literate people, translated by other literate people, you’ll understand that they never talk about reality, let alone that they can show the way to simplicity.

 

So you must remove time out of wisdom writings to discover the essence of it. The Gospel of John looks totally different when you do that and than again you’ll recognize Philo:

 

“In the beginning is the Word, and the Word is with God and the Word is God. This is from the beginning with God. All things come into being through the Word and without this nothing comes into being, that exists. What comes into being through the Word is life and life is the light of the human race. And the light shines into the darkness and darkness doesn’t understand it. There stood up a man, sent from God, who’s name was John; he came for testimony, to testify of the light, so that all might believe through him. He wasn’t the light, but he came to testify of the light. That one true light, which enlightens every human being, was about to break through in the world. He is in the world and the world comes into being through Him and the world does not know Him. He comes to what is his own, but his own people do not accept Him. Though all, who accept Him, receive the strength to be Gods children, they who believe their conscience, what’s neither out of blood, nor from the will of the flesh, nor from a one-man’s will but born from God. The Word creates the flesh and lives in us and we behold its glory, the glory of the firstborn of the Father, full of grace and truth. Johannes testified of Him and cried out, saying: “This is he of whom I said: 'The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me. After all from his fullness we all receive grace after grace; because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth come through the Logos. No one has ever seen God; the only born Son, who is at his Father’s side, reveals him”. And still it is!!!

 

All together it remains a complicated construction, because about reality, God and Creation you can say nothing. Every attempt to say something meaningful about that, every construction that tries to catch the creating process in images is vanity and a mistake.

 

Ceterum censeo it’s a pity that those writers didn’t realize what Ludwig Wittgenstein says in the last sentence of his Tractatus Logico-philosophicus:

 

Than there never would’ve been a gospel or Christianity and it could’ve save the world from innumerable amounts of misery. It has been a well-intentioned attempt to found a just world but, through the opaque mix of mysticism and wisdom, doomed to fail. It would’ve been enough if they’d just shown the way to the simple path, and kept silent about reality.

In the Symposion, in the speech of Aristophanes, Plato describes the trap of Eros, or the libido, as we call it today. Consider, before you read further, that it’s a metaphor and that every metaphor has its limitation. Once the human nature was different, because original man was whole and was of a male/female gender and than he describes a creature with four arms and legs and two backs. And they attacked the Gods and to end their revolt the Gods decided to cut them in two. And Zeus cut the creatures in two, like people cut morels or eggs with a single hair. “But now”, says Plato, “we are divided in two halves because of our injustice”. That’s how we became masculine and feminine, two poles and every half seeks it’s other half and together they are whole again. The Gods planted Eros or the libido, the re-unifier, in the people and driven by it, people try to make one out of two again. In the coitus they play an animal with two backs, like Rabelais calls it in his Gargantua and Pantagruel, and that they call unification.

The big mistake that Plato made, the same that’s been made in the Fall, is that he didn’t realize that we are all born as little, whole humans and that we are divided during our acculturation and upbringing and being raised to be those creatures with that special behavior and thinking, that we call boys and girls. Halves who attract each other through Eros. And that pair of halves need each other and are complementary to each other, talk about “we”, depend on each other, cling to each other in a strangling grasp, so that none of them can change any longer. And that’s what they call love, but it’s a continuously compromise and to give and take and it seems more like trade-business. No matter how, it has nothing to do with generous and unconditional love. It’s a miracle that these two halves get whole babies. If one of the two changes, they no longer fit, then they get a divorce and again they search for a suitable other half and so l’histoire se repete every time. The stronger the relation, the bigger the grief if one of the two falls away, because if you have to live as a half again you’ll always miss the other half. So the Libido is the big trap that keeps us from being whole again and to turn back from duality and a schizoid existence to simplicity and wholeness and to enter the Kingdom, like they once called it.

 

The beatific, the one who has once again become whole has no desires anymore and the little death of the orgasm, that “losing yourself”, from which you wake up each time in the same boring world again, can’t add anything to his happy bliss. Regarding that, the Roman Catholic church is right when it decides that coitus should exclusively be in use of reproduction, but that counts only for the community of whole human beings and not in this valley of tears, which people try to cheer up a bit and where they try to escape from with their short orgasms.

Check upon yourself how much you’ve sacrificed for that weird game.

So in paradise, before the Fall, or in the Kingdom, men and women love each other generous and unconditional, like God loves all its children and there is no Savior. Sexual desire is a cultural artifact. It’s not something you can believe, but you can only experience it yourself.

Wouldn’t it be a mad creation with a crazy God if it was meant for mankind to multiply themselves unbridled until a war or an epidemic would have to reduce the population again?

Imagine the quest for truth as climbing a mountain. When you stand at the base of the mountain you only see a part of reality. You see rivers flowing, but you don't know where they come from and where they are going. You see birds flying until they disappear behind the mountains. You see clouds appearing from behind the mountain and feel the wind blowing, but you don't understand where they come from. About these questions you can invent many theories, but you never can verify them.
As you leave the herd at the base and climb higher, at each new level you take a new point of view and see more, but not all, and you realize many people have preceded you in history, have rested or died there and shared the same point of view, and so had the same vision; they wrote about it, and you recognize what they saw. You pass philosophers and theologians, who proclaiming their own truth, and great men of the world proud of their short-sightedness. Everywhere on the mountain are people all from their own point of view theorizing about reality, but they only see part of it and they don't realize.
Everywhere, you encounter the luggage left behind by those who preceded you, for it is impossible to reach the top burdened. But you have to go on, and the higher you struggle to climb, and the more people you leave behind, the more complete your view becomes; the more lonely your expedition is, the more you become aware of a bigger, and more complete sense of reality, and the last meters are the most laborious. There you meet Heraclites, Plato, Spinoza, Rousseau, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and many others who perished in sight of the goal.
And then you take the most fantastic step a human can take, and at once you are at the top and you can overlook everything. You don't need any more theories; you look upon reality and realize you are the centre and king of your own world. You could say you share all points of view or you no longer have a point of view. You see where the rivers spring from and where they end in the sea. You understand how and why the winds blow, where the clouds come from and how they dissolve again into rain. You don't need any more theories to fill your limited field of view. You understand everything because you know nothing and you have no more opinions. You have entered the Kingdom, Nirvana, paradise, Erewhon, Shangrila, Utopia, or any of those other names people at the base of the mountain have given to it and desire to reach, but consider unreachable.
But most surprising is that the whole plateau is crowded with an uncountable crowd of little children and just then you remember you have been here already long ago. And there you find the guest-book and you read: "Buddha was here"," Chuang Tzu was here", "Zarathustra was here", "Socrates was here", "Jesus was here" , “Kilroy was here” and many, many other names of all those who in their lifetimes were laughed at, murdered, ignored, called heretics; those who were exiled and died at the stake after they went down again to tell the others the route to the top. Everywhere below you see people on their standpoints, ventilating their opinions about reality, every point of view a different opinion, as many opinions as there are points of view; and they struggle and fight for their own right. You are astonished when you hear their discussions about the route-maps to the top, which they call the Holy or Secret Books. But all those opinions tell nothing about reality or the route-maps, but only about their distance from the top. Spinoza would say: "What you tell about reality tells more about yourself than about reality, and what you tell about the other tells more about yourself than about the other".  Looking down from the top you see a big fight with only victims everywhere.

That is the Truth, and it is horrible, revealing, tragic, shocking and trembling

So be very careful when you have been to the top and have returned.

While during the entire human history people arose, that warned for the increasing influence of science, because they, like for instance priesthood, saw waning their power, there have been others who recognized that knowledge hazed people.

 

"Into blind darkness enter those who follow ignorance; into even greater darkness go those who follow knowledge."(2)

 

In times like these, in which people let themselves be led, trusting on scientists it’s a hard digestible statement, but it could well be true. Also Isaiah says something similar:

 

"For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know. Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. (3)

 

And see, while mankind, with the help of science, tries to control nature and with their laws attempt to keep people to heel, everywhere unexpected disasters take place. Instead of understanding, that precisely the controlling causes the symptom’s, the scientists promise to the people, that they are not ready yet, but that they will eventually succeed to find a solution for all those self-made problems, if only they are patient.

 

And yet people establish their hopes on politicians, scientists and theologian, expecting beautiful promises, optimistic plans, but basically nothing has changed. Still there are people, who know how others should live, what they have to believe, what’s right and what’s wrong.

 

"Almighty God, deliver us from sciences and the pernicious whims of our fathers and give us back our ignorance, innocence and poverty“ ,

 

Jean Jacques Rousseau sighed, as if a development, that humans started themselves, should be stopped by an almighty force. Aren’t people free to let themselves be influenced by a variety of complicated scientifically explanations? But it’s so tempting to get a scientifically considered story to gloss the consequences of your do’s and don’ts.

 

“For humans to be in awe, he has to – and perhaps folks – must wake up. Science is the way to make them sleep.”(5)

 

It’s the miracle of life, that science reduced to an even though complicated but in the future definitely explainable entity of biochemical reactions, that can be controlled and improved. And about biochemical reactions you don’t have to amaze yourself, those you can explain.

Science is based on a theory, it is an invention, an artificial constructed building, outside reality, in which facts and happenings get arranged and connected with each other. It’s an action of thinking, not of life. That thinking is regulated by compromised rules of the logic. Science therefore has no universal value, only relative. Wisdom on the other hand is about life and reality and shows connections in reality, is timeless and therefore it has an infinite value. “Love your next ones, like you love yourselves”, has nothing to do with wisdom, but is an advice, with so many hooks and eyes, that it’s useless in real-life. Actually it means, that you love another, like you love yourself. Wisdom gives a connection in the present, it only observes. Everything is as it is and never otherwise, while the thinking of human’s moves only in the past and the future. Every human being is what he is, while he learned, that he is what he thinks and does. You can only love yourself if you know who you are, if you realize, that you are a human being, nothing more and nothing less. Just than you can see all people as your fellow men. For parents children should be fellows too, but parents learned that children need to be raised, while that’s in conflict with "Do NOT do unto others what you do NOT want them to do unto you".
 

"You may give them of your love, but not of your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts (6)

 

You can only love another unconditional, if you accept them like they are and not like you want them to be. The only thing children need is food when they’re hungry, rest when they’re tired and the freedom to stay what they are, innocent and unbiased. When they do not fit into this crazy world that way, it has to be ascribed to the world and not to the children. They didn’t ask to be born, did they?

And that, while they are the only humans in the world, furthermore you can only see people, cherishing the illusion, that they are the roll they play, Christians, employees, Dutchman, woman etc. or complicated combinations of these, that once were just little humans too. “Be yourself I said to someone, but he couldn’t: he was a Christian.” You can actually fill in anything there. Originally the gospel was a kind of guide to redemption or enlightenment, graft on word- and image-use, accredited to the thinking of that time. 

 

"After all you have to start from the actual situation and then you have to become more simple and more simple all the time, coming to simplicity finally (7)

 

It promised a complete anarchy, in which no man ever holds power over another. A paradise on earth where people would stay in bliss.

 

"The main fear of Christianity to realize freedom is fear for the superior powers of its own chaos. But that chaos is rather the result of that fear than the cause (8) 

 

Instead of a working-force of a just world, Christianity is by lack of understanding essentially an impediment to, what in their own words is called, the Kingdom of Heaven. You are only saved when you don’t, as it’s called: ‘sin’ anymore. ‘To sin’ is everything you do that keeps you from your freedom and happiness, so also other people’s freedom. Exercising and undergoing power, influencing and getting influenced, making plans, expectations, wishes, intentions or having needs, living by traditions, standards and rules, that others decided for you, desire and possession, all of this is what binds people and stands in their way to be free.

If man truly wants to be free, he has got to recognize everything he learned, as excess baggage, useless, foolish and as inventions. Although you can play a role with it in this society, it won’t let you live. Only when you have redeemed the last penny thinking comes to standstill, that big grinding wheel, and there remains pure experiencing, an eternal present. Than you’ll feel one with everything and everyone and you’ll see, as mystics call it, “God”, the all-embracing connection. First you must dare to realize that all our learning and knowing is a big daydream, only serving interests in a more and more expanding coil, of which the end is lost.

 

Actually the gospel preached a big revolution, an “Umwertung aller Werte,” back to humanity, back to nature and a demolishing of all boundaries.

 

There’s only one race and that’s mankind

There’s only one country and that’s earth

There’s only one language and that’s love

Children are being born, and grow up in a world in which the cards have already been shuffled and the power has been divided. In an artificial world, created throughout generations, with a maze of prohibitions and bidding, laws, traditions and regulations, they take their first steps. They just have to get used to the harness, all those products produced by culture, objects of prestige and performance, consumption articles, devices and machines to simplify a complex and artificial existence. And soon they have learned to find the most bizarre things normal, beautiful and clever. When they are grown up they look with admiration to their own creations, on which they will come to depend more and more.

“Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots.” (9)

By then nature has already become wild and chaotic. The perfection of creation that, without the help of human hands, continuously replenishes itself, they don’t see anymore. It’s merely become something that can be exploited for one’s own goals and  benefits and can serve for the production of all the things, with which they satisfy their self-created needs. Still people are trying to submit nature to their control, which disturbs the natural balance and through which they send many disasters upon themselves. Cultivating, it is called. And the remnant, a disturbed balance, removed from the whole, needs to be controlled, to continue the disturbance. With much effort cultural products like heather, pollard and polders need to be maintained, because they might just return to their original state.

When the child has grown up, the culture he is creating as a grown-up is a close reflection of his childish experience. Society and culture first are hindrance and then the result of that hindrance (10)

The more a child is belittled in it’s youth, the more insecure it will be and the more it wants to prove itself and the greater the urge to perform will be. Beware of the slaves, who will become the masters.

“It gets ever more clear, how much damage is being done by people who are mentally unhealthy, especially in the family, in which the child even records small relationship disorders between the parents in the soul, from which seriously sick patterns almost fatally get continued through to the next generation.” (11)

The way family members interact with each other, and keep each other in their place, gets passed through generations. Also the diseases that go with it. Scientists call that heritable diseases, which labels people to be deficient and cause fear and guilt. Once there was written:

I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. (12)

When someone in his youth gets taught to be hateful, he can pass that on to his children, with all it’s consequences. It are no genes but memes (Dawkins), that are hereditary.

People’s adventures are a direct continuation of the individual family drama’s. The social is the derivate of the individual’s psychic. (13)

Only a collection of unhealthy, unpeaceful living people can form an unhealthy unpeaceful society.

But only individuals make war, varnish their nails, go to the ballot box, believe in capitalism. But culture makes them do so. But we make culture, made it over the centuries what it is now. (14)

People say society is to blame for everything that happens to them, while they are a part of it themselves. They let themselves get influenced by others and parrot others, raise their children for this society and send them to school. If you enjoy the sweet fruits, you’ll also get the sour ones. They’re all in the same boat, but it’s not due to the others, nor the boat, that they’re in it.

Children, originally unbiased, get harnessed by all the rules and standards of their well-intentioned parents. Lured by rewards and on both sides contained by punishment, they go the way, that doesn’t actually exist, but which their parents in their heads have set out for them. Or else nothing will come of it, it’s called, because what needs to come of it is an adapted member of this unjust society. Just like pets who need to be tamed to fit them in an artificial environment. The way of rewarding and punishment and the balance between those two, determines the straitjacket, in which a child will eventually feel safe in. It knows what it will get. Every time it determines the free space in it’s cage, by looking how far it can go before it gets punished. “There just are boundaries.” The smaller the free space given, the more rebellious or obedient a child will become, depending on the way the parents maintain the boundaries. Freedom within boundaries it’s called very euphemistically. The authoritarian raising, in which punishment, physically or verbally, and still worse the non-verbal communication and makes up the traffic signs of prohibition and keeps the children from taking another path, has changed in the course of time into a strategy, with rewarding as primary tactic. But you get so tired of the ongoing rewarding and also the inducement has to be greater every time. It are the parents, considering normal what they think, do and want and don’t  know their own prejudices, who are the examples for their children. It’s the standards, laws, rules and prescriptions, that they have taken upon themselves and carry as their luggage, which the youngster will take over. With that it will take over the strategies, with which the parents try to keep their heads above water in society.

The ends justify the means, and the tools which the parents use to weave the lattice are: decree, punish, threaten, getting angry, warn, reward, stimulate, advice, setting  conditions, denying love, worrying, spoiling, be disappointed, protect, nurture. But in time the youngster learns a range of tactics to cross or escape the boundaries that have been set for him, by pushing, whining, crying, lying, running away, disobeying, blarney, bad tempers, stealth, keep silence and provoke pity. To be able to participate in this society a child must learn what is thought to be important and reputable. That appearance and clothes are very important, that ambition, prestige and creativity are praiseworthy, that courtesy, good manners and adjusted behavior are being appreciated, that acting strong, standing up for yourself, being obedient, polite and civil are virtues, which can get you far, that some things are beautiful and others are ugly, others healthy or harmful. And over time everybody has a feel for each other and knows the limits of their territory and that of the others. So in the upbringing the territory of the youngster gets ever more restricted, personal development it’s called, bizarrely. Ever more restricted, and the youngster gets ever more immature, not free, dependent and biased. And when they’ve grown up, they just go on with the game. Then you’ll see, when you look around, adults everywhere, politicians and other leaders, who fight each other with the same childish methods, to defend their own interests. Because a child must be hardened to handle a hard world, in which everybody fights for their own skin. Like the scientist says: having enough “ego strength” and to build up a good frustration tolerance. And that is happening while children are a continuous mirror for their parents, showing who they once were. Children can’t learn anything from their parents, except that life in this society is one big lie. Children are wise, adults are foolish, but parents always know better.

“Behind every throat inflammation there is an authority conflict.”(16)

 

Children always lose the conflict with their parents. It’s the parents who set the boundaries, who have the last word and wisely the child literally and figuratively suppresses it’s answers. But it stays disobedient and obnoxious, which you can see from the swollen glands, because the body speaks, whenever someone has a reason not wanting or daring to speak. The parents don’t understand the contrary behavior of their child and deal with it even harder, which makes the youngster suppress even more. It doesn’t come out and hurts the youngster. The end result is a throat inflammation with big inflamed tonsils. It’s because of the draft or cold, people have learned, and to prevent it even more restrictions are being imposed. And as result it happens more often. If just the tonsils are removed, they think. And the doctor immediately sees it, those wrongdoers must be taken out. And in a barbaric ritual they are demolished, after which the parents can go on in the same manner. Children, who don’t want to hear it anymore, get aching ears; the doctor calls it a middle ear infection and that’s because the nose tonsil is to big. But why it happens to one child and not to the other, he doesn’t understand. Children who get stuffy of a situation, are labeled with a bronchitis or asthma. Child who don’t see it anymore just get glasses. Or they snivel and that means all comes out of their noses.

In the Netherlands, in 1981 only, there were tonsils removed from 140.000 children, while actually the parents should have been treated. Unconsciously, the ENT- doctors are henchmen of the establishment, but you can’t blame them for it, because they don’t know what they’re doing. They just follow an established opinion in an established society and according to their theories it’s all true. About the other doctors later on.

Medical science isn’t about the human being, it’s about it’s components. It assumes, that the parts together form the actual human. First they’ve opened the human, divided it in parts, and everything they found taken from the whole, confined and given a name, while all parts limitlessly flow into one another. The workings are explained on basis of analogies with self-created machines and devices. The heart is a pump, the kidneys a filter device, the legs a motion device. There are even those, who speak of a sexual device. Humans are a mechanical happening, a machine, so they claim. In the eyes of the scientist a human is some sort of Frankenstein monster, a golem. Disruption of the device gives a symptom and a collection of symptoms is called a disease. The question “why” doesn’t fit into the scientific thinking, so they consider the “what” and “how” and fight the symptoms. But it’s like using an instrument for a purpose, for which it isn’t made for. It will show defects finally. And the tools-maker will fix it without asking what happened with it, because he would cut his own throat if nothing would ever be broken. That’s also the case with the doctors, to be sure people keep getting sick, or else they will go bankrupt. Isn’t it bizarre, that the medical science, who lacks a clear notion of the actual meaning of life and death, pretends to fight for life and against death?

 

Medical science is a science of parts and groups. It puts people, absolutely unique individuals, in charts and statistics, determines the average and calls that normal. What they observe is not the human, but humanity subjected to their way of asking questions. And that way scientists prove all kind of things, while a prove only proves that they obey the rules, which, of course,  they designed themselves. Thus it’s a quantitative practice of medicine, which floats only on the measurable. All qualities of life, that don’t fit in any system, like sorrow, fear, loneliness and pain, must be neglected. Because to measure is to know. And what you can’t measure, you can’t know and scientifically doesn’t exist.

 

So people believe, that bacteria and viruses are pathogens, while nobody has ever seen a bacteria cause a disease. Calling bacteria pathogens is like calling the bubbles in a boiling fluid the cause of the boiling. Someone who lives in harmony with himself and his environment, is in equilibrium or balance. That balance gets disturbed, because man deems he must be something he actually isn’t. It takes effort to maintain a disturbed balance, which causes the resistance to reduce. And when the burden exceeds the carrying capacity a symptom will show up. That can be an inflammation, where the scientist then finds bacteria, which he subsequently will fight. An unnatural healing process. When you show people, why they have exactly this symptom, show them the relation between the complaint and their way of living, so they can understand what’s the meaning of it, they themselves can change their way of living in such a way that the symptom disappears.

As therefore those arts are best that have the nearest affinity with folly, so are they most happy of all others that have least commerce with sciences and follow the guidance of Nature, who is in no wise imperfect, unless perhaps we endeavor to leap over those bounds she has appointed to us. Nature hates all false coloring and is ever best where she is least adulterated with art. (17)

Scientists believe a lot and because they have proven it with their own system, it is true, and because people trust science, they don’t just believe, but even know, that you can simply get sick for no reason, that certain diseases are incurable, that not all people have the same chance, but some have a tendency for certain diseases. That the body is actually a device, that can be disrupted for no reason, some kind of assemblage of biochemical reactions, that when it’s disrupted can just be normalized with chemicals. That you can eat healthy and need proteins, carbohydrates and vitamins, as many as they have calculated. That milk and meat are healthy. That pain has no meaning and is unnecessary and so must be fought. That what applies to rats and rabbits, also applies for humans. That medicines can cure you. That men are totally different creatures compared to women, because of the hormones and such on. But it’s really nothing more than a belief.

In this society, in which everybody stands up for their own interests, one thing always goes at the expense of somewhat else. Ambition, which is highly valued, always is at the cost of other people. Getting upstream in this society can only be achieved by using others for yourself. Winning requires losers. Knowledge is at the expense of common sense. Cultivation at the expense of nature and civilization destroys naturalness and finally power is always at the expense of love. People have learned that they are nothing, but that they have to become something, a little cog in this wicked society, a master or a slave, and that they first have to learn a lot for it and get degrees and that only then they are something. That you are the role you learn in order to participate. But you can’t however, be human and simultaneously be something else, because then you are neither and that’s a schizophrenic existence. The role you take upon you, is for the others and for society.

 

But people are not free to choose. Nobody has chosen to be born in this degenerated society, nobody picked their own parents. It’s a joint responsibility of all people, who hold each other in a web of constraints, which makes people go the only possible way, the one that has been left open for them. All of humanity, the entire web, is responsible for every delinquent, every disease and for every disabled. Everyone is through everyone on this globe interdependent. Masters need slaves, but slaves equally need masters, spiritual leaders need believers, but believers equally need spiritual leaders.

 

That is where children grow up in, influenced by the delusions of their own environment, every caste it’s own normative parlance, personal gain and interests, but

And that way they live their lives in the strait waistcoat of culture.

They work and live on a culture layer, slid to them from outside, a system of other people’s opinions, other people’s work, living in the atmosphere, in the environment, in the spirit of the times: in one word, they live as a collective, conventional irresponsible “I”, knowing no longer why it thinks or will thus or thus. (19)

Escaping from the straitjacket of one’s own environment requires adaptation to the habits of another environment, for otherwise you’ll stay an eccentric stranger. The only choice left then is to just play a role, and try to play it as good as you can, because the alternative is being expelled. What people first must do for others, to fit in, they then do while thinking it comes from themselves. What “people” think has become the internalized motive and the fear to not fit in. Then people set for themselves a task and goal, while they actually do it for others, because they want to be appreciated, fit in, and thus they become their own slave driver. They deny themselves their life to become something and to achieve something. From that they derive the right for all kinds of things like, appreciation, rewards and gratitude. The principle of “earning favors”. In a vicious circle everybody gives the one in front a pat on the back and expect it from the one behind him, for everybody wants to be cherished in the idea he’s doing something useful. Everybody is busy for everybody. It’s one mass delusion. But the circle can’t be interrupted and the bizarre game must go on. When people don’t get, what they think they deserve to get, they get angry or disappointed. Like the one who got passed for promotion, the one who failed its exams, the excluded, the mother who always cared with her ungrateful children, the husband, who always made sure the money came in. Always people with their own expectations, who deliver themselves a disappointment, because they needed the others and blamed them when they didn’t satisfy their expectations.

If you participate in the struggle, you’ll sooner or later get hurt. If you can’t swallow that, you can get cancer for example. But people aren’t being wronged, they only feel wronged. When you play along in an unjust society, you’ll be treated unjustly. And when it’s just for you, for someone else it’s unjust. It’s always one or the other.

For a world that propagates, that you’ll find happiness in desire, possessing and doing, the message of the wise, that true bliss is found in not wanting, not having, and not doing, sounds ridiculous. For this society, Lao Tse, Zarathustra, Buddha and Jesus are impractical fools.