Archive for September, 2009

Faith, Reason, and the Masters

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

This is the “age of the spirit,” proclaims the venerable Harvard University theologian Harvey Cox in his new book, The Future of Faith. Professor Cox has been a leading voice in America since the publication of his book The Secular City in 1965. In that tome he argued that the church was less an hierarchical institution than an expression of faith and action. Cox now reasons that the Christian faithful are ignoring dogma, embracing spirituality, and finding common ground with other world religions. Similar change is happening in other faiths, he observes.

Displaying her deep understanding of the broad view of the divine in other religious traditions, the British theological historian Karen Armstrong argues in her latest book The Case for God that even though faith may be less needed than spirituality and compassion, God, albeit a mysterious force, is a transcendent divinity whose existence cannot be denied.

In a recent Newsweek magazine article, religion editor Lisa Miller suggests that such books are intended to “dismantle the arguments of the atheists.” Further, she says, “Armstrong shows that for most of human history, ‘faith’ and ‘reason’ were not mutually exclusive.” The God in whom reasonable people believe today is nothing like the portrait of an anthropomorphic deity that atheists despise.

The truth seems to lie a little more in the middle ground between faith and reason than either side is ready to accept. Atheism has been under attack for its dissent from a view of God—the old man with a beard sitting on a cloud and dispensing judgment—that no intelligent believer actually affirms. Theologians, despite their historical long view, are increasingly up against a society that is profoundly bored by religion and demonstrates its attitude with its feet. In the USA, a so-called “religious nation,” only 44% of the population attend church regularly. In more-secular Britain, 27%;  Australia is at 16%; and Norway a mere 5%. Unsurprisingly, only 2% of Russians attend church. The world is going secular very fast.

WODEN SAYS:  Once one has become familiar with the viewpoint of our guides, the Masters of the Spirit World, the two sides in the old belief-in-God debate seem rather irrelevant. We are part of an energetic universe, the Masters assert, and the nature of energy at its Source and within its highest dimension is sentient—thinking and feeling—as we are. Moreover, being the Source of all energy, it is in everything that exists and therefore is creative, all knowing, and all powerful. Yet, because it is universal energy it cannot also be an individual personality. Whereas God believers see their deity as a person wholly other than and different from themselves, the Source of energy is wholly connected with its creation in some way or another. Source is in no way “apart” from its creation as theologians assert. On the contrary, say the Masters, it is each one of us, at soul level.

Religion is interested in the human relationship with the divine. In the Masters’ view the energy of Source is, in part, split up into fragments, which are individual souls. They share the eternal Source energy and therefore share in its sentience, knowledge, and creativity. Even when incarnate on planet Earth, souls remain a totally connected vestige of Source energy. People are not “given” souls for an “afterlife.” Souls, which have been detached from Source energy, are given human bodies (which cannot remain alive without soul energy) for the duration of their incarnation on planet Earth. When the body dies, the soul “transitions”  back to its energetic home.

Atheism is interested in verification of truth. Modern physics is giving some help here—for example in the seemingly sentient reaction that sub-atomic particles give to being observed and measured. Essentially, the Masters’ point of view should be easier for the atheist to accept, given the energetic model on which it is based, and the fact that survival of death does not mean the physical survival of a human being who has died, but refers to a pre-existing attached energy continuing to exist unchanged in its own form and nature.

This is a model of life that is destined to replace theology and agnostic or atheist argument in due course. It deserves to be better known.

The best place to look for more detail is The Masters’ Reincarnation Handbook, available from our bookstore either as a booklet or as an instant ebook download. Other reading includes our discussions with the souls of the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the physicist Albert Einstein, and the evangelist Dwight Moody contained in Talking with Leaders of the Past or as single-chapter downloads. Happy reading!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Commentaries | No Comments »

The World’s Pedophiles

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

From Brazil to Japan, Cambodia, Austria, and the USA, pedophiles are kidnapping, raping, abusing, and frightening children from the very young to pre-pubescent teens. Between 10% and 20% of pedophiles are women, but it is mostly observed as a male obsession, and men generally do the most harm. In America 65% of abusers are family members and 90% are known to the victim. Some 60% of people in drug and alcohol rehabilitation were abused as children. Social and mental problems follow or consume many of the abused for the rest of their lives.

Currently Americans are learning of a horrendous situation of pedophilia. Phillip and Nancy Garrido have been accused of kidnapping an 11-year-old, Jaycee Dugard, and keeping her locked up for 18 years. While Phillip was previously jailed for 11 years for kidnapping and rape, he was found to be mentally sick. He was given early release from jail three years before the alleged kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard took place in 1991. Jaycee appears to have been held captive and raped, and she now has two daughters, presumably by Mr. Garrido.

In Austria another recent case appears to be even worse. Reportedly Josef Fritzl has confessed to keeping his daughter Elizabeth in a windowless cellar over a period of 24 years. It appears that he fathered seven children by her, three of whom had been kept without sight of daylight all their young lives. Fritzl’s wife appears, strangely, to have been ignorant of what was going on. Wow!

In the shanty towns of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, young children are forced into prostitution, both male and female, and involved in porn-movie making. Drug money is used to bribe the police to look the other way. The recent Oscar-winning Bollywood movie Slumdog Millionaire told a similar story about the Mumbai slums in India.

Sex tourism in Cambodia has been in the news with the deportation to America of three convicted sex offenders. They were caught in a US-led operation. Jeff Blom of the International Justice Mission has said, “Cambodia in particular has been known for some time as a pedophile haven because there’s been a broken justice, no rule of law, and actually no laws on the books that would have been enforceable against these types of activities until recently.”

When Japanese censorship laws were relaxed in the 1990s, a wave of “lolicon” (Lolita complex) art developed a big following. Widely distributed pictures portray 12- to16-year-old girls and depict or imply a wide range of sex acts in pictures that often feature partial nudity. Claims that this literature leads to actual sexual abuse are hotly denied. Japanese culture is undoubtedly more liberal and includes the annual Phallic Festival in Kawasaki, attended by some 30,000 who honor the gods of sexuality, represented by giant penises, and seek the gods’ protection against sexually transmitted diseases. The rest of the nation, presumably, tunes in to watch the event on TV.

Japan’s practice of enjo kosai (compensated dating) has older men dating schoolgirls, as young as 12, in exchange for presents. While not always including sex, this is a highly dangerous activity and is said to involve 5 to 10% of young high school girls. Prostitution is illegal in Japan, but the age of consent is only 13 in Tokyo and some other parts of the country.
Enforcement of prostitution varies widely even in regard to little children. Some countries, including Australia, Canada, Eire, and New Zealand are among a minority where publication of lolicon pictures is a crime. Whatever laws are on the books, most countries struggle to control pedophilia because of a lack of political will or shortage of dedicated personnel.

WODEN finds it a bit difficult to look at this grisly scene with the detached vision of the spirit world, but he understands how spirit guides view things: very differently from human beings.

First, the divine Source of energy, of which our souls are a part, has created in this world a finely tuned balance between positive and negative forces.

Second, we are all actors playing roles down here on Earth as we unlock the meaning of the positive through our experience of the negative. We may choose to play negative or victim roles. Presumably the pedophile’s free choice, made before coming to live on planet Earth, was to grapple with obsessions and to encounter hostility on the part of society. Some souls became addicts, others racists, and still others sex maniacs. We may also assume that their victims freely chose to suffer control and abuse by others. Both pedophiles and victims find themselves in a mental “hell” as the drama plays out.

The fact that our souls are involved in role play while in physical form may deepen our understanding of why pedophilia happens, and why this is such a big deal in the interplay between positive and negative forces. But it doesn’t mean we have to go soft. Kids need protecting from predators, and society must be able to function smoothly. If that means we must lock people up for life or chop off their heads (or another part of their anatomy) Woden is wrathfully cool!

But when we feel aggressive towards pedophiles, we must watch ourselves and guard against all-too-frequently made hasty or biased judgments. Although a fierce social response may be one aspect of a pedophile’s life lessons, Woden prefers restraint regarding execution or castration out of simple humanity and in fear of the real danger of judicial mistakes. We must guard against our vengeful actions or we will add ourselves to the number of people in “hell.” Our guides insist that hell is not a future destination but a present state of mind. We make hell for ourselves as a judgment on our own lives, the spirit guides tell us. It is something pedophiles know all about—you can see it on their faces.

(For more on this topic read Talking with Leaders of the Past. A discussion with Adolf Hitler deals with this topic. Available from www.celestialvoicesinc.com .)

Tags: ,
Posted in Commentaries | No Comments »

Mother Earth

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

In Vienna, the Hilton Hotel has installed a large quantity of treated window film to cut air conditioning costs, reducing the temperature in its rooms by nearly 10%, and saving a ton of money by pruning electricity use and CO2 emissions. In a French installation, the drug company GlaxoSmithKline will pay off a similar project within 3 years with savings in heating and cooling its corporate headquarters.

Skyscrapers are notorious for their waste of energy. The Chicago-located Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), the tallest building in the western hemisphere, is starting a massive environmental refit which will create over 3,000 jobs. With help from wind and solar equipment, the project will save the equivalent of 150,000 barrels of oil each year when completed.

In a different way, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, is helping Mother Earth. The company is now diverting the whole of its staggering 531,000 tons of waste from landfills, mostly by recycling: turning waste meat into fuel, for example, and making spanking new cardboard boxes out of used ones in a speedy two-week turnaround. Even plastic bags are recycled as big refuse bags—there, and you said they just threw them away!

New Zealanders concerned about the damage that palm oil production has done to rainforests have forced Cadbury NZ to promise that it will stop using palm oil in its chocolate. The candy manufacturer had recently started using the oil to cut costs. Citing the threat to tropical wild life, including the endangered orangutans, of palm oil agricultural practices, the Auckland Zoo led an attack by environmentalists and stopped the stocking of Cadbury products on its premises.

Woden recognizes that Rome was not built in a day. Mother Earth will need a lot more help from a much wider spectrum of business interests if she can continue to house her people, animals, and plant life. When looked at against the backdrop of the chemical and the oil companies’ continued and massive pollution of land and water, and the damage to air quality done by coal-fired power plants from China to the American rust belt, these corporate projects I have cited look like fleas on the rump of a rhinoceros.
All this is more than global warming, much more than a threat to comfort. It is a matter of the near-term sustainability of life on our planet. In her recent channeled message, published on this website, the soul of pioneer environmentalist Rachel Carson said this: “Mother Earth is tired of being scourged and is fighting back with tremors, eruptions, and winds. Become aware of life and soothe her troubled brow. Every effort you engage in to stop and reverse her agony will be rewarded with a better life for all. Be aware that every action you perform affects the energy of everything around you.”

Now, Rachel says she monitors the souls on Earth currently fighting the same battles in which she once participated. She attempts to infuse them with energy to sustain their efforts. The spirit guides support everyone seeking to help Mother Earth. We all have a contribution to make. Rachel herself took on the chemical companies and was attacked professionally for doing so. Some people have chosen to believe that “direct action” will nudge things forward in the right direction. Most people prefer to use ballot boxes, boycotts, petitions, and protests. Each soul makes its own choice—but no soul lives here on Earth who does not suffer in its human body from the pollution of the atmosphere and of the food supply.

There seem to me two opportunities missing from the usual list of things we can do. The first is suggested by the Masters of the Spirit World themselves. This is simply for us to gather together to praise Mother Earth for her bounty and to thank her for her gifts. Just that. The Masters say we should avoid praying for things to be better. That creates the suggestion that things are no good, and the healing energy of the universe will take us at our word and do nothing. But if we give thanks for the glories of Nature, that same universal Qi will come to rectify whatever does not match our thanksgiving by empowering change and strengthening, calming, and protecting the great spirit, Mother Earth.

The second thing is to realize we must be people of environmental integrity ourselves. We must try harder to buy locally produced foodstuffs, monitor what we put in landfills, cut our carbon footprint. And we must strive for wellness in our individual body, because thus we contribute directly to the wellness of the whole world.
Thank you, Mother Earth, for all you are and all you do for us.

Tags: ,
Posted in Commentaries | No Comments »

“I trust my heart to Lipitor”

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
Good doctors may try to resist the easy temptation to comply with their patients’ desires but, in the litigious USA with the ever-present threat of lawsuits for doctors’ inaction hanging like the sword of Damocles over their head, most physicians meekly comply. Anyway, patients are skilled in having just the right amount of chest pain, for example, to trigger the desired response from their hurried physician.
Despite the long list of so-called “side effects” mentioned as a rapid aside on television, people are still moved to action. Americans love action above all, be it an MRI test, a biopsy, or just a simple drug prescription. It is a national attitude that has helped to make American healthcare the most costly and one of the least efficient in the western world.
Though mandated by law, the whispered phrase “side effects” hides another devious trick. It’s rather as if the drug companies are saying, “We are the responsible ones because we included the fact that you may go blind or die, but don’t be frightened, little patient. Drug mother knows best.” Maybe the medicine moguls got the term “side effects,” which implies insignificance, from the military. You never “kill” your enemies these days; instead, they are just “taken out.” What the “side effects” merchants don’t mention is often rather more relevant: In the research tests their companies engineered to persuade the government to grant their drug a license, frequently their potentially lethal pill was found to be only as little as 5% more effective (if that) than a sugar-coated placebo.
So, if you “trust” your body to some wonder drug or other, will it work?
The first answer is a cautious acknowledgment that it may well act as intended in, say, lowering your cholesterol score. But there’s a catch. As anyone who has paid attention to the cholesterol debate knows, the evidence is slim (and is outright denied by many competent physicians) that the targets set by drug companies for “safe” levels of serum cholesterol in the body have any basis of truth whatsoever. So may we risk the “side effect” of death for no good reason? Nobody knows for sure, least of all the family doctors, who are regularly bribed and brainwashed into submission by the drug companies.
The second answer is spiritual and also may also be quite positive. As the Masters of the Spirit World point out in their Healing booklet (see Literature), when patients’ conscious minds truly believe that they will recover from an illness, or will not fall prey to an infection, then their attitude may indeed trigger self-healing. This may not happen, however, if the disease or lack of physical balance represents an experience willed as a life-lesson by a soul, in advance of incarnating.
Although the Masters are not fond of traditional western medical practice that seeks only to treat the body and not the spirit of the patient, many good physicians are true healers who inspire their patients to heal themselves. Alas, if the disease is imaginary or over-hyped for the sake of drug sales, these good doctors may be wasting their breath.
At the heart of this matter, Woden believes there is a deeper issue. These powerful drug advertisements on TV possess a dangerous negativity. The slogan “I trust my heart to Lipitor” says, in effect, “We are the miracle healers who are able to save you from death. Ignore the side effects—believe in us.” In other words, it exploits the fear of death. People everywhere are terrified of dying.* They will believe anyone, pop any pill, that removes the shadow of the grim reaper. Who cares what it will cost!
The glorious assurance for those who embrace reincarnation is that we do not die. At the moment of our passing, rough or smooth, our soul transitions seamlessly back from its temporary physical human existence into its permanent state as an energetic being, directly connected with Source, the creative energy of all that is. The soul never dies.
*(Our booklet A Conversation about Death is available from www.celestialvoicesinc.com )

Posted in Commentaries | No Comments »

Lockerbie

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
What a slew of issues come forth from the so-called “Lockerbie Bomber’s” release! I placed his popular designation in quotes because, as he himself has always persisted in claiming innocence, serious doubts have been raised by others about whether he really was guilty of the terrorist act on 21st December 1988 that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 right on top of the little Scottish town of Lockerbie.
Then there is the fury of grieving relatives, including parents of the 42 students who were among the 270 victims. For the American relatives, it was bad enough that only a life sentence had been meted out for Al-Megrahi by the Scottish court, as European countries have long abandoned the barbarity of capital punishment. Now the perceived weakness of the Scottish justice minister in allowing him to go home to die of prostate cancer reignited their wrath. This was compounded by the ecstatic reception given him by relatives and friends as he tottered off the plane. Conspiracy theories abound—was this a final cozy deal between the British and Libyan governments? Enquiring minds want to know—especially members of the British Conservative Party, of course.
Woden could go on, but we are interested in the cosmic spirituality of the case, as taught by our spirit guides, the Masters of the Spirit World. Viewed from their perspective at Home on the Other Side, things look very different.
Our starting point involves the decisions and contracts made by all the souls involved in the incident before incarnating—coming down to Earth to take human flesh. Each of these souls was on an experiential training course and made a free choice to come to Earth. Our little blue planet is the only one in the universe whose energy is neatly balanced between positive and negative. As I explained last week, souls are seeking to learn lessons down here. Mr. Al-Megrahi’s soul (yes, he has one) may have chosen to play a negative role, in which case he could well have been the terrorist as charged, or he might have chosen to suffer negativity, in which case he could possibly have been wrongly convicted. His family members may have chosen abandonment and grief among their life-lessons.
The Masters insist that death is not accidental. Its timing (though not its manner) results from the free choice our soul made before incarnating. We do have options, but an early physical death usually results from a contract that our soul made in advance with other souls. At the soul level, family members and friends of the Lockerbie victims were most likely looking to experience “man’s inhumanity to man,” grief, anger, and so on. The kids on the plane were not “robbed of their life” from the perspective of the spiritual universe. Firstly, they all had agreed to die young, and, secondly, death came only to their physical body; they themselves “transitioned”—smoothly carried on in their soul form. The soul is eternal; it never dies.
There are some issues in the Lockerbie fallout that the spirit world has only a marginal interest in discussing. We earthlings love to fight over the right and wrong of things. Did the court system fail in its exercise of justice? If a man convicted of killing 270 people is set free because of terminal cancer, why cannot other prisoners serving life sentences be treated similarly out of fairness? Spirit guides take such matters in account, but persist in saying there is no good or bad, right or wrong. “No right or wrong!” we storm back at them. That is correct because the “bad” things that happen to “good” people are what their souls have freely requested in advance to provide them with experiential lessons. If you or I want (at the soul level) to experience anger, for example, the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 is an excellent way to incur it.
One final thought: Mr. Al-Megrahi is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. This, no doubt, was caused by an energetic blockage in his body. If so, why did that blockage occur? Was it his shame for what he had done? Was it anger at the injustice of the court’s decision to convict him? Was it something quite unconnected to Lockerbie? We shall never know.
*
Woden says: If you want to read further, The Masters’ Reincarnation Handbook is listed on the Literature page in both book and ebook formats. The Masters’ own blog may be found at www.mastersofthespiritworld.com.

Tags:
Posted in Commentaries | No Comments »