CHRISTMAS. WHAT DID JESUS ACTUALLY SAY?

What did Jesus say? Not his followers. Not the Cardinals. Not the popes. Not the Archbishops and bishops. Not the Patriarchs. Not Moses or David or Solomon. Not Paul. Not the priests. Not the biblical scholars. Not the historians. Not Augustine or Thomas a Kempis or Origen or Aquinas. Not your grandmother.

Christianity grew out of what Jesus said and did. What he did was to heal all manner of diseases (including death) and cast out devils. What he said could be reduced to just three things (if you really had to choose only three things).

Love the Lord your God.

Love your neighbour as yourself.

Do unto others as you would be done to. 

Out of these seeds has grown the enormous jungle which is Christianity today. Full of the fighting of wars against Moslems, the killing of Christians by Christians. The burning of "heretics" and "witches" by the "Holy" Inquisition. The mental and physical enslavement of South American Indians. The sexual abuse of children by priests. The accumulation of wealth.

The accumulation of unprecedented wealth and "treasures upon earth" in the Vatican.

What did Jesus say? Jesus said unto him, If you will be perfect, go and sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

Matthew 19: 21

Every year, the Pope urges the rich to give to the poor. 

If he followed Jesus' advice and put it all up for auction with Christies, he could go a long way towards wiping out the Third World Debt!

He would no longer need a bullet-proof pope-mobile.

NEW PROJECT: A CHAIN IS ONLY AS STRONG AS ITS WEAKEST LINK

RUNAWAY TRAIN

Your country is a runaway train, steaming along without a driver, while the passengers struggle with each other for the better seats or fight the staff for entry into the driver's cabin or argue about where it is going or should be going.

No-one is in control. No-one can stop it with the brakes. No-one can operate the run-off points and re-route it to somewhere safe. It takes courage to get off!

Your world is an even bigger runaway train.

But the most significant runaway trains are in the brains of the passengers and the staff: thought trains. Associative, compulsive, remembering, regretting, fearful, hungry, dissatisfied, uncontrollable thought trains.

Can you decide "Stop!" and it stops?

Can you re-route it onto happy, creative, positive, contributive, affectionate thought trains?

Can you "get off" altogether?

The Runaway Train, which is your country, has no driver. The last driver sold himself. To a Group of men in First Class. There he now sits. With his back to the engine.

The Group stripped the driver's cabin of all  instruments, dead man's handle, electronic equipment etc. including a  SIGN, which reads KEEP OUT! DRIVER AND AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY. They also sold the door linking  the cabin to the  rest of the train. They replaced it with a steel plate which has a small window. Through this can be seen the back of a life-sized puppet. In driver's uniform. Strapped to the driver's seat.

The Group sold the assets to another group in Third Class. This group has reassembled the assets in the guards van, which now resembles a driver's cabin put together by a gang of  ergo-gnomists called  lunatics. It also has the SIGN.

The group is now systematically working its way through Third Class, telling passengers that the value of their tickets has fallen below the cost of the journey. They are worth nothing and therefore invalid. They actually have a minus value. But this can be set as a discount on new tickets. These they must now buy or risk being thrown off the train.

When this reorganisation of Third Class has been effected, the group will move on to First Class. They will explain to the Group that their tickets too are invalid and that their minus value is greater than that of the Third Class tickets because the initial purchase price was higher.

Trapped between the steel door and the group, the Group will use up all the money they got from the sale of assets to bribe the group to go away. When all the money has gone, there will be a battle between the Group and the group which the group will win. The last surviving Leader of the Group will be dragged out from under his seat, dismembered and thrown out on both side of the tracks. He will then be formally tried and convicted.

The group will then start fighting the rest of the passengers who will by then have formed groups of their own. When the survivors are too weak to fight any more, they will then slouch in their seats, moaning and complaining, until the train hits the wherever it is going.

This, they will discover, is not, after all, HEAVEN.

In the Brain Train, the driver - You - sold out to Desire longer ago than you can remember. You continue to sit in the front seat looking backwards at whatever it is that Desire wants you to see. This, you have discovered, is not, after all, Heaven.

The runaway train which is your country (and your world) can be stopped or re-routed if a man with 100% Ethics were to take the wheel.

100% Ethics is: Don't do Evil. Cultivate Good. Purify the Mind.

Where Evil is anything which harms another being (including oneself).

          Good is anything which is for the benefit of other beings (including oneself).

          Purifying the Mind is getting rid of every kind of unwholesome, dishonest and mischievous mental impulse, thought and feeling.

           Harming another being is doing something to another which another does not want and one would not want done to oneself.

Is there a single Head of Government anywhere on this planet who has 100% Ethics? Answers, please.

            

The runaway trains in the brain need 100% Ethics, too. But the thoughts and impulses have to be brought under control. It is beneficial if the driver of your car is a good man. But that's not enough if he can't control the car.

NEW PROJECT: CHRISTMAS. 

WHAT DID JESUS ACTUALLY SAY ?

Not followers, priests, academics, enthusiasts.

The man himself.

The most reliable historical record is in the Four Gospels. In the King James' version Jesus' words are in red. Taken together they provide a historical link with the man. There are also words in red in the Book of Revelation but these are not Jesus' words. This book is the work of a visionary, John, full of poetry and prophesies which might or might not happen. The man himself is historical. The contents of his book are not.

WHY HOPE FOR WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE?

It is in the Present that everything is done. From the point of view of the mind, it is in the Future that the consequences occur. The mind invents a Future in which to perceive these consequences and moves towards them. If these consequences are seen to be both essential and realisable, the state of the perceiving mind is Hope. If they are seen to be essential but unrealisable, it is Despair.

Action is in the Present. The power to do things exists in the Present, too. Not only that, it exists inside you. Everything that has ever come into existence (including you) comes from that source. Everything that will come into existence (including future you), will come from that source.

It is the Centre. Locate it. Investigate it. Learn how to use it.

NEW PROJECT: RUNAWAY TRAIN

NO HOPE; NO DESPAIR

Do they not realise that building is for gods?  
Cannot even the wise think it odd
that a man must slave
for what he cannot have?
Is it left to be the knowledge of the few
that life is only something to be got through?


You needn’t wilt
or tire,
nothing need be built
any higher.

NEW PROJECT: WHY HOPE FOR WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE?

THE POLITICS OF DESPAIR

The great gates hang

on broken hinges,

the temples blaze,

the walls are breached;

the palaces have all been looted

the end of a dynasty has been reached.

Those still living

have all been taken,

women and children have been sold;

the last king hangs

from the palace lintel,

the images burn to give up their gold.

Think,

when you dream of country houses,

of shattered rafters and sudden fear;

and, as you climb the social ladder,

remember the last king

hanging here.

                                           Blondin


Look on my works, ye Mighty, and Despair (Ozymandias)

NEW PROJECT: NO HOPE; NO DESPAIR

IF NOT NOW THEN WHEN?

Doing is only possible Now. If it's an intention for tomorrow, the intention is done now. The action may be done tomorrow. But, among other possibilities, tomorrow may not come and you may not be alive.

    NOW 
    Now.

    Sit down.

    Let go.

    Tomorrow’s now will be no more than this

    - another was.

    Nothing is enough

    to distract

    your present thought.

    And your present thought

    is only a movement between two points,

    a wave that leaves the water behind,

    plotted by an electrical mind.

    So take your nothing.

    Now.

    Old Dhong says "if you have noodles, eat them Now!"

NEW PROJECT: THE POLITICS OF DESPAIR

SINNER MAN

There is nowhere outside where Sinner Man can hide. The karmic results of one's sins are within and you take within with you wherever you go. Medieval Christians were taught that the only things you can take with you at death that will be of any assistance to you are your Good Deeds.  In the Tibetan rituals, which attempt to guide the dying man over the bridge of death, he is constantly reminded "Remember your Good Deeds."

But you can't remember your good deeds if you haven't done any.

Undoubtedly you have done not-good deeds.

When are you going to stop the not-good and start seriously doing good deeds?

It will certainly be too late if you wait until "that day".

And they need to be genuine.  Nowadays the emphasis is increasingly on packaging and labelling which hide and disguise what the product actually is.

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it is described how the dead man's heart is weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth.  If his heart is lighter than the feather, he is allowed to pass into the afterlife.

Maat = Truth, law, morality, justice.

Book of the Dead: better translated as "Book of emerging forth into the Light".

NEW PROJECT: IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN?

THE JUNGLE OF SPEECH

AFTERNOON TEA AT THE WARNEFORD*

Speech
reaches out
to whisper and shout,
praise and curse,
across a silent universe;
making of molecular vibration
a means of human communication.

It wasn’t always quite like this;
the groans
and moans,
the hiss
and howls
in the warm pre-Cambrian mud
were eloquent enough avowals
of love and hatred, fear and blood.

Even now,
it isn’t always quite the same;
the grunts and lowing
of pig and cow
in farmyard barn and shed
make no poetic claim
but express the cosmic suffering
of the living and the dead.

When fragile humankind
comes here to peer,
through spiralling downwards mind,
into thorny jungles of raw sensation,
it loses its clear articulation;
the fine distinction
of the human word
is dislocated and blurred
into jabbering of animal and bird.

* Warneford Hospital, formerly Warneford Lunatic Asylum, two and a half miles east of Oxford city centre where the professional and middle classes, including senior and junior members of the University, came (come) when they could no longer cope with the lives they had created for themselves.

NEW PROJECT: SINNER MAN

"Hey Sinner Man,
Where you gonna run to?
Hey there Sinner Man
Where you gonna run to?
Hey Sinner Man
Where you gonna run to
All on that Day?"