In this chapter, I assume the premise that we are the fallen angels and consider some logical consequences. If the last chapter was not compelling, this is an academic exercise, but of interest as a ’what if’ scenario.
Assumptions
We are immortal - originally light-spirits imprisoned on the dark side of the Universe. A powerful deity has, for not accepting His dominion, has put us in a gigantic magnetic cage, cut off our wings, blinded our spirit vision, erased our memories, and cast us to the dark side of the Universe where unaware we sully our spirits by absorbing darkness by doing dark deeds. In order to keep us in this fallen state, this God proposes half-truths and allow differing beliefs to develop among us about spiritual truth that we can hardly experience. We forget our immortality and become increasingly attached to the material world until most of us think ourselves nothing more than slabs of meat.
Hypothetical Consequence 1: Obsession with mortality
If we don’t know that we are immortal, then our observed mortality would weigh heavily in our minds, distracting us with unnecessary worry. Immortality would tempt us as a fruit forbidden. Indeed moderns have interpreted the texts of ancient Egyptians in such morbid terms - obsession with immortality rather than knowledge of immortality.
Hypothetical Consequence 2: Confusion of spiritual faiths
If we cannot experience the spiritual universe directly, then various and in- consistent beliefs about God occur, inconsistent with each other and impossible to verify because our organs of perception are dulled or atrophied or simply disabled. Thus reality reduces to the physical three dimensions and rational thinkers develop objective knowledge with the handicap of three dimensional observations only. What seems like an irrational urge for ’religion’ spurs vast majorities into following ’faiths’ whose adherents defend their beliefs with blind zealousness - the most devastating examples perhaps come from the Crusades
84 CHAPTER 13. CONSEQUENCES OF HELL ON EARTH around the ’Holy Land’ in 1100s.
Hypothetical Consequence 3: Reversal of Truth
The biblical religions uphold the fallen angels as the epitome of evil and God’s wrath that happened to other spirits, not us, for we are graced in various ways. This would seem to be a perfectly clever way of making sure that we never consider ’those evil spirits’ as ourselves. This has been, for me, a little too convenient.
Hypothetical Consequence 4: No Exit
If we have been stuck in hell and reincarnating, it is possible that few human spirits have ever exited hell even in death. The positive consequence would be that if we are able to break all the magnetic barriers that define our incarcer- ation, then we could return to heaven en mass without death. In other words, if hell is our spiritual condition on Earth, then heaven must also be a possible spiritual condition on Earth - one that we ourselves can achieve by defeating the false deity that claims to be our creator and breaking the spirit barriers that He had erected to contain us in hell.
Hypothetical Consequence 5: We are not what we think
Returning to one of the most misunderstood conclusions of Descartes’ while we can show that self-awareness proves the realty of our being, while we know we are because we think, we are not what we think. This is because all that we observe about ourselves could still be deceptive and one needs some way to differentiate truth from illusion. Spiritual masters, Siddharta among the greatest of them, have answered this question already for us that as a race we have put in the same class as religion: we cannot rely on the standard five senses to determine who we are. To moderns this sounds like mumbo jumbo because we had developed a science purely on the three dimensional observations and hence all phenomena that did not fall into the parameters of this science we had labeled as ’hocus pocus’. Now it is not the science that is part of hell but the atrophy of spiritual awareness such as closed third eyes. Indeed, without a science, we had systematically labeled things that point to a spiritual reality as signs of mental diseases-hallucination being the most common symptom of ’delusion’. In a separate chapter I will argue that there is no system in the human body capable of creating hallucinations.
Hypothetical Consequence 6: Artificial differences become significant Now given that we don’t know that we are four-dimensional spirits, perhaps our drive to be unique leads us down a useless path-use of physical information to subdivide and categorize. Our skin color, language, height, weight, weight of brain, bone thickness, curliness of hair, and other surface characteristics in various cultures are used to differentiate us. While race is not real, racism certainly is, and dominates the divisions, along with nationalism, religion, and wealth-class, that stop us from reaching a humane world-system. Rhetoric of ”tolerance” notwithstanding, these divisions are unquestioned privately by most on the planet. If one uses as definition of a racist as someone who believes that races are real, then almost all of us are racists. The point of this observation is that if we knew that we are all fallen angels in hell, then these surface dif- ferences would lessen in importance and we could focus on our real talents and
85 uniqueness.
But what about the differing histories that different peoples have had? I have had previous lives across the ’racial spectrum’ personally, and thus have the following counter-question - what if you found out that in different lives you have been members of completely different ’race’ - would you still hold your identification with ’your people’ as strongly? Most people with personal experience with different cultures will tell you this from personal experience-the human similarities outweigh the cultural baggage no matter where you go, and many of the differences stem from differing positions in global capitalism rather than simply being results of ethnicity or culture.
As an example, Islam is a dominant religion of the global poor, and that de- fines behavior of many Muslim cultures much more than some medieval anachro- nistic drive. Of course the prison of religion of the deceptive God is active here too, but no more than the 77
Hypothetical Consequence 7: ’Intractable’ Divisions of Capitalism, Nation, Religion
Capitalism prefers a pyramidical structure of power for the world. Nations create divisions that require defense of artificial boundaries, while religions pro- duce adherents who believe (rather than know) stories about spiritual truths. If we are indeed fallen angels, none of these systemic differences are accidental as these three structures have surprising strength in perpetuating division and conflict in the planet.
As long as these three structures exist, I will claim, there cannot be harmony in our world. The only reasonable way to remove these, however is active decision by individuals. I propose a peaceful way to transition from the current system to a global Republic structure that is legal by national laws.