Esoteric Agenda a Fundamentalist Rhetoric:
Spiritualty Sceptic; Spiritualty Rational: Aside from atheists’ annoying detachment from God, Atheists and Christians have one thing in common: both believe, as Allan Watts puts it that the world is an ‘artefact’ of nature; how the artefact came into being is another matter. In previous essays, I outlined that rationality breed’s atheism. However, rationalism and scepticism are not bad things.
There are a lot of born-again Christians out there. Their internal experience with spirituality automatically makes them follow Christ due to their background and environment, which defines their individual beliefs and ideals. There seems to be self-elitism to the born-again Christians; their experience in the supernatural makes them think they are the chosen ones. This viewpoint and a strong Christian upbringing are a recipe for chaos. These types of experiences can occur in near-death experiences or sometimes taking hallucination drugs or by any other event in their lives. There is a slight difference between this experience and the present experience; one of these can be self-elitism over living beyond the ego.
There is a vast difference between spirituality and religion, and many people know this. They have realised that having a firm belief system and regarding it as absolute truth does not make you spiritual, no matter the nature of that belief. And this is the rigidity of Christian thinking; unless you think like them, I’m afraid you might be mistaken in their eyes. With the influx of Eastern teachings separating, religion and spirituality became more apparent, and it is more likely the Church took notice.
There are now intellectuals in Christian history who use Eastern belief systems, cutting and pasting those belief systems and fashioning something that can align with the New Testament. Their approach to recruiting people into their institutions also aligns with their propaganda. For example, let’s say a person who is a Christian has a spiritual awakening; a spiritualist will equate this to the grace of God and reinforce them with their study to come up with some truth. However, Christians will realize it’s the grace of God and Christ and identify it as an opportunity to be a Christian who is born again, and only through Christ will you be saved. See how problematic this approach is, and ultimately, it is fear-laden. Do you need the Bible when you know everything starts from the spirit? Do you need to go through Christ to be with God? You become closer to God after your awakening, and it often doesn’t come with the help of a Messiah.
Fundamentalist Christians won’t have any of that; they will keep pushing only through Christ is the way, and that before in front of God you will be Judged. And this is an absolute farce; see how fear is the structure in which they preach. The truth is that reaching Enlightenment is reaching Christ’s Consciousness; that means that through him, you will be saved. God is love, not fear.
The notion of being saved differs from the gnostic point of view, that gnosis is about knowledge of divine reality. [The Gnostics seemed to define the remote God of the Pleroma as ineffable, which means indescribable, indicating that God is beyond the realm of mere things. – Richard Smoley, Jay Kinney]
All sorts of questions can arise when you regulate the notion of being saved to an inverse form of solipsism. An answer that can stand apart from this militant notion [is that gnosis is knowledge of how we stand about the Unknown God and the material universe. For the Gnostics, without knowledge of the Demiurge, the Archons, the bridal chamber, and most importantly, the route back to the Pleroma, we cannot be “saved” but are doomed to wander in illusion both in this life and beyond. As in the Tibetan Buddhist doctrine of the bardos, one must maintain consciousness at one’s death and, armed with the right passwords, pass through a maze of astral worlds (referred to as “the middle” in The Gospel of Philip) until one reaches the realm of Light. Such an approach to gnosis links it to specific crucial information (perhaps acquired experientially) necessary for salvation. – Richard Smoley, Jay Kinney]
A great example of this inverse-solipsism comes from Kevin M Sullivan, author, minister, and born-again Christian. He describes his experience in his early twenties where he went through an event in which he sincerely asked Christ to reveal himself and come into his life. After which energy of fire came through him and somewhat cleansed him, a huge weight was lifted from his chest. And from that experience, he knew Christ was real. He would later, through the Bible study, interpret that the fire was Christ’s spirit coming into his spirit, and from this, he was re-born again. In Sullivan’s experience, he embodies the word “I”; therefore, it will be the most significant error and profound truth in his preaching and writings.
So, having this experience and embodying the word “I”, together with the words “me,” “my,” “mine,” and “myself”, is misleading because the word “I”, as Eckhart Tolle describes, “a primordial error, a misperception of which you are, an illusory sense of identity.” So, Kevin M Sullivan would relate the passage in the Bible where the spirit must be born again – Kevin equates his experience with Christ’s Spirit coming into him – to an illusion. He interprets it literally through an experience he had. The passage must be born again can be interpreted in many ways; for example, reaching Christ’s Consciousness can be the same as being born again. He defends this by saying, “I know some people may not like to hear this, but I know it was Christ because I’ve experienced him.” Do you see the word “I” being used repeatedly – his experience, coupled with factual knowledge of the Bible, is misleading, and it doesn’t allow other people to be aware of God; instead, it stifles it. Albert Einstein calls this “an optical illusion of consciousness,” and Eckhart Tolle says, “The illusory self then becomes the basis of misinterpretations of reality, all thought processes, interactions, and relationships. Your reality becomes a reflection of the original illusion.” And this is not a dismissal of his experience but his process and interpretations. (Eckhart Tolle n.d)
He also states that if you’re not born again if you don’t know him, you’re not ready for eternity – and that there is an evil wave of energy at work to lead people away. Those people who seek to push into the supernatural other than the ways of God, through divination, mediums, and psychics, it’s condemning the scripture – and it is said in the scriptures not to go down that wrought – if you proceed in doing this, it can open up demonic situations. This is a common trait now for fundamentalist Christians to condemn any forms of Esotericism, Gnosticism, Buddhism, and the Tao Te Ching, basically any institution whose only purpose is to make people aware of their consciousness of self. They will box those teachings into the form of an Esoteric Agenda – a conspiracy of which they are a part. This is simultaneously true and also a conjecture and it doesn’t hold to scrutiny. He has self-aggrandised himself into a prophet and weakened the beliefs of his people (Christians) – do every Christian have to go through a near-death to have Christ in them and be born again? Do you see how it’s more about controlling than redemption? The New Age is not helping usher in this New Order movement. Instead, it’s the Church and the New Age; no institution can stand outside the Globalist Elites. What does stand outside is your faith in God, Christ, and your awareness of Consciousness and Spirit.
Divination, mediums, and psychic practice are inherent in spiritual practice. It is said not to practice it according to the texts of the Bible and is solely based on a warning not to do it to keep people away from harm. When channelling or meditating, there is no way of knowing whether or not you are contacting angelic or demonic spirits and why discernment should be practised. First, John 4 1-3 states, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world. And this is how you can recognize the spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”
So even Buddha, the supreme enlightened one, was challenged by a demon; the demon Mara demanded to know who would testify that Buddha was worthy of attaining ultimate wisdom. His demon army rose to support him; Buddha said nothing, and then he reached down and touched the earth with his fingers, and the earth shook, and the demons fled. And then Buddha says, “The earth is my witness,” “Mara, you are not the earth, the earth is right here,” accepting the earth as it is. Mara was gone. Then, he meditated through the night, and his former life passed before him; he visually remembered that he had gained the power of birth and rebirth, the cosmic vision of the entire universe. Then, he said my mind was at “peace,” then heaven shook the Bodhi tree and rained down flowers; he had become the awakened one – the “Buddha.”
This phenomenon becomes more prominent as the number of sensitive people increases. That is demon possession when people are sleeping, and sometimes, even when people are about to sleep but still awake, they get possessed. They’re more commonly known as Incubus and Succubus; some symptoms are a ringing tone in the ear, inability to move, pressure in the chest, your mind being hacked or electrical synopsis firing more and faster than usual, similar or a mind epileptic fit. If possession can occur in sleep or when you’re about to sleep – by the Bible and the Fundamentalist Christian’s logic, we shouldn’t sleep due to voluntary and involuntary divination practices. The brain creates DMT in the brain responsible for dreams; when Incubus and Succubus attack, the person’s dreams are vivid and often feel like they are not in control. Ayahuasca is a plant drug that Sharman uses for spiritual healing on people. This plant induces DMT and is Holistic – and it’s like (from what I gathered through the interpretations of shamans that it feels like) dreaming while awake. This plant is natural and is part of the whole. Therefore, dreams, holistic healing, and meditation are concepts of the natural and do not exist in the Fundamentalist’s Christian condemnation; when such event happens to people naturally without their control – their argument is mute.
Satanism and Occultism have their form of magic(k), based on evil worship and sacrifice. So why would a Christian Fundamentalist group in the New Age with this group? I suspect to further their fundamentalist agenda and to keep people in a state of fear, and for that, I have no doubt. Undoubtedly, the extreme political left controls the extreme religious right, which the Fundamentalist Christian Church offsets.
If you’re a musician, there is a concept of improvisation. Musicians know about this when you’re playing a song through an instrument and improvising. Sometimes, you get into a zone, and suddenly, you are not playing the instrument; instead, the instrument is playing you. It’s when you subconsciously know all the notes, and there is little need to think about it, but what is the force driving the song notes to play? Tapping into the ether, this is where artists conjure their imagination and, in doing so, have finer intuition. Schopenhauer says, “The man endowed with imagination is able, as it were, to call up spirits.” Fundamentalist Christians won’t allow this in this act of divine creative nature, or are it an act of divination, so you see, it does not hold up to this basic human faculty of intuition and imagination. And this is why Alan Watt’s comment holds weight when he says: “We don’t need the Bible when we know we have spirit.”
The Tao teachings emphasize awareness of the Tao; the Tao Te Ching came before the Buddha, and their basic teaching is being aware of the Tao in yourself and the natural world. Sitting and watching the tree’s sway, seeing an aspect of nature in small animals like ants, this is, in a sense, a low meditative state. Sitting down with cross legs is just a detail of how Yoga, Zen and Sage teachers sit. Being aware of breathing is meditative also – so, do you see how nature is part of a creative artefact, and for the Church teachers to dismiss nature is also dismissing your nature and spirit, even though they are agents of the spiritual Church?
Eckhart Tolle says, “What is spiritual realization? The belief that you are spirit, “no,” that’s a thought. It is a little closer to the truth than believing you are who your birth certificate says you are, but it is still a thought. Spiritual realization is to see that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am and that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away. The Buddha was probably the first human being to see this clearly, so Anata (no self) became one of the central points of his teaching. When Jesus said, “deny thyself,” he meant to neglect (and thus undo) the illusion of self. “I” the self-ego is who I was, and it would be absurd to “deny” it.” (Eckhart Tolle n.d)
Kevin M Sullivan proclaims that while being a minister, he also banishes evil spirits that people possess. He also knows all the different types of spirits out there, and one of those he mentions in his Darkness radio interview is Familiar Spirits – familiar spirits act like angels of light to deceive when, in fact, they are demon spirits. It is said not to practice such divination, and yet he does himself, and he has not accepted that the fire spirit that came into him might be an angelic spirit and not Christ. All the archetypes of Christ appearing in people come in as light; he appears in front of them, and people seem profoundly moved by it. They start to cry, and everybody cries when they see Christ. Grant Morrison, a comic book writer, went through a near-death, and when he saw Christ, Christ said to him, “I’m not the God of your father; I’m the hidden stone that breaks all men’s hearts.” Jesus came to him in Gnostic form.
Kevin M Sullivan proclaims that while being a minister, he also banishes evil spirits that possess people. He also knows all the different types of spirits out there. One of those he mentions in his Darkness radio interview is Familiar Spirits – familiar spirits act like angels of light to deceive when they are demon spirits. It is said not to practice such divination, and yet he does himself, and he has not accepted that maybe the fire spirit that came into him might be angelic, not Christ. All the archetypes of Christ appearing in people come in as light; he appears in front of them, and people seem profoundly moved by it, and they start to cry. Everybody cries when they see Christ. Grant Morrison, a comic book writer, went through a near-death, and when he saw Christ, Christ said to him, “I’m not the God of your father; I’m the hidden stone that breaks all men’s hearts.” Jesus came to him in Gnostic form.
Aside from Buddha or anyone who goes through similar spiritual practice, awakening is an act of grace. Once you have a presence, Eckhart Tolle says, “You can either try to go on as if nothing has happened, or you can see its significance and recognize the arising of awareness as the most important thing that can happen to you. Opening yourself to the emerging Consciousness and bringing its light into this world becomes your life’s primary purpose.” “I want to know the mind of God. Einstein said, ‘The rest are details.’ ‘What is the mind of God?’ it’s Consciousness.” (Eckhart Tolle n.d)
