"excuse me Sir,have you been washed in the blood of the Lamb"
I was very tempted to stay and chat
"excuse me Sir,have you been washed in the blood of the Lamb"
I was very tempted to stay and chat
I converted a Jehovah's Witness to Vedism during a 7 min wait on Angel tube station's platform.
He asked if I ever think about God. I said yes. He asked if I wanted to talk about it.....
I explained that the 3 wise men came from the east and that c.270BC Ashoka the Great unified India and converted to Buddhism after seeing the horrors of the battle. And that by 0AD, the whole of India was Buddhist.
I explained that all 4 Gospels say nothing of JC's life between arguing with the Pharisees in the temple at the age of 12/13 and coming back and turning water into wine aged 30.
But he went off into the wilderness, to the East, after the argument.
So clearly he went to India, met Vedic holymen like the 3 wise men, and studied transcendental meditation.
He then came back and taught Buddhism/Hinduism to Jews in words of one syllable. Turn the other cheek, do unto others etc.
By now the tube had come and me and my mate got on.
But just before the doors closed, I told him that if he really wanted to understand Jesus, this showed that he should follow the Vedic religions, as this was a reason that Christianity was less violent and God's chosen peoplely than the other two Abrahamic ones.
It's basically Vedism explained to middle eastern ****wits.
He had this weird look on his face, as though he was trying to compute it all. But he didn't disagree with anything I said.
Here's hoping he's living as a Saddhu in the Himalayas, communing with the Divine by smoking stonking great chillums 24/7
You dont want to do that, they're wired differently and thus it's a potential fire hazard.
Only kidding, I'm a comitted atheist but if I had to chose one pantheon to throw my weight behind it'd be the ganjees paddlers every time.
The look on his face when the doors shut was priceless.
He couldn't argue with any of the stuff I'd said from the Gospels, such as the 3 wise men, the Pharisees and the water into wine being his first miracle when he came back from the wilderness.
Nor about turn the other cheek, do unto others etc.
I honestly think I'd shaken his PoV a bit. Not shaken his belief, just shown him there may be more to it than he'd previously thought.
Best wait for a tube ever, imo. So glad he was there and tried to bother me.
Also, isn't being an Atheist, as opposed to an agnostic, showing a fundamental faith in a tenet of your own personal philosophy? The sort of things people slag off Allans for?
I mean, as you can't disprove the existence of God, if you say you're certain, then surely you're saying "I can't prove it but I know it must be true as that's what all my tribe tell me and I think they're right."
What I would ask the atheists is why they reckon so many different cultures that use psychedelics all believe it can unlock different planes of consciousness on which one can commune with the Divine?
Why do Saddhus and druids and acid-heads all get munted and talk to God?
I would have thought that it bothers God more that I don't believe in him or her. If we do create him or her in our o own image then that person would be a bit pissed
Yes, exactly that.
Though I do think mankind has a passionate, burning desire to athropomorphise everything ever and that is the single biggest reason for the phenomenon. And bare in mind I've done plenty of psychedelic adventuring.
But it's not anthropomorphic if you're dealing with a non-human hyperintelligence of pure love that is the holistic sum of all particles and thoughts and feelings that ever were are and will be. {And that's barely scratching Its surface, imo.}
Yes, you can see him as an old white man with a beard, but once you go beyond that, a multidimensional hyperintelligence of pure love the size of all spacetime and more can't be described as anthropomorphism.
{And remember that just because you didn't see something on psychedelics doesn't mean that those who claim to have are wrong. You can go on a safari and not see a lion every time you go. Doesn't mean they don't exist, that those who saw lions are misguided.}
I'm not claiming I'm right here, I think this is worth stressing. I'm immensely jealous of those people who have faith, any faith. It must be a wonderful thing to have. In my mind though, the beauty in the sublime is just chaos, just some countless iteration that got it right. Here, now. That's incredibly beautiful in itself. I just cant attribute it to any being, whether it be an old white dude with a beard or a herd of wild cows stampeding across the plains.
Though, it has to be said, I saw plenty of things in the depths of peyote binges, some of which claimed to be god. So you could well be right.
I've had experiences with psychedelics that I thought at the time could be metaphysical, but I subsequently believed to be .... just psychedelic. I thought I saw Margeret Thatcher's face in a tile, but it didn't mean she was really there.
Anyway, as far as we know, love is anthropomorphic anyway.