BEFORE BIDDING YOU adieu, there is one last subject for me to touch on.
It is a topic which has been lurking in the background of this entire book, but one which I have successfully avoided thus far.
It is the subject of a Supreme Being.
Does a Supreme Being of some kind exist?
If it does, what is its relationship to life on Earth and to the things we have discussed in this book?
I will try to tackle these questions but be forewarned that this chapter is the most speculative and philosophical in the book.
My discussion will be a simplified one and it is not intended to be definitive; I advise the reader to consult other sources for more information.
If this is not to your liking, then please feel free to proceed to the next, and final, chapter.
It is unfortunate that the term “scientific method” has become almost synonymous with materialism.
The two should not be equated.
The scientific method is simply an attempt to understand and explore an area of knowledge in an intelligent and pragmatic fashion.
It strives to find cause-and-effect relationships and to develop consistent axioms and techniques that will lead to predictable results.
This is the type of methodology which needs to be, and can be, applied to the realm of the spirit, but it has not been done to any large degree.
The great universities and foundations are too busy with their “man is brain” studies to do more than superficial studies into the mounting evidence of spiritual existence.
The major religions already have their “word of God" writings and so they rarely undertake scientific studies into this area either.
Some people deny the existence of a Supreme Being altogether.
It is difficult to blame them considering the level to which spiritual knowledge has deteriorated.
However, the overwhelming evidence of individual spiritual existence and the many characteristics which all spiritual beings seem to share in common would suggest that a “Supreme Being” of some kind probably exists as a common source of all spiritual existence.
If a Supreme Being exists, it is likely that most people would not recognize it if they encountered it.
Many individuals expect a Supreme Being to be a giant man in a flowing beard who:
Still others perceive it as some completely unfathomable mystery that no one can ever hope to comprehend except through strained mystical contortions.
A Supreme Being is probably none of those things.
While researching this book, I encountered many ideas of what a Supreme Being might be.
Perhaps the best way to tackle the issue is to first try to determine what an individual spiritual being is.
A spiritual being appears to be something that is not a part of the physical universe, and yet it possesses both external awareness and self-awareness.
The Samkhya definitions on pages 103 and 104 of this book appear to be fairly accurate, and I refer the reader to those pages.
The mounting scientific evidence of spiritual immortality in near-death episodes and in documented past-life memories indicates that spiritual beings are best defined as timeless and indestructible units of awareness. [1]
Every spiritual being, or unit of awareness, seems to be completely unique and independent.
Each appears to possess its own distinct viewpoint which cannot be entirely duplicated by any other unit of awareness.
This uniqueness and individuality of viewpoint appear to be the very essence and purpose of spiritual existence.
We may see some evidence of this in the fact that when individuals are crushed into a sameness, they become unhappier and worse off; their perceptions deteriorate, and they are less creative.
When true uniqueness and individuality are restored to people, they regain their vitality and creativity.
It appears that every unit of awareness is capable of infinite creation because creation by a spiritual being is accomplished by the act of thought or imagination. *
* The words “thought” and “imagination” are probably not the best to describe the actual process, but they are adequate for our purposes.
If you imagine that there is a white cat on top of this book, you have created a white cat, even if it only exists for you.
Such creations, when shared and agreed to by others, eventually give rise to universes that can be shared and experienced by all others.
This seems to be how spiritual beings create universes of their own and in cooperation with others, and why there exists evidence in modern physics that our universe appears to be ultimately based on thought.
For any universe or reality to exist, an infinity must first exist in which a universe or reality may be placed.
All reality, including this material universe, arise out of infinity and not vice versa; this has been demonstrated by some remarkable mathematics being done at various universities.
Every unit of awareness is the source of its own infinity because thought and imagination have no bounds; any amount of space, time or matter may be imagined by any spiritual being and ultimately agreed to and shared by other spiritual beings.
Where did all of these countless units of awareness come from?
Did there exist at one time only a single unit of awareness from which all others originated?
The many similarities between all spiritual beings make it appear so.
That original unit of awareness would be what is normally called a Supreme Being, which we might also call the Primary Being.
It appears that individual spiritual beings are actually the units of awareness of a Primary, or Supreme, Being, yet each unit is possessed of its own:
self-awareness
personality
freewill
independent thought
and infinite creativity.
This would mean that a Supreme Being had created, or had given “birth” to, an uncountable number of unique and individual units of awareness through which that Supreme Being could experience the uncountable infinities, universes, and realities which all of those spiritual beings could freely and independently create.
A Supreme Being might therefore be very crudely likened to a person sitting in a television control booth who puts out trillions of video cameras.
Each camera (spiritual being) feeds a picture into its own individual monitor screen in the control booth to be viewed by the operator (Supreme Being).
Each camera is situated a little differently and so each has a different viewpoint and perspective.
Each camera is also capable of creating its own ”special effects” (universes).
If the above theory is accurate, we might ask:
how could a Supreme Being have been so foolish?
Why would it create awareness units that were self-aware?
After all, it is the quality of self-awareness, or the awareness of being aware, that allows spiritual beings to be completely independent and to engage in the silliness which has caused them to suffer the sorry plight that they now appear to be enduring on Earth and probably elsewhere.
Why did a Supreme Being not simply throw out an enormous number of awareness units that were only externally aware and had no consciousness of their own existences?
Better yet, why did a Supreme Being not do the sensible thing and simply retain its own single undivided viewpoint?
Self-awareness is apparently the quality which gives spiritual beings the capacity for thought and imagination, and hence to be a source of infinity and creation.
Without self-awareness, a spiritual being could not create on its own.
Self-awareness appears to act as the “mirror” against which a spiritual being can be the source of an infinity, and within that infinity can create realities and universes.
Theoretically, of course, a Supreme Being was already capable of creating an infinity and of creating anything within it, hut only from its own single viewpoint.
A Supreme Being could only be the source of one infinity:
its own.
If a Supreme Being wanted to experience another infinity, it had to first create another unique self-aware unit of awareness like itself.
So, it apparently did just that.
But it did not satisfy itself with just one more unit of awareness:
it appears to have put out an uncountable number of them so that it could enjoy an almost infinite number of infinities and realities.
This suggests that the potential scope of a Supreme Being extends far beyond the boundaries of this one small universe—it encompasses trillions of potential infinities and universes.
“Aha!” you might interject.
“By definition, only one infinity can exist.
It is redundant for something already capable of infinite creation to expand itself.
Infinity multiplied by uncountable trillions is still infinity.”
As noted, infinity appears to be solely the product of viewpoint.
Only units of awareness are capable of viewpoint.
There therefore would exist as many infinities as there are units of awareness (spiritual beings).
Infinity does not arise out of the mechanical universe or from any of its laws; rather, the mechanical universe and its laws all appear to arise out of infinity.
What went wrong?
How did so many spiritual beings, each capable of infinite creation, wind up with a dull thud on
Earth thinking that they are nothing more than meat and electricity?
There are apparently many factors that caused this, including those discussed in this book.
I will leave it to someone else to describe other, perhaps even more significant long-range, causes.
I will only add that spiritual entities can become hopelessly caught up in the labyrinths of their own intricate creations.
Although the universe appears to operate on very simple building blocks (please refer to the discussion on pages 104 and 105 of this book), once those blocks are put into place and other arbitraries are introduced, a universe can become extremely complex and solid-looking, like the universe we share now.
When that happens, spiritual beings may become fixated in those universes like cameras anchored in a dense rain forest; the cameras are unable to perceive beyond the foliage immediately in front of them.
After staring at the foliage for a long enough time, the cameras may begin to believe that they, too, are nothing but foliage and they forget that they are cameras.
Salvation would come by restoring to those cameras their true self-identities and by giving them the ability to come and go from the rain forest at will.
If we look at individual spiritual beings on Earth, we see that they are very small in relation to the universe.
This is the situation that apparently occurs when spiritual beings become enmeshed in bodies or other physical objects.
In that state, spiritual beings have lost their power to change perspective in relation to the physical universe.
Perspective is apparently what determines the “size” of a spiritual being.
Have you ever stood on top of a skyscraper and looked down?
Your first reaction might be to think,
“Gee, those people sure are small.
They’re the size of ants!”
Those people look so small, and really are so small, because of your change in perspective.
A spiritual being in an entrapped state can apparently change perspective in the same way in relation to the entire physical universe. The universe can appear no larger than a coffee cup, or an atom the size of a mountain. This is apparently how a spiritual being becomes “bigger” or “smaller.” Changing perspective in this fashion is not an act of mere thinking, however. It is a matter of actually shifting direct spiritual perception in as real and tangible a fashion as the person who hops an elevator to the top of a skyscraper. Spiritual beings on Earth are largely confined to the single perspective dictated by the physical bodies they animate. Mental perspectives can still change, but not the direct perspective of the spiritual entity in relation to the universe itself.
The foregoing discussion has some rather clear implications in regard to the rest of this book.
The act of repressing a spiritual being, entrapping it in matter, or otherwise seeking to reduce its vision, creativity, or self-awareness as a spiritual being is the act of trying to reduce a Supreme Being.
If one reduces a Supreme Being’s unit of awareness (i.e., a spiritual being)—even just one unit out of many trillions—one has still reduced a Supreme Being by that much.
Since only other units of awareness can engage in such repression, it follows that a bizarre psychosis has arisen.
It is as though extensions of the same ultimate body are trying to repress other extensions, e.g., the left hand is trying to reduce and trap the right hand.
That appears to be one type of psychosis that can arise when beings possessed of free will become entrapped.
Some mystical religions teach that one’s ultimate spiritual aim should be to permanently “merge with” or “rejoin” a Supreme Being.
This appears to be a false goal.
If spiritual beings were created to act as unique and independent viewpoints, it would be contrary to the purpose of creation to permanently “merge” with other awareness units or with a Supreme Being.
It may not even be possible to do so.
The true goal of any salvation program should be to fully recover one’s unique spiritual self-awareness and perspective.
The above discussion suggests that many popular ideas about “God” may be inaccurate.
For example, some people with “near-death” experiences report going through a tunnel and meeting a “being of light” which instills in the near-death victim feelings of love and “all-knowing.”
I met a man who belonged to a Hindu sect which attempts to contact and merge with this “being of light” in its meditations.
The man wrote a paper describing his personal experiences.
His descriptions of spiritually traveling down a “tunnel” and meeting a “being of light” are very similar to the statements of near-death victims.
While I acknowledge the importance and probable reality of many such experiences, I question some of the beliefs which have arisen from them.
The feelings of “love” and “all-knowing” conveyed by that “being” can be instilled by drugs, electronic emanations, and by other artificial means.
Interestingly, some UFO abductees have reported such emotions during their alleged examinations aboard UFOs.
In some of those UFO cases, the surrounding evidence strongly suggests that the feelings were caused by an electronic device used as a sedative.
Whatever the near-death “being of light” might be (and I will not even try to guess), it is most assuredly not a Supreme Being.
It may even be an object that contributes to post-death spiritual amnesia.
People should not be counseled to “merge with” or “go to” the “being of light” during meditation or at death.
They should stay away from it if they can.
In saying this, I do not mean to deny the otherwise positive and profound feelings experienced by some Hindus and near-death victims as a result of temporarily re-experiencing their spiritual immortality.
What are we then to think of the idea of a Supreme Being sitting in “judgment” on the beings of Earth?
It is hard to imagine that a Supreme Being would condemn its own units of awareness, no matter how small and entrapped they have become, and no matter how insanely and destructively some of them behave as a result.
Would a Supreme Being, seeing how bad everything has gotten, perhaps end its experiment and vanish all other awareness units except itself?
If such a thing were possible, I dare say it would not be done.
Creating an almost infinite number of spiritual beings would actually have been a brilliant move on the part of a Supreme Being to expand itself immeasurably.
The solution to what went wrong would be to preserve the awareness units and encourage them to achieve their salvation.
Spiritual salvation would probably not happen through the waving of a magical Godly wand, however.
Because spiritual beings possess free and independent will, salvation appears to be something that spiritual beings must take responsibility for themselves.
It is up to every individual to seek out his or her salvation in an intelligent fashion.
Salvation appears to be something that can be achieved as pragmatically as any other goal in life, provided that a rational understanding of how to attain it is developed.
Many theologies teach that a Supreme Being is opposed by an enemy.
Perhaps there is an element of truth to this, even if the truth has been distorted.
We do observe that at every level of existence there exists a condition or “game” in which survival is challenged.
At the personal level, an individual’s survival is constantly opposed by aging, disease, and other factors.
The survival of a family unit is often tested by financial problems, hostile relatives and outside sexual temptations.
Organizations and nations usually have competitors and enemies.
In the animal kingdom, the survival drama is most vividly played out in hunter-prey relationships.
All physical objects face inevitable deterioration.
Spiritual beings themselves appear to face survival challenges by being trapped in matter.
Since this survival game seems to exist at every level of existence, it is possible that it also exists in regard to a Supreme Being—a game in which a Supreme Being’s own survival is tested by the diminishment of its awareness units and perhaps by the ultimate diminishment of the Supreme Being itself.
For such a game to exist, a Supreme Being would have had to either negotiate with one or more of its own awareness units to be the Supreme Being’s opponent(s), or a Supreme Being would have had to create in one or more of its awareness units an apprehension that a Supreme Being posed a threat to the continued existence of all other spiritual beings.
A Supreme Being’s opponent would not be any different or inherently eviler than any other spiritual being, any more than one neighbor who sits down opposite another to play a game of Monopoly is innately eviler just because he or she plays a different side.
An opponent would simply be one who became a different marker on a game board and played as well as possible.
If such a game has indeed existed, then we can certainly hope that it may end soon by a Supreme Being conveying thanks to the opponent(s) for a game well-played, promising the indefinite survival of its awareness units, and asking that the game be stopped.
