Almost everyone who has lived in contact with Western civilizations who, religiously speaking, professed Christianity, has heard certain familiar phrases or cliches which were uttered by the evangelistic expressionists of this religion; these phrases being such as “The Lord Jesus Christ” or “Accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior,” etc. At the time of utterance there are several factors immediately apparent: the person who utters them does so in a manner and way which suggests to an observer, trained in certain psychological manifestations, that this person is traveling under a traumatic hypnotic trance which has been induced by a combination of strong psychic pressures, such as guilt complexes, fears, etc.
The untrained observer, however, does not and can not analyze the psychological position of this religious evangelist or Adventist. In fact, he may be easily victimized and be also projected into the same trance-like hallucination by a combination of similar psychic rapports with previous religious contacts lived in other lives, all culminating in a conveniently expressed escape mechanism i.e., “Accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.” It has not occurred either to the evangelist, or his newly subjugated or intended victim, to completely and thoroughly analyze the religion which he so expresses, or rather that he is believing he is expressing. For there is, in truth, no similar parallel in his current expression and the gospel of life as taught by Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, let us enter into a constructive historical analysis.
The phrase “Lord Jesus Christ,” is a merging of two personalities, brought about in long term usage by uninformed people. The noun, “lord,” is a designation commonly used to signify an all powerful personality. In the case of the evangelist, the “lord” has a direct connotation and reference to the Old Testament Jehovah.
Jehovah, in turn, is a more recent pronunciation of the designation Jahweh, an ancient Babylonian god, worshiped by Father Abraham; and which later (by Mohammed) became transposed into Allah. Therefore, “lord” is Jehovah, Jahweh, Allah, and he is also Ahura-Mazda, or Zoroaster, the more modern counterpart of Osiris in Egyptology. In all cases, however, and by whatever names designated, religious liturgies concerning these god configurations always contained certain basic parallels that are also being currently expressed in Christianity.
Paradoxically enough, the mission of Jesus was to destroy this god concept and to replace it with the Christ Principle, or the “Father within” each person which was the personal development of abstract consciousness, attained through countless earth-life experiences as a personal polarizing process of self in each expression with a similar facsimile of experience posed in the Infinite.
Knowledge of the experience could then remain, in essence, with the individual, which, when included with an infinite number of such polarized experiences, comprised and developed this higher Superconscious Christ Self and when it could be assumed that development reached a certain stage, could be the all-inclusive and dominant expressive personality with this person.
How then, save through ignorance, could the evangelist merge these two entirely different and opposite personalities – one a fictitious development of mystical ideologies, the other a realistic scientific development of an abstract personality actually endowed in some ultimate and with all of the god-like qualities and proclivities of the fictitious personality and with none of his temperamental vicissitudes.
In line with this historical analysis and in conjunction with psychological factors of personal development, it becomes quite obvious that Christianity is not a religion; neither can it fulfill any promises of personal salvation to any person. For, here again, the purpose of personal development is completely nullified in the “Christ Savior” position, adopted by the evangelist.
The duped victim is now traveling in a twilight zone. Through his belief in the salvation that Jesus died for his sins, or that he has been automatically relieved of these sins, through “belief’ etc., he now has no personal moral responsibilities either to himself or to his fellow man.
In his make-believe world of fantasy and shadow, he is constantly confronted with two unrealistic opposites in his religion. The conflict between two opposite doctrines; the purported subjugation to damnation and hell as the price paid for a sinful life; yet, on the other hand, complete salvation by merely believing that he can be saved by “the Lord Jesus Christ.” How then, could any sane human being rationalize a moral course of action in his daily life which would be utterly impossible to any person, save that he was temporary, at least, transported into a hypnotic trance-like condition which was sufficiently strong to blind him to the obvious differences in his religious fantasy?
The pages of history portray many strange and weird practices performed, individually and collectively, by races of people all basically interpreted as their religion. In fact, they are still continuously being re-expressed and readapted or merged into new adaptations or other religious forms.
Population wise, numerically speaking, more than a billion people embrace a religion which has, as its predominant deification, the old Chaldean god, Jahweh, currently reexpressed as Jehovah and Allah, which also have other current similarities. Mohammed, and Jesus, the only prophet, indigenous to each religion which, in itself, presents a great contradiction; for unless Mohammed was Jesus incarnate (which he was not) the two religions would thus be proportionately contradictory.
There are more than 800 million Christians believing Jesus to be their personal savior; more than 600 million Mohammedans give Mohammed much the same position, and there are more than twice this combined number who place Buddha as their personal interpretation of a divine configuration with Brahma, who also is a parallel configuration of Jahweh; and Brahma, which likewise subdivides divinity into Sheva and Vishnu – the devil and Christ.
In the face of this great preponderant mass of evidence, certain personal realizations must be objectively realized. It cannot be rationalized, that because great populations believe in certain deistic configurations, they are necessarily true merely because of the number of believers. This signifies a much more important philosophical concept; that people of the earth, as a whole, are presently engaged in an evolutionary metamorphosis – that this same evolution has been going on for thousands of years. In this sense, the earth can be likened to a certain elemental grade in a modern grade school; small children coming into this grade, learn its curriculum and pass on into the next higher one, etc.
In the end, we can visualize the earth man, past, present, and future, as involved in an elemental stage of his evolution. The many lives he lives on the earth can be likened to the many days he will live in his school classroom; and when, after a certain threshold of mental development is reached, he will graduate, so to speak, into one or more somewhat higher planets, where life is again resumed in the same evolutionary sequence, but in a somewhat more advanced technology.
To conclude then, certain constructive extractions can now be obtained from our analyses. As Emerson said, “Be yourself, imitation is suicide.” Therefore, we also, as Truth seekers, constructively minded on our evolutionary pathway, must learn to detach ourselves from the herd and the blind, sheep-like attitude which often destroys sheep in their reaction to fear. After detaching ourselves, we must stand firmly upon the rock of personal and moral responsibility to the evolutionary principle of creation.
Upon this rock we must introspectively view the many and sundry dispensations of life, including the religion of our fellow man as merely his first approach to understanding the Infinite; in his various reactive interpretations of life, he has begun to form the first tenuous strands of projected thought which, like some climbing vine, he is trying to reach into the Infinite; trying to select various aspects of the Infinite as they so present themselves to him in his daily life. We will thus see that while the material or physical man as he so lives in his daily earth life, has not yet developed the more abstract mental conception, he is still vitally concerned with life as a reactive force that reaches through every daily dispensation.
He must, therefore, erect various compromising configurations, such as political and religious systems, which in turn, must again be subdivided into his own personal code of ethics. This then is the world of today just as it has been for thousands of years. The same basic principles of material, physical reaction are just as predominant today as they ever were in any past historical epoch; and with all these numerous reactionary elements, religion still occupies the same niche.
To the Truthseeker, therefore, the strongest emphasis must be placed upon personal moral integrity – not to be swayed by what seems to be masses of circumstantial evidence as they are generated en masse by populations. The supreme and ultimate goal of any human is personal emancipation from rote systems and the rhetorical minds which support them; for as these systems are constantly regenerated, so they pass and with them the populations who lived them and supported them.
If immortal life is to be attained by any human, it must be attained in a logical sequence of evolution which develops his mental capacity to such extensive proportions that he can live and function without dogma, creed, or rhetorical elements. He must live as a creative element or entity that functions reconstructively with the Infinite. For this is indeed the way the Infinite Itself lives; the Infinite which not only created all forms and substances, but is constantly re-creating, and in this constant resurgence of re-creation, is always the sum and total of all things.
It is clearly indicated in the idiom of our modern 20th-century science, that no religion can be scientifically supported or proven. Biblical depictions are either archaeological history or are fictitious and legendary in nature. Religion, therefore, can practically be assumed as passe – it belongs more properly to the primitive aborigines who still roam the jungles.
As of today, science has opened the door to an entirely new dimension of understanding. Through the atom and associated fields of electronics, astrophysics, etc., mankind is, as a whole, approaching an entirely new concept which can be referred to as the future religion of mankind.
Could it be prophetically assumed that in the passing thousands of years, our present-day Christianity will reside in the museums, where it can be viewed by the visitor along with other antique objects as an amusing depiction of man’s historical development? Amusing, yes, if it were not so tragic. To the countless millions who have died in the godless bigotry of their religion, to the countless other billions who have constantly been waylaid, thwarted, and plunged into miserable hells of physical and mental illnesses by religion, the superman of tomorrow who so views religion in antiquity, must do so with the moral lesson ever apparent.