Category Archives: religion

Sins and virtues

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I was recently reading a book where seven sins were mentioned – pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.

I looked at this list, and my first thought was that this just doesn’t feel right; those don’t really look like sins. They look like symptoms.

You see, a sin, by definition, would be a choice against God. This choice would then produce a spiritual fall, and once in a state of depravity and fall from Divine grace, a soul would exhibit symptoms of what Bhagavad-gita would attribute to the gunas of the Prakrti: tamas, rajas and sattva, where qualities of tamas would be laziness (sloth), ignorance and so on, symptoms of rajas would be wrath, pride, envy, lust and so on, and symptoms of sattva would be, essentially, religion and mysticism devoid of transcendence – basically, attempts to be virtuous but without a true connection with God, without whom virtue is impossible.

So, if those “deadly sins” are more symptoms of a fallen state than causes of the fall itself, what then are the true sins – the actual causes of apostasy from God? It is a very difficult question, because, obviously, people who compile the lists of sins and virtues always try to moralize, and I don’t think it’s actually helpful, because the actual saints never actually seem to live up to those expectations, and yet that is what makes them feel alive, impressive and fun: things that would make them seem flawed from a moralistic perspective are actually a spark of life that makes them feel real and impressive. I have read exchanges between St. Augustine and St. Jerome, and I find them really entertaining, because they are both right and wrong about certain things, they can argue from different points of view, and they both make mistakes. They are not virtuous because their lives are devoid of all sins from some list; they are virtuous because it is obvious that they both are trying to do the right thing – establish truth, guide people from ignorance to knowledge, and seek supremacy of God over the lowly things of this world. Sure, they are sometimes prideful, wrathful, ignorant and commit logical fallacies, but I don’t mind – it makes me smile and even laugh, because I see the spark of Divinity in their flaws. Their “sins” don’t feel like some terrible depravity they are made out to be; if anything, they are funny, the way a small scared kitten hissing at you is funny.

On the other hand, I’ve seen lots of fake saints, people who work from a list of saintly virtues and try to act as if they are holy by appropriating them, and my reaction to those is the opposite – I feel disgust and anger at their falsehood, despite the fact that such a fake person can formally have less flaws than St. Augustine, whose flaws don’t bother me in the slightest, and I instead feel joy because of his goodness and accomplishments. Obviously, those lists of virtues and sins are somewhat or fully misguided, because they miss the actual point of what it is like to be in this terrible hell of a world, because, you see, to be here and not manifest all kinds of symptoms of terrible anguish, and not resort to all kinds of coping mechanisms during your mostly failed and futile attempts to break through and find your way out, means you’re closer to a rock in your nature, than an angel. In the language of Bhagavad-gita, it’s easy to tell whether something comes from the mode of rajas or not. It is easy to say whether something is of pride, anger or wrath. It is much more difficult to distinguish whether the things that are not of rajas are in fact of tamas or sattva, because some things that look like virtues are merely symptoms of being a lifeless, spiritless husk, devoid of any valuable and positive content.

This might sound abstract, so let me make a thought experiment. Let’s imagine an angel of God who somehow got stuck here in this world, for some unknown reason, and is born in a human body. What will he feel, not being able to sense God’s presence, being separated from all knowledge and power, and being assailed by a torrent of uncomfortable sensations? If you think he’ll act like a paragon of virtue, you’re an idiot. No, he’ll try to find his way out by testing what reminds him of his dear Lord, whose presence he can no longer establish. He will try all kinds of things, failing repeatedly and suffering in his loss and depravity. He will metaphorically try to scrape his nails at the impenetrable illusion of this world until his fingers bleed, alternating between hope, frustration and despondency, he will try to find comfort in sex, food, music or other things in this world, and feel despair as it all fails, and the stupid moralisers who compile lists of sins will find abundant examples in his behaviour, and scarcely any “virtues”, yet I will recognize him as sinless and virtuous in all his terrible suffering and depravity, because all he is looking for is God, and it is not a sin to fail.

On the other hand, how pathetic does one have to be to fake virtues in order to impress human audience? How pathetic would you have to be to even care about the opinion of other deluded humans in this place, instead of trying to break free? How pathetic would one have to be not to feel terrible pain of God’s absence, and instead fuck around with this foolish nonsense?

Because, in my world, the actual virtue is to need God above all things, and if the symptom of this profound need in this world is terrible suffering, which results in all kinds of mistakes and coping mechanisms, I see none of this as a sin, no more than I would see a desperately hungry man’s attempt to eat tree bark as sinful. If anything, it would merit compassion.

So, what are true sins, then? That is a much harder question for me to answer, because I’m not sure reality works that way. Is a rock sinful? Is it virtuous because it is not sinful? You can’t be either sinful or virtuous if you lack the capacity, and this, in most cases, will be the answer. I personally observed “souls” of many beings; a wasp is unrefined and cruel, but if you ask me whether it’s better than a rock, I would have to agree. A bird or a dog has a soul that is more refined than that of a wasp – still coarse, but less so. So, evolution and growth in refinement, sophistication and general quantitative increase of merit across multiple dimensions makes for the difference between a rock and a divine being, but when you take a divine being and put them into this world, if you expect them to act like some paragon of virtue adhering to a list compiled by some philosopher or a theologian, you are a fool. You would be right to expect them to suffer terribly and struggle fruitlessly, try to cope with failure and fail even at that. If you see the motivation behind their struggle, their pain, humiliation and steadfast attempts to break through, and instead of tears of compassion this invokes sanctimonious judgment, it only means that in the coordinate system of spiritual advancement you are closer to a rock than to a holy angel of God.

Individualism

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“The UN chief said the condemnable Hamas attack on Israel could never justify collective punishment of the Palestinians,” The Times of Israel reported. The only “realistic basis for genuine peace and security,” according to Guterres, may be the creation of a Palestinian state.

That’s just the thing. A very small minority of people exist as true individuals. Most exist as an aspect of their group, a religious or a tribal designation. That’s why Muslims react as a collective entity – they are Muslims first, and everything else third. If you don’t treat them like a collective entity, you are exhibiting a fundamental misunderstanding of the available reality, essentially trying to replace the reality that is here, with some fantasy or philosophy that you would prefer in its stead. In fact, I don’t think they would want you to treat them as individuals, and not Muslims. When a Westerner has a child, they think they are making one more individual being. When a Muslim has a child, he’s making one more Muslim.

The Muslims don’t want a “Palestinian state”, unless it is formed on the ashes of a destroyed Israel, and after all the Jews have been killed or exiled. What Muslims want is universal Islamic supremacy.

The problem with the Jews is that they are almost the exact same thing. They are two materialistic non-transcendental religions that think they are ordained by God to rule the world. They think they are the true humans as God designed them, and everybody else is some sort of cattle. That’s the foundation of their “morality”, which is why I return to my original point, that there will be peace when those groups understand that their perspective is fundamentally flawed; essentially, what a Muslim sees after death is that they were completely wrong about everything, and what a Jew sees after death is that Christianity is the proper branch of Judaism, that got things right ever since st. Paul. The solution to their genocidal dilemma is therefore not genocidal destruction of one or both sides. The solution lies in transcendence of this world, and for both sides Christianity seems like the most logical and straightforward path. Sure, Hinduism or Buddhism would do just fine as well, but only to a few individuals with such inclinations; for the majority, understanding that Islam is basically a fake religion created by a madman who misunderstood what he heard about Judaism and Christianity, and hallucinated the rest, and Judaism is a dry branch that refused to accept the aspect of transcendence introduced by Jesus. Both sides have good reasons to repent and consider themselves sinners and fools. Yes, the Muslims are worse, but that doesn’t give the Jews a free pass. They are sinners who refused the hand of God when it was offered.

 

Implications

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I find it amazing how people can have the strangest opinions, without stopping to check what this says about the universe they live in and the way it functions.

I’ll have to explain this; for instance, in Star Wars, you have physics of the Universe that makes sense – there is Force, the living beings have a certain number of cellular organelles called “midichlorians”, which are something akin to mitochondria or chloroplasts in our universe, and they essentially connect your living tissues to the Force, and if their count is significant enough, you become “Force sensitive”, and if a Force sensitive person receives proper training, they can develop abilities to use the Force for things such as telekinesis, telepathy or whatever. It all makes sense, the way plants being able to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugar makes sense. However, X-men don’t make sense. The underlying premise is that you have mutants with special abilities. I have no problem with that if “special abilities” are enhanced hearing, ability to perceive more colours or even the ability to hear radio. That is all possible without changing anything with the universe. However, when you have a mutant who can stop time, use extreme telekinesis or read minds, this is a “stop right there moment”. Here you need a universe with different laws of physics that make this possible, you can’t just have a mutation that introduces midichlorians in a universe without the Force, and expect telekinesis to be possible. Yes, you can develop cellular organelles or tissues that transduce radio waves into electricity and feed it into the brain, giving you a sense that “hears” radio. It’s not all that different from the way eyesight works. However, to be able to read minds or perform strong telekinesis, there must be an underlying physics that makes it possible. If something works, the question you need to ask is what underlying conditions need to be met in order for this to work, and what does this say about the universe we live in.

Let’s return to my initial conundrum. I had people making claims such as “if someone doesn’t have money, it means he can’t be of God”, the assumption being that God is the ruler of this and every other world, and nothing happens without His sanction – basically, God will provide for His own people, and they will never have to worry about money. On the other hand, those same people will make negative claims about very rich people, assuming that money is the thing of the Devil, and all the rich people must have sold their souls in order to become that rich.

So, which is it? They apparently never stopped to think that the first claim contradicts religious teachings; Jesus was born in a barn and Krishna was born in a dungeon, so it’s not like there’s actual evidence for the claim that those of God will be provided for and safe in this world. If anything, evidence for the contrary can be found. However, I’ve seen same people have the expectation that if you have money, you must be spiritually fallen, and if you don’t have money, you can’t be on good terms with God, not stopping to think that you can’t have it both ways. There are three basic options – either God micro-manages the world, Satan micro-manages the world, or nobody micro-manages the world and it runs according to its own independent laws, which makes exceptions from those laws “miracles”. Also, the corollary of God being able to provide for His people is that He is able to control everything in this world, which makes every bad thing that happens in this world His fault, which gives you a God that is either malevolent or indifferent. If Satan is able to control everything in this world, why aren’t things much, much worse for good people? Why do evil people such as Hitler experience frustration and failure in their plans? The third option, where neither God nor Satan have complete control or influence here, but the world functions according to its own independent laws, and either side is able to occasionally “tip the scales” their way according to some complex ruleset seems far more likely. For instance, Satan can tempt you and make your life very difficult, but he can’t outright kill you. God can’t outright solve all your problems, but He can inspire you – but you have to believe it and accept guidance. Also, miracles do exist, but the defining characteristic of a miracle is that it happens exceptionally, and not regularly. If something happens regularly or predictably, it’s called the law of nature. Miracles, where exceptionally good and unlikely things happen to people who pray to God, do happen. However, so do the anti-miracles, where exceptionally bad and unlikely things happen to people who pray to God. The pattern according to which this happens isn’t obvious, but for some reason people act as if it is – of course God’s people should be rich, famous, healthy and live forever, because take the example of Jesus, who was born in a barn, was always poor, had to escape lynching mobs and was eventually betrayed and crucified; oh wait…

Most of this nonsense is caused by poor religious education people received in childhood, which is why I didn’t allow my kids to attend catholic “Sunday school”. This proved to be an excellent call when other children, who did attend, were mocking my kids saying that if they didn’t pray to Jesus they will have bad grades and their mom will die. Apparently, that’s how it works according to the religious teachings those kids received – you pray to Jesus to get good grades and your mommy doesn’t die. What did I say to my kids in response to that? “This is pure nonsense. God is the highest reality and the highest good, and you pray to God by trying to understand what is real, adhering to the highest truth you can know, and always choosing the greatest good you can see in everything you do, and prayer is good if it focuses you in those efforts. However, if you want to get good grades, you better study, because prayer won’t help there. As for your mom dying, let’s put it this way: if God didn’t strike that idiot Sunday school teacher with lightning for teaching children this stupid nonsense, it is safe to assume things don’t really work that way. God is not a vending machine where you insert a prayer-coin and get a wish, God is the greatest of all goals and the function of prayer is to align your life with this goal in order to be with Him in both this life and the one after. That teacher is an idiot and that’s why I didn’t allow you to listen to that nonsense, because it would teach you such idiotic things about God that you would end up being atheists. God is the safety line you hold on to in order not to go crazy in this world which is full of all kinds of evil and ignorance, in order to get to the other side whole, undamaged and hopefully improved by the experience.”

Yes, this is actually a true example of the kind of speeches my kids could hear from me when they were 7. 🙂

Futility of pretense

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I was recently asked how I can manage it; knowing that the global economy is in the process of controlled demolition, that a major world war is unfolding and it’s just a matter of time before it goes nuclear, and the global “elites” have plans to kill half of us and completely subjugate the rest.

My response was “what’s the alternative?”

I can pretend everything is fine but that takes away my power to do what little I can to be aware and prepared, essentially to watch for the direction of the falling tree before I start running. I cited the example of a leaky window frame – I can either pretend there’s no problem, and ignore rainwater seeping into the wall and the black mould colonies, I can be aware of the problem and do nothing about it because it’s not my problem to fix, or I can be aware of the problem and do something about it. The only options that include any agency on my part start with awareness. Sure, it’s not very comfortable to know that the world that we know is pretty much doomed. But what is the alternative? Live in an illusion? What problems does that solve? It’s like having a brake light on my car turn on, but I say it’s fine because the brakes haven’t failed yet. Yes, fixing the brakes is a hassle – get an appointment with the mechanic, wait, travel there and back and spend some money. But what’s the alternative? Wait until the brakes fail completely, hope you don’t wreck the car when they do, and then still have to fix the problem, only with an undriveable car so you have to have it towed. How would that be helpful?

With the civilizational collapse, the matter is different only in the sense that one can say we’re doomed anyway and no degree of preparation can help, so it’s better to just not get stressed over it, but that is a fallacy right there. Let’s assume the worst-case scenario – total doom, and nothing you can do can save you. Oh, really? You can’t meditate, you can’t pray to God for guidance, you can’t resolve your attachments, you can’t put your affairs in order? You can do many things, because souls do survive the death of the body, at least for those who in fact have a spiritual core worth speaking of. Let’s say there’s a nuclear exchange, and it kills the total of 3.5 billion people, which is more-less the worst-case scenario estimate. With today’s world population of 8.1 billion, this means 4.6 billion survivors, which is more than the world population was in the year 1980. There would be no nuclear winter; that’s known to be pseudo-scientific rubbish. Sure, there would be some dust injected into the high layers of the atmosphere, but no worse than the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, which puts a definite upper limit on all my estimates, and the global climate effects of that were trivial. Radiation will be really bad in hot spots, but those will be the exact hot spots where the likelihood of surviving the nuclear explosions and their aftermath will be lowest, anyway, so it’s like shooting a corpse; not really adding to lethality. If you’re not in one of the directly impacted zones, you will likely not even know what happened because there will be a total or almost total loss of communications. There will definitely not be real-time reporting on the Internet or the cable TV.

Let’s say it’s just the economic collapse and the war threat fizzles out for some reason. Economic collapse looks like Yugoslavia in the 1990s, only everywhere, and there isn’t a stable foreign currency to use, because everybody is impacted at the same time. If only one could have known in advance and bought gold and silver to trade with. Oh wait…

Knowing what’s about to happen might not change the outcome, but it gives you some degree of control over your situation, it gives you time to spiritually prepare for death, and it gives you time to prepare for a survivable bad situation in ways that can possibly mitigate the hardships, and even if it doesn’t help in the end, you feel better knowing you at least did what you could.

Honestly, I’m not sure what good my preparations will do, if any, because every single actual hint I got “from above” was about the “other side”, afterwards, and it felt wonderful. I wasn’t warned to stock up on canned beans because I’ll have to survive a nuclear holocaust or something. I was told that this nightmare will end for me. So, why am I still buying gold coins, fixing my car, fixing the leaky roof window and buying a new computer? Why am I not just letting go and letting everything turn to shit? Because that’s not my style. When the end comes, it will find me firmly in control of things, acting as if everything will go on forever, with car serviced, phone batteries charged and with enough gold to ride through a really bad shitstorm, God willing. And at every single second of dealing with things as if they are to go on forever, I will be ready to go at any moment.