DOES HEAVEN REALLY EXIST?

 The Rapture, up, down and sideways

After the recent “Rapture” nonsense, you probably expected that I would have to discuss this subject since in one way or another it affected the lives of so many people even though it turned out to be a non-event. There were many people who lost all of their life savings, their homes and more importantly, their sense of self-worth or at least whatever sense of self-worth they had left after following an ignorant self anointed prophet with a mental state bordering on the hinterlands of insanity. After all, when you expect Jesus to take you up to heaven to be with him and He's a “No Show”, the fact that he ignored you has to damage your self-esteem if you had any to begin with.

On top of that, after you have sold your home to purchase billboards proclaiming the end of the world and drag other ignorant, gullible and easily influenced people along with you into this self-destructive belief system, you have to feel some guilt. Well, worry not, the prophet has once again re-scheduled “the end of the world” event, the “Rapture”, until October, when all of the millions of saved people in the world will be somehow floated up into heaven, which by the way is UP as opposed to down or sideways if you have seen any of the billboards with arms raised and everyone's gaze focused skyward. The least they could do is grant the God of their beliefs the power to rapture people in all directions. Which brings me to the subject I want to discuss.

No, heaven as you think of it does not exist. Heaven is a place you wouldn't want to live if it really did exist, but don't worry, because there is no heaven, at least not in the sense you have been told, and this is one of those things that I didn't have to tell you. Every reader of these articles intuitively knows that the stereotyped heaven is pure myth. First of all, up, down, left or right are meaningless terms that lose much of their meaning as you leave the earth surface. Up is only significant when referenced to the solid earth, the earth that you stand on. If you were drifting in space, you would be hard pressed to discern up or down and in fact, the words up or down become meaningless.. To the astronauts in the space shuttle, down is the floor of the shuttle that they stand on though the shuttle may be upside down orbiting the earth at the time.

I only mention this to get to the point I want to make, and that is the idea of a heaven somewhere in the sky, on a cloud or behind a rainbow is ludicrous and downright silly. This is one of the concepts that I have told you that you know, but don't know you know, and you are too frightened to challenge the commonly accepted concept of a heaven in the sky. Many of similar Biblical stories are simply that, stories, myths, legends and superstitions originating somewhere in the mists of time and passed on from generation to generation without anyone ever utilizing their one great gift as a human being, and that is the conscious, reasoning and scrutinizing human mind. Which incidentally, is unique to the human species and not an attribute that evolved in the animals, till now. You can now get a glimmering of the arising of the faculty of reason in some species such as the dolphins.

To make things simple to understand the Bible is a collection of ancient letters and stories based on myths and legends, written in many divergent languages by many divergent people and complied into one book after much editing, expunging, deleting and adding to by the early popes into a book that conveyed their beliefs that would be embraced by the early Catholic church. In those days, the church was the absolute authority, the binding glue that held early civilization together, so it's not too unusual to understand that they would make the rules, and the rules were made to give the church control over the populations. Who would dare challenge the rules that described and specified certain sins and laid out the prescribed punishment of eternity in hell. Rhetorical question, of course.

These myths and stories were written in different languages, collected and complied somewhere between 300 and 500 AD and included stories about Jesus and the disciples. As most of you know, or sense, there are some quite true and valid stories of the life and words of Jesus, most written by people who never met him, but were simply repeating stories that they had heard. After centuries, the distortions became so prevalent that it is hard to put much faith in these tales without exercising some discernment. You would be right to say that these early popes, Justinian for one, created the Bible as it suited their needs and the needs of the church at that time, and you are all familiar with the integrity of the popes, bishops and clergy of the Catholic church.

You all know how a story repeated only a few times from person to person can become so distorted that the whole meaning of the story becomes lost in the repetition, so imagine how the Bible, rewritten, edited and translated into hundreds of languages, then edited and deleted could maintain any semblance of the truth of the times after centuries of tinkering by the early popes and scholars. But the good news is that it does in some instances have valuable information if you can burrow down through the clutter. Another problem with understanding the Bible is that Jesus spoke in the vernacular of the times and much of his teachings were spoken in a symbolic way that could be understood by the people of those times that are hard to interpret today.

So, it's not hard to understand that some present unscrupulous religious figures have figured out how to distort and misinterpret otherwise worthwhile parables and lessons of Biblical times for their own motives and greed. Most of these born con-men turned religious teachers were enabled by the advent of television and the internet, where mass communications made it possible for them to mislead thousands through manipulation of Biblical verse to fit their own interpretation and just as every patient needs a doctor, every criminal needs a victim, every televangelist needs a follower (sucker).

These television preachers would put P.T. Barnum to shame when it comes to running scams on their fellow humans. They are experts at what they do and that is to virtually hypnotize their audiences through a variety of stories, incantations, singing and a natural understanding of the needs of those searching for answers in the wrong places. They use catch phrases such as “Sew your seed” (give me your money). And believe me, it's all about money with these folks and they are some of the most creative people on the planet when it comes to bilking believers out of their life’s savings.

They will sell you prayer cloths dipped in the River Jordan (tap water), soil from the Temple Mount (dirt from their backyard), praying over your prayer requests (tossing them in the dumpster), and all of this in the pursuit of their mansions, airplanes, limousines, exotic vacations and every luxury you can imagine at your expense. You know their names well, you will see them on your Television screen every day of the week, and the more you see them, the more people are losing their homes and savings because of their greed.

The destruction of the world concept, the judgement and the rapture was made to order for these charlatans to scam the populations. During the Armageddon and rapture predictions at the dawn of the year 2000, the televangelists had a heyday, everyone of their ilk writing books on the rapture threatening you would be “Left Behind” if you weren't saved. The book stores did a land office business because of the fear instilled by the perpetrators of this fraud foisted on the public.

The early popes learned well the value of instilling fear in the populations and without that same fear that is perpetuated today in most religions, these kind of frauds would not exist. Fear in the hands of these flimflam men turned men of the cloth is used to help them symbolically remove your sins while removing your treasure and they don't lose a nights sleep over the misery they inflict on their followers.

There can be no end of the world as you know it. Worlds do not end, practically speaking, but, and this is difficult to explain, but the world that you are so fond of is not yours alone to destroy. Other reality systems are using the same energy bank that you do to construct their own living world that they then perceive and utilize, the same as you do. What you think of as exclusively your world, is your reality system utilizing the same vast available field of energy that other beings use to construct theirs, these other systems occurring simultaneously in what you would call the same time and space in the universe. You can ruin or destroy your reality system, but the world, the inner construction, will still be a functioning entity of its own nature and will continue to be used by others.

If you destroy, practically speaking, your world (reality system), those who experience this ending, could of course die during the event or if you destroy it over time, like you tend to be doing now with overpopulation, pollution and climate change, there could be a more gradual extinction. As some may think, no god will swoop down from the clouds at the last minute and save the world, saving the righteous and punishing the wicked. You were given a world to evolve in a way to benefit all consciousness, and incidentally, that includes the flora and fauna. It is a serious game you are engaged in and there are no restrictions placed on your actions be they beneficial or destructive. You are given full reign to develop your civilization as you see fit and full freedom to destroy it if you so choose by ignoring the signs that are evident even to the most ignorant among you.

If you destroy your Earth System, another will be put in its place, infused with life's energy force, recycled with new consciousness, and the process will begin all over again, in time terms, with another new stone age. The good news being, the new inhabitants having trace memories of the past civilizations mistakes and their eventual destruction, will utilize this now latent knowledge and develop more rapidly, avoiding the same pitfalls.

I have a question for the followers of Harold Camping the “Rapture guy” and others like him. No matter what you have read, no matter what you have been taught, do you think for a minute that any “Self Respecting God” would destroy a world that He created? I think not. God is not what you think he is, or she is, or it is, but yet, this elusive God is above all a creator, of all worlds not a destroyer of it's own works. But this God of everyone, who in a very real sense, is part of everyone and everything would be destroying a part of himself, and that is unthinkable. God does not stand apart from the world but is found within it, not in some esoteric heaven.

This creator God through entities/souls created your identity, and once an identity is created it cannot be destroyed, diminished or compromised in any way. Once the identity is created, as far as the soul is concerned, it's “Hands Off” and the identity/personality can end their physical life any way it chooses and en mass, any civilization or society can destroy itself, as far is its earth presence is concerned. But the living earth personality is simply earth elements temporarily given life, infused with living consciousness, and those elements must eventually return to the earth one way or another.

If you should continue abusing the planet and end life on earth as you know it, the personality continues on its merry way, rather unconcerned, concentrating its attention on a new adventure to come. Bodies die, identities are forever. Identities are somewhat like your enjoyable little game called “Whack A Mole”, whack it down in one place and it pops up in another. Personalities/identities assume various bodies for various realities, which they create and then inhabit and experience. They are eternal.

This is not a comfortable statement for me to make and may sound a little callous, but physical bodies and physical worlds are expendable and can and will be replaced, although that is not the desirable outcome, and no world, planet, plane or dimension was ever created with destruction in mind. The consciousnesses behind the civilizations involved in these Earthly experiments are immortal and will go on to succeeding successful existences in other places after their life in this one is done.

Finally, when October rolls around and the Rapture believers are once again in the news with arms raised to the skies, eyes trained on the clouds, predicting a new end of the world event, salivating with anticipation, enjoy it for what it is, good entertainment. Unfortunately, because of erroneous Biblical interpretations many will believe these so called prophets and others like him, and many will once again suffer because of incoherent and illogical ranting of Biblical prophesy.

This is a sub-note to the article. You are involved in this Earth life to live it with gusto and learn from the living, not to keep following false teachings and repeating your mistakes. You have all heard this statement; You are a moron if you keep doing the same thing and expect different results.