of religion.”
Simon put down his notes as he continued. “The evolution of religious thought was taking place on all the world’s continents at approximately the same time. About 5,000 B.C. the Aztecs and Mayans conducted sacrificial rites to combine the forces of the universal and eternal causes of divinity. In Mesopotamia a divine being of all beginnings gave their peoples a triad of great gods to begin the quest of immortality. In Europe Neolithic cultures built sacral houses and sanctuaries to house their past spirits. The Mediterranean people’s cosmogonist myths signalized and thanked the supernatural powers that protected them and allowed their crops to prosper. Siberian cultures flourished and produced symbols and ideograms to witness the presence of their official goddess of worship. Mega-glyphs and monuments were raised in England and Ireland to honor their astral cults. Pre-Vedic religions in Pakistan and India built superb cities dedicated to their deities. The North American Indians constructed their snake dwelling mounds as examples of their cultural evolution and their search for sanctity. The Sumero-Babylonian man raised great and complex buildings as they interwove the Semite and Sumerian writing, art and religions. Their cuneiform tablets, which are man’s first written history, portray the divine being divided between the personal and transcendent. These first sacred stories contain various versions of the creation of mankind and preach that the human condition is subordinate to the God’s service. In Egypt towering pyramids were raised towards the splendors of heaven and the mysteries of the sacred character of the prime mover. In China their cultures created a cosmology of contrary and complementary principles to attest to the existence of the God of the heavens and the Lord of above. Indo-European religions of India bore witness to the vedic Gods, Varuna and Mitra, who ruled the cosmic order and spiritual sovereignty. During the second millennium B.C. in Iran, the message of Zoroaster was a revelation received from his supreme god named Ahura Mazda whose central theme was man’s choice between good and evil. About this same time in Mesopotamia, God appeared to Abraham and chose him to accept the total ties of faith and become the leader of the Israelites. A few centuries later Y.H.W.H. revealed his laws to Moses and his Ten Commandments gave birth to three sets of religious values. Thus Jews, Christians and Muslims all recognized the validity of one monotheistic God who rewards virtue and punishes vice.”
He took a deep breath as he explained, “The human historical experience is filled with God’s revelation of the mysterious and divine. The nature of all the sacred is that man is governed by a transcendent God who demands faithfulness of his followers. The choices you make will either lead to sacred salvation or a painful period of punishment.”
As he put his hands to pray, Simon continued. “Although we all probably learned this in Bible school, what I didn’t realize is that from the time that mankind created his earliest symbols and signs, the intent has been to communicate the invisible to the visible. When mankind chose to communicate other than in words, which in turn led to today’s religious writings, it was only intended to be an extension to allow others their symbolic experience of the sacred and profane.”
“What was important to them was to pass the message on. But next cultural achievements were absorbed and an enduring effective government of the gods took place in the temples. Myths became but faint memories, as each of the books of wisdom was updated and usurped within the unification of the founding churches. The sacred stories of today do have their roots in our primordial ancestors’ memories, but the stems and leaves bare no fruit of the original events.”
He looked around the spartan room to make sure he still had our total attention. “Early symbolic actions had sacramental values that focused our forefathers’ attention to sense they were surrounded by the unseen. Today we have traded that spiritual source for a scientific society. Facts and figures are favored over faith. What used to be an essential component of daily life, is now just a trip to a Sunday school service. Although we have learned to measure the unseen powers of the magnet, radioactivity or electricity, we still see only the results of the power and not the true source itself. As unseen and unknowable as air, faith too is something that only when it is missing do you feel smothered. Our ancestors, however, had an affinity with all of their surrounding. The cavemen weren’t worried about the exact date that the world was created. They were instead inspired by the mysterious mutual forces inherent in every single aspect of life. They were not seeking an explanation of this state of enlightenment; they only wished to express and preserve for their peoples this state of mind in their artful stories, paintings and carvings.”
“I got goose bumps last night at the bar when Judas told us of his moving cave wall painting that has never been matched by a big silver screen presentation. This simple fact alone tells me that I have been desensitized to my surroundings. I now only see, instead of sense the life I led.”
“In our ancient world men and women imitated the actions of their gods to obtain a life beyond the mortality of their mind and muscles. A similar spirituality surrounded our entire world. Each culture’s achievements were attributed to their gods. The links between their divine worlds and their physical surroundings were tightly interwoven and perpetually celebrated to keep each in balance. Political stability was only gained by the effective management of their gods. Civilizations could collapse and cultures would disappear if their deities were not appeased. To help the people remember, poems were read about the creation of gods, the chaos that followed and final state of the surreality of the sovereign. Temples were raised, laws were made, celestial celebrations were conducted, men prayed, and rituals bound everyone to all that really mattered.”
Simon put down his notes and started walking around the table as he spoke. “God talked to mere mortal men like Abraham. He even assumed human form as a friend. This divine epiphany that crossed the boundary between the two worlds was not considered uncommon. The Bible and other great religious books speak often of these types of encounters. Angels walked amongst men and women and gave them words of encouragement, or assignments to complete, or in some cases even children. This was a world of many messengers whose manna would be an inspiration to the masses. People of all different faiths would choose a particular conception of the divine not for some abstract reason, but rather for the simple reason that the deities’ words of reason worked wonders for them. The existence of God was not debated. It was a known fact.” He closed his eyes as he said, “God spoke and you listened.”
“Nowadays it seems that only on T.V. or within the theater is the place that angels or God shows up to dispense advice. For example, on the popular T.V. show called “Joan of Arcadia”, whose title is an obvious play on words about another Joan of another time and place, the producer published her own list of guidelines to the show’s writers that they must keep in mind while composing their scripts. Let me read her rules to you:
1 God cannot directly intervene.
2 Good and evil exist.
3 God can never identify one religion as being right.
4 The job of every human being is to fulfill his or her true nature.
5 Everyone is allowed to say “no” to God, including Joan.
6 God is not bound by time. This is a human concept.
7 God is not a person and does not possess a human personality.
8 God talks to everyone all the time in different ways.
9 God’s plan is what is good for us, not what is good for him.
10 God’s purpose for talking to Joan, and everyone, is to get her (us) to recognize the interconnectedness of all things – i.e., you cannot hurt a person without hurting yourself; all of your actions have consequences; God can be found in the smallest actions; God expects us to learn and grow from all our experiences. However, the
