A New Life Of Boundless Power

A week ago my post was about Henry Ford and his way of dealing with problems. The writer was someone called Henry Thomas Hamblin and I believe it was written in the 1970s. I came across another piece by him, which touches on his view of spirituality. I thought it may be of interest to 67 Not Out readers. The second paragraph is one very long sentence, but I have left it as in the format written by Hamblin.

Man is heir to wonderful illimitable powers, but until he becomes aware of them and consciously identifies himself with them, they lie dormant and unexpressed, and might just as well not exist at all as far as their uses to man, in his unawakened state, is concerned.

When, however, man becomes awakened to the great truth that he is a spiritual being: when he learns the little petty self and finite personality are not the real self at all, but merely a mask to the real man: when he realises that the Spiritual Ego, a true divine Spark of, or branch or twig of the Eternal Logos, is his real Self: when he understands that his body is not himself, that his mind is not himself, that even his soul is not himself, being but the vehicles through which he seeks expression, but that he is spirit, deathless, diseaseless, eternal, forming an integral part of the One Spirit and being identical with It, he enters a new life of almost boundless power.

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The Fatwa, Noah And The Spirituality Of Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe in Noah - as featured in Event magazine

I'm not usually interested in the private thoughts or lives of actors, so called celebrities and so on but something I read about Russell Crowe rang true. He was talking about God and spirituality. This is what he is reported to have said by Event magazine (it comes free with the UK Sunday newspapers).

"I don't believe there's a crusty old bloke floating about on a cloud. I divide spirituality from religion. And I think organised religion has got a lot to answer for. How many wars have there been that haven't been based around an essential religious difference?

But I do believe in spirituality. I believe that God lives inside all of us. Life is about kindness and giving - that's the core of things. Gratitude is the most powerful thing you can have in your life. If you are grateful for small things, bigger things come. If you are cynical, the stuff you want to do never works out and your cynicism gets deepened and you get more embittered."

I don't he's too far away from the truth.

Crowe was talking on this subject because he has been working on a new movie, Noah, which is to be released in early April. The movie has already caused some controversy and this in turn illustrates a lot of the problems within organised religions.

Noah has been made the subject of a fatwa by some within Sunni Islam and has been banned by three countries already: Qatar, Bahrain and UAE. Event also claims that the movie is causing controversy "among Christian groups, particularly in the US, who are predicting the film will take liberties with the Book Of Genesis."

There will no doubt always be differing opinions about the Bible and whether it has been altered over the years. Crowe says that the director, Darren Aronofsky, has, "Read the translations of all the Bibles, from the Hebrew through to King James, and he's seen the way the story gets changed and perverted."

I'm far from an expert but I also believe that the Bible has been altered over the years and concur with what is written, for example, on the BBC News site by Roger Bolton. He writes:

"The world's oldest surviving Bible is in bits.

For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery, until it was found - or stolen, as the monks say - in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany and Britain.

Now these different parts are to be united online and anyone, anywhere in the world with internet access will be able to view the complete text and read a translation.

For those who believe the Bible is the inerrant, unaltered word of God, there will be some very uncomfortable questions to answer. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today's Bible.

The Codex, probably the oldest Bible we have, also has books which are missing from the Authorised Version that most Christians are familiar with today - and it does not have crucial verses relating to the Resurrection."

Codex Sinaiticus - see here

But it's up to us as individuals as to what we believe and we should also respect what others believe. No matter what, we are all basically the same and if we do believe in a God He surely won't favour some religions or races more than any others. How can He when we are all part of the same God?

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One Of The Great Spiritual Laws And How This Affects Our Lives

One of the great spiritual laws, I've often seen, is along the lines of: No man can exist alone neither can he get anything on earth unless he gives first.

Nothing new in that but I was reminded from something I read that this also applies to countries, continents or any groups as well as to individuals.

What I had been reading was a treatise that was supposedly channelled through a medium. The teachings are from a Dr Lascelles and the medium was Mr CA Simpson. This is what is written about the consequences of the two world wars:

"As the Great War of 1914-18 drew to a close the horror of the battle fields was replaced by the greater mortality rate of the great influenza plague which spread across Europe, gathered momentum, carrying itself across the Atlantic to USA and eventually spread as far as Australia. It was a particularly deadly virus which killed with the ferocity of shell fire, decimated whole families and, adding to the sorrows and disasters of the War, left Europe and much of the world prostrate.

The suffering, starvation and destruction of sanitary installations apart, there is every reason for concluding that the Influenza Death of 1918-19 was a direct result of four years of concentrated hatred of such a depth and intensity that it actually brought about biological changes resulting in the creation of a new virus. Millions died in hatred. Millions more succumbed to the result of hatred."

The assumption from this is that hatred possesses certain powers. But why then wasn't there a similar virus following World War II? It's about the degree of hatred.

"Strangely enough the Second World War, even greater in its ramifications and extending over a far greater area of the earth was not accompanied by such concentrated hatred.

The First War was fought in a spirit of unmitigated power lust, it was blatantly and unashamedly a military war fought for victory and for the sake of victory. It was accompanied by no great hopes for a better world after victory. Its aims on all sides were directed to the accumulation of more territory and the sheer killing of as many millions as modern industry could handle.

It ended on spite and an atmosphere of punitive vengeance. It was woe to the vanquished and to the Devil with compassion. The bleeding sword of retribution was the final and only arbiter. Out of this appalling state of mind arose the Great Deaths as factually contrived as though it had been planned. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the victorious powers were smitten as much as the defeated.

The Second World War ended upon a different note. It had always been fought more in sorrow than in savagery despite the appalling slaughter of far more civilians than in the First War. Nonetheless, the victors emerged from the Second War as awed and overwhelmingly conscious of evil as the defeated were. There was little though of revenge.

The lesson of the First War had been learned and the vessel of peace was launched upon a sea of generosity never before witnessed in the history of mankind. Medicines, food and clothing were poured into Europe and the Far East in a grand effort to re-establish health and good will. We had all sinned in not avoiding the Second War and out of this awareness of sinning came the warm hand of reconciliation.

No plague of the 1918 dimension followed. The wisdom of love, be it conditioned by self interest or not had prevailed and the world set out upon a venture of prosperity and humaneness never before envisioned."

You may not necessarily agree with the doctor's interpretation of the two world wars. But it does illustrate that, as well being responsible for what happens to us as individuals, we also reap what has been sown by those supposedly acting on our behalf. Think Bush and Blair for example.

What we give out - whether good, bad or the many gradients between these extremes - we get back.

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Parasitism And Spirituality

We can have hundreds of spiritual books but if we haven't actually experienced the content it's doubtful we have progressed spiritually. It's similar to distant places. We can read about them, but unless we visit them we haven't achieved very much. Attaining information for itself rarely makes us better people unless we put what we learn into action.

I was rambling on to myself about such things when absent mindedly I picked up a book I have mentioned previously in my post The Book And Suffragette Coincidence.

The book is called Natural Law In The Spiritual World and dates back to the 1880s. There is a signature inside dated July 24 1884.

The page I opened was in a chapter called Parasitism. I felt it linked me up to what I had been thinking:

"In those churches especially where all parts of the worship are subordinated to the sermon, a species of parasitism is peculiarly encouraged. What is meant to be a stimulus to thought becomes the substitute for it.

"The hearer never really learns, he only listens. And while truth and knowledge seem to increase, life and character are left in arrear.

"Such truth, of course, and such knowledge, are a mere seeming. Having cost nothing, they come to nothing. The organism acquires a growing immobility, and finally exists in a state of entire intellectual helplessness and inertia.

"So the parasitic church member, the literal 'adherent', comes not merely to live only within the circle of ideas of his minister, but to be content that his minister has those ideas - like the literary parasite who fancies he knows everything because he has a good library."

The chapter goes on to talk about someone who joins a church.

"What more likely than that a public religion should by insensible stages supplant his individual faith? What more simple than to content himself with the warmth of another's soul? What more tempting than to give up private prayer for the easier worship of the liturgy or of the church? What, in short, more natural than for the independent, free moving, growing Sacculina to degenerate into the listless, useless parasite of the pew?"

And it continues to say that:

"A physiologist would describe the organism resulting from such a process as a case of 'arrested development'. Instead of having learned to pray, the ecclesiastical parasite becomes satisfied with being prayed for. His transactions with the Eternal are effected by the commission. His work is done by a paid deputy. His whole life is a prolonged indulgence in the bounties of the church: and surely - in some cases at least the crowning irony - he sends for the minister when he lies down to die."

There's obviously much, much more but you'll no doubt get the picture. The author talks about how nature provides for all our wants.

"She gives him corn, but he must grind it. She elaborates coal, but he must dig for it ... He must work, think, separate, dissolve, absorb, digest: and most of these he must do for himself and within himself.

If it be replied that this is exactly what theology does, we answer it is exactly what it does not. It simply does what the greengrocer does when he arranges his apples and plums in his shop window ... but he does not help me eat them."

As that naff expression says: We have to walk the walk. We won't get too far if we simply sit and watch others walk.

Sacculina is a genus of barnacles that is a parasitic castrator of crabs.

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