What do we know about God? Very little, for sure, as I remarked in my last message. God is not accessible to the human mind, as man's mind is not accessible for the animals’ mind. It is even worse. Between God’s nature and the human mind, there is a substantial difference, not just a difference in quantity, such as between the intelligence of animals and men. Because animals, the most developed among them, can think. They can learn, plan, adapt themselves to new situations — that is what is commonly called "intelligence." The chimpanzee that draws his unordered scrabbles on paper is able to outline forms such like a circle, an "X", a cross, and many more. However, it never ends up sketching a rudimentary face, as the children do. When reaching certain phase of their "abstract" development, it stops, while it continues advancing in humans. This is a gradual difference.
But with God, things are different. His nature is essentially different from human nature. And human mind is, in its essence, the very same animal mind, highly developed, there is not doubt about it, yet it still is animal.
In many messages, we have spoken of the animal mind and of the soul’s mind, without having defined those expressions. We will not be able to define these expressions in this message either, for the simple reason that language is the product of the animal mind, and the spiritual, i.e. what refers to God, escapes its description. Language already weakens when it shall describe the most common emotions. Nevertheless, we have words to denominate those states of mood, and so, implicitly, we know what others are talking of or what we are reading, because we have lived them in our own flesh.
In order to describe God and to experience His presence, it is necessary, therefore, to employ other means, which we call "spirituality." It is not based on the mind, but on the soul and its perceptions — provided what we designate "spirituality" be indeed genuine and not a pseudo-mysticism that is satisfied with establishing unfathomable mysteries, without bothering to find out, if these mysteries really exist or are just the product of human laziness, which out of contentment simply refuses to investigate beyond what is easily possible, or even prohibits that others do so. And the mind, always eager to dominate man, joins in and supports this inertia, betraying its reluctance to loose control and open the way for a development on a different — the spiritual level. Spirituality is the experience of the soul. You can only understand the typical vocabulary of this kind of experience, when you have lived it in a similar way.
When man has hardly set out to investigate God, His nature and, just in case, His existence, employing his appreciated intelligence, he staggers over a serious problem: Where to start? He cannot see, he cannot touch, neither savor nor smell the object of his inquiries. How to take measures of the invisible and inaccessible? And if God is spirit, how can the same be measured?
As a last and easy resource, the specialist analyzes the old writings, which claim to have been communicated by God, through inspiration. At the same time, he rejects modern writings, which claim the same thing, but it seems that antiquity justifies a change in criterion.
The Portuguese writer, José Saramago, awarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature, a brilliant man and master of language, dedicated intense studies to the Bible, and he came to his conclusions. He even reinterpreted the gospels, retaining the essence of the biblical story, but adding a good dose of "realism." In his work we find several statements on God, surprising and provocative expressions for sure, a selection of which we will analyze one by one.
1. God needs men just for being able to be God.
I ask, which is the base for the relationship between man and God? Before formulating this statement, it would have been good to investigate the background, I think.
2. Each man who dies is a death of God, and when the last man will have died, God will not resuscitate.
Here I would have liked to read a definition of what is death. Yes, I understand that the author wants to express that God is the product of the human mind, only living in that mind, as a phantom or projection. And when man dies — and here it is clear that he speaks of a definitive death, of "ceasing to exist" — then the existence of God, too, will end, because the mind that nurtured it, dose no longer exist. This, implicitly, has already been mentioned in the first statement.
3. Man forgives God anything, and the less they know him, the more they forgive him.
The less they know Him, the more they fear Him, without daring to inculpate God of what they perceive as "His work."
4. God is the silence of the universe and man the scream that gives meaning to that silence.
God is the Love that floods the universe, and man is like the salt that, little by little, dissolves in the ocean of Divinity, giving it "flavor."
5. God: an “all” torn out of the nothing, through which little more than nothing exists.
Once again, the atheist betrays himself, who impelled by some unknown desire set out to seek God, but whose mind was trapped in the ink of the books.
6. God says: do not adore that stone, that tree, that mountain; they all are false gods. I am the only and true God. Saramago comments: God, poor fellow, is falling into the flagrant sin of pride.
Oh, God, poor fellow... if pride is a sin, who committed it?
7. It is necessary to be God in order to like blood so much.
Definitively, that is a justified conclusion, taking into account the story of the Old Testament, and Jesus' mission, as the orthodox explain it, washing away with his blood our sins.
8. Jewish tradition considers the law received at Sinaí as a contract between the people and God. Saramago claims that a decent contract should express and harmonize the will of both parts. "I don't believe that one can affirm that this is the case: God imposed his conditions and the people accepted them."
They accepted them, because they were the basic rules for living together, rules that, by the way, had been formulated much earlier in other cultures. The "Codex Hammurabi" established very similar commandments, without the supposed participation of God. If God is just the projection of human mind, why should we accuse the "phantom" of what man has elaborated?
9. Before Jesus, men were already able to forgive, but not so the gods. Forgiveness is human.
It is true, God does not forgive, He loves. God is not justice, he is Love. Indictee and judge, man himself will be both at the same time.
10. When will the day come, oh Lord, when you will come to us for admitting your errors in front of all men?"
This he may ask when he is near the Father, provided this question will still be a valid one for him, and not just a shameful recollection of a distant past.
A few days ago, we have spoken of the "other." The problem of the supposed analysis of God is in its essence the problem of the "other," whom man ignores, and upon whom he projects his own expectations. God does not forgive, because man does not forgive, God makes mistakes, because man makes mistakes, etc. And it seems so difficult to find features of love in God, when man himself lacks this property.
In the old times, when humanity was hardly able to extract iron from the red mineral, it seems forgivable that they attributed to God whatever they could not understand. It is also comprehensible that they sought to justify their actions through the recourse to God, that is to say, that "God had commanded them” to do this or that thing, for example, to annihilate the whole population of the conquered towns.
At the present time, it is incomprehensible how intelligent people can apply the same Bronze Age criteria to evaluate ancient writings.
Does God forgive? Well, God never has accused and will never accuse Mr. Saramago of blasphemy or slander. Therefore, there is nothing to forgive. He, however, maybe has much to forgive himself. Don José, although you deny God, although you accuse Him of everything, although you are mocking Him, the Father will always love you, and we will always love you. Your mockery will become shame, and your shame will give way to despair, until some day, a weak light enters in your loneliness. This light is love, and this light will remain. And when you develop in your new freedom, flooded by light, searching for that source, which is giving you warmth and happiness, little by little you will learn to make out what you had investigated in vain during all your life.
We in the Celestial Heavens use the soul and its senses to know more of our Father, who opens up to us freely and voluntarily, without hiding behind "mysteries." Do the same. This is the difference between spirituality and occultism. Do not try to measure light with ruler and a pair of compasses; do not try to investigate the Father with your mind.
This is all I have to say.
I am your brother Judas.
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