Season's Greetings - Shades of Yule

☆ ☆ ☆ Season's Greetings  ☆ ☆ ☆

from the Grizzly Grizmas Grinch! 

Relativist Revealed as Embodiment of Evil (DP)

Dissociated Press
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Dark Northern Forests

When rumors about the evil in the fundament of a Finnish freak thinker began to circulate in early October, few could guess just how on the mark the suspicions were. Sources have since confirmed the actuality of the allegations, fueled by a surprise discovery of incriminating photographic evidence on a perfectly peaceful Sunday afternoon. In the shocking photo below, he is seen measuring the sum total of the fibers of his being.

This shocking photo was taken by an unsuspecting amateur photographer,
who was studying the life of frog philosophers at the local village pond.

According to a U.S. based team of professional psychopathologists and forensic experts, this unsettling photo is undeniable proof of the presence of evil in his fundament. Suspicions of evil first began to rise with his obstinate unwillingness to accept any one point of view as absolute or clearly eminent, and the subsequent refusal to conduct himself according to rules and rituals derived thereof. His sympathy for Pyrrhonism, an early Greek cult of Satanistic thought, has since been confirmed.

Dubbed a cancer to be denounced vehemently by ideological professionals, his brand of thought advocates an ideology where nothing is certain, and everything is perpetually open to question. According to a spokesman of the Church of Absolute Truth, "The very thought of having no absolutes to comfort ourselves with is abhorrent, and a direct slap in the face of all organized religion and established ideology."

That notwithstanding, the former Hari Krishna Guru figure has garnered some support from audiences bent on decadence and moral turpitude, eager to legitimize their ambivalent approach to the very foundations of life and human society. According to sources, he is currently in hiding somewhere in the dark forests of the northern hemisphere, developing an underground laboratory with a team of quantum scientists to prove once and for all "that nothing is certain, and everything in a perpetual state of quantum uncertainty." (DP)

On Ideological Fundamentalism

I've had my fair share of encounters with the polarities of rigid absolutism and objectivism on one side, and flexible relativism and subjectivism on the other, and have eventually come to see the light that lets all flowers bloom. While it's not a popular position to take among the followers of one tradition or the other, I haven't heard the likes of the following statement I came across yesterday even from religious fundamentalists, at least not in so many words.

"I recognize the evil in your foundation and your arguments are saturated with it - and it must be denounced vehemently because it is a cancer out there."

No doubt, relativism can strike an annoying chord in the ears of those who would rather believe their model of understanding is a de facto theory of everything, both in the realm of religious dialogue as with anything else featuring strong ideological convictions. That it is annoying is rather an understatement, for it's downright threatening, inasmuch as it suggests the possibility of tearing down the precious walls of absolute opinion built and maintained by generations of adherents.

The above citation becomes doubly curious over the fact that it was addressed to yours truly in a discussion that had absolutely nothing to do with poking the holy cows of any flavor of religious fundamentalism, but rather in the course of an attempt to discuss a purely secular (and not even political) theme with a person sporting a long academic background. A world where ideologies are juxtapositioned in such a radically condemning fashion is a world gone sad and sour

I suppose ambivalence can be threatening, but really it is only from a state of ambivalence that something truly new can evolve. Rigid ideologies, even while they may serve a purpose, are almost invariably antithetical to the progress and evolution of human understanding, shunning as they do the prospects for discovering solutions outside the established framework. All the while, doubt remains one of the most powerful tools at our disposal in our quest for knowledge and understanding.

This idolatry of human mental constructions is perhaps the single most devolutive force in the history of mankind with a long and devastating track record of stifling, oppressing and persecuting those discontent with available solutions, seeking to cross over the establishment to the undiscovered land. The problem started with Adam and Eve grabbing a fruit off the tree of forbidden knowledge and receiving a due punishment, and has really only grown worse ever since.

Related: Metaphysical Relativism - On Choosing Friends and Mythologies

The Broad Way That Claims No Authority

The Tao is broad; you can move far to the right and to the left; and still remain within it. Millions of living beings live on it, depend upon it for their existence; it accepts them willingly, and claims no authority over them.

The Tao accomplishes its tasks, and claims no credit. It clothes and feeds the living beings who live on it; yet it imposes no obligations on them, and expects no gratitude from them.

The Tao desires nothing, so it may be called small. Yet since it claims no credit, imposes no obligations, and expects no gratitude, it should be called great.

— Tao Te Ching #34

Mary Had a Little Lamb who Met a Little Troll

Mary had a little lamb,
Little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow!
  

Everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
Everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go!

It posted on her blog one day,
Blog one day, blog one day,
It posted on her blog one day,
To see what trolls would say!

There was a troll without a name,
Without a name, without a name,
There was a troll without a name,

It danced and sang its song!

And the troll chanted:

"To-day do I bake, to-morrow I brew,
The day after that the new blog comes in;
And oh! I am glad that nobody knew
That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!"

And the lamb interjected:

Nasty troll, I know your name
Know your name, know your name
Nasty troll, I know your name,

I know you have no shame!

My Life According to Pet Shop Boys

This is the first such I have ever posted on my blog, but hey, there's a first time for everything, and every blog starts going downhill at one point or another... "Answer with song names from artist X" to the questions. Five minutes of entertainment and fifteen minutes of fame, here goes.

-=o)O(o=-

My Life According to Pet Shop Boys

1. Are you a male or female? Jack the Lad
2. Describe yourself: Positive role model / Young offender
3. How do you feel? I wouldn't normally do this sort of thing
4. If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Where the streets have no name
5. Your favorite form of transportation: Battleship Potemkin
6. Your best friend is: Your funny uncle
7. Your favorite color is: Read my mind
8. What's the weather like? Home and dry
9. Favorite time of day: Later tonight
10. If your life were a TV show, what would it be called? Luna Park
11. What is life to you? Integral
12. What are you looking for? Beautiful people
13. Have: Legacy
14. Wouldn't mind: Decadence
15. Your fear: Pandemonium
16. What is the best advice you have to give? A different point of view
17. If you could change your name, you would change it to: Sexy Northerner
18. Thought for the day: We came from outer space

-=o)O(o=-

I Saw the Walrus

It's been quiet for awfully long. I have even received letters asking if everything's all right. Some have wondered what I've been up to, others have just kicked back and enjoyed the absence.

The questions are many. Inquiring minds want to know. Who is the eggman? Where did the walrus go?

Since time is at a premium these days, I thought it best to prepare the above illustration to explain all that and a bag of chips. I'll try and get back to more verbose writings towards the end of the summer.

Happy days in the meantime. Jaya Blogannatha!

YOU WILL BE ACBSPIMILATED

you will be acbspimilated | resistance is futile
your distinctiveness will be engaged to service us

There's more in common to the Hare Krishnas and the Borg than just the hairdo and the uniform uniform, but that's a topic for another time. Today it's just a picture that tells you the thousand words.

Raganuga.Com Audio Archives

The audio archives of the now retired Raganuga.Com are available for download at The Internet Archive:

Raganuga.Com Audio Archives

The download area contains all materials hosted under the lectures (patha) and songs (kirtana) sections of the site. Most of the materials come from Advaitadas's old source tapes I once cleaned up and uploaded.

The kirtana are recordings of songs primarily from Radha-kunda from over the decades. The patha are Advaitadas's translations of lectures by Pandit Ananta Das Babaji and Pandit Vaishnava Pada Das Babaji.

     

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5, the media can be freely downloaded and shared. A special mention goes to The Internet Archive for their hosting service.

Total download size in MP3 (VBR) format is 1.9 GB. The files are available for download individually in several formats (MP3 64kbps, MP3 VBR, Ogg Vorbis) and in a single zip file.

Raganuga.Com Audio Archives

He built a shrine at Radha-kunda...

Someone was kind enough to remember me with a composite photo of myself and what appears to be a shrine I once inhabited. This is actually the toilet bathroom combo of the house I never really lived in. My actual shrine, rented on the roof of the Manipuri temple (where the below photo of me was taken), was a bit under five square meters in size and came with a 30x30 cm window.

For contrast's sake, let's include a recent shot of where I live at these days. Many have wondered whether I ended up living in the stump of an old tree or something. Who would have guessed just how on the mark their guesses were! Actually I do live in the stump of an old tree. (Solar power and wireless net.) Below you can see me emerging for the hollow of the tree to greet the mid-day sun.

I also have a mantra I chant when I stand at the treetop greeting the heavens, an atma-dhyana or self-contemplation of sorts. The pronunciation and the full merit can only really be obtained by native speakers of a Finno-Ugrean language, even if there are a few foreign masters of vowel harmony and agglutinative morphology too. I may prepare a chanting guide with a recording in the future if there's sufficient interest among the readers.

Korpikuusen kannon alla on Mörri-Möykyn kolo.
Siellä on koti ja siellä on peti ja peikolla pehmoinen olo.
Tiu tau tiu tau tili tali tittan sirkat soittaa salolla,
Pikkuiset peikot ne piilossa pysyy kirkkaalla päivän valolla.
Syksyn tullen sieniä kasvaa karhunkankahalla,
Mörri-Möykky se sateessa istuu kärpässienen alla.

The Dangers of Incoherent Internet Usage

Internet forums and blog comments tend to fill with the obscurest possible attempts at verbal communication. Many posts are so indescribably incoherent that they are rarely intelligible even to the architect of the verbal potpourri himself. It's all fun and games they say, yet few understand the very real dangers writing on the internet in an incoherent state of mind can cause to innocent readers.

Be a responsible internet person — consider the potential psychological and physiological injuries your readers may sustain when exposed to your writings. The following flowchart presents a basic five-point-program to help overcome the urge to post in heightened states of incoherence. If you are an incoherent addict, print it out and and study it whenever you feel the urge to post your productions to a website.

Exercise particular attention when posting to a site you are addicted to, as addictions tend to lower the threshold for emotional and irrational responses. A special word of caution is in place for addicts posting under anonymous aliases on sites they've sworn to never participate at again. While self-control and peer support may help some get over their budding addiction, advanced cases of focused iOCD are best left in the hands of trained professionals.

Gaudiya Repercussions Status

Edit 2009/04/10: The site is now back online.

I've been contacted concerning the ongoing downtime at Gaudiya Repercussions. The issue appears to be with the services of the hosting provider itself, beyond anything I (as consultant admin) can do until a company response is received.

Currently all HTTP and FTP access is offline. That notwithstanding, we now have a current site MySQL backup secured. Whatever happened and happens to the site with what seems like the hosting disaster we had been half fearing and half expecting, no texts will be lost. This might also be a major network issue, but most likely the server's gone totally defunct.

Watch this space and the comments feed for more information as the issue resolves.

Edit 2009/04/09: There seems to also be a software vulnerability in InvisionBoard that allows registered users to abuse the forum system by flooding it with spam comments. A certain comments table we have was filled up with tens of thousands of entries (76,963 to be precise) in 125.1 megabytes... (Turns out this was an unrelated older issue that had gone unnoticed. The database garbage has now been removed as well.)

Edit 2009/04/10: The site is now back online. Turns out the issue was caused by vandalism, as reported here. While any proper hosting datacenter does have redundant connectivity over several independent pipes, in this case a grand total of ten bundles with hundreds of fiber-optic cables were cut down at four separate protected locations, taking down telecom and internet access from some 50,000 subscribers, affecting our server as well.

Star Wars: Cult Derelicts (DP)

Dissociated Press
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Hollywood, USA

The tragicomic saga of Ananda Skywalker, Finnish philosopher and Hare Krishna derelict, recently recognized as the prodigal son of a former cult leader, has finally reached the big screen. Written and directed by George Lucas, the narration is transplanted from the original alien environment into a familiar science fiction universe.

Screenshot with Wader and Skywalker from last week's Cult Derelicts teaser.

Matching expectations from fans worldwide, the long-waited Hollywood rendering of the saga explores the love-hate relationship of young Padawan and Dark Wader in substantial detail. While the juicy revelations do explain a great deal of Wader's obsessive-compulsive disorder towards Skywalker, rumors abound even the director doesn't know what exactly is going on in Wader's head.

Distributed by Warner Bros, the flick is scheduled for global release on April 15th. While heavily criticized by critics, fans have been going nuts with trailers and sneak peeks at SWcultDerelicts.Com. Looks like another box office rattler from George Lucas in the coming, whatever the critics' opinion!

On Choosing Friends and Mythologies

This old article has been revised and extended, also republished under Metaphysical Relativism: Choosing Friends and Mythologies. If you want to comment, please post under the new entry.

Life turns on a new leaf and broader perspectives become available to everyone of us every once in a while. When it's time to evolve and you've grown mature to move on, there's little point in clinging to old and outdated modes of thinking just to uphold facades or maintain outer tranquility. The journey onward continues — but if you subscribed to a system of beliefs, there may be an aftermath to deal with!

The greater part of what's ahead illustrates the fascinating realities of many true/pure believers, the more fundamentalist segment of religious adherents. I personally favor increased recognition of an inherent sense of subjectivity and relativity in all of human thought and activity. It would certainly help in healing many religious wounds and schisms, and we might avert a war or two as well if people were just a little bit less hell-bent on enforcing their absolute views on others and defending in kind.

There's a unifying pattern somewhere in the whirlpool. Finders keepers.

Narrow Horizons and Lost Potentials

One of the darker sides of religion is seen in many adherents' tendency to accept and reject friends and relationships on the basis of their chosen mythos, or the overlay of beliefs and ethical codes. Particularly smaller or tighter religious/spiritual denominations and groups tend to encourage or even enforce a segregation of believers from non-believers, protecting the believers from the perceived dangers of evil and heretical thoughts and mundane company. This leads to mental and/or social isolation from the surrounding world.

Clinging exclusively to people who subscribe to similar metaphysical beliefs is unfortunately a poor means of connecting to the rich and diverse potentials of the human world. When your available range of contacts and possibilities becomes confined within a single frame of reference, you'll be a monoglot in an increasingly globalizing world, and if you happen to subscribe to a smaller group of fringe believers, you're further stuck with an obscure tribal language. Expand your horizons!

The narrower you draw the spectrum of your human connections, the smaller shrinks your window of being nourished by interaction and exchange. On the other hand, should you choose to expand the range of your connections beyond the identifications and defenses of any particular system of belief — the specifics of which are hardly essential in the grand scheme of existence! — you would maximize your interactive potential and evolutionary prospects in life.

Some patterns remain constant across the history of religious fundamentalism.

The Religious Repercussion — What Went Wrong?

Beliefs and mythologies rarely follow a straight-forward logical formula you could easily understand; because it doesn't really have to make sense or be true, as long as you believe in it and receive an extended sense of comfort or convenience. People can get highly emotional and irrational in promoting and defending their cherished beliefs — especially when their existential framework is under perceived threat by contradicting views.

As we've seen the world around, it's not that hard to even accidentally make someone feel that their faith is being blasphemed or persecuted, leading to indignation, uproar, and unpleasant repercussions. If I wrote an article called "My Overly Holy And Medium Moot Existential Dilemma", and then someone got on my case for forgetting the PBUH because the initials added up to someone's revered name (PBUH) — would that make any sense whatsoever? I think not, yet such are the times we live in — everyone is connected, and increased exposure leads to increased opportunities for conflict.

Were religions truly meant to bring so much anger, hatred, and narrow-mindedness into the world? Someone must have lost track of the actual point somewhere down the history lane — unless the bugs were stamped as features and thrown in at last minute by the busy sky systems designer, who just needed to meet his markets soon. If god really exists, one really hopes it was the humans who screwed up their part of the deal, because clearly something isn't quite right with the picture we see.

Crossing through a number of religious communities over the years, I have witnessed on countless occasions how temporary, frail and superficial relationships based on religious sentiment and communality can ultimately be, when perspectives evolve and situations change. Shared religious beliefs can create an awfully narrow and fragile platform for leading an actually fulfilled life, depriving you from access to the greater part of your real inner potentials, along with the potentials of the larger human world and an abundance of lessons to learn.

What color of  glasses do you wear when praying or evaluating others in the eyes of god?

Subjective Faith — Subjective God

On a necessary note of clarification over my sometimes pointed critique on the darker sides of religion and belief — I do not mean to criticize any one system of belief over the others. I am simply against endorsing any given view as the final and ultimate word in metaphysics, including my personal views that are explicitly tentative and subject to improvement and evolution. This reservation naturally reflects on my outlook on the greater part of religious beliefs and associated organizations and congregations, who all too often would have us believe in them as the sole emissaries of the greatest and tallest truth.

Every belief is formed and conceived of in the subjective and limited individual human mind, and religious experience itself is a highly subjective sensation. If a belief works in favor of your subjective world, then may you be happy and prosper with it — but please don't try to force-paint the same sign across everyone's sky. You wouldn't like to see vandals doodling their graffiti on your garage door, so please remember to keep your He-Man and the Masters of the Universe graffiti off others' mental environments too. That is, unless you know you're welcome to decorate and are clearly received in kind. In either case, be sure to keep yourself and your message in a broader context!

God created us all into his own image, and we all seem to look and think a wee bit different. Let's aim for a bit of extra space and dimension up there in the sky as well. Your god sounds an awful lot like you, so he's probably not the same god who created me in his image. Will the real god please stand up and announce himself? It's been a long time coming, and at least a a basic corrigenda and updating for the popular range of holy books would be in order.

The Real God™ — a truly ultimate entity in every respect, excelling in total immanence and transcendence, experienced as absolute in fullness, nothingness and beginningless flux, the supreme blueprint and mastermind of chaos and logos, pervasive as undivided cognitive existential joy — frankly doesn't give a rat's ass about people raving on about any one of the countless conflicting beliefs of theirs. That is, if such an entity exists to begin with — which is something best left up to each individual to sort out for themselves.

A pet future utopia of mine is a world where the humanity at large has evolved to a point where metaphysical relativism is so widely taken as a self-evident axiom that the mere concept of religious friction is an unintelligible oxymoron. Utopia pending, humanity still has a great many cognitive bridges to cross in learning to relate to each other a bit more constructively. We all dig peace on earth, goodwill among men, and all the rest of the good stuff that religious advocates promise in their leaflets. We don't really need that hell and brimstones stuff in capital letters on the flip side of your leaflet, thank you very much!

» Continued: On Ideological Fundamentalism

Wisdom of Sir Aleister Frogley

For those of you wondering what's going on in the darkest recesses of my mind, and where the bogeymen inside my head are running. Aside yesterday's Judeo-Christian Demiurge of April's Fools fame, Sir Aleister Frogley has been a great inspiration, even if my attention therewards has been infrequent at best. There's something profound in his extraordinary lunacy that tickles my fascination. That, and the fact that my first guru emerged from the Crowley gene pool.

The wisdom eye of the shaman is the base of the World Tree. The disembodied mystic ascends in trance beyond the finite human world to obtain the insights and powers of the higher planes.

—o)O(o—

“Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.”

“Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.”

 “The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.”

Confessions of a Sinner

Some readers may remember from the years past that I have periodically come up with open letters that sum up a past period, often flavored with a distinct aroma of regret over my attitudes and actions. This is one of those times again, so please bear with me and read on.

It isn't without regret or remorse that I note how I've come to see the basic errors of my ways, both in the guise of a Vaishnava and among Oriental religions in general. It stands to reason there is a God, and only one supreme God. If the destination is one, how can there be many different ways? I used to think it was a load of bunk, sure. But was I right?

 It's only when you realize you're a sinner and in a hopeless position that things start becoming clear. No amount of exotic spirituality is going to make up for your sins when the day of judgment comes — we are all guilty. It's up to us to not be deceived by religions propagated by prophets misguided by Satan himself.

Whether it's the cult of the black god Krishna, whose name is etymologically rooted in darkness and evil, or atheistic nihilism promoting reincarnation and other such false doctrines, such as Buddhism, they lead to nothing but moral deprivation. Worshiping an evil god and promoting humanity to god's position are equally sinful, and lead to the same unpleasant ultimate destination. When push comes to shove, only two fundamentals, the forces of good and evil, are at work in the world.

The grim reaper is coming for each and every one of us in due course. The choice is yours — where do you want to go? You can choose to accept the salvation offered through the atonement of Lord Jesus Christ and enter into the Joy of the Lord, or you can reject the opportunity as I once did. Truly, one sometimes feels as if God had spilled his pearls before the swine, sacrifice as he did his only Son to save a world of disbelievers.

The God Who Created the God Who Created the God

Religious philosophers tend to argue in favor of an original intelligent cause as an answer for the question of our origins. It stands to reason, they argue, that an original cause be accepted to avoid the paradox of beginninglessness. The original cause being of course a monotheistic god, who is assumed perfect and benevolent.

From these roots come the marked difference in the linear and finite versus cyclic and infinite models of the Occident and the Orient, along with some wildly varying concepts of god or its equivalent. When it comes to god and gods, much is assumed and little is certain.

The pursuit for an original cause is much like a walk in Escher's paradox.

Original Cause as a Non-Solution

Proposing that there is an original cause is philosophically unsatisfactory, inasmuch as the original cause always remains incomprehensible to us smaller units, its originality unproven in the face of the possibility that our original cause is but the a link in a chain of causation. The concept of a greater creator merely begs the question whether there might be more creators at work somewhere up the pyramid of creations.

If there is one creator god for the existence we know, it is in fact entirely plausible that there may be any number of other, more compassive gods further up the line of creations, the extent of which we'd never be able to decipher as either infinite or finite. The seemingly definitive solution of an original cause now effectively returns to square one, once again face to face with the paradox of infinity and beginninglessness.

Brahma, the Hindu demiurge, is born from a lotus growing from Vishnu's navel.

Hierarchy of Creator Gods in Indic Lore

The Vaishnavite mythology, found throughout the Puranic lore, posits the existence of a single eternal transcendent deity, Vishnu, who dwells beyond the world of creations, and also permeates the creation as its supporting substratum. At the dawn of creation Vishnu, lying at the bottom of each of the universes he created, let a lotus sprout from his navel, atop which awoke Brahma, the creator god of the Hindu trinity, set to organize the elements of the cosmos provided by Vishnu.

This prime creator, in turn, set forth a number of Prajapatis, progenitors of mankind and diverse species, along with a number of sages to impart wisdom to the creation. In a fair number of epics the lesser gods, created by Brahma, mistake their immediate creator to be the supreme creating deity and the original cause, and in fact he is found to be so deluded on a number of occasions himself.

The god Brahma also features in early Buddhist lore as one among a number of Brahmas, each presiding over their own Brahma-worlds, fancying themselves as creator gods, frequently original causes in their own right. These Brahmas feature in a number of legends from the Buddha's cosmic adventures, and it was in fact Brahma Sahampati who urged the Buddha to go forth and preach the dharma in the wake of his enlightenment.

The theology of some Vaishnavas, most notably the Gaudiya tradition and the Hare Krishnas, further posits that Krishna is, rather than an avatar of Vishnu, in fact the original source god, of whom Vishnu is an extension for purposes of creation. Yet they are in some respects identical, one deity and one mind, and yet again different in some minute manners. Overall, I get the effect of calling to an office for the person responsible, only to be routed around in circles until the line breaks. No wonder some prefer speaking face to face, whether it's gods or service personnel.

Not surprisingly, adherents of the Shaiva school likewise claim Shiva to be the supreme god, as again the Shaktas insist that Shakti is the ultimate mother-godhead, of which Shiva, Vishnu and the rest spring forth. Faced with the immense plurality and conflicting opinions of the Indic gods, good old Christian monotheism might begin to seem like a welcome breeze of fresh air. If so, please breathe to your liking before starting the following section.

David Tarleton: The Aeon Sophia at the Birth of the Demiurge

Gnostic Demiurge and Judeo-Christian Creator God

I recall a lively conversation I once had with an elderly Jehovah's Witness. He was adamant that the mainstream Christian Church was wrong in claiming that Jesus was God, while he was in fact the first creation, as also god's instrument for the making of the creation that sprang forth — all standard Jehovah's Witness theology.

Incidentally I was also once filled in into the higher secret of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, again by an elderly gentleman somewhere in northern Finland. All was fine with my theology, but the fact that I was a monk at the time. Skipping the preliminaries, he related how we, as married couples, are to evolve and one day become creator gods and goddesses of our own universes.

To make things even more confusing on the Judeo-Christian front, we are confronted with the question of their god being perhaps a legion of gods, as the plural address Elohim and covenants to "not have any other gods" indicate. How much do the Elohim have in common with the gods of the Olympos mountain, the Egyptian Pantheon and the Hindu gods of Himalaya?

It was the Gnostic tradition that first identified the Judean God as a so-called Demiurge, an inferior and imperfect deity responsible for the creation of an imperfect world. Gnostic estimates of the lesser deity span from an embodiment of evil to merely an imperfect yet benevolent being. The Gnostics view the birth of the Demiurge as an accident that was never meant to happen, in effect describing an unplanned pregnancy leading to the birth of a defective god.

In contrast to demiurge are the eternal Pleroma, self-manifest beings transcending our dimension, ascension among whom is the final destination of the humans. As fascinating as it is, one can't help but wonder whether there might be yet another layer of causation beyond the supposedly eternal Pleroma, who as a matter of fact sound remarkably similar to the residents of the Immaterial Realms of the Buddhist cosmology, who are again superceded by the cryptic nirvana.

The Judeo-Christian God's wrath in the Genesis incident over Adam's acquisition of classified knowledge is interesting in its own right. We even find the following admission in God's own words (3.21): "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." Interestingly, the serpent was right over the fruit's effects, while God was in fact trying to prevent access with threats of death upon eating. Now that ought to get the conspiracy theorists running!

Left: Intimidating Jaffa servant of an Egyptian Goa'uld. Right: The Ori grant supernatural powers to their Priors.

Evil Gods of Science Fiction

The well-documented traits of the God Institution have also found their way into popular entertainment. For an example, the popular TV-series Stargate features two separate races of malevolent beings posing and worshiped as gods, only to be overthrown by their subjects in due course.

The Goa'uld, evil and technologically advanced power-hungry parasites, used humans for slavery for millennia in the guise of various Egyptian, Greek and Oriental gods, posing as immortal lords and the creators. The Goa'uld were snake-like creatures who bonded with human hosts, integrating themselves with the hosts' spinal cord and the brain. (Incidentally the often-controversial kundalini-energy of Hindu Tantrics literally means "female serpent" and, when activated, rises up the spinal cord and yields psychic powers.)

Again the Ori, an ascendend incorporeal species, inspired massive crusades to have everyone worship them, for they gained power through the energy sapped from lower sentient beings. For them, the religion is a conduit for transferring upwards the energy expended by the worshipers. In return for worship and absolute dedication, they offered their followers a false promise of ascension, unwilling as they were to share of their power. Really, exactly how many of the available promises of afterlife are guaranteed real deals? It's a pity religions don't come bundled with a money-back guarantee.

While there would be a number of other juicy examples to illustrate the concept, let's focus on the gist of the idea, namely the assumed integrity and benevolence of the said god or gods. There is no reason to assume that a more powerful being would have also evolved in benevolence, even if the religions of the world do tend to take the goodness of their gods for granted. Hey, the gods of the Zoroastrians being the demons of the Brahmanas and vice versa, one or other of the gods out there has got to be evil! And evil or not, faithfully worshiped by devout followers.

Something is fundamentally wrong with the above scenario.

Final Thoughts

The final day of reckoning pending and yet to be proven, there are few compelling reasons for worshiping one authoritarian god or the other. Given the insubstantiability of the said claims of absolute originality, omnipotence and omniscience, there is little reason to accept demands of allegiance. Neither claims of rightful ownership of our souls or threats of damnation or annihilation can serve as a basis for a healthy, working relationship. If there's one thing that puts me off on so many levels, it is intimidation.

If some choose to voluntarily pursue the worship of a god or several gods or goddesses, whether it be for solace, pleasure, profit or wisdom, I don't see it as objectionable as long as the relationship remains non-abusive. If a god or the gods are real, existing and sentient beings, it stands to reason that our free will ought to be respected, and all forms of life, regardless of evolutionary level, ought to have certain rights. Just like we also treat nature and animals, eh? Do unto them as he did unto us...

Coming from a god who created hell, a promise that he can save me from going to hell isn't exactly playing it fair. You cannot create a threat and then play the good guy for alleviating the threat! When a threat is produced to gain advantage from the object of threat, it is called coercion. Use of coercion with self-produced ultimatums spanning infinity cannot be the work of a a truthful, loving and benevolent being.

Not that I'm an atheist. Atheism as a concept is far too limited, as is theism along with its bretheren ideologies. Pantheism and monistic nondualism are high on my chart of working elements for a coherent overall picture of existence. No single theory in itself seems to be adequate for capturing the essence of existence, and a comprehensive Theory of Everything is yet to be written. Be that as it may, it seems evident that the era of authoritarian creator gods is nearing its inevitable end.

Further Reading

Brahma (Buddhism): A fascinating gloss on the role of the god Brahma in Buddhist lore, little known to many Hindu adherents who fancy Brahma as a Hindu deity. Ironic as it is, the god of the Brahmanas was identified as one of the Brahmas known to the Buddha long before the Puranas began to grow into their current renditions!

Brahma (Hinduism): A good overview of the Hindu lore of creation, the birth of Brahma, who was to become one of the popular Hindu trinity, and the subsequent gods he created for the sake of expanding his domain. Path to Deification: How we evolve into gods, as understood in the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gnosticism: Pleroma and the Demiurge. Goa'uld and Ori: Two fictive races of false gods in the Stargate universe.

Infidels Against Prabhupada!

"We have organisation, men and money ready for the long fight ahead. As we said before, we will not rest until Srila Prabhupada's movement is returned back to Srila Prabhupada, brick by brick."

— IRM: ISKCON Revival Movement

Butters takes on the cause: Back to Prabhupada! Down with the Infidels!
Background: Ruoholahdenkatu 24, Helsinki — Infidel Headquarters

KrishnaCaitanya.Com - Future of the Website

Back in 2003 we started KrishnaCaitanya.Com, a website for Sri Krishna Chaitanya Shastra Mandir. As it stands, I am no longer actively involved in its operations, and the few outlets we had in Europe and the U.S. have been inoperative since years. In fact, we don't even have a contact e-mail for anyone at Radha-kunda.

The domain is scheduled to expire on the 16th of April, in a month and a half from now. As it stands, the site is badly out of date, and it's questionable what purpose it serves. Since I have enough domains to pay for annually as it is, KrishnaCaitanya.Com will expire in mid-April unless (1) someone wants to sponsor the domain ($10/year) or (2) someone is eager to work on something related and lets me know of the same. (N.B. I am not in a position to coordinate anyone's SKCSM-related efforts aside giving access to the website if someone so wishes.)

Radha-kunda Property Back on the Market

This property has been sold.


Six months ago, we put our Radha-kunda house on the market: 220 square yards of land and a small house amidst a peaceful Vaishnava-community in a prime location, with a five-minute walk to the sacred ponds at the center of the village.

After a lengthy delay, the current buyer has backed away from the deal owing to personal financial constraints. Therefore the property is available again, and at the same price (900,000 INR / 14,000€ / $17,500) despite increased (and increasing) land value. We can also help you through all the legalese and link you up with reliable builders, should you want to develop the property further.

For more details: Radha-kunda Property for Sale

GeeVees - 01.3: Further Experiments in Japa and Meditation

I cannot even begin to count the time I've committed to meditation over the years. Timewise, the bulk of my experiences span from my twelve active years as a Gaudiya Vaishnava, employing the tradition's methodology of meditation with theistic and transcendental objectives.

Over the years, I have also practiced a number of other methods of meditation, many of which form the bulk of this article alongside the Gaudiya roots of my meditative practice. The study of more physical contemplative yogic disciplines like Trataka, Pranayama and Kundalini, and the Chinese arts of Taiji, Chi Gong and Falun gong, have been set aside for another article.

A holy man seated for meditation with his rosary.

In the Gaudiya tradition, mantras are twofold: One category is the public maha-mantra (Hare Krishna Hare Krishna etc.), the other the many secret initiation mantras one receives from a guru. While the latter are almost invariably vocalized in the mind only, the former is also murmured, chanted audibly, and also sung to the accompaniment of instruments as a hymn of prayer and praise.

A japa-mala in its covering bag, underneath the maha-mantra written in Bengali script.

Symbolism of the Rosary

The japa-mala, a sacred rosary made of Tulasi-wood with 108 beads, is employed for the counting of mantras. While the practice is universal, the details and the interpretations vary. Many Gaudiya Vaishnavas take the rosary as symbolic of the rasa-mandala, the circular midnight dance arena of Krishna and the 108 main gopis. The rosary frequently has a string tied in after the eight largest beads, signifying the eight principal gopis.

I cannot recall anyone ever featuring the symbolism in any practical capacity, and so it remains a mystery whether you're supposed to meditate on the eight gopis every time you touch the eight beads, and whether you're supposed to mentally contemplate on the Rasa-dance pastime over and over again, or whether it's just a fancy poetic depiction without much further meaning. The only practical gopi-mandala related practice is a prayer some chant before taking up the rosary:

tri-bhaGga-bhaGgima-rUpaM veNu-randhra-karAJcitam |

gopI-maNDala-madhyasthaM zobhitaM nanda-nandanam || MBD 4.223

“In a three-fold bending form, his fingers curled on the holes of the flute, amidst a circle of gopis is the beautiful son of Nanda.”

While such symbolism can serve as useful initial inspiration, in this case I found no overall practicability to this, whether as an emotional or a visual aid. As for the string, I did find it useful in keeping mental track of even and odd rounds. As I sit for meditation, I'm disinclined from fiddling with the counter beads and breaking my solid posture and energy build-up every few minutes. Crossing the string with your fingers helps you bundle rounds into segments of two, and thence into segments of four and eight, up to where you can chant dozens of rounds and keep accurate mental track of the number without its causing a disturbance.

Author chanting japa in 2007 at Radhakund.

Experiences with Gaudiya Vaishnava Mantras

Rarely do I engage in japa these days, as I've come to find both the accessories and the verbal mantra-formulations distracting in general. Even with the maha-mantra, when I took up chanting en masse during my later days at Radhakund, it became constantly less and less a matter of the individual names in the mantra. Is one seriously supposed to do a focused back-and-forth bouncing contemplation on Radha and Krishna? If the point is to focus on them, it helps solidify your meditation if a single object remains in extended focus.

I personally found the diksha-mantras much more suited to this purpose, the Radha-mantra in particular. It consists of two bijas, the name of Radha in dative, and a closing exhortation. Dhyanachandra lists a common variant of the mantra as zrIM rAM rAdhikAyai svAhA in his manual. Combined with asanas and pranayama, the prolonged vibration of this formula led me to a substantial kundalini-experience — even if the presence and action of kundalini is largely ignored in Gaudiya circles.

The eighteen-syllable Krishna-mantra (astadasaksara-mantra or Gopala-mantra: klIM kRSNAya govindAya gopIjana-vallabhAya svAhA), on the other hand, was a bit lengthy to my liking and less useful for focused contemplation. Again, is one supposed to focus on Krishna, Govinda or Gopijanavallabha? If they are the one and the same, where is there a need for a plurality of names? And if they are different (as any pundit would explain to you), we again have the problem of having to constantly shift our focus.

I remember also growing uneasy over some of the other mantras, the tripartite gayatris in particular, that did not follow the standard meter and rhythm; a symmetric rhythm helps with maintaining focus. In particular, the accessory gayatris for the remaining members of the Panca-tattva and the accessory gayatris for the gopis were rather cumbersome formulations. (I was initiated into a total of 12 mantras and 12 gayatris at Radhakund.)

During my active chanting years, especially with the numeric strength of japa growing to two daily lakhs (128 rounds) and beyond, it was necessary to learn to relate to the ping-pong of names in the maha-mantra. Less a conscious decision and more a natural evolution, the explicit components of the mantra began to withdraw in favor of exposing a spiritual fabric rising from the vibration itself, a vibration underlying the names. It was this presence, of which it seemed a great deal could arise, that I associated with suddha-sattva, the existential fabric of the spiritual world itself. I doubt the idea would pass any orthodoxies, but such was my experience nevertheless.

Replica of Tryambakeshvar Mahadeva, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas located around India.

Experiences with Traditional Hindu Mantras

I have also done a fair amount of japa during my post-Gaudiya time, starting in the summer of 2007 with a brief and final Gaudiya revisit during the Kartika month of the same year. In exploring a future direction, I hopped on a rollercoaster of Advaitic and Buddhist studies, for those were the two traditions I found to be best matching my general spiritual orientation, matching inclinations present from before my contact with Vaishnavism, and latent throughout the years of Vaishnava practice.

In the initial period of exploration I grew quite fond of OM, the classic ultimate chant exhorted in the Upanishads. I found it much more suited for touching the tranquil existential fabric I had conjured with my earlier chantings of maha-mantra. In fact I even experimented for a week on hybrid mental japa of maha-mantra and OM — it's amazing what your mind can pull together once you put it to work. It was rather interesting, but required an excess of mental energy to contain over long term. I settled for the good old OM and was quite happy with it.

The pancaksara-mantra for Shiva (oM namaH zivAya) was a natural expansion of OM, very compact in its formula, carrying the gist of the structural power of the shorter Vaishnava-mantras I had once found useful. Moreover it carried strong Advaitic content, regardless of whether you associated it with the Upanishadic world or the approach of Kashmiri Shaivism, conveying a strong sense of non-dual divinity embodied as the Shiva-archetype. Along with the mantra of Tara, the pancaksara must be the most chanted among my later mantras.

A statue of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, in Kathmandu.

Experiences with Buddhist Mantras

During my travels with the Buddhist monks and beyond, I committed a fair deal of time to some common Buddhist mantras. From the Thai monks I walked with, I learned the practice of chanting the ten ephitets of the Buddha on a rosary (iti 'pi so bhagavo arahaM samma-sambuddho...), which was more of a broad contemplation than a narrow-band mantra even if quite catchy with its irregular rhythm, and also briefly experimented with the shorter Theravadan chant (namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma-sambuddhassa).

A similar wisdom-contemplation was the great Mahayana mantra (oM gate gate para-gate para-saMgate bodhi svAhA) summarizing the heart of Madhyamika-philosophy on the nature of existence, covering the evolving perceptions of form and emptiness, and culminating into bodhi or enlightenment. While not as suited for extended repetition, I found chanting a few rounds to effect a rather refreshing flashback of the fundamentals of existence. Of course, with all mantras and particularly in this case, one must be well acquainted with the meaning of the mantra, and for fuller effect share personal experience of and insight into the said base aspects of reality.

Another genre of mantras employed in the Buddhist tradition are those associated with tantric or Tibetan Buddhism with its approach of contemplating on enlightened archetypal deities. My favorite by far was the mantra of goddess Tara (oM tAre tuttAre ture svAhA), which I practiced along with a refined visualization practice I learned from Atisha's medieval sadhana-manual in the library of the Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu. I also experimented on the mantra of Padmasambhava (oM aH hUM padma-guru vajra-siddhi hUM), a powerful chant in its own right, and the classic mantra of Avalokitesvara (oM maNi padme hUM), the bodhisattva of compassion, a mantra full of soothing lucidity and peace.

The mantra oM maNi padme hUM engraved on a stone wall in Tibetan script at Bodh Gaya.

Other Modes and Methods of Meditation

It was the non-verbal methods of meditation that I was most at home with. I suppose this largely owes to my preference of conceptual thinking over verbalization, or the pazyanti (direct perceptual) level over madhyama (mental verbalization) and vaikhari (external verbalization) stages in Upanishadic terms. Mental and verbal japa still maintain a sense of distance to the object, while conceptual contemplation puts one in an immediate relationship with the object. (This is incidentally also the goal of the Gaudiya way of meditation with its specific object.)

Two old Buddhist practices aiming for samadhi (concentration) and prajna (wisdom) are the heart of all Buddhist meditation. The former, while not directly conducive to the awakening of ultimate wisdom on its own, is a powerful and systematic method for attaining increasing levels of samadhi or jhana (Sanskrit: dhyana) along with their subsequent benefits. The sophisticated jhana-theory of Theravada Buddhism serves as a highly useful reference point for other traditions of object-meditation. Perhaps the most sriking discovery for me in this was in understanding the underlying principles and the inherent similarity between supposedly unique meditative traditions.

Vipassana or insight-meditation, the second of the two divisions of Buddhist meditation, is a direct tool for attaining ultimate wisdom and enlightenment. While vipassana may employ a number of techniques in attaining deep introspective perception and clarity, essentially it's about learning to observe the inherent natures of reality, witnessing the fundamental principles of reality (anicca: temporarity; dukkha: anxiety; anatta: non-selfhood) in all phenomena. While there are methods for enhancing the experience, the core observant principle does not require technical support.

All in all, it's all but clouds at the back of the hall...

Craving, Peace and Spiritual Objectives

I have come to marginalize goal-oriented spiritual practice in my life, having observed that it often leads to results quite antithetical to the desired goal, and instead of contributing to, consumes the sense of perennial tranquility and insight from the inside out. A very elementary Buddhist teaching is that craving leads to misery. Whether one is craving for openly mundane aims, supernatural powers, imaginary liberation or the favors of a supreme god, the very fact that there is craving leads to grief. As such, while I do not systematically seek to practice the said methods (or any other methods), their gist in revealing the natural potentials of the mind seem to have been amicably absorbed.

It is my personal conclusion that the less one attempts to actively manipulate one's spiritual evolution, the more one gains in the way of peace and existential insight. By stopping you progress. By seeking progress you stop. What a beautiful paradox. Now, I could cite any number of Hindu and Buddhist teachers whose teachings ultimately reflect the same, but I don't as I'm more concerned with direct personal experience than I am with the spiritual systematizations of another, no matter how wise he may have been.

Not that one isn't to learn of the experiences of others — but neither is one to assume he can successfully lead the life and grasp the insights of another without eventually developing his own. Whatever we learn is to be personally experimented on, experienced, and incorporated into our own unique frame of reference. We are what we are, and exactly at the place we are — independent of anyone's projections of what and where we ought to be according to his system. Walk your own way, I say. Or rather, stop and be happy.

Gaudiya Discussions Archives - Back Online

These are the reinstated archives of Gaudiya Discussions, the once mighty giant of online Gaudiya Vaishnava discussions, debates, history, theology, controversy and creativity. Browse the 3440 threads in 42 forums, unearth the treasures, escape the gremlins, and come out the other end a bit wiser than you were.

Some hated it. Some loved it. Some avoided it, not knowing what to think of it. It made an impact, and it deserves to be available for the future as an important attempt at exploring, experiencing and documenting the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition.

http://www.gaudiyadiscussions.com/

Religious Leaders Condemn Bad Album Cover (DP)

Dissociated Press
Thursday, Feb 19, 2009
Maui, Hawaii

Following the bold portrayal of a former Hare Krishna devotee as Michael Jackson in a manipulated version of his 1987 album Bad, religious leaders the world over have condemned both the rancid illustration and the anonymous artist involved. Members of International Shiva Council based in Maui, Hawaii, have been rallying the island's popular beaches, handing out matchboxes and print-outs of the said illustration, modified to include the words "death to infidels".

Offending cover contrasted with other contemporary examples of alleged blasphemy.

Sources tell the artist has fled to Denmark and now lives in a burrow on the plains somewhere south of Copenhagen, now a participant in a high-level witness identity protection program of Danish Security Intelligence Service (DSIS). "It was like the Mohammed comic strip episode all over again, only ten times worse," said a representative for the Ministry of Interior, declining to comment on government involvement in the artist's protection.

A representative for International Shiva Council of Latter-day Michael Jacksons (SCLAMJA), a new religious organization who reveres Michael Jackson as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, compared this to the 1967 outrage caused by the cover of Axis: Bold as Love by Jimi Hendrix, in which the musician's face was superimposed to an old Hindu painting depicting the universal form of God. Readers who are not old hippies may also be reminded of the cover of Aerosmith's 1997 album Nine Lives, depicting Krishna dancing atop the many-hooded Kaliya-snake with his head replaced with a cat's.

Michael Jackson, currently visiting the Never-Never Land, was unavailable for comment. A press release from the artist's public relations office notes in a jovial tone that if Mr. Jackson is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, despite the fact that he really wants to be Peter Pan, then surely he wishes for all his little friends to be Supreme Personalities of Godhead too. Or in the now God's own words, "Why can't you share your bed? That's the most loving thing to do, to share your bed with someone." (DP)

Bottom Line: I'm Bad

Are you perhaps trying to prove something to yourself, not to others? Perhaps trying to convince yourself that you're not such a bad person after all? Satisfying your narcissist tendencies?

All of that and a bag of chips for sure! Dedicated to all anonymous internet commentators — the future is yours chaps, procreate and prosper!

Your Butt Is Mine

Gonna Take You Right

Just Show Your Face

In Broad Daylight

I'm Telling You

On How I Feel

Gonna Hurt Your Mind

Don't Shoot To Kill

Come On, Come On,

Lay It On Me All Right...

Because I'm Bad, I'm Bad - Come On

(Bad Bad - Really, Really Bad)

You Know I'm Bad, I'm Bad -You Know It

(Bad Bad - Really, Really Bad)

You Know I'm Bad, I'm Bad - Come On, You Know

(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)

And The Whole World Has To Answer Right Now

Just To Tell You Once Again,

Who's Bad . . .

The Banishment of the Watch-Maker

"You can't talk about karma without God, for every law needs a law-maker!" Or so I was told by someone who had read my earlier article discussing universal and Buddhist concepts of karma. Do we really need to have an intelligent designer for each and every minuscule aspect of existence, or does the world turn every bit as well without a cosmic architect?

Despite my sincerest efforts, it just didn't add up in the end.

Foundational Fallacy

It is quite meaningless for someone to just say that every law or principle requires a law-maker. A hypothesis employing deductive analogy is far from a conclusive standard of evidence. Analogy meaning the hypothesis that the principles of our human world would be identical to those of any second dimension, of which we may deduce that just as every law of human world is made by a human maker, so every principle in existence requires an intelligent designer.

Does this make sense? Is it logical? Of that, we have little evidence. Our experiences in the human world may be manifold, but the human world is not an archetype from which to derive and reconstruct any and all higher dimensions of existence. After all, in the human world all things come to an end, and grief is inherent in existence, but the supposed god and his domain are invariably in breach of these fundamental principles.

It is really rather naive to assume that our form of existence would be the only extant form of conscious life, thence creating the myth of how exceptionally rare a coincidence it is that we should exist as we do. This ill-assumed exceptionality again gives rise to theories of intelligent design, and culminate in concluding that the great intelligent designer must be akin in principle to those now considering themselves the created. Ladies and gentlemen, the anthropomorphic creator god is now seated on his throne.

Had god had a sense of humor, two plus two would equal five.

Self-evident Principles

When a man opens his palm holding an apple, the apple falls. Do you need a law-maker for that? The intrinsic properties of the variables bring about a certain conjoint effect by their own natures. Gravity exists in a situation where objects with mass attract each other. Where these conditions don't exist, the said phenomenom does not occur. We happen to be in a place where objects with mass attract each other, hence the apple invariably falls to the ground. Should we shift our location to outer space, for example, the apple would no longer fall owing to different coefficients.

You don't need a law-maker to decide whether 2+2=4 or not. The intrinsic values of two identical variables add up to a combined result of twice their value, automatically and without need for divine design or intervention. Everything is the way it is in the human world because the variables happen to be right for a particular variety of existence. In other conditions, the variables would either create a foundation for a different variety of existence, subject to the effects of the interacting variables, or none at all if their current synergy would be too weak to effect such, in which case they would remain latent pending a change in surrounding effectors.

Moreover, causes and effects require no will of their own to interact. Any given effect is the only possible outcome of the exact interacting causes in the exact environment of variables. Theoretically, knowledge of each intricate aspect contributing to a situation would give a passive observer, who knows the potentials of each aspect, the ability to foresee any given event or series of events with perfect accuracy. Advanced capacity in recognizing variables and patterns is what the ancients called omniscience, while omnipotence was the derived capability for intricate manipulation of variables to effect the desired outcome.

Why would you possibly need a watch-maker, a compassionate watcher, a passionate interventionist or a dutiful maintenance man for any of the above to function as it already does?

The beginningless dance of infinite co-efficent factors

Beginningless Redundance of Creator

The concept of an original law-maker-cum-creator is every bit as flawed in the light of Vedanta as it is before plain logic. The Brahma-sutra states that existence is anadi or beginningless. Beginningless by its very definition indicates that there has never been a dawn of existence where principles of interaction would have first been established, rendering the necessity for a god or a law-maker entirely redundant. If the wheel of existence has been turning without a beginning, the concept of an original creator becomes a paradox by its very definition.

The principle of causality, then, is a beginningless field of coefficient exchange requiring no designer or supreme intelligent coordinator for its functioning. Everything is in a constant state of flux, each factor in motion and shaping the other, two causes giving birth to a new effect that naturally follows. The momentum of each factor escalates its contacted surroundings, giving rise to infinite new causal chains, even as the sum total of energy remains constant. I call it the dance of the universe, as also the great weaving of cosmic fields. If there must be a god, let him be the symmetric caleidoscope of the universe.

Continued: The God Who Created the God Who Created the God »