"Imagine" is the solace I needed today

After hearing about today's attacks in Paris, I considered writing a blog post about religious fundamentalism. But then I realized that John Lennon had already said everything I wanted to say.

And in a much better way.
-------------------------------

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

 

 

 

Comments

[Richard van Pelt]

The usual suspects will say that Islam "is only one fundamentalism that does this!"

There was a time and a period when Christians routinely did this. Today, Christians just kill with their words, narrow, bigoted, and spiteful people who will hold entire groups at fault for the actions of groups no one has contol over. These pious and self-righteous paragons, though, have no problem whatsoever using the tools of the state to use the state to impose on others values they can find only through their reading of scripture. If this is not sharia-type fundamentalism, I don't know what is.

On another forum, I made the following comments, which I think are germane here:

I cannot do anything about your narrow-minded bigotry. It is your right as an American to be bigoted as it is your right to hold values that undermine the principles upon which this country was created. I don’t respect your values, but I have to accept your right to hold them.

I weep that four out of ten of us believe as you do. I weep that another four out of ten are utterly ambivalent to the values you hold. It will cheer you that there are so few of us willing to stand up to the toxic principles you represent.

I weep that there are those like you whose faith is so strong they would use secular legislation in order to impose religious values upon the rest of us while despising those who believe other than yourself.

I weep that there are so few who will not stand up in defense of the pluralism of American values that allow people to co-exist, working together to make this a society based upon respect rather than rejection. Rejection seems to be the direction this country is headed, and if so, you have to accept the consequences.

But I will not accept your accusing me of supporting the vicious actions of ISIS simply because I respect the religious values of others. As much as I disagree with your faith-based values, I do not condemn all Christians. Nor do I condemn all Muslims for the infection that plagues their co-believers.

[david r]

Richard, read your first sentence in this text you typed and then read the last paragraph you typed.

Do you not see any discrepancy?

[tucson]

Richard,
Christians, even fundamentalists, are not known for routinely blowing up and shooting crowds of people, torturing, burning alive, raping and cutting heads off, etc. as do radical Islamists. There is a difference between the two in that regard.

"Imagine" is a nice dream, an ideal to aspire to, but unfortunately there are many who believe in a religion with a heaven and something to kill and die for.

There is no solace from this. Just war.

[Robert Searle]

The following maybe of interest if not already known on this site.

http://www.livemint.com/Companies/PWoKIHBfQfDUWSu0Z9vgsJ/Shivinder-Singhs-ties-with-lowprofile-sect-go-beyond-spiri.html

[cc]

Imagine" is a nice dream, an ideal to aspire to

You can see it that way, or you can see it as a thought experiment.

If you can imagine a world without religion, you know how unnecessary and pestilential religion is. If you can't imagine a world without religion, you're hopelessly religious.

[Jim Sutherland]

OCCULT INITIATION from SPIRIT to CONSCIOUSNESS with out HOLY BOOKS

We are here, ( in the Earth Light Zone, having left the Twilight Zone ) where ever we happen to be, at this very moment, imagining how our lives might be different, had we departed our place in the Spirit world, entered a womb, bonded with a fetus, and matured to being delivered into our present material bodies into this world of ,.....confusion.

Were we born with any particular Holy Book, or Scripture, or Owner's Manual hanging around our necks, instructing our parents how to care for us, or what we needed in order to reach self sufficiency and to be able to take care of our selves?

Imagine, that we arrived here, in our present material environment, that there had never been a single Holy Book written, not a single past human that had ever shared any religious or occult, or esoteric information with any human up to now!

We would have to decide on our own, all the mysteries of birth, life, death, and survival from the womb to the tomb. Could we do it, and remain human? Would society be better, or worse, with out all the religions, denominations, secret mystery schools, sects, with all the names we have become familiar with, and most of us have chosen to join one or more, and to become involved by either being followers, or leaders?

But, again, what if no Holy Books of instructions penned by inspired past humans had ever been written?
The only instructions we would be able to learn from, would be given to us orally, and by Teachers who we would choose to listen to, and we would be able to gauge what they told us by their actions! In other words, we could witness if they walked their talk, or talked their walk, or did they prefer to teach others, or us, to "do what we say, not what we do!"

But, considering that no Holy Books had ever been written by any past teachers, we would need to be taught by any one we chose as our teachers, by witnessing how they lived, how they treated their family and others, and we would be able to know most aspects of their lives, if we chose to follow in their foot steps, if we wanted to live as they do.

Now, considering the above, so far, are there ANY such individuals, who YOU would choose to follow and become a disciple of, by knowing that particular teacher or leader had never read a single holy book, or had ever been taught by any past leader that had read any such holy book of instructions, or had never been initiated into any secret society, fraternity, club, other than Consciousness, in the material body, having arrived from some mysterious place outside our present bodies?

That is exactly how our early human ancestors arrived in human bodies on planet earth, from where ever they came from. They arrived here with out Holy Books hanging around their necks, or written any where on their anatomy!

But, ....they all arrived with software that had to be down loaded into their hardware, and once the software packages were down loaded, and run through their planet earth Anti-Malware Virus programs, ( All Holy Books of instructions had been deleted from memory) they would need to OK new additions of software into their ( our) hardware, from then on!

Once we were on our own, and had graduated our parent guardian's care, we would need to choose our own ways to live in human society, that had grown to present from the beginning, with out any participant ever having access to, or having read a single holy book of religious instructions or myths.

We then would have to choose our own medicine or poison! WE would be constantly flooded with decisions of either rejecting, or accepting habits that our family, friends, and peers have already made part of their lives! And, we would be able to actually SEE and WITNESS the lives of those that we chose to participate, or reject in their habits or medicines.

Consider how our present lives might be different than they are presently, considering what we were spoon fed and forced to believe by our parents, teachers, gurus, priests, ministers, clergy, nuns, shamans, occultists, magicians, ....deceivers, heretics, and the list could be never ending.

I do not want to name any sect, but running searches on Google of denominations, religions, secret societies, etc, would take many life times just to wade through the basics of a few of them! Wikipedia could keep one busy reading an entire life time, alone!

But, our ancestors did not have Google, nor the Internet, and they relied on holy books, written by people we could not witness in action. Consider, further, any original thoughts written could have been changed, with other additional thoughts either added or deleted to suit their purposes of the times, by editors, scribes, etc. as well as translated from language to language, where many original thoughts were lost in translation. Our earliest ancestors arrived here with only their spiritual software, and survived. Could we now also survive, if we had to, and if so, would we be better or worse as humans?

Of course, we would need to include philosophy, and philosophers, in the same examples, because they are only another branch of non-religious religion, as well as Atheism, Deism, Occultism, Mysticism, Charletism, or any Isms!

We each would need to be led by only what our inherited software we arrived here with, and was installed in our hardware, ( brains) instructed us about how to live! But, considering all the present holy books haven been downloaded into our hardware, ( brains), our hardware has been turned into mushware!

Then, we would all be asked to consider accepting or rejecting opportunities in material life such as:

Diets: what should we eat, that would be the healthiest for nourishing our bodies, while doing the least damage to the planet earth, or taking life from other lower species?

Medicines: Would we participate or reject alcohol, tobacco, any kind of addictive drugs, or natural herbs?

Considering, none of us had ever seen or heard about any 10 Commandments, or any other "Thou shalt nots" from any prior holy books, we would need to make our own decisions based on what our elders shared with us, or told us, but we would be able to WITNESS what effect our elders choices had or was having on them!

Would we participate in war, if called to kill other human beings?

With out listing wrongs or rights, we each would be held responsible to either participate or reject, each opportunity for either further progression, or suppression of our individual spirit/souls,.....if we had implanted software that even registered such ideas.

The above is only food for thought, if we decide we might like to take personal inventories of our present implanted moral values.

How ever we arrived here, or Who or What ever sent us here,....will remain a mystery,. ....until we graduate these present earth suits.

[777]

Jim wrote

""" But, considering all the present holy books haven been downloaded into our hardware, ( brains), our hardware has been turned into mushware!"""

This was very good food , Jim
enjoyed it very much

Yzs , most of us specially those with high IQ depend less on intuition
and serendipities and function with bad software, a pirate copy of an old Operating System O/S
and that in an old damaged PC, to warm, with corrupted disks and trojan memory
not to speak about the Processor
The stone ager had much more intuition

That what lucky enough is still somewhat available is : conscience,
different in each of us ;
in the adi granth, first page defined as ( His Will, ingrained in us )
and also that was damaged as you described by family, tribes and dirty books etc
according to each one's karma, somewhat improved by spare lines in real holy books, poems , like Rumi s.

I think you are open to the claim I made on this blog and proved the mathematic-actuarial
way that "this type of Jim' existing actually , . .
is smaller than each day winning the lotto, . . . even smaller and to multiply with a number bigger than the total of all electrons in this univers and that to that same power
It proved that actual Jim is impossible
and by virtue that Jim wrote a comment here anyway , . . : JIM IS GOD

I explained this somewhat broader in former comments about Brian, but
he didn't like to accept this 100% proof
because his head would explode ( paraphrasing :)

So, isn't it normal that
God preferred for limited time to do away with memory and omnipotence
and specially omni-science to experience JIM

He did it a myriad ways on this planet and with all universes because this method to accumulate Love big time worked fine.
She is doing myriads of other tricks , one blisser than another all with the same goal which is Love
She can't get enough of it !

It's so strange that really great IQ scientists like Hawking do not believe that
The reason is that to believe it really you have to experience it,

The experience is in the Sound Current
and it's so smooth a way.
Shame that many don't have a little patience
or by increasing ego go opposite

You told once what you desire, please do the smooth thing

777