CHRISTIANITY, OLD AND NEW

Ozodi Osuji

Introduction

At the beginning of each year, for as long as I can remember, I go back to my old Bible and start reading it. I usually start with the Gospel according to Matthew, then proceed to Mark, Luke, and John, proceed to the Epistles, and end with Revelation (I have the New International Version). If I feel like it, but it is not mandatory, I go to the Old Testament and begin reading Genesis, and by the time I have gotten to the middle of the Old Testament, I may give up. One thing is for certain, however, I read the New Testament, at least once a year. Something happened this January, though; it became crystal clear to me that what the Old Testament taught, what the New Testament taught, and what New Age Christianity teaches are different from each other. I decided to see if I could write about these differences and reconcile them. Let us begin with the Old Testament.

THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Old Testament is the story of Jewish people. I often wonder why the early Christians, those who put the bible together, apparently, at the behest of Emperor Constantine in 325 CE, added the Old Testament to the Christian Bible. It does not seem to belong to the Bible. I am guessing that they added it to the New Testament to give the message of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, who was a Jew, historical continuity. It seems to me that the Old Testament should have been left as it was, the Jewish Torah (Moses’ five books), the Tanakh (Nevi, and Ketuvim), and Christians simply used the New Testament.

Whatever the reason behind having Christians read the Old Testament, what I garnered from it is that there was a man called Moses and that he wrote five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. After Moses were Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, Second Kings, First Chronicles, Second Chronicles, then Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Palms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zecharia, Malachi.

All these writings dealt with Jews and do not seem relevant to other people. Be that as it may, one understands that the Jewish God, Yahweh, created the world and set the rules of its operation. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and later other laws were added and those must be obeyed by Jews. Yahweh is a law-and-order God (the word God is English but is derived from old German, Guda). His laws must be obeyed or else he punishes you.

For example, In the book of Genesis, he asked Adam and Eve, his first created human beings, not to eat the fruits of a certain tree and they ate it; for that infraction, they were chased out of the Garden of Eden and no longer lived by his grace where all their needs were satisfied by him, God; from the day they disobeyed God, they had to work for their living and were no longer eternal and had to die. The wage of sin is death. And not only were they punished but their offspring were punished; human beings, in as much as they are affiliated with Christianity, are said to be still suffering from the original sin. They are still to be saved from that sin; Jesus Christ is said to be here to save them if they ask him and obey his commandments.

After death, God still judges people; those who live according to his laws are rewarded with eternal life and those who disobey him are relegated to eternal hellfire. There is no in-between, you are either innocent and he rewarded you with heaven or you are not, and he banished you to hell.

The God of the Old Testament is the God of fear and punishment; you must fear him and do what he asked you to do or else he punished you. Thus, the Jews, for whom the God of the Old Testament addressed his laws, because they were his supposed special children, the rest of us are not, tried to live by these strict laws.

According to their history, from the day that Abraham left Ur, near today’s Baghdad, in Iraq, the Jews have had four thousand years of continuous, unbroken history. They are one of the few longest-lasting human civilizations, including Egypt, Sumer/Mesopotamia, China, Persia, India, etc.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

In 4 BC, Josuah was born to Joseph and Mary at Bethlehem, in Judea, Israel; and at the age of thirty, he was baptized by John the Baptist and thereafter declared his mission.

He called himself the son of Man, and later the son of God. In several parts of the four gospels delineating what he did during his three years of ministry, he made it abundantly clear that he is the only path to attaining salvation, reaching God. No one comes to God except through Jesus Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ.

John 14:16

“ In John 14:16, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him.”1. In Matthew 7:26-27 and Matthew 10:32-33, Jesus says, “If you don’t follow me, you will not be in the kingdom of God.”3. In John 11:25, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.”

To reach God you must, therefore, accept Jesus Christ as God’s only anointed son; you cannot be saved by yourself or by other people but by accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and Savior.

Jesus accepted the teachings of the Old Testament that there is a God and that God punishes those who disobey him by relegating them to eternal hell fire. But in the world of the here and now, he modified the teaching of the Old Testament by emphasizing love and forgiveness.

Matthew 25:41

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Jesus emphasized love and forgiveness in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 2-12) and his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7).

In the sermon on the Mount, Jesus made it clear that we must love God and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Matthew 18:21-22.

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant also stresses the need to forgive: 21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

Essentially, one is to love God and obey his commandments and love one’s neighbor as one loves one and forgive one’s neighbor the wrongs they did to one.

36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22: 36-40.

After his crucifixion, resurrection, and departure from earth, his followers are to ask the Holy Spirit, the comforter, and counselor he was going to send to them to guide them; they are not to make any decision without asking the Holy Spirit to tell them what to do. By their selves they do not know what is good for them and only Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit, God in the temporal universe can tell them what is right or wrong. (John 14: 13-31)

The Catholic Church later posited the idea of the Holy Trinity, three selves in oneself: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit. These three are one God. The Son of God is only Jesus Christ. Since the Son of God after his crucifixion has returned to heaven, He and God sent God the Holy Spirit into the world, and we are to ask him for guidance for as long as we live on earth. Jesus talked about the Holy Trinity thus:

“In the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19), Jesus linked the three persons: “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.”1 In John 16:7-15, Jesus speaks about the ministry of the Holy Spirit and refers to the three persons in the one God.2 In John 14:9, Jesus tells Philip, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father,” emphasizing the unity and distinct roles within the Trinity.3

Christ, the Anointed One, the Jewish Messiah who came to save Jews is now seen as the savior of the entire humankind even though he initially said that he came to save Jews:

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to Him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.”

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So, his disciples came to Him and urged Him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” 24 He answered, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel.”

25 The woman came and knelt before Him. “Lord, help me!” she said. 26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (Matthew 15: 21-28)

The word Christ is of Greek origin; Jesus is also of Greek origin. The man’s Jewish names were Joshua and Immanuel, and his father’s name was Joseph; thus, correctly, he is called Joshua Ben Joseph. The Greeks changed Joshua to Jesus and changed the Jewish Messiah to Christ, thus, the man is now known by two Greek names.

Greek was the language of the educated class in Judea and much of the Middle East when Jesus was born; Alexander the Great conquered the area around 300 BC and the people were socialized to speak Greek (and Aramaic); the Romans conquered Palestine in 53 BC but instead of imposing their Latin language allowed the educated class to still speak and write in Greek.

Christ is a status, the Son of God status. It is a status that only Jesus, according to traditional Christians, has; the rest of us can be guided by Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit to salvation but we are not Christ or the son of God.

This raises the question: whose sons, are we? New Age Christianity answered that question by saying that we are all the sons of God, and when we are loving and forgiving, as God is, we are the Christ.

NEW AGE CHRISTIANITY

New-age Christianity borrowed heavily from Asian religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, and Greek Gnosticism; it is the result of the encounter between East and West; it evolved gradually and was not formulated in one setting.

In the nineteenth century, they called aspects of it transcendentalism, key thinkers of whom were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; such churches as the Church of Christian Science (1875), Unity Church (1889), and Church of Religious Science (1922) were early members of the new age Christianity.

The insights of Channelers, such as Helen Schucman (1975), A Course in Miracles; Jane Roberts (1972). Seth Speaks and other Seth books and Robert Monroe’s (1992) Journeys Out of Body added to the corpus of what is today called New Age Christianity.

One of the differences between regular Christians and New Age Christians is that new agers believe that each of us is a Son of God and if one lives as Jesus did, lovingly, one attains Christ’s status.

A Course in Miracles says that to attain Christ status one must jettison the ego-self that one made for one’s self, a self that one uses to replace the self that God created one as, and reclaim one’s real self, the son of God, the Christ, who is egoless, not separated from God and his other creation, who is oneself with God and all creation.

This view of us as the sons of God reminds us of Hinduism. See Swami Bhaskrananda, Essential Hinduism, 2002 and M The Gospel of Ramakrishna (1949), And Yogi Yogananda, the Autobiography of a Yogi (2000).

In Hinduism there is a God/Self-called Brahman; that Self has a part or in Christian categories a son called Atman. Brahman and Atman are oneself. Somehow, Atman, a part of God now seems separated from Brahman and lives as an ego-separated self-called Ahankara.

The goal of Hinduism is to guide the individual to stop seeing himself as a separated self, Ahankara, ego and reclaim his real self, Atman. When he experiences that Self in Samadhi, he is said to have become enlightened to his real self and become illuminated that he is part of the formless, spiritual light called God.

Buddhism aims at accomplishing the same goal in Nirvana, in Zen called Satori, the experience of oneness, and unity with God, where the individual’s ego disappears, and he knows himself as one with God. See Maurice Walshe (1995). The Long Discourses of the Buddha.

Jesus taught that there is Satan, the Devil, and evil and wicked behavior in people and that there is heaven and hell. He believed in demons and was all over the place casting demons and evil spirits out of people, healing the sick, and raising the dead to life. No other human being in history has performed the supernatural miracles Jesus is said to have performed ( he gave his apostles the ability to heal people but they did not do as much as he did, because, as he said, they were men of little faith; with strong faith, one can tell the mountain to move into the sea and it does so, and one can ask God whatever one wants and get it).

Matthew 21:21

“Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.”

John 14:13

“Jesus said that if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer12. In John 14:13, Jesus also said whatever you ask in His name, He will do it.”

If one is evil and wicked Jesus taught that one will be punished, relegated to eternal hell fire.

New Age religions do not accept hellfire and punishment for evil behaviors. Helen Schuman’s A Course in Miracles, one of the bibles of New Age Christianity, insists that we love one another and forgive one another our sins. All we need for salvation is love and forgiveness. Love and forgive all and you regain the awareness of yourself as the son of God, the Christ self. See A Course in Miracles chapters 2 and 31.

If you have lived in this world long enough and understand that some people are evil and do damage to other people, you ask: how is the wicked made less evil in our world?

In our world, we know that some people are evil, such as Adolf Hitler, what do we do to them? Forgive them? Will forgiving Hitler make him stop killing people, take over all of Europe, make Russians servants of his Germans, and take over Russia to the Ural Mountains, as he planned to do in his foreign policy, Lebensraum? (See Adolf Hitler, 1925, Mein Kampf.)

Our experience on planet Earth tells us that forgiving murderers, thieves, and rapists does not stop them from engaging in antisocial behaviors and being criminals. What stops them is force and punishment.

You arrest criminals, try them in courts of law, punish them by sending them to jails and prisons, or kill them, as in capital punishment. If you want to prevent wickedness on earth, you have to be tough on criminals; indeed, empirical evidence indicates that criminals inherit bodies that are less prone to fear and anxiety and have no feeling of remorse and guilt for their wrongdoing; they even seem to derive sadistic pleasure from hurting people!

There is no doubt that the idea of God punishing evil people upon their death contributes to making people law-abiding. Remove fear of God’s punishment and society’s punishment of evil people and many people will run amok killing and stealing from other people.

Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Asian religions posit the idea of Karma; here, it is said that what people do on earth has consequences for them in this lifetime and the next lifetimes; people are said to reincarnate back to this world when they die; those who were evil in past lives are punished with diseases and poverty in their present lives.

The idea of karma is a means of checking people’s proclivity to wicked behavior.

Jesus asked his followers to obey the temporal governments they lived under and pay taxes:

Mark 12: 17

“Well, then,” Jesus said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” His reply completely amazed them. Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him.”

Matthew 22:21

“So, Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

In New Age Christianity, you do not need Jesus Christ to save you, you can save you. All you need to do is recognize that God created you as his son, and since God is love, you love God, love yourself, love all people, and forgive those who wronged you.

According to Helen Schucman’s A Course in Miracles, to be on earth, one opposes God by separating from him and inventing a substitute self, the ego-separated self, and makes it one’s God and worships it. The ego is the symbol of the son of God’s opposition to his father; his father says that he is one with him and all creation but the son wants to be separated and created the ego and housed it in a vulnerable body that feels weak and attacked by all kinds of things, such as other people, bacteria, virus, and fungi and defends his self.

See A Course in Miracles – Chapter 2: The Separation and the Atonement – I. The Origins of Separation.

The desire for the ego-separated self and its defense makes it seem real. Now stop desiring the ego-separated self and do not defend it and you relapse back to the awareness of your oneness with God and thereafter you live as the eternal son of God, the Christ.

You do not need any religion’s clergy to guide and exploit you; you can find salvation by yourself. Just love and forgive all and you are saved from the ego’s hell and prison.

Love and forgive all and then meditate, Buddha’s style; in meditation, you jettison identification with the ego, tell yourself that you are not separated from God and other people and that who you are you do not know, give up the ego, make your mind empty, void and who you are, by itself, will dawn on your awareness.

You are a part of God, part of oneself. You can do this by yourself and do not need governments, religious authorities, churches, clergy, the pope, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests to save you, you do not need Jesus Christ, except as an example of a saved person.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him said Sheldon Kopp (1982), meaning that you can save yourself and do not need external saviors. See Dalai Lama (2019). The Stages of Meditation.

Helen Schucman said that there is no external universe or world; what we see as the world outside us is the projection of our thoughts.

Imagine the external world as a space, and each of us thinks and projects his thoughts, in images, into that space. Then we see our collective thoughts and projections; perception is projection, she said; without our thoughts, nothing exists.

There is nothing to see outside us. What we see out there are our projections. I do not see you as you are (you are a thought in the mind of God; God himself is also a thought), and you do not see me as I am (I am an idea). I am merely seeing my projections to you, and you are seeing your projections to me. The world of God is the dance of ideas inside the idea called God.

Without our thoughts, ideas, and projections the universe does not exist. I do not exist in the body; you do not exist in the body; we are ideas in each other’s minds and project our ideas out as the pictures of each other that we see.

If we remove our ego-based thinking we stop seeing the external world we projected and return to the awareness of formless oneness, One God with infinite parts, all ideas in each other, with no space and time between them.

New-age Christians give the impression that there is no hell. But not every person who has died or had a near-death experience has seen God.

Generally, those who have had near-death experiences report that only those who are loving and forgiving people go to the world of light forms when they die on Earth.

Only a handful of people, such as Jesus Christ and Buddha go beyond the world of light forms and reach the formless world of unified spiritual light, aka God and his heaven.

Wicked people, upon death on earth, do not see the world of light forms; they are in the in-between world, between the earth and the world of light form, in darkness; from that world of darkness, they reincarnate back to our world of dark forms.

That is, there are four possible places of being:

1. God’s formless, unified spiritual world, aka heaven.

2. The world of light forms.

3. The world of dark forms, our world.

4. The in-between world, between our earth and the world of light forms, darkness (hell where lost folks grope in darkness until they reincarnate on earth).

SCIENCE

One can try to ignore all religions and simply do science. Scientists study the world of space, time, and matter. We all must study those. But who is studying science?

Is the self and its mind a mere epiphenomenal thing thrown up by the play of electrons, photons, and atoms in our brains? One wishes that life is that simple. But life is not that simple.

Consciousness is affected by our biochemistry and biophysics but that is not all there is to us. There is a self in us, a thinker in us, a dreamer in us; what it is I do not know.

To deny that there is something in us that we do not know, something that is dreaming of ourselves in the world of space, time, and matter is stupidity itself.

You can play the atheistic scientist and pretend that you do not think that there is a part of us that is outside matter, but the fact is that logical considerations prompt us to entertain the idea that there is something outside matter even if we cannot prove it to be true.

If we limit ourselves to the study of matter, certain findings in that study suggest that there is something non-material going on in matter. Consider quantum entanglement. You entangle two particles of light and then separate them and place them at the opposite ends of the universe, trillions of miles apart from each other, and touch one and it reacts, the other particle at the opposite end of the universe instantaneously reacts as if you also touched it, regardless of the space separating it from the particle you touched. This suggests that the two particles react non-locally, could be one, and are in each other without space separating them.

In 1944, John Wheeler suggested that all electrons are one electron! Many bizarre behaviors of particles suggest that they seem to behave as one particle and are one.

Nevertheless. Even if we prove quantum mechanics it is not going to demonstrate the existence of mind and self. This is because the self and its mind are outside matter; it is they that invented energy and matter and use them to do work.

A SIMULATED UNIVERSE

I suspect that the idea of the simulated universe is true; we, as spirits, while remaining as spirits in one unified spirit, aka God, invent the material universe and project simulated aspects of us, dream figures, into the universe, the dream, and make the simulated selves do what they do on earth, just as we do when we sleep and dream and project dream figures into our dreams, and they do what our sleeping minds ask them to do; the dream selves do not know that there is another mind using them to do what is done in the dream.

We, in bodies, on earth, seem real but are the dream figures of our real selves, which are nonmaterial, parts of a unified spirit Self. We remain in a formless unified spirit self, God, and, as it were, go to sleep and dream ourselves in the physical universe, and the universe and the people, us, in it seems real but is not real, is a simulated universe, a collective dream.

SCIENCE-BASED NEW CHRISTIANITY

Human beings are born in bodies; they are born into existing societies of people. They immediately formulate self-concepts and translate those into self-images. They do not remember how they formed their self-conceptions but what is evident is that by the time a child begins elementary school, usually, at age six, his self-concept and self-image are in place.

Each child has a sense of who he or she thinks he is. Each person has a self. The self is constructed, as George Kelly (1958) pointed out, with the building blocks of the child’s inherited biological constitution and his social experience.

The child says, in effect, this body and the self in it is the person that I am. That self has two parts to it, the part presented to the world of other people to relate to and the inner self, the nice social self, the hidden self that other people do not see.

The part presented to other people to relate to generally tries to behave in a prosocial manner so that other people would get along with it; it is a social mask, a persona, a mask, a personality.

Carl Jung saw the social self, the human personality, as a mask, and behind it is a spiritual self, the creator of the social self, the human personality. We do not consciously understand the self beneath the human personality. Jung’s Depth psychology (1935) attempts to reach the self in the collective unconscious mind.

The inner self, which other people do not see, according to Alfred Adler (1921) wants to be especially powerful, important, and superior to other people. The inner self seeks power and wants to be able to use that power to navigate through its world; in some cases, it wants to be the most powerful self in the world (such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and other dictators).

In some cases, the inner self feels that as it is, it is not good enough and wishes for what Karen Horney (1950) calls the ideal self, a self that is perfect. That superior, powerful, and perfect self is the result of the child’s experience in his body and society.

The superior wishing self feels that if it does not act superior it will be overwhelmed by the exigencies of the world and die; it is motivated by fear of harm and death. It does not want to die. It wants to be a separated self that is competing with other separated selves and live for as long as possible. Indeed, it wants to live forever and fears death.

Alas, it is living in the body, and the body is very vulnerable; the body can be harmed by other people, bacteria, viruses, and fungi and become sick and die.

One must feed one’s body with food, medicate it, clothe it, and house it to make it survive. Thus, the individual not only wishes to live as a powerful, separated self but must defend that self’s body or it dies.

As long as the individual wishes to have a separate self-housed in body and defends it, which we all do on earth, he must suffer.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Gautama Buddha (see Maurice Walshe, 1995) said that human beings exist to suffer. They suffer because they have desires, including desires to be separated from other selves and have the material things it takes to support a separated life in the body. He said that to end human suffering one must give up all desires, including the desire to live as a separate self in body.

If one gives up the desire for a separated self, Buddha said, one simply experiences himself as part of life. Life is one.

One life manifests in infinite people, animals, and trees. If one did not seek a separate self and defend it, one would know that one is part of life, no more no less.

In Buddhist meditation, one is told to give up the desire for a separated self, give up all identification with the ego-separated self and body, and allow one’s mind to be blank, void, and empty of all ego-based thinking. (See Dalai Lama 2019)

Those who manage to make their minds an empty slate for one hour claim that they lost their prior sense of separate self and experience themselves as part of one unified life. They say that unified life cannot be explained in words and language because language and speech evolved to enable separated people to communicate with each other.

In the non-separated state, there is no need for language and speech; the individual knows himself as part of one unified life.

That unified life has no beginning and no end; it is an eternal, permanent, and changeless life. That unified self is said to be peaceful and happy, but it does not have a sense of this or that ego-separated self, it is just life.

That unified life is supreme intelligence; what we call intelligence on earth cannot comprehend it.

Without desire for ego and defense of the separate ego, one gains access to that infinite intelligence, the intelligence that makes everything in our universe possible, for it produced them and yet is not them.

I believe that we are each a manifestation of that infinite connected intelligence. What it is I do not know.

It is the eternal intelligence that human beings, all over the world, call God and worship him. Occasionally, people like Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ let go of their attachment to separated selves, or as Jesus would say, die to their old ego self-concepts and self-images and allow a new self to be reborn in them, the new self is the Christ self, the Buddha self, the son of God who is one with God and all his creations.

In Christological language, God and his son, the whole self and its parts, are one shared self with one shared mind. They live in a formless, peaceful state.

I cannot describe the whole beyond giving an analogy; analogies are metaphors trying to explain what cannot be explained in words. One analogy is that supreme intelligence is a field of formless spiritual light; the whole self is a wave of spiritual, that is, formless light and each of us is a particle of that spiritual light. Wave and particles are one.

One can function as a wave or particle of spiritual light; both are the same and equal. There is no space, gap, time, or matter in that unified spirit self. It is that self that manifests in each of us, in animals, plants, and wherever life is found.

On earth, each part of life sees itself as separate from other parts of that one’s life and struggles to survive as a separated self and defend itself.

Our universe is a place where each unit of life, in people, animals, or plants, sees itself as separate from others and struggles to live as a separated self. It desires separation and defends septation. It exists for however long it can live as a separate, important self.

The body it lives in is composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, copper, zinc, and many other elements that eventually decompose and decay into the elements that compose it.

Over time the elements decay into electrons, protons, and neutrons. Over billions of years, those subatomic particles decay to pure light/ photons.

Our material universe is made from the light that came from nowhere and nothing during the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

The physical universe of galaxies, stars, planets, plants, and animals, over trillions of years, will decay back to that primordial physical light.

What lies beyond the primordial physical light science cannot talk about because its parameters are beyond what the instruments of science can observe.

The scientific method can only observe separate things, as small as photons of physical light, particles and elements, and molecules, but cannot observe what lies beyond matter, space, and time.

DISCUSSION

I have a desire for separation from other people; I have a desire to be different from other people; I have a desire to be better than other people.

In pursuit of the wish to be different, separate, and better than other people I feel not part of people. I no longer feel a part of life.

I live to protect and defend my desired separate self. In doing so I am lacking peace and happiness.

The pursuit of separation and differences and defense of the separate self makes one unable to get along with other people and stifles one from behaving spontaneously and authentically; it prevents one from learning at full capacity.

The ego slows down one’s learning and gives one a lot of anxiety and fear (fear of not living up to one’s grandiose self, fear of failing, fear that it would be harmed and die).

When I realized that the idea of having a separated, different, and better self is an illusion, and accepted that there is only one life and that all of us are parts of that life and let go of my desire and defense of the separated self I felt like a heavy weight was taken off my life. I became light in feeling about myself.

I became an adaptive learner, certainly better than when I wished for a grandiose ego and defended that false big person.

The desire for a big self leads to avoiding people to go live as the big self, unchallenged by other selves. In social withdrawal, one retains the ego’s imaginary big self.

In some passive egotists, the individual prefers to do work that is grossly below his mental capacity just so he does not fail in performing more difficult jobs and in not failing retains the sense of having a grandiose self.

Without the desire for a big self and defense of an imaginary big self, one sees one as a part of life and joins all parts of life, people, and other living things and flows with life, living harmoniously with all people.

Without a desire for a big self and protection of that false self, one finds a way to serve all people through a line of work that comes naturally to one. Serving all parts of life through one’s work is what gives human beings the greatest sense of joy and peace.

Without my hitherto desire for a grandiose ego, I serve humankind through a science-based new Christianity. Why call it Christianity? It is because Christ represents love and we are at base parts of love, one unified, joined self.

In other papers, I pointed out that the desire for a grandiose but imaginary self is at the root of most mental disorders, be it anxiety disorder, personality disorders, paranoia, mania, and others; thus, letting go of the desire for a big self and not defending the big self leads to mental health (biological factors held constant; some mental disorders are rooted in biological issues, such as schizophrenia).

CONCLUSION

What lies beyond space, time, and matter, what existed before the Big Bang, and still exists, is the unified spirit self. I cannot explain it, and no one can explain it with the categories of language because there is no I and no I, no self and other selves, no subject and object, no one to see other selves, it is oneself that is simultaneously infinite selves.

Our ancestors called oneself, God, and worshiped it. In this paper, I talked about how Christians, old and new, approach the unified self, life.

In other papers, I talked about how Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Gnosticism, and African religions approach the unified spirit self.

No religion and no science can explain the unexplainable, how oneself, one life is simultaneously infinite and still knows itself as oneself.

Human beings have many ways of deceiving themselves; one of them is to get caught in stressing the difference between religion and spirituality.

Religion is Latin for efforts to reconnect human beings to their creator; that effort is organized in most human societies and hence becomes ceremonial and perfunctory.

Individuals who do not like the ceremonial nature of religion opt out of organized religion and seek personalized ways to reconnect to their creator; they call what they are doing spirituality. True.

Religion and spirituality are efforts to know that we are joined to God and each other. Love is what joins us to each other and God.

Thus, we must love God with our whole hearts and love ourselves and our neighbors with our whole hearts. Love makes us feel like we are oneself.

God is love and his sons are in their natural state loving. We are currently, in our awareness, separated from love and live as the opposite of love, as hateful people.

We invented false separated selves/egos and housed them in bodies and made them seem to live in space and time; that makes us seem separated and have different interests from other selves.

Each of us seeks what is good for him and if possible, with cooperation with other people but, if necessary, at the expense of other people. We believe that what we gain other people lose. But in truth what other people lose we lose and what they gain we gain; this is because we are oneself.

Now, we must accept that there are no other people; we are all joined to each other and God; what we do to other people we have effectively done to ourselves (although we do not see it).

We must return to loving God and each other because it is only in the union, which is joining with each other, and the removal of the obstacles to love, such as egoism, that we live as God created us, in perfect peace and joy, bliss, and know that, in our formless state, we are eternal, permanent and changeless.

NEW AGE RELIGION OVERREACHED IN STATING THAT PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING THEIR REALITY

CHRISTIANITY, OLD AND NEW

HEALING THIS CREATURE CALLED HUMAN BEINGS

CHRISTIAN GNOSTICISM

CHRISTIANITY, OLD AND NEW

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