The prophecies of Nostradamus

Evening Empires Will Fall 

Before long all will be rearranged,
We can hope for a very sinister century,
The estate that was masked and alone will change,
Few will wish to stay as they were.

Century 2:10

Before long everything will be rearranged.
We can expect a very strange century.
Women's estate that was masked and alone will change everything.
Few will wish to remain the way they were.

Manuela Dunn Mascetti and Peter Lorie
Nostradamus: Prophecies for Women
(Manuela Dunn Mascetti and Peter Lorie, Nostradamus: Prophecies for Women,
Simon & Schuster, 1995, p. 155.)

Before long all will be rearranged,
 

within decades everything will be rearranged and the religious landscape will undergo major renovation. The word "rearranged" means there will be no drastic changes — just like rearranging furniture to give a more rejuvenating atmosphere. There will be no upheavals as this "lunar consciousness" is about Self-Realization; a peaceful, tranquil attainment of inner awareness, an awakening to Reality and Truth within. The direction will be towards greater global peace, harmony and healing.

All dogmas and doctrines of the religious institutions will be re-examined, rearranged and put in proper perspective. Muslims will know that Shri Jesus Christ is the Universal Savior. Hindus will learn that Shri Jesus is now Shri MahaVishnu, the most powerful deity of their pantheon. The Buddhist will discover that without the Saviour's permission they will never be able to enter the Great Lotus Forest. The Christians will understand that Shri Jesus is the Door and His Holy Mother the Destination. The Muslims will know that Prophet Muhammad and Islam are, along with other Messengers and Holy Scriptures, like petals of a beautiful flower. The Jews will know that they are not the chosen people and the Messiah they were waiting is Shri Mataji Shri Nirmala Devi. The Buddhists will know that God and His Kingdom exists. The Hindus will know that all their Gods and Goddesses are incarnations of the Great Adi Shakti. 

The pork-eaters, beef-eaters, vegetarians, thieves, prostitutes and sinners are just as welcome to enter the Kingdom of God as popes, ayatollahs and bhagwans. So are all unbaptized heathens, uncircumcised pagans and untouchable wretches. The Good News of the Resurrection is for all His children, barring none. 

The tyrannical reign of the religious regimes will finally come to an end, and all humans will be able to embrace the universal religion, and each other: This universal religion will "have no location in place or time, which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahmanic or Buddhist, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite pace for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in its finite arms, and find a place for every human being, from the lowest groveling savage not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centred on aiding humanity to realise its own true, divine nature."

"Right Education for the 21st Century

We are reaching the end of the 20th century and it is time we take stock of what we have achieved in the field of education, what have been our failures and whether we need to continue in the same direction into the 21st century or do things differently. In considering this question I would like to explore the situation globally and not with reference to any particular nation; also I would like to give a wide meaning to that word education, to cover the entire process of bringing up the next generation of children into adulthood and not limit it to only what transpires in a classroom in the school. A child is educated by the entire environment in which it grows, and that environment is determined equally by the parents, the teachers and the society around him/her. All this and more determines the kind of individual we produce, which in turn determines the kind of society we live in.

It is important to bear in mind the relationship of the individual to society. If we produce individuals who are self-centred, aggressive, ambitious, greedy and competitive, one cannot organize them into a society that is non-violent, peaceful, co-operative and harmonious. If we organize them into a communist society we shall have the violence and domination that we have seen in communist societies. If we organise them into a capitalistic, so-called free society, we will have the violence and the divisions that we see in such societies. It is not possible to bring a fundamental transformation in society unless the individual is transformed. Education is therefore the main engine of social transformation, since it determines the kind of individual we are producing. Governments, legislatures and the law enforcement agencies are only organizations to control the individual, they do not transform him. Therefore, true social change is the major responsibility of education, not merely the production of trained personnel. The test of right education today is whether it is producing good planetary citizens.

The way we live has changed drastically over the last century and that change can be traced to what we have achieved in the field of education. At the beginning of the 20th century human society, all over the world, was beset with tremendous problems of natural disasters, famines, epidemics, primitive transportation, inefficient communication, lack of health care and poor agriculture. Our system of education has helped us to change all that, to develop all the knowledge and the power that was necessary to make the transition to the modern society in which we live today. There may still be some parts of the world that are struggling to make those changes, but at least we know how to do it. The great strides that we have made in this century in the field of engineering, medicine, agriculture, transport, telecommunications, and power are all a direct consequence of our achievements in education and we have reason to feel proud of what we have achieved. However, the problems that human society is facing now are totally different and the question that we need to ask is whether the present problems can also be solved the way we have solved the other problems, through greater knowledge, better organization, more efficiency and more power. If so, then we should continue in the same direction. If not, then we must seriously consider whether we need an altogether different vision of education for the 21st century. To examine that, let me list what to my mind are the major challenges facing mankind today.

MAJOR CHALLENGES OF TODAY'S WORLD

i) Groupism/division:

Perhaps the greatest problem we are facing today is the fact that human beings are divided into groups——racial groups, national groups, religious groups, linguistic groups, economic groups, political groups, professional groups —— and each individual identifies with his or her own group, feels rivalry with other groups and cares only for the security and progress of a particular group. These groups are in turn willing to exploit each other, cheat each other and even destroy each other in wars. This has become the greatest single cause of insecurity in the world today. It is responsible for most of the violence that we see in the form of wars, terrorism, rioting and militancy. This is a malady that afflicts the most progressive and highly educated people as well as the most backward and illiterate people in the world today. The reason for this is not difficult to see. The individual identifies with a particular family, country, religion and culture in which he/she is born. He/she is taught to feel proud of it and defend its ways. The mind of the individual then works like that of a lawyer defending the me and the mine and attacking the 'other'. He/she feels secure in identifying with his or her group but this identification is in actual fact creating the greatest insecurity in the world today.

ii) The power unleashed by science and technology:

Human beings have lived with wars and rivalry for thousands of years but we cannot afford it any more due to the tremendous power that science and technology have placed in our hands. Our hatred of each other could only manifest in the killing of a few individuals when we lived with bows and arrows, spears and knives. Today, with our atomic and nuclear bombs we can decimate a whole nation in a matter of minutes and no war is a local war any more. This has greatly enhanced the urgency of the problem since mankind is in danger of annihilating itself in a nuclear war. We cannot therefore afford to postpone the solution to this problem. Human history has been a history of wars and if we do not learn now, we shall soon be fighting our last war.

iii) The environmental catastrophes:

Another major problem we are facing today are the environmental catastrophes about which we are constantly reading in our newspapers and magazines :depletion of the ozone layer, global warming industrial pollution, deforestation, soil-erosion, nuclear fall-outs and over-population. The root cause of most of these is the attitude we have developed towards nature in the course of this century, treating it as a resource meant to be exploited for our benefit. With the development of science and technology and the consequent industrialization there is a race between different nations of the world to be the first to capture the profits in the international market and achieve the economic progress of their nation at any cost. Animals are not looked upon as fellow living beings but merely as raw materials for the meat industry. Rivers and mountains are looked upon as objects to be exploited for producing electricity or promoting tourism. Even children are regarded as the 'wealth' of the family. Nature is regarded as something meant for our use, we being the masters of the world. But are we really masters of the world? Was the world created for us? Or, we are a part of the world, as is every thing else and we need to live in harmony with all the other parts, regarding them as friends and not as resources ? That is the way mankind related to nature for thousands of years but in the last one century our attitude has changed surreptitiously and unless this paradigm shift is undone we are going to face more and more environmental catastrophes. We may have better computers and faster planes but we will not have fresh air to breathe and new diseases caused by the disequilibrium will make life not worth living.

iv) Dictatorships:

Another great problem facing mankind is the fact that most of the governments in the world, especially in the third world countries, are still dictatorships —- military dictatorships, communist dictatorships, religious dictatorships and dictatorships in the garb of democracy. There are very few countries where there is real democracy and freedom of expression, political freedom, freedom to grow, freedom to question, to think, to write what you believe in. Dictatorships stifle dissent, they tell people what to think, what to do and what not to do. The greatest crimes of this century have been perpetrated under dictatorships.

The very basis of dictatorship is the exploitation of the weak by the powerful. So long as we believe that power is meant for exploiting the weak, we still accept that might is right, which is the law of the jungle. Both between nations and within a nation one can see this uncivilized use of power as a means of exploiting others. It has been said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely; but the evil does not lie in power itself. Power is just the ability to do things. What dictates that it should be used to exploit and dominate the weak and not help or protect them? Unless mankind can change its relationship with power, power will continue to be used for destruction and domination. So education must concern itself with bringing about the right use of power, which is the true spirit of democracy.

We object to dictatorship when it is at the level of the government but all dictatorship is evil, whether it is in an organization, a business or in the family. Therefore the spirit of democracy needs to be inculcated in every individual if the problems of dictatorship are to disappear.

v) The breakdown of the family:

The institution of marriage and family was set up partly to regulate sexual behaviour but more importantly, to ensure that we are able to discharge our responsibilities towards the next generation. The human child needs to be looked after, protected and helped to learn not for a few days or a few months, as is the case with other mammals, but for a period of 20 years, since there is a whole new dimension of mental, emotional and spiritual growth involved. No one has yet found a better way to ensure this than through raising a child within a family with two parents. That is a responsibility a man and a woman share when they produce a child. Today, this co-operation between man and woman is breaking down in modern society and the incidence of divorce is now as high as 60% in some affluent societies. The worst sufferers of this breakdown in co-operation are the children and consequently juvenile crime is on the rise. Obviously, we are not approaching life rightly and we need to rethink where we have gone wrong.

vi) The inertia in society:

Last but not the least, is the great problem that society tends to replicate itself. Prejudices and illusions tend to continue from one generation to the next and so do the problems associated with them. If the Jews teach their children that the Arabs are their enemies and the Arabs teach their children that the Jews are their enemies, the younger generation grows up with the feeling of animosity already ingrained in their mind. So the prejudices of the elders continue in the young and so does the problem of animosity. So, how is it to end? It is the same with the Catholics and the Protestants or the Hindus and the Muslims.

This animosity will never end so long as we educate the children to obey and conform to what their elders are saying. We must therefore create an inquiring mind, which questions what it is told, is aware that it has many prejudices that need to be examined and dropped and is willing to undertake this task of discovering for itself what is true. This process of doubting one's own opinions, of discriminating between what is true and what is false is the awakening of intelligence. It is inconvenient for the elders to awaken the intelligence of the child because it may begin to question them, question their values and their way of living. But it is essential to encourage and respect dissent if we are not to create a static society that is inflexibly caught in a fossilized groove. There is too much inertia in society today and the only way to change it is to create a mind that is inquiring not only into scientific questions, but also into social, moral and religious questions. In other words a mind that is intelligent about the whole of life and not merely one aspect of it.

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION

If we are facing so many problems at the end of this century of stupendous progress, then we must stop and ask ourselves what it is that we have done wrong? Why are we facing so many serious problems though we have amassed so much knowledge, created so much power/ability and become so 'intelligent'. Do we need better controls or do we need to change direction? Will more of the same kind of education as we have been imparting solve these problems? Do we need still better computers, still faster airplanes, still more goods, yet more knowledge and efficiency and will that solve the problems we have discussed above? If not, then should we not re-examine our priorities in education and question the very vision with which we have been working so far?

The present vision of education

What is our vision of education today? What kind of human being are we aiming to produce? The aims may vary a little from country to country but essentially, all over the world, education is aiming to produce a human being who is intelligent, knowledgeable, hard-working, efficient disciplined, smart, successful and hopefully a leader in his field of endeavour. If one may most humbly point out, Adolf Hitler had all these qualities and yet most people regard him as the most evil person of this century. The only thing he lacked was love and compassion. So what is there in our present day education to prevent the creation of a Hitler or of little Hitlers for that matter?

The holocaust, perhaps the greatest crime of this century, was perpetrated in a country that had the best of science, art, music and culture of the kind we are aiming to inculcate through education today. So what is there in present-day education to prevent the recurrence of the holocaust? Indeed, we are perhaps at the brink of a still larger holocaust in which the whole of mankind may be eliminated from the face of the earth in a nuclear war. Present day education is basically developing greater and greater power; but both God and the Devil (as conceived by us) are infinitely powerful. Are we ensuring that the power we produce will be used in godly ways and not in devilish ways? If not, then it is irresponsible to generate power.

The major challenges facing mankind today are not due to a lack of education. They are not created by the illiterate villagers in Asia or Africa, they are created by highly educated and professional minds——-lawyers, business administrators, scientists, economists, military commanders, diplomats and the like —— who plan and run governments, organizations and businesses. So we need to look at the kind of education we are imparting and not the quantity. When you do that it becomes clear that we are producing lopsided human beings : very advanced, very clever, very capable in their intellect but almost primitive in other aspects of life; top scientists and engineers who can send human beings to the moon but who may be brutal with their spouses or their neighbours; human beings who have a vast understanding of the way the universe operates but little understanding of themselves or their life.

It is this lop-sided development of the individual that is responsible for all the problems we are facing today. As an educationalist we must accept that when we impart knowledge it is also our responsibility to impart or awaken the wisdom to employ it rightly. Our present day education has not paid serious attention to that responsibility.

A DIFFERENT VISION OF EDUCATION

Keeping in mind what we have said so far, how should we modify our vision of education for the 21st Century? that kind of mind should we aim at producing? What values should we try to inculcate? The prescription would not be identical for all countries and different cultures may go about it in their own unique way, but the broad outlines can be stated as follows:

i) Create a global mind, not a nationalistic one.

We are all citizens of one world and we share the earth as our common habitat. What affects one part of the world today is of concern to all of us. So we need to have a mind that feels for the whole world and not just for one country. We are part of one world, one humanity and if we can settle issues within a country through democratic means and adjudication, is it not right to do that also between nations? If we have a global mind that really did not believe in "might is right" there would be no armies and no wars. That is the future we must realize for the 21st century. We may work for local problems but it is important to do so with a global understanding.

ii) Emphasise human development, not only economic.

Education must not regard children as raw material for achieving the economic progress of the nation. It must concern itself primarily with the development of all aspects of a human being —physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual —— so that he or she lives creatively and happily as a part of the whole. Human beings may differ in their abilities but they are not unequal, neither superior or inferior. They must be respected irrespective of their abilities. Goodness must be valued above efficiency.

iii) Encourage inquiry, not conformity.

It may be inconvenient for the adults but it is important that children grow up with questions, rather than answers. At each age the questions will naturally be different but the ability to inquire and to learn for oneself is more important than to obey and follow unquestioningly what one is told to do. It follows that there must be no fear in our relationship with the child since fear kills inquiry and initiative. The child must be free to make mistakes and learn for itself without the constant fear of being rebuked by an adult. Such a mind is rational, flexible and not dogmatic, open to change and not irrationally attached to an opinion or belief. This implies the absence of all propaganda for any belief, including nationalism. "Our country is the best country, our culture is the best culture" is not true —- it is propaganda, which divides people.

iv) Cultivate co-operation, not competition.

The present emphasis in the world on individual achievement for name and fame is irrational and egotistic. We are all inter-related and inter-dependent and little that is really meaningful can be achieved alone and in isolation. Team work and the ability to work harmoniously with others is more important than individual achievement. Co-operation is the essence of democracy. One works not for personal gain or reward but for the welfare of the whole community, with love instead of arrogance. It is important that each individual does his or her best but it is not important that that should be better than another. We are friends, brothers and sisters, not rivals. If something good happens to my brother I rejoice with him, there is nothing to feel unhappy. The sense of competition that we are encouraging in children today leads to envy, jealousy and rivalry. It sows the seeds of division between human beings and destroys love and friendship. Therefore, it is evil. The importance we have given to winning gold medals in world-cup matches and Olympics is based on propaganda and illusion. Does it really matter which human being can jump one millimeter higher than all the others? We are not asking the right question when we ask, "Who won?". The more important question is, "Did they enjoy the game?".

v) Create a learning mind instead of an acquisitive mind.

The awakening of intelligence is more important than the cultivation of memory, both in life and in academics. If we give information to the child we add to his knowledge but intelligence is the ability to learn for oneself. What can be taught is limited but learning is endless. The greatest things in life are those that cannot be taught but they can be learnt. The feeling of love, respect, beauty, and friendship, cannot be taught but like sensitivity, it can be awakened and this is an essential part of intelligence. The ability to discern for oneself what is true and what is false is also intelligence. It is important to create a mind that neither accepts nor rejects an opinion or a view too readily, but stays with the question, "Is it true ?".

vi) Create a mind that is both scientific and religious in the true sense.

Unfortunately we have divided the scientific quest from the religious quest of mankind and concentrated only on the former in the educational process. In fact they are two complimentary quests, one for the discovery of the order that manifests itself in the outer world of matter, energy, space and time and the other for discovering order (peace, harmony, virtue) in the inner world of our consciousness. By mistakenly equating religion with belief we have created an antagonism between science and religion. Actually they are both quests for truth into two complimentary aspects of a single reality which is composed of both matter and consciousness.

A mind that is purely rational, scientific, intellectual, can be extremely cruel and devoid of love and compassion. One that is only religious (in the narrow sense) can be overly emotional, sentimental, superstitious and therefore neurotic. We must therefore aim at creating a mind that is both scientific and religious at the same time —— one that is inquiring, precise, rational and skeptical but at the same time has a sense of beauty, wonder, aesthetics, sensitivity, humility, and an awareness of the limitations of the intellect. Without this undeniable balance between emotion and the intellect, a mind is not truly educated. Understanding oneself (self-knowledge) is as important as understanding the world. Without a deep understanding of our relationship with nature, with ideas, with fellow human beings, with society, and a deep respect for all life one is not really educated.

vii) The art of living.

Education must concern itself with the art of living creatively, which is much vaster than the specific arts of painting, music or dance which we teach at present. We have equated the quality of life with the standard of living and we measure this in terms of the Gross National Product or the per-capita income of people. But is the quality of our life determined only by the quality of the house we live in, the car we drive, the food we eat or the clothes we wear? Doesn't the quality of our mind affect the quality of our life far more? A mind that is constantly worried, bored, envious or frustrated cannot possibly lead a life of high quality.

When we educate not for economic development but for human development we must concern ourselves with the happiness of the individual as whole, in which physical well- being and comfort are a small but necessary part. Far more important is the ability to work with joy, without comparing oneself with others. If one is insensitive, there is constant boredom and to escape from it a constant pursuit of pleasure. The entire entertainment industry has come up to capitalize on human boredom. When we teach children to work for a reward and not for the joy of working, we teach them to separate work from pleasure. Such a mind is energized only when there is a reward, otherwise it lives in a state of boredom. The art of living consists in enjoying every thing one does, irrespective of the results it offers. One then works creatively, with sensitivity and not for personal ambition.

This, and much more, is involved in the art of living. It cannot be learnt like a formula. It is a by-product of one's understanding of life and of oneself. Therefore we must help students to come upon such understanding. Virtue, which is the flowering of goodness in human consciousness, is a by-product of self-knowledge. It is not something that can be practised mechanically like a skill.

viii) A holistic development of all faculties.

At present education is geared to producing specialists. Some amount of specialization in skills may be inevitable but we are human beings first and engineers, doctors, lawyers, artists and agriculturists afterwards. Therefore specialization must not be at the cost of understanding what it means to live fully as a human being.

The human consciousness has several faculties (capacities) and I have tried to group together words that we commonly use to describe them, into four categories. Many of these over- lap with each other but those within a category seem to me to have a common basis and differ in a fundamental way from those in another category.

Faculties of human consciousness :

a) Intrinsic: Perception, awareness, observation, attention.

b) Thought-based: Knowledge, memory, imagination, reason, analysis, criticism, science, mathematics, language, concentration, intelligence (of thought), will.

c) Feeling-based: Joy, beauty, wonder, aesthetics, humour, art, music, poetry, literature, sympathy love, affection, compassion, friendship. Attachment, desire, fear, hatred, jealousy, anger, violence.

d) Beyond thought and feeling: Intuition, insight, vision, wisdom, silence, meditation, peace, harmony, understanding, intelligence (not of thought).

The above list is not exhaustive and one can add several other words to it. Nor are the categories exclusive since thinking, feeling, and observation all go on simultaneously in our consciousness and also interact with each other. So this classification is only for the convenience of discussion. Education, at present, greatly emphasises the thought-based faculties and to some extent cultivates those based on feeling. For a holistic development of the individual it is important that there is a deep understanding of all the above faculties and they are developed in a balanced way. It implies that in order to cultivate one faculty we must not impair or damage another. This means one cannot use fear and punishment to make students work harder since that destroys inquiry, intelligence and initiative. One must not use comparison and competition as an incentive either since that destroys love and promotes aggression. One must not offer rewards since that cultivates greed and insensitivity.

What incentive then should we teachers use to make our students learn? It makes our task much harder. The challenge before us is to reveal the beauty of the subject to the child so that education becomes a joyous process and not a dreary task to be achieved somehow. If we accept that challenge then we must find ways to make education lively and interesting for the child. A good school is one where the children are happy, not the one which achieves the best measurable results in academics. The real responsibility of education is to reveal to the child all the beauty of life, and there is great beauty in art, in literature, in science, in mathematics, in music, in games and sports, in nature and in relationship —— indeed in every aspect of life. We have a reasonably good idea of what it means for a tree to be in full bloom. But have we seriously inquired what it means for the human consciousness to be in full bloom? Must not education help us to discover that for ourselves?

DIFFICULTIES OF IMPARTING SUCH EDUCATION

There are several difficulties in actually imparting such an education. The greatest difficulty is that we have ourselves not received the right kind of education. Therefore we must not mechanically repeat what we know. We need to question our methods and not merely repeat what our teachers and parents did. It requires us to be original, intelligent, creative and not merely asserting ourselves. Our minds are conditioned into the old system, the old vision, therefore we are ourselves obstacles in the way of the new ! One has to be acutely aware of this fact and therefore not just teach but also learn to break from the past.

In the new vision of education we are not only taking the responsibility to impart information and skills but also to awaken sensitivity and creativity in the child. There is no set method for doing this. These are things that cannot be decided, practised and achieved. Yet, they get awakened in the child if there is the right atmosphere in the school and the home. It is our responsibility to create that atmosphere —— an atmosphere of working co-operatively, with joy and friendship, working hard but without personal ambition or any sense of rivalry, an atmosphere of open-ness, of questioning, of inquiry, and the joy of learning together. Which means we ourselves must live and work that way. Sermonising does not work. A child learns from what he sees actually happening around him or her, not from what we speak in the classroom. If it finds that we say one thing and do another, it will also learn to do precisely that. Which means we end up teaching hypocrisy ! A teacher who punishes a child because he gets his sums wrong is not only conveying to the child that it does not know how to do the sum, he/she is also conveying that the strong can dominate and penalise the weak ! So one has to be very very careful. There are no short-cuts for imparting the education that we have described above. The child imbibes the values he/she sees, not those that are talked about.

Intellectually we adults may know more than the child but in the larger issues of life we face the same problems, the same difficulties as the child ——- problems of boredom, worry, fear, habit, conflict, desire, frustration and violence. Therefore we need to learn along with the child, not merely teach. It demands great honesty, humility, sensitivity and patience. That is our difficulty —— to be an educator who is willing to accept that challenge and not seek an easy way out. There isn't one. The deeper truths come to a reflective mind as insights that cannot be taught by another. One cannot do anything to create insights but one must not block them with an ambitious and overly active mind which has no time to stand and stare.

CONCLUSION

Mankind is caught in a great illusion. It thinks it can solve its problems through legislation, through political and social reform, through scientific and technological progress, through greater knowledge, greater wealth, greater power and greater control. It may solve some problems with all this, but those are all trivial problems and temporary cures. By these methods we shall go on creating new problems on the one hand and trying to solve them on the other to maintain the illusion of progress. The famous humorist Ogden Nash wrote, "Progress was all right once, but it went on too long" ! We need to consider that remark seriously. If we human beings do no transform inwardly, we shall soon join the list of those unfortunate creatures that lived a million years or so and then became extinct for they could not adapt themselves. It is not certain yet if evolution of man from the ape was really a step in the direction of survival. Only time will tell. Survival requires not the intelligence of 'progress' but the ability to co-operate and love each other and to live in harmony with nature. The ant has survived longer than man. What we need now is not more ability and more efficiency, but greater cohesion, greater compassion, greater capacity to share and work together.

Education in the 21st Century must therefore concern itself not with greater 'progress' but with the inner transformation of the human consciousness. It is not that this has not been pointed out before. The Buddha, Socrates, Christ and innumerable other sages in all cultures have pointed this out long ago. Till now we have ignored what they have said but still managed to survive somehow. We cannot afford to do that any more, for we are inexorably heading towards a nuclear holocaust which will make survival not worth it, if not impossible. Therefore the issue has acquired an urgency for mankind which was not there before.

In presenting the vision of right education for the 21st Century I have drawn heavily from the life and work of Madam Montessori (1) and of J. Krishnamurti (2), both of whom have emphasised the need for educating the whole human being and not merely the intellect. Out of this vision, Madam Montessori developed certain methods and techniques for use with small children since she took upon herself that task. But the techniques and materials she developed have meaning only when the teacher shares her vision of life; otherwise the teacher may use those very materials to inculcate a sense of competition and achievement among the children ! A school is not a Montessori school just because it adopts the use of those techniques and materials. The technique does not create the vision; it is the vision that creates the technique. It is important to come upon that vision of life and to actually live that way throughout life. Unless education helps the student to do that it has very little significance. It means we must be students all our life, living with deep and fundamental questions. One such question is, what does it mean for a human being to live in harmony with the cosmic order?

The twenty-first century demands a total change in our outlook on life and our vision of education."

Prof. P. Krishna

 

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We can hope for a very sinister century,

 

Thus it will be a dark and evil century as the Antichrist forces battle His messengers spreading the Good News of the Resurrection, which the Third Fatima Secret clearly illustrates. Even the Muslims will indirectly join hands with the Catholic Church and prevent the Truth of the Great Holy Spirit from spreading. Nostradamus' particular choice of the words, very sinister, is a dreadful omen, a frightening premonition of the Battle of Apocalypse that is about to commence.

The bogus Vicar of Christ and his Church will not be able to save itself, much less even a single soul. Thus:

• a grace period (Last Judgment) is given by the Great Holy Spirit to human beings before the End (Second Coming):
  
  "But they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand."
  
  

• it begins the destruction of the papacy and the man who spiritually holds one billion souls ransom by claiming to be the Vicar of Christ:
  
  "Having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him."
  
  

• the guardians of the religious regimes —  priests, reverends, bishops, popes, rabbis, clerics, imams, mullahs, shaikhs, ulema, ayatollahs, gurus, swamis, pandits, brahmins, acaryas, bhagwans, granthis, gianis, lamas, monks, dalai lamas — will be meeting their spiritual deaths for defying the Last Judgment: 
  
  "and in the same way there died one after another the bishops, priests, religious men and women, and various lay people of different ranks and positions."
  
  

• humans will be obeying the Message of the Resurrection (Al-Qiyamah): 
  
  "Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the angel cried in a loud voice: "Penance, penance, penance.""
  
  

• and actively taking part in the Resurrection by purifying themselves in mind, body and spirit — 
  
  "the souls that were making their way to God." 
  

The Qur'an also explicitly warns that the blind followers of institutionalized religions, particularly the Muslims, will defy the Resurrection — even after being provided with irrefutable proof, divine visions, descended angels, celestial signs, fulfilled scriptural prophecies, manifestation of all major eschatological expectations and the Message of universal spiritual healing. This diabolical denial of their own Holy Scriptures is indeed going to bring forth a very sinister century. It will be a satanic century! It will be a dark century! It will be an evil century! The guardians of religions regimes will again deceive their prisoners-of-religion and deny all Truth. It will be an anti-God century! The forces of Antichrist in all religions will band together to destroy the Truth. It will be a corrupt century! The Armies of Armageddon will use all their might to battle the Spirit of Truth and the announcement of the Resurrection. It will be the darkest of all centuries! Be forewarned, humans, be forewarned!

"Failures of Organized Religion.

There are a lot of things wrong in human relations which religions do not address. But religions are supposed to be dealing with that subject, because the entire purpose of material existence is to overcome sin.

The worst problem in organized religions is that they construct theologies, which can only be corruptions. The constructs are analogous to competing with God in creating trees and trying to do it in a factory, since humans cannot control evolution.

All theologians subjectivize (or de-objectivize) the origins of reality making themselves, their figureheads and God sources of reality. It's like trying to pour the universe through a funnel, and their heads are the funnel. Sin conditions them to do that, because it puts subjectivity in conflict with objective reality. Since sin does that, it is a prevalent standard outside religion also, except that science has been creating a general understanding of what objective reality is.

Subjectivizing religion through theology is analogous to saying that before you drive a car across a bridge, you must repent, because God holds the bridge up, and it will collapse if you don't repent first. Repenting, of course, means joining some organization and making a donation.

Theologians are clueless of God's purposes. They assume that religion has the purpose of producing some divine gimickry such as "Keys to Heaven" or "atonement." They cannot understand the objectivity of existence, where worship and ritual create real psychological effects, and morality pertains to the standard by which people do everything.

Morality is the point here. It is not theologically taught as the standard of human interactions but as an attempt to please God by responding to his whims.

The real characteristics of morality are not determined by the relationships between like-minded persons but by relationships between opponents. Christ focused on that area describing morality in terms of how people relate to their enemies rather than their friends. One reason why is because enemies are often not the culprits; they are often innocent victims. Another reason why is because morality is universal; it cannot change for enemies, even if they are culprits. In other words, it is a sin to sin against satan.

Which brings an important point to the front. Sin is not something that can be put on a list; it is anything that is detrimental to someone else.

Examples of bishops not knowing right-from-wrong is in their handling of sex abuse cases, where they do more to promote the problems than solve them. The Catholic Church is being bankrupted by the consequence. Another example is in their squashing of opponents, who tend to be traditionalists, when churches are being converted to social halls, or sex education is being promoted in schools. They use lies, trickery and degradation to subdue their opponents.

Moral problems are most visible in communication, because it is the first response to all problems. People are supposed to be objective, not only in what they say but in why, where and how they say it. Objectivity includes relating to enemies and friends by the same standards, as Christ taught. But doing so is unheard of in the world. Motives are advanced through selective standards. Nothing in organized religion corrrects that problem.

Objective reality is the medium which sorts out problems and creates life. But religious authorities are not teaching that.

Subconsciously, sin creates a hate for truth and reason. Life cannot be sustained under those conditions. Attempting to create truth and reason is viewed as a threat to religion, because it does not come from authorities. It is a violation of the rules of Catholicism to propagate reason on morality outside the Magisterium.

The official view in Catholicism is that the "Magisterium" must be the source of the religion, because it is God's work, and any other moralizing is a threat to it. So anything conservatives say is supposed to be God's work, and all else is a threat to it. Authorities and conservatives eliminate all opposing realities by saying it is not the Magisterium.

One problem with the Magisterium concept, along with other types of authoritarianism, is the assumption that there is a truth which exists, and the true believers adhere to it and purify it.

That concept is mindless. No one can produce a perfect truth, or even a totally adequate truth, or arbitrate it for someone else. People can only work towards it through increased knowledge and evidence.

Truth is the communicated representation of unified reality, which is approximately the same thing as objective reality. Communication requires reality in two locations: source and receiving point. Even if it exists at a source, it doesn't automatically get to a receiving point. Even if one person or a piece of paper has perfect truth, it doesn't automatically jump into another person's mind.

How does truth get into someone's mind? Through everything humans can produce for communication, reason and study. Therefore, there can be no lines around truth. And therefore, magisterium does not exist beyond a contrivance.

Magisterium is defined as teaching authority. To assume that there has to be authority to teach anything is extremely mindless. Certainly, there must be authority over organizations including religions, but absolutizing it and extending it to universal things like truth is perverse.

To try to draw a line around a perfect, or even imperfect, truth is ignorance about the purpose and standards that humans are supposed to have in life. People are supposed to be determining what reality is and how to relate to it. The concept of Magisterium assumes that there is no purpose in life, because most of life is uninfluenced by the Magisterium. The counter argument would be that all of life should be influenced by the Magisterium. But that position is saying that a few theological whims can direct all of life. It is arrogance and irresponsibility.

The bliss of ignorance says that people are supposed to get moral truth from the Magisterium and apply it to create morality in their lives. The two questions are whether the moral truth is in the magisterium and how it would be applied.

Consider the question of whether moral truth is in the Magisterium. Are not the Ten Commandments supposed to serve that purpose? Maybe they needed to be expanded a little. How much expansion is the right amount? The fact is that the whole universe is the size that truth must be, not some paper in the church archives.

Consider what Christ taught. He was crucified for breaking the Ten Commandments through blasphemy. The Ten Commandments were not enough. So he taught how to relate morality to all of life.

If Church authorities are supposed to create morality for everyone, then morality is an entity that can be passed around. How does the morality get from church authority to the rest of life? There is a mindless assumption that morality can be created through phrases, advice, theology, paper or whatever church authorities produce. That assumption is extreme ignorance about what morality is and how it is produced.

No paper can describe all that needs to be known about morality. Therefore, people need to know how to make decisions about morality by relating it to everything in life. Christ taught a process of how to make those decisions. Actually, he called it a path. A path controls the process. He didn't call it a piece of paper.

Do you suppose that applying reason to a subject has anything to do with the path that saves? Is applying reason to a subject inside the magisterium or outside of it?

The magisterium is supposed to produce perfect and infallible moral truth. The concept of purifying reality is mindless. What would purified reality be? Would it be separated from all other reality? How could it be purified if it were not separated from impure reality? How pure would it be if it were separated from all other realities?

What human minds do is acquire knowledge through applications of reason. Knowledge increases incrementally by building one element upon another. Correct reality gradually replaces incorrect reality. Thereby, knowledge evolves, as all realities evolve. Truth evolves, technology evolves, biology evolves, social institutions and standards evolve.

If purified reality could be conceptualized at all, it would be a hypothetical end point, not anything in past tense. Pretending that there is a purified reality someplace defies the process of how reality is handled.

One could say that Christ produced perfect truth. That concept creates an acceptable figure of speech, because the source material is extremely useful and reliable. But notice what he taught; it is a process or path. He taught the most rock solid basics of the subject, using examples and parables to clarify unlike anything else in existence. And then he said in essence, "Find this wherever you look in life."

The thing that makes Christ's words a representation of perfect truth is that they are a representation of objective realities and laws found in life. The results are supposed to be integrated into life, not separated from it.

And even then, no one can entirely agree upon the meaning of what Christ taught. The ability to extract the "perfect truth" depends upon the mental condition of the person viewing it. Guess where the mental condition comes from. It comes from a path; and the essence of the path is poverty. If a magisterium were producing a perfect truth, the product would be found at the bottom of society rather than the gold vaults.

It is for this reason that truth comes from the bottom of society rather than the top. The reason why Christ was from Nazareth rather than Jerusalem, and why he walked in sandals with the nobodies, is because truth could only originate from the bottom of society, not the top. The truth of Christ's words is a lot more perfect at the bottom of society than at the top.

Mindless persons assume that they produce fact, while everyone else produces opinions. Their facts are unquestionable, because they come from authorities; and everyone else's opinions must be discarded, because they cannot be proven. Thereby, authority rules through fact over opinion.

In other words, one of the main reasons why religion fails to improve human standards is because there is no concept of how to properly handle reality or truth. Christ said a lot about it, but sin repels the truth.

Another major problem which religions do not directly correct is the effects of subconscious forces which create sin. Those forces are only overcome through poverty or its related effects."

www.nov55.com/

 

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The estate that was masked and alone will change,

"Pope is another horrible fake guru sitting here. Then we have another one which is of Canterbury sitting there. All of them are false gurus — know nothing about Kundalini, don't know anything of Brahma, ...  So they want to propound that they are the solution, achieving nothing, spoiling the name of Christ, and doing all kinds of things against Him stupidly, without knowing the Divine."

Sri Visvasaksini Shri Nirmala Devi Gmunden, Austria - July 6, 1986 (Visvasaksini [384th]: The Silent Witness of the action of the universe. The devotee after sadyah prasada mentioned in the last name becomes Jivanmukta, being only a silent witness of the universe untouched by it. This is the Turiya state of the devotee.)

The vast Catholic Church is the only institution in the whole world that wears the mask of infallibility and sells gift-wrapped salvation solutions to their teeming sinners, a peculiar hereditary disease afflicting all Christians. The absurdity of the papal doctrines, as sound as their earth-is-the-centre-of-the-universe theories, will be exposed to all humanity. The stench from inside the Vatican — of its satanic birth, genocide, falsehood, scandals, blasphemies, spiritual bankruptcy, unholy baptism, empty rituals, deceptions, Mafia links, stock speculation, currency market participation, corporate connections, off-shore profits and multi-billion dollar hoards — will waft around the world and reveal its dark nature.

He does not know the depth of his ignorance or the height of his arrogance. Neither the Father, the Holy Spirit, nor Shri Jesus ever endorsed the following facts which form the fundamental faith and dark origins of the Catholic Church: original sin, hereditary papal infallibility, Inquisition, purgatory, canonization, clerical hierarchy, baptism, confession, celibacy, and simony. 

These dogmas are a potpourri of "false ideas about life, and that's why they want to put these ideas on to God also, and try to make Him also follow these concepts; where you had to confess, and you have to say you're a sinner, and you're a born sinner, an original sinner — all kinds of things. So, as you are branded as sinner, you see, always felt guilty;"

"That the Church of Rome has shed more innocent blood than any other institution that has ever existed among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant who has a competent knowledge of history."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, (reprint: New York: Braziller, 1955), Vol. 2, pp. 40-45.

Hundreds of millions of innocent lambs in the past have already been led to their spiritual slaughter by atrocious popes who, by masquerading as Christ's representatives, deluded so many nations. Moreover, hundreds of millions are yet to perish of inner darkness in this century as they defy the Resurrection, a spiritual genocide unparalleled in the annals of human existence. The rise of the papacy is surely the work of the Devil, the Dragon in the Biblical text Revelation, for no other force on Earth could have misled so many for so long. Over the centuries it is clear that popes were not Vicars of Christ but of Satan! 

"The Pope and the Council contained aspects of papal history completely unknown to me. I had been brought up as a Catholic, had gone through the usual six-year seminary course prior to ordination, had graduated from a Catholic university, the Gregorianum in Rome, and had never come across such ideas. This is partly to be explained by the partisan nature of seminary education and the fact that in such establishments history is a Cinderella subject. The misbehaviour of popes is lightly dwelt or even excised, rather in the way that Trotsky was cut out of all Soviet history by Stalin ... My ignorance must also be set down to the preference Catholics have for a history of the papacy that can be read with white gloves on. It is not easy to admit that one's leaders were often barbarians, or that the good popes sometimes did far more harm than good. Thus, quite late in my career, I felt obliged to examine the history of Catholic ideas and institutions, the later of course including the papacy. It was a long and sometimes painful form of a self-education."

Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy,  Bantam Press, 1988, p. 455-56.) (Peter de Rosa is author of many books including Bless Me, Father, Christ and Original Sin, and Jesus Who became Christ. In Vicars of Christ. He dispels myths about the papacy in favor of hard facts, and provides everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, with the true, alarming story of the dark origins of the Church.)

The Church-feared Third Secret of Fatima will now take effect and even the might of Satan will not be able to stop the impending destruction of its Lair. Be forewarned, Mighty Rome, be forewarned!

The reign of the 'infallible' popes — living icons of satanic lies, hypocrisy, evil, debauchery, blasphemy from whom hundreds of millions today seek salvation — is about to end. How were so many fools made to believe something that is not even written in the Bible? This being the case, why won't others succumb to that which is written, but deviously misinterpreted to mislead?

Something is terribly wrong with the Catholic Church — very much wrong! God Almighty enlightens and gives humans absolute individual freedom to pursue Him, and not to be enslaved to a single man for salvation. But Lord Jesus' victory is assured over His adversary who regards himself as "the ruler of this world." Be rest assured that the Last Judgment frees all humans from the tyranny of religious regimes!

• Vatican life was never dull or wholly evangelical. There were authoritative tales of drunkenness and sexual orgies, some of which were truly inspired by Bezulbub. For example, another Prince of Carnal Life Alexander VI, "was reputed to have had incestuous relations with his daughter, the gorgeous Lucrezzia. If so, and it is not certain, it was a record even for a Renaissance pope to have had sex with three generations of women: his daughter, her mother and her grandmother."
  
  

• His Holiness Pope John XII (955-63) "was a true debauchee (referred to by some sources as an 'incestuous satanist'), partially as a result of his pampered upbringing. John was allegedly fatally stricken (possibly apoplexy) in the midst of an adulterous act; he lingered eight days before expiring."
  
  

• Beatissimus Pater Pope Julius II was tall, handsome, and naturally, a great womanizer. Thus it was no surprise that "on Good Friday 1508 his Master of Ceremonies reported that his Holiness could not allow his foot to be kissed, 'quia totus erat ex morbo gallico ulcerous', 'it was completely riddled with syphilis'." This was a disease very common among priests, a peculiar clerical hazard. 
  
  Prostitutes gladly welcomed the clergy with open arms (and legs) since priests always paid higher prices for their sexual services. St Bridget made this remark to Pope Gregory: "The clergy are less priests of God than pimps of the devil."
  
  

• Giovanni de' Medici was an abbot at seven, cardinal at thirteen (the youngest ever) and pope at 37. Our Most Holy Lord Pope Leo X was peculiarly pious and had neither mistresses nor bastards. However, he was a latent homosexual, highly addicted to "those pleasures which cannot, with decency, be mentioned."
  
  

• Benedict IX (1032-44) gets a lot of votes for being the worst pope. "A depraved lecher infinitely more concerned with carnal pleasures than with the business of running the papacy ... Like Nero, he achieved the extraordinary: Both managed to shock their contemporaries."
  
  

• Our Most Holy Lord Pope John XII "copulated with a long list of ladies, including his father's old flame and his own niece," and ran a harem in the Lateran Palace.
  
  

• Pius II acknowledged that Rome was "the only city in the world to be run by bastards" and successive popes made sure history recorded the era as the Golden Age of Bastards. The Most Blessed Father Borgia had ten illegitimate children from pretty Vanozza. Pope Julius II had three while still a cardinal.
  
  

• Alexander VI's "eye for pretty woman was said to be infallible, even in old age." From Giula Farnese, a ravishing 15 year-old beauty married to Orsino Orsini, he sired a daughter, Laura. "That is why Giulia became known throughout Italy as 'the Pope's Whore' and 'the Bride of Christ'." By offering the pleasures of youth to his Holiness she secured a red hat for her brother, the future Paul III, who was thus nicknamed "The Petticoat Cardinal." At the age of fifty-eight Alexander VI took another fresh mistress.
  
  

• The False Prophet Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) was another Borgia. Our Holy Father was "a debauchee whose spiritual concerns were almost entirely overshadowed by matters of flesh, gold, and aggrandizement." He made his son Cesare a cardinal at the age of eighteen — even though he was not a priest.
  
  On October 31, 1501 one of the most blasphemous acts in Vatican history took place in the heart of Christendom. "Cesare invited his favourite sister Lucrezia and the pope, the only other male present, to a festival called 'The Joust of the Whores.' Fifty of Rome's finest danced in increasingly scanty attire before finally disporting themselves naked around the pope's table ...
  
  In a frenzied finale, the whores fell on their knees, scrambling in the rugs for chestnuts which the Borgias threw to them like hogs." 
  
  There were reliable rumors, perhaps for good reason, that His Holiness Pope Alexander VI "preferred an orgy to a high mass."
  

• An influential Irish Roman Catholic religious order involved in teaching generations of youngsters has issued an unprecedented high-profile public apology for sexual and other abuse inflicted over years in its institutions.

  The congregation of the Christian Brothers in Ireland has taken out half-page advertisements in Irish newspapers admitting that some victims' complaints have been ignored. The admission follows a number of prosecutions initiated against members of the order, other Irish religious societies and Catholic clergy in recent years over sex and other crimes, often dating back decades.

  The Christian Brothers have traditionally been associated with boys' schools in Ireland, for many years. At one stage the order ran more than 100 schools and eight orphanages. The apology refers to harsh punishment dealt out to pupils and to sexual abuse. Telephone numbers on both sides of the Irish border were listed to provide help on a confidential basis for any pupils who experienced ill —treatment or abuse at the hands of its members.

  According to reports, in Newfoundland, Canada, nine of the lay brothers of this order were convicted of abuse-related crimes at an orphanage. One of the most senior figures in the Catholic Church in England and Wales had defended his decision to allow a known paedophile to continue working as a priest, despite warnings he would re-offend.

  A BBC investigation found evidence suggesting Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor ignored the advice of doctors and therapists that Father Michael Hill would carry on assaulting children. An investigation for Radio 5 Live found one priest under investigation who was still working. Another, recently suspended, was allowed to work in a primary school while under suspicion of abusing children. He had been accused of abuse twice before.

  Since 1996, six priests have been convicted of child abuse. In each case, the church knew of previous allegations. The Church introduced the guidelines following the case of a Midlands priest jailed for sexually abusing seven children. Numerous complaints had been made against him, but the Church failed to call in the authorities.

  Archbishop Murphy-O'Connor told BBC News 24 he"regretted exceedingly what happened"— namely that after he allowed Hill back to work in 1985 after suspending him as priest, Hill went on to indecently assault more altar boys and was jailed in 1997. Hill was jailed after pleading guilty to nine counts of indecent assault and one of gross indecency, committed over a 20-year period.

  The spokesman said since 1994 the Catholic Church has had strict rules in place which state that if a complaint is made against a priest, social services should be informed and the priest removed from parish duties. The police is informed of such incidents, but he said parents themselves frequently did not want to get law, for fear of putting their children through a trial.

  Archbishop Murphy-O'Connor has now agreed that boys abused by the priest should receive compensation, but as part of the settlement they were required not to speak publicly about what happened.

  A BBC News investigation in 1999 revealed evidence that some catholic bishops in the UK were failing to follow the church's protection guidelines, allowing priests accused of child abuse to continue working.

  John Wilkins, editor of Catholic weekly The Tablet, says," the image of the church has been tarnished appallingly by paedophile priests around the world. And this has damaged the church's reputation in the UK. It has done enormous damage to priests themselves —their morale is very low. They feel depressed and defensive. It has been appalling for church.”

  "There is mistrust between parishioners and their priest, the general public and priests. There is mistrust between parishioners and their priest, the general public and priests as suspected paedophile priest would most likely be shuffled sideways to another parish. Today, the church authorities inform the police, move the alleged abuser to a safe house, and suspend him or her from pastoral duties.”

  "Last October Pope John Paul II sacked Father John Lloyd, who raped a 16-year old girl and indecently assaulted two altar boys in south Wales- the first such dismissal of a British priest in recent history. The Pope dismissed three American priests in 1998, and sacked two diocesan priests in Ireland in recent years.”

  Yet Mr. Wilkins questions whether those at the top of the church hierarchy take the issue seriously enough. The Pope has twice received the former archbishop of Vienna, Hans Hermann Groer, at the Vatican, despite allegations that he had sexually molested young clergymen.

  Public apology:

  The Irish government has launched an inquiry into allegations of abuse at so-called industrial schools, where children were detained if their parents were deemed too poor to look after them, or if they stole or played truant. The 52 schools, run by Catholic religious orders and backed by the government, closed in the 1970's. Campaigners say the priests and nuns subjected most of the children in their care to physical or sexual attacks.

  Following these and other allegations made during the 1990s, the Christian Brothers, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of Mercy have issued public apologies for abuse inflicted over the years in their institutions.

  The Christian Brothers have also been implicated in sex scandals in Canada. More than 300 former pupils at Mount Cashel orphanage, Newfoundland, have alleged the lay brothers abused them. The scandal forced the order to sell property and assets to pay legal and compensation bills.

  Compensation:

  In 1998, the Roman Catholic Church in Dallas, Texas, agreed to pay more than $30 million to 12 former altar boys molested by a priest. Church authorities allegedly ignored warnings and covered up Father Rudolph Kos's activities. He is serving a life sentence for more than 1,300 attacks carried out between 1981 and 1992.

  Back in Britain, this year the victims of convicted paedophile Father Eric Taylor have said they plan to sue the church for failing to protect them. Taylor is serving a seven-year prison sentence for sexual offences against children in Father Hudson's Homes in the 1960s, a Catholic charity.

  Earlier this month, Father James Murphy pleaded guilty to 18 charges of indecent assault against seven children at south London parishes from 1976 to 1990. He attacked some of his victims in church itself. In April, prison authorities in Ireland moved Father Eugene Greene to another jail following attempts to kill him. The retired priest is serving a 12-year sentence for abusing altar boys.

  Four years ago, Father Adrian McLeish, of Durham, was jailed for six years. He had abused four boys-the sons of parishioners-and boasted about it on the Internet. Police had seized the UK's biggest collection of child pornography from his home. Although Mr. Wilkins says it would be difficult to link the scandals to the falling numbers attending mass, "It certainly won't put attendance up.”

   

"The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, in whom, by the appointment of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order or government of the church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner; neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. (Colossians 1:18; Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 4:11, 12; 2 Thessalonians 2:2-9)"

London Baptist Confession (1689), Chapter XXVI, Article IV.

"It's a very serious thing they have done against Christ. And still going on. Still this Catholic Church, though being exposed so much, is still going on — in India also, all over. It's stupid. This Protestant Church also is going on everywhere. What good name have they brought to Christ, one should see. The first and foremost thing He has said that you must enter into the Kingdom of God, that you must be born again. 

So it's all mental: You are born again. You have a certificate. We are born again. Finished. So this mental attitude of the West is responsible for killing the great Incarnation of Christ, so I think it's another crucifixion. Mentally, you cannot understand spirituality."

Shri Aksamaladi-dhara Shri Nirmala Devi

 

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Few will wish to stay as they were.

In this century few will wish to remain faithful to the Church, an evil entity that deceived so many hundreds of millions over so many centuries. What hope of salvation lies in the dark corridors of this God-forsaken place? What powers of redemption remain in an institution responsible for the extermination of countless souls? What compassion exists in an organization whose baptized popes extracted exquisite pleasure from inflicting excruciating pain on their victims? What type of 'unholy ghost' turned the entire papal hierarchy into a torrid, teeming, writhing mass of lusty, licentious, fornicating clergy? Who empowered the Church in its long, lurid history of blasphemy — His Holy Spirit or Satan? To whom does the baptismal Mark in the biblical Revelation belong — His Holy Spirit or the Beast? Who is marking the babies, the most vulnerable of all? Who is marking the dead, the most hapless of all? 

And why does the Spirit of God plead: 

Come out of her, My people, that ye may not partakers of her sins, that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached into heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Revelation 18:4-5

"The coming of God's kingdom means the defeat of Satan's: "If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."  Jesus' exorcisms free some individuals from the domination of demons. They anticipate Jesus' great victory over "the ruler of this world."

J. C. Ratzinger, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, p. 121.)

"People do not know what Time has come. It is the Last Chance. You won't get anymore chance. In Bible it has been described as the Last Judgment."

Shri Nirupama Shri Nirmala Devi
Delhi, India — August 18, 1979

(Nirupama [389th]: Unequalled.)

Sexual abuse and exploitation of believers by their spiritual leaders is an unfortunate fact that can be found in all sects and denominations of all the religions in the world. The Linkup, the largest and most prominent victims' and survivors' advocacy group in North America, is dedicated to the fight for justice, prevention and the healing of victims. They track cases around the world, publishing up to date summaries and special in-depth articles in our newsletter, the Missing Link

The Missing Link covers public allegations of all kind of misdeeds (not only sexual abuse) committed by clerics and spiritual leaders of every denomination and religion from around the world. Our emphasis is on "mainstream" churches and individual spiritual leaders and ministers, current and former, rather than "cults".

Every story has been taken from published news accounts. The stories are organized first alphabetically by US states Alabama-Lousiana (including Washington, DC) and Maine-Wyoming, and by date (most recent first). Reports from all other countries, including Canada, Ireland, and the Vatican, can be found on the International pages.

"Popery's Plague of Paedophile Priests

Shake not the hand of this newly-modelled heathenism and foully-corrupted Christianity.

Professor Arthur Noble

Texe Marr's book Catholic Empire of the Queers—An Exposé of Pedophile¹ Homosexual Priests and Lesbian Nuns (available from Amazon at US$ 7.00) is an eye-opener. The author, widely known for his in-depth research into the filth underlying the external glitter of the Vatican and its global 'peace' jaunts, exposes and documents how the Roman Catholic Church has become the lair of legions of depraved homosexuals and paedophiles who now "comprise the majority of priests and nuns" (emphasis mine). The reader will discover how priests who prey on altar boys and children in Church-run orphanages have "turned the altars and pews of churches into Sodomite beds"; how Lesbian nuns have "come out of the closet" (!) and arrogantly proclaimed their perverted lifestyle; how the Vatican has been forced to pay out millions of dollars in court settlements to victims of sexual molestation by priests.

Adding details to Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Garry Wills' assertion that priests live in a "shadowy underworld of secrecy, evasion and misrepresentation", Marr reports that this is nothing less than the prophesied emergence of a "sacrilegious New Religious Order—a Catholic Empire of the Queers".

Yet, despite the exposure, the atrocities persist in multiplying, and the Vatican continues to cover them up. Reports from the United States demonstrate that there has been no change in depravity ongoing for centuries. Jason Berry, an expert on paedophile priests, revealed in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times of May 17, 1992, that "since 1982, more than 400 U.S. Catholic priests or brothers have been reported to church or civil authorities for molesting children". The number today, almost a decade later, could well be in the region of 1,000. After researching the New York Times Index for sex crimes committed by Roman Catholic priests in the 1990's alone, one researcher said he was "absolutely aghast at the magnitude of debased depravity running rife in the Catholic Church, victimizing the innocent and betraying their trust". He asked the discerning reader to consider the "untold numbers of molestations which go unreported, or cloaked in secrecy by the Catholic Church" and the "innumerable incidents which go unreported in countries around the world—countries which do not have freedom of the press". He concludes that the "depth of sin of the Catholic Church boggles the mind".

Of the hundreds of known and probably thousands of unknown cases, that of 'Father' James Robert Porter, reported in the New York Times of July 15, 1992, is one of the most horrific. It involved more than 100 men and women who said they were sexually assaulted by Porter as children. John Daignault, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, described them as "the largest single group of victims of one perpetrator, in a position of authority, in psychology's history". [New York Times, December 4, 1992.] One writer called it the "true story of a demented demigod shuffled from diocese to diocese, raping at will"—a story which "could not have been written by even the most fertile imagination in the world of fiction".

To this can be added the string of recent paedophile priest scandals in Britain, Belgium, France, Germany and several other countries—all of which serve to underline the unsurpassed moral corruption and sexual vice endemic in the Roman Church. The flood of cases amply demonstrates that Rome has not changed one iota since the days of Luther, who led the revolt against its inherent rottenness.

As the Pope continues his global jetsetting, consider, therefore, the true nature of the unchanged system that he is promoting. The contrived glitter of the welcome ceremonies conceals rife putrefaction; the mellifluous words of 'peace' are a veneer for the preparation of war against 'heretics'; the 'pologies' refer to the excesses of the 'sons and daughters of the Church' and never acknowledge the guilt of the Church itself; the hypocritical words of 'remorse' for past 'mistakes' are followed by the beatification of the very perpetrators of the evils committed; the plea for 'tolerance' is a ruse to promote Popery to the eventual exclusion of all other religions; and the outstretched hand of 'friendship', if grasped, will drag you towards the bloody fate once suffered at the hands of Rome by the victims of the Crusades, the Protestant martyrs, and the Jews.

Shake not the hand of this newly-modelled heathenism and foully-corrupted Christianity. It is the clutch of The Mother of Harlots, whose doom is assured, and that of all who enter into her parlour."

Professor Arthur Noble
http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=paed

"The Tentacles of Religion (PDF Format)

Many of us find our way to India hoping to find some missing part of ourselves, some guidance or some meaningful direction. It doesn't take long to realize that India is a spiritual supermarket with a plentitude of religions, cults, sects, gurus and other various groups, sure to make navigating an extremely difficult task. This article has been designed to help you navigate through this jungle, encouraging you to continue challenging whatever or whoever you find, so as to prevent you from buying tinsel while looking for gold. Unless we are very careful, the tentacles of religion can easily engulf us in many subtle and sneaky ways. Here we are encouraging you to be 100% impartial while on your journey of self-discovery, so that your determination is not shaken by the beliefs of others.

How to test for real gold

The acid test of the real gold is very easy. If one abides within oneself 24 hours a day, without being distracted or attracted to any stimuli, gratification, feelings and experiences, that very person is real gold. A sure test is whether or not they practice what they preach. You cannot claim that you are free when you are in prison yourself. A person living with security and protection, while preaching democracy, human rights or spiritual freedom, is clearly not living the words. If you extend this very idea to religion you will be able to appreciate the camouflage of this dangerous addiction called religion.

So, naturally the question arises, what makes a religion?

There are a thousand and one factors and variables that give rise to the mask called religion. You cannot make the Neem sweet by covering it with honey. So if you know how to dissect and differentiate between the sweet and the bitter, maybe you will understand the gimmicks of the human mind, society and the by-product of it; religion. When we put little nitric acid on the real gold, defilements such as copper, silver, aluminum etc. begin to oxidize, and slowly the tiny gold begins to glow.

Person Profile

1) People with herd mentality (99% of the world population strive to become part of this psychic makeup)
2) Ego confirming that you are the most intelligent, wise, fortunate, that you really understand everything and all others are stupid, useless, and hopeless. Inferiority and superiority complex.
3) Irresistible hunger and appetite for blind beliefs (taken for granted attitudes)
4) Belief that you are not enough. A sense of poverty, guilt, loneliness, disability and willingness to hold on to a crutch.
5) Feeling of being special or uncommon.
6) Feelings of jealousy, perhaps hatred and prejudice.
7) A big space in your mind to store popular myths, blind faiths, beliefs, intellectual ideas and ideologies.
8) You have to be a little racist.
9) Big thirst for identities, levels, status, hierarchy and projections.
10) You love to 'become' something or someone.

Believing the belief IS the mind.

Establishment Profile:
1) Icons—Logos, symbols, gestures, pictures, sculptures, architecture, idols, paintings, artifacts (cross, image of Buddha, mosque, rosary, and other religious cosmetics) Mythical, legendary, historical and present persons and personalities (Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Muhammad and so on)

2) Books — A book or a set of books, considered the source of final wisdom, beyond which no one can go. (Bible, Koran, Tripitak, Bhagavad Gita, Torah)

3) The Intermediaries—A group of people who have already sold their conscience at the altar of their belief, known under different names, levels, identities, and designations. These groups are also known as divine incarnations, priests (hereditary and professional). They retain the sovereign right to interpret icons, books, ethics, values, morals, ideas, concepts, etc. The follower or the devoted believer has to have the tremendous blind faith that these groups of people are the middlemen between followers and the ultimate, i.e. between themselves and God, Allah, Buddhahood, Krishnahood, Enlightenment, Liberation, Freedom etc. The salesmen are branded in different trademarks such as lamas, priests, 'divine incarnations', brahmins, popes, fathers, archbishops, mullahs, avatars (incarnations), rabbis, shamans, channelers (mediums), divine representatives, abbots, sect and cult founders and leaders, politicians, intellectual wizards, sportsmen, sexual heroes and heroines, smugglers, community leaders, organic, narcotic and psychedelic drug gang-leaders, fanatics, fundamentalists, extremists, magicians, mesmerists, sorcerers, hypnotists, psychologists, healers, masseurs, different kinds of martial art practitioners, and many more.

4) The Herds — Mobism or groupism is a dangerous hunting energy among believers that they have the right thing, the real gold in their possession. Maybe in reality what they have is a bunch of horrible blind beliefs, dogmas, concepts, ideas, ideologies, feelings, or good or bad experiences, such as cultural, linguistic, traditional, geophysical, legendary, mythical, similes, metaphors, fashion, masks and make-ups, colours, complexions, food habits, addictions, books, political or economic isms, intellectualism, clothes, music, sex, education, blood groups, gender, commerce, ages, philosophy, fabricated sciences, fear, protection, security, collective ego, collective prejudice, collective habits, books on history, fantasy and many other such things, creating a fertile ground for growing thick, blind beliefs, shared by people of cattle breeding mentality. Without herd mentality religions will simply disappear from the face of the mother planet.

5) The Slaughterhouse—there must be a nursery or breeding ground where in the name of selling the truth, these dead ideas are being cultivated and nourished into the minds of thirsty herds. These breeding grounds are known in different ways, cultures, communities, and geographical areas, such as church, gompa, pagoda, mosque, chapel, convent, temple, monastery, synagogue, workshop, clinic, institution, center, sweat-lodge, etc. In these places, the herds are tamed to suit the covert and overt pursuits and motives of the intermediaries (middlemen). These units act as large scale and small scale standardizing and manufacturing units where the invaluable human conscience is being skillfully slaughtered with tremendous pride and celebration.

6) The Glorification—When you tamper with the conscience of a human being, you have to replace it with some rubbish called glorification. The biggest examples are the crusade in Europe, the conversions in colonial times and the Jihad in Medieval times, where the murdering of nonbelievers was considered to be the highest spiritual act that a believer could achieve in a lifetime. Perhaps history has not yet forgotten the cruel slogan that used to echo in the American subcontinent, south and north, "Who is the best Indian? A dead Indian."

7) The Brainwashing—No religion has ever continued to survive if it didn't adopt effective methods and tools of brainwashing. Please remember that no religion will exist if they do not do this. To do this skillfully with total satisfaction, you need a place where you bring the group or individual, applying different communication methods like new linguistics, rebirthing, healing, hypnotism, magic, history, fabricated science, religions, metaphors, Sunday schools, adopting young children or families into the sect, cult or religion, participation in rituals, musical sessions, prayers, carols, mass, books, phrases, slogans, arts, advertisements, sports, multimedia exhibits, pictures, clothes, tattoos, growing nails, beards, hairs, piercing, animal sacrifice, addictive poisons, sedative drugs, tribal euphoria, sex, pornography, philosophies, psychological therapies, psychic therapies, and so on and so forth.

8) The Rare — Religions are also created using the human obsession for rare ideas and objects. We give millions of dollars for a piece of stone called diamond, because it is rare, and so also many religions have been born out of these kinds of concepts, ideas, rituals and so on.

9) The Popular (The Mass-hysteria)—When you are in a movie hall or a theatre hall, and one or two people go towards the toilet, you will very soon find more people suddenly running to the toilet. This is biological. If you impartially look at the psychological response of social beings, you will be able to see it very clearly. If anything for whatever reason becomes popular, you will find everybody running for it. Exactly the same thing happens with cults, sects or religions. This mass-hysteria comes from the collective ignorance of 'I don't want to dissect or examine why I want to be a part of the mass-mesmerism'. Popularity or mass-hysteria can be inflicted on the mind very easily by using different mass-media techniques, such as books, journals, newspapers, etc.

10) The Conversion—Conversion is the cancer of religion. It may sound very rude, or bias, but when you really examine the entire process of conversion adopted by most of the religions and sex-cults, old or new, it will strike you in the face. Conversion is a camouflaged weapon that systematically, with all sophistication, kills your inborn right for freedom. Once you become a convert of any concept, idea, ideology, sect, cult or religion, old or new, you are nothing more than a cloned cattle, or at least your mind is cloned to fit into something that has been transported into your personality-makeup. Political ideologies more or less lead to the same place.

11) The Education—Almost all preachers in all religions of the world, when they want to sell their ideas and blind beliefs, try to use glorified words, like calling it teaching, guide, contact point, message or friend. They disguise their visionary, strict preaching in various words and forms, like preaching through entertainment, paints, parents, schoolteachers, or sporting grounds. Many hardcore religions use education and propaganda as a weapon to brainwash people and create a kind of confidence or false trust. But what they are preaching or helping you to experience? They claim it is not religion, but many fundamentalist religions use philosophical ideas to convince and convert people, saying this is not a religion, but just another philosophy. Whether feudalistic, theocratic, theological, tribalistic, primitive, prophetic, animistic, philosophical, or theosophical people trying to open both formal and informal schools, they simply, in a gross or subtle way, all use modern education and techniques to brainwash the victims called students of this school or that institution.

12) Cloning the mind at home—Although the preachers of democracy and human rights all over the world make noise about the abuse of human rights by different governments and nations, nobody is raising any voice against this centuries-old sickness of religion. Parents take the right over the child, brainwashing him or her by saying "You are a Christian" or "You are a Buddhist, Muslim, Jew," etc. This is a blatant abuse of the human rights of children. Parents have no right whatsoever on a minor who doesn't have an idea of what religion is all about. All children should be free to, at least after the age of 18 or 21, to embrace any confirmed religion. Do we really need to stamp our children with the ideas of the parents? Is this not a social, moral and political abuse when they are highly vulnerable and totally dependent on parents and society? Will mankind awaken from the deep slumber, and free the innocent children of the future from the shackles of parental missionaries?

13) Festivals — Most of the religions of the world use different community and family festivals to perpetuate their beliefs. More and more crowds are drawn into various festivals, used as a kind of occasion or celebration, to initiate their blind beliefs and religious dogmas in a very non-conventional way. The preachers of different religions either actively or passively try their best to encourage vulnerable individuals to accept their ideas and ideologies, blind beliefs, dogmas and religions.

14) Cruel Compassion—Compassion is a caterpillar that is disguised as a softhearted butterfly. All over the world we know what is popularly called American aid (compassion). All the so-called compassionate American governments and multinational companies are always out there to help people in poor countries. But, if any country accepts this aid, they have to sell out their sovereignty to be operated by the White House or Pentagon. In the same manner almost all religions, sects, cults, new and old, want to serve the needy, neglected, sick, deprived victims of social political situations. Surprisingly, many religions use compassion as a potent weapon to lure and convert tormented minds coming from other religions. Compassion is like a chemical bomb that easily entraps spineless people. If you want to verify how compassion is abused openly all over the world you won't have to go far. Just go to a nearby church, mosque or a center of Missionary Charity. Once you approach them for a little help, or you enter into their organization as a volunteer, or even just an ordinary visitor, you will be presented with a cross, Koran, bible or even tika, bell and dorje.

15) Uniform — If you've ever been to any areas where different nomadic tribes live with their cattle, you will find that they either put some bells round the neck of the cattle, some mark on the body of the cattle, or ornaments and colours to create the identity that this particular cattle belongs to this particular nomadic pasture. The same primitive, tribal, self-enclosed and conformist mobism has found its way into the modern world in the form of religious or military uniforms. It inflates the ego, helping you to make sure that you are the fortunate one and those who don't wear the uniform are declared misguided or even lost. Depending on your status and position, like in military, these uniforms can also change. Uniforms help you to hold on to your segregated identity that divides humanity in the name of truth.

16) The Hierarchies—You may have forgotten the name of your parents, but very few people forget the most popular mantra of the modern world: "It takes a Coke to quench your thirst". It is easy to understand how a multinational profiteering organization functions internally. The commercial hierarchy is the engine and sole owner of the inter-commercial activities and its profit. If you stretch the same idea without bias, you will also find religions, cults and sects, new and old, have the same elaborate hierarchical structure. In the bottom of the ladder are the laymen (the people of herd mentality), next comes the local or immediate, professional priests or monks. In the middle is the regional commander, such as bishops and fathers, abbots and lamas. Then comes the national, like a Cardinal, archbishop, bhikku, senior lama and bantee. Then finally, depending on the structure of the hierarchy, the highest person could be like Pope, Archbishop, Ayatollah, Dalai Lama, Traditional Heads of the sect, Tribal Chieftains, and so on.

17) The Copycats—Perhaps you are very much aware of cocktail-parties. A cocktail is a mixture of many borrowed ideas, digested concepts and many antithetical ideologies and philosophies. Some religious groups and their think-tanks are busy day and night copying different vocabularies, ideas, concepts, methods, metaphors, and terminologies. Now, millions of books are being manufactured and cooked, fabricated every day to claim how nice, beautiful and smart these religions, sects and cults are. This is an effective way to repaint the ugly faces of an already out-of-fashion world of religion. This helps them to successfully hide their cancerous wounds. Amazingly enough, when they copy or borrow these ideas, they never give any credit to the source from where they copied it. Ironically they are the preachers of truth, values, and ethics.

18) The Power—The human mind in society is the helpless by-product of power. Religions, sects and cults, are the integral parts of herd mentality. Professor Lasky says, "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". If you open the blood stained pages of the history of human civilization, you will find that the largest number of invaluable human lives have been sacrificed on the altar of religions, sects and cults, old or new. If you look at the recent history of colonialism, fascism, nazism, apartheid, visionarism, jihad, inter-religions, and anti-Semitism, you will find that human beings are killing each other like they kill flies, only to proclaim that "I am right". Please remember here that 'when two people are right, only then they fight'. Religion, sects and cults, will never be free from power. A corridor of power is the cradle of religion. Not a single religion in the world has attained popularity without a direct or indirect support of people in power. Besides the accepted religions of history, political isms are assuming the status of religion. It is very difficult to draw a bottom line between religion, political isms and the people in power. They need each other for their survival. Only when one party finds that the other one is becoming more powerful, they try to either exert control or eliminate the other one. They use and abuse each other for their mutual advantage.

19) The Propaganda—If anybody realizes the massive potential of communication, it is perhaps the veterans of religion, those who not only understood it, but invented the means and methods to propagate and spread their ideas from the centers to the periphery (the masses and mobs). With the progress of time, mass communication, systems, principles and technologies have undergone astronomical changes. Hence it is a big boon for religious propagandists to harness new systems of communication and mass media to their maximum advantage. That is why all religions, sects and cults produce huge amount of books, literatures photographs, symbols and icons, audio and video materials, internet web-sites, radios, sattelite-tvs and other systems. All these systems are busy 24 hours a day, all over the world, blasting at the people to come and join, "Here is the truth, Here is the salvation".

20) The Money—Where there is money, there is mind. He who holds the jackpot, controls not only the mind of society, but also the nerves and blood of the people. This was understood by all religions, sects and cults, 1000 years ago. Either people of religion get into power themselves, or they become twin brothers of the powers that be. It's an open secret. Either you have power and try to get into the jackpot, or you have the jackpot and buy the power. So, the role of muscle power and money power always goes hand in hand. All of the world's religious hierarchies and monasteries are the richest, although many talk against amassing wealth, preaching the simple life. If you look at their leaders, you will find a blatantly hedonistic way of living. Most of the religions, cults and sects, use money to convert new entrances to their beliefs. Money is the bedrock on which the edifice of religion is built upon. Without money, there is no religion.

21) The Sex — Among the destruction of the mind and senses, is the irresistible attraction to sex. Centuries ago, religious people understood the massive potential of sex as a vital weapon for perpetuating and expanding religion. For example, look at the panchakarma, vamachari, vagrayani, where practicing sex with consorts (tesu) was considered the supersonic way to enlightenment. Similarly, if you look at different religions of the world, you will find that sex is misused and abused thoroughly for the up-keep and expansion of the respective religion, sect and cult, old or new.

22) Crime — It is hard to find any religion, sect or cult in the world that is free from sneakiness. Almost all of them teach and preach the converts to lead their life in a particular way, while themselves they lead it quite the opposite. To upkeep their painted images in the society among the followers, they try their best to manipulate all possible sources to prove that they are great. Hence, almost all religions, sects and cults, old or new, indulge in crimes of all types and natures, i.e. emotional, social, economic, physical, and ethical crimes. And it is always the people on the bottom of the pyramid who will suffer and be blamed, while the leaders and the powerful get away with it.

23) Indulgence — Although most religions, sects and cults invariably preach the leading of a simple and harmonious way of living. But since the inception of religions, cults and sects, it is always the hierarchy that breaks the rules they preach, taking advantage of the resources that are supplied by their followers. They are like parasites on their followers, popularly called children, brothers, sisters, comrades.

24) War — Any authentic study on how war originates will reveal, directly and indirectly, that religion plays a fundamental role in fomenting the psychosis of war. Not only do religions, sects and cults ignite war, but they uphold it. Look at Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Israel (Jews vs. Muslims), Tibet (Buddhism vs. Communism), Spain (Basks vs. Spaniards), Yugoslavia (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Tamil vs. Singalese) Burma (Karen vs. Buddhists), Iran vs. Iraq (Sunni vs. Shia), Afghanistan (Mohajid vs. Sunni), within the Tibetan refugee community (Sukhden sect vs. Geluk sect) and so on. Massive numbers of human beings have been murdered mercilessly in the name of religions, sects and cults, fighting for "truth and compassion".

25) Drugs and addictions—Unfortunately, if you go on searching for a religion, sect or cult, old or new, it will be hard to find any single one of them being free from addictions. Addictions are skillfully used by religions to recruit new converts and keep the old ones, so that the empire of religion does not loose its influence and incomes. Anyone with a broad conscience is a threat towards the established structure of religion, so they use addictive properties to eliminate the sensibility of the devotees. Addictive properties are also used to give a good time to the followers and believers so that they won't jump out of the net. Invariably so-called 'holy places' are successfully used as smuggling-centers. Addictive properties that have been abused by religions are not restricted to one or two different kinds. Practitioners of different religions use almost all drugs, depending on their convictions and identities, including organic addictive properties such as magic mushrooms, marijuana, hash, bhang, opium, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and also synthetic drugs such as LSD, Ecstasy, Prozac, Ice, and sometimes even sedatives. Undoubtedly, addiction, prostitution and trafficking of women and children, is indirectly and directly encouraged by some cults and sects.

26) Gender — Discrimination of women is the core of most of the religious teaching and preaching. There are many smart religious groups, sects and cults that use women for the promotion of their dogmatized goals. Prostitution in the name of religions, cults and sects is expanding everyday. In some religions, women are not allowed to deny a man sex, if he asks for it, provided he comes from the same religion. You serve your body for the sake of religion. A man in Tibetan Buddhism, including monks and lamas, have the right to recruit a young attractive woman (consort) for sexual Buddhist practices for the purpose of reaching immediate enlightenment. She should be other than your spouse/wife. Devadasi practitioners offer girls to the temples; a glaring example of gender abuse in the name of religion.

27) Betraying peace—Religions, sects and cults are not only warmongers, but they also ruin the possibility of peace by segregating humans from each other. Every religion is nothing but a dangerous weapon of divisiveness. Most of them use the biopsychic bomb called identity ("I am right"," I am great", "They are worthless", "They are misguided") for eliminating peace.

28) Exploitations — Undoubtedly, most religions, cults and sects are busy talking against the manipulation and exploitation of various kinds of nature. You don't have to look at history, but just go to a nearby religious center and stay there for a while. Then you will understand how they act as a predator on their own followers and believers whom they promise to give protection. There are many countries in the 21st century, both developed and undeveloped, where people pay taxes to the hierarchy of religion. These exploitations are not only restricted to religious activities, but also extends to the physical, mental, emotional, economical, social, cultural, legal, educational, historical, and so on.

29) Exploiting guilt—Invariably, almost all religions, cults and sects increase their money-power by abusing the followers who admit their sins. You can remove your sins and criminal offenses by offering a good amount of your corrupt money to the religion concerned, thus many devoted believers and followers commit the crime with the intention that they can easily get rid of their sins in exchange. Religions, sects and cults, sanctify crime and in return the money is used either for conversion or some other orgy of the hierarchy.

30) Money laundering—All over the world leaders and priests of religions, cults and sects have amassed so much money that they use their money-power in clandestine activities to protect their image and tenure.

31) Tampering — The dangerous contributions of religions, sects and cults is tampering with the progress of humanity by distorting the facts of history, i.e. art, culture, literature, dates, happenings, names, reasons, objectives, so that the next generation is deprived of truth. They also fabricate almost everything to upkeep their image. i.e. the real history of colonialism in Africa, Australia, America and many parts of Asia is not available to the emerging generations and the facts and figures of gypsies killed during the holocaust is more or less eliminated. The list goes on endlessly.

We can go on making volumes of lists, but hopefully this little discussion will provide enough light to expand your views, helping you to examine the actual nature of religion. This article is not written against any particular faith, group, religion, sect or cult, but rather is written with open-heartedness to add a new prospective for a better understanding of ourselves."

 Namaste Newsletter, May/June 2001
The Tentacles of Religion (PDF Format)

 

           

 

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