Sunday 15 May 2011

Chinese Whispers

The children’s game known in the UK as Chinese Whispers (in the USA as Telephone or Grapevine) starts with a message that is whispered to the first person, then passed around the group, each whispering what they heard to the next. Mistakes are inevitably made and accumulate, prompting innocent merriment.

Let us say someone once heard a message from the Spirit and wrote it down years later. It was translated and commented on, then the commentaries were freely incorporated into the translated text. Later for political reasons, someone edited the text in a big way, and then that was translated. Chinese Whispers or what?

However it seems to me that probably the Spirit always comes into the world through Chinese Whispers, even if there is only one whisperer.

Thursday 5 May 2011

Thinking and Doing

If you live inside your head, Science, Art and Religion will appear to contradict one-another. This is because, inside our heads, we build systems of knowledge, and in the name of reason, we demand consistency.

If you stay inside your head, only science and logic ultimately make sense. Art becomes nice things to look at to make us feel happy, and religion becomes wishful thinking to calm us when we are afraid – especially afraid of death.

Get outside your head, and Science Art and Religion are thing that we do. And we do things differently. Science tells us how best to use the world to meet our needs. Art tells us how best to view the world to find value in it. And religion tells us how best to relate to the world, including and especially to one-another.