Richard Lloyd Jones: The Great Spirit. Yahweh. Jehovah. The Almighty. God. Whatever name he goes by, he's been honored and worshipped by the greatest human beings in history. Only in our modern times have we systematically acted to remove the creator of the universe, and of ourselves, from our human institutions, and great damage to ourselves. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, our Christmas show, The Modern Relevance of God.
Well, it's a beautiful topic today because it speaks to something deep in all of us. Even if we don't acknowledge it, the sense of meaning we all look for and have such difficulties finding in our modern philosophy. God is out of the picture in human affairs today, and we've removed him at great expense to our collective well-being. The modern scientists and thinkers have elaborated theories that try to explain existence and all the magnificence and immensity of the universe in materialistic ways, as not needing the immovable mover, as Aristotle called him.
And the pathological powerful, who often held the reins of the churches, have contributed to the modern-day aversion to God as well. After all, who wants to consider a God who is intoned from high places as the bringer of pestilence and war and famine? That, of course, is not God at all, but our projection of our pathology into God. And so we're not talking about that vision today at all, but of the infinitely beautiful and loving creator of all of this, this one we would like to talk about in our program today.
But let me just say one more thing before we begin. Buried in the release of all those diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks site is some very clear admissions from the U.S. Military and CIA that they are engaging in a series of actions designed to increase apathy among the world's population so that leaders can ignore voters and a very nefarious agenda can be implemented.
And they've been acting on that agenda for a long time. I think this is linked with our loss of hope and that means a link to our loss of contact with true spirituality and God. So here at Christmastime 2010, let's consider the modern relevance of God. Rich at richjonesvoice.com is my email if you have any comments. After listening, love to hear from you.
Dr. Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco from Norberto Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy joins me today. Keppe's science allows us a deep perspective on all the important issues of human existence. And this one today is perhaps the most important. Cláudia, in a previous... I was playing an excerpt from one of our earlier podcasts for a bunch of students. And I also included it in our last week's show, because I found it so powerful, where you said that Dr.
Keppe told you once that he felt that materialism, commercialism, materialism particularly, was worse maybe than drug addiction or
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: alcoholism. Do you remember this conversation we had? "I remember."
Richard: "And in this, you said, because it caused an enormous—materialism, because it's very sensorial—caused an enormous socioeconomic drama, and it caused us a terrible decay in the spirituality of
humanity."
Richard: And here we are, coming close to Christmas, and this is never more evident.
We never have this consciousness more than we have at this time of how commercialized we become, how materialistic we become in a time which is supposed to be about something much more beautiful. We have lost a lot, haven't we?
Cláudia: "Yes, we have.
Richard: By this orientation into material senses."
Cláudia: Yeah. So when we think about Plato and his ideas of Christianity, that the matter is a big problem.
We exchange spirit for matter and material world more or less like this, the body, the flesh. But the way they speak, it's not really clear to us because the matter in itself is all good. So we can't blame the instincts. We can't blame the body. The body is something that belongs to God. God created our bodies. God created all material richnesses. The exchange we did of the spiritual, the glorious for something so small, so small, so unsatisfiable.
Richard: Unsatisfactory?
Cláudia: Unsatisfactory, yes.
Richard: Well, unsatisfiable too. We'd never be satisfied, but it's like
Cláudia: it leaves a hole in us, doesn't it? Yes, because you know why? I would like you to read this third paragraph. All this glorification book is a masterpiece. And now that we are getting closer to Christmas time, Richard, I feel that we should be reading this book every day because the vision Keppe brought about Christ, it's different from all the churches, even Christian churches.
Richard: Dr. Keppe's book is called Glorification. It is available in English, and it's a great blessing that it is. Our great friend Margaret Kowarek spent a lot of time to translate this book to try to capture the spirit from the Portuguese into English, which is
Cláudia: not easy. It's a very inspirational book. That's why it's so difficult to translate.
Richard: Yeah. And in this, on the cover of this book, it says, called Glorification, it says, "A more complete comprehension of the Creator, achieved through scientific experimentation, revealing the true God that institutionalized religion has hidden from us." Wow.
So this paragraph that Cláudia has chosen me to read is from the second, third section. And I'm quoting now. "When Christianity affirmed that man was made in the image and semblance of God, it was referring to something whose dimension is far beyond our comprehension."
Is it possible, for example, to understand the essence of life? Do you want me to continue? And then it continues. The human being is always better than we think he is. That is why he does not feel well when he is not acting in accordance with his magnitude. And that is why every analysis of man portrays him as inferior to what he really is.
So
Cláudia: here we are in an impasse. Because if you look at mankind presently, if we look at the way human beings behave presently, you will never compare human behavior today with the behavior of Jesus Christ. No. So you cannot compare at all. So what happened that we got so far from our true essence? Because our revelation, even other religions bring the revelation that we are made at resemblance of God.
So if we imagine, we wonder how Jesus Christ would behave if he would be in my place.
And the difference is so enormous in his capacities and his wisdom and his balance and his health and his glory and his fulfillment. Everything is so... His
Richard: joy, his love, every quality.
His magnetism, his beauty. Everybody was attracted to him. Everywhere he went, multitudes went, like compressed him to touch him, to see him, to hear him speaking. So he was a true leader.
And because of his magnetism, he was a total magnetic being.
Cláudia: So we should be beings similar to him. So when we look at ourselves and we see what we do, how deformed we are now, and how deformed, even more than we sometimes are, some people are so much deformed that they kill, they are like mass murderers.
Richard: You're not talking physical deformation now, you're talking like a spiritual problem in the
Cláudia: soul.
I'm talking about both. I'm talking about all the suffering and the pain and the dependencies and addictions and vices and perversions of not only sexuals, but all the perversions like killing our fellow man and hating people and envying people and being so low in the vibrational scale, so much linked to the horizontal materialistic world that even nature we don't pay attention anymore.
Even beautiful music we don't hear anymore. So artists are more and more rare. Now you see only people understanding about computer systems and all this...
Richard: Or the financial world, you know.
Cláudia: Financial and money, money, money. Money in Numbers. So, life became very dry, very discomfortable, uncomfortable, and we can say that we feel we are rejecting, repelling everything that comes from God. Yeah.
So, doing so, we destroyed our true essence and our true nature. Read a little bit more here. And we will think about this.
Richard: So I'll continue from the same chapter. If our fellow being shows us more clearly what we are, not only by making us see our errors, but also by making us conscious of good, then Christ is the most perfect fellow being we have.
Because he is the only man since Adam rejected truth who did not reject his human nature.
My God. Wow.
Cláudia: My God. As I'm reading that,
Richard: oh. How can we comment on this phrase? It's impossible. That's everything. So it's how come
we could be like this? How come we could be similar? How come we don't want to be similar?
Cláudia: How come we reject this resemblance, Richard? Why do we do that? So this is almost impossible to understand, but that's what we do.
We left behind paradise, we left behind good feelings of love and truth, and we do this every day. So that's why it's so important this methodology to see yourself through the mirrors we have in other people. So what we don't like in other people show what we don't like to see in ourselves, but many times we do the same.
Richard: Almost always, actually.
Almost always. In different ways, we have to face that. So Jesus was a true human being then. Yes. Not only God, but a
Cláudia: true human being.
Yes. He was the first man, as here it's written, that after Adam had a perfect
Richard: nature and did not reject his true essence as we do with our true essences. Is this the salvation then that the religious people talk about?
Cláudia: It seems to be, Richard. And I think that at least to be solved, to be... Saved? Saved, I'm sorry. That's okay. To be
Richard: saved.
You speak about speaking Portuguese, how difficult it is. I have the same problem in English. When you're speaking about profound subjects especially, it's much more difficult to catch them.
Cláudia: In order to be saved, we need two ways, an energetic work, like two ways. We need the salvation coming from God. We could never, ever save ourselves by our own. But there is our own way to God, which is we want, we should want, we must want and accept to be saved by Him.
And if we don't, he can't do anything about that.
So he can't save us if we don't go to him and ask him and accept his salvation.
Richard: And being saved is not about being rescued like in a boat, right? It's about
Cláudia: saving ourselves in
Richard: some way, rescuing the part of ourselves that we've denied. It's more this, isn't it?
Cláudia: It's like a regeneration. It's like going back to accept our true essence and perceiving, realizing that pathology and sins are just attitudes.
They don't belong to our essence, they destroy, they deform our essence, but they don't belong to our essence. So it's a matter of becoming conscious that no matter negative evil an attitude can be, it's an attitude and just an attitude. And this, by being conscientized, can be changed, can be improved. And for this we must also have, and we need, the energetic help of God.
These two-way mechanisms, this two-way movement.
We asking and accepting the help of God and Him coming to us with all His merciful and totally infinite goodness and beauty bringing to us the energy and the salvation we need, what some religious people call the grace, in order to be saved. So I think that at this time of the year, when we have this December 25th being the commemoration, at least a date that was determined to commemorate the birth of Jesus, to understand that we are talking about things that are much, much bigger, much, much more important and much more related to our inner core than just buying gifts and eating turkey and commemorating and exchanging gifts or even what we do most of the times.
We eat too much, we drink too much, we fight a lot. People are too envious and too angry at those times and they have more accidents. And so it seems that during this time, envy, the envy of God, this envy, this rejection, this repelling God's things are even more present because he is more clear.
Richard: It's more clear time for him.
Cláudia: Can I tell something about your life, your privacy? Because you spoke about nine years ago.
Richard: And I remember one day we traveled on a weekend to a church, to a place, to a city, and there was a church. When I first came to Brazil.
Cláudia: Yeah, and we visited the church, but you were outside. You didn't want to come in.
Richard: I was very uncomfortable.
Cláudia: Yeah, you were like sitting in those... Benches
Richard: outside somewhere,
Cláudia: yeah.
Richard: Well, I was never very comfortable with the whole aspect of organized religion. But
Cláudia: this has a meaning, because organized religions
Richard: identify God with pathology, with suffering, we project onto God. And religious people do that, too. It was uncomfortable for me. I'm only now, because of Keppe's science, coming to understand what a spiritual life means, scientifically.
So I never came to this through religion.
That never would have happened for me if it had come through religion. It's come through science. But I was thinking as you were speaking, here we are having a conversation on a radio program about the life of Jesus, his importance in our life, in what I hope is not being construed as a religious way. But I wanted to speak a little bit for some of the academic intellectual people that might be listening, because I can feel what happens for them, because I had the same reaction.
And I received a letter, I don't know, maybe a couple of years ago, Cláudia, when we were doing another program about this. And somebody said, "but why do you have to use the name Jesus in a religious way? Why can't we talk about energy? Why can't we talk about the universe, universal energy, this great love that exists in the universe?"
Why do you have to separate people by talking about Jesus? And I think it would be worth addressing that, because this isn't an academic argument. I think it's a very spurious argument. I think it's very badly intentioned. But maybe it's good to try to address it here. What are you talking about, and why are you talking in this way about this?
Cláudia: We can name maybe three most important monotheistic religions.
The other religions are more a kind of philosophical and cultural and mystical experiences and philosophies. But religion is very much a link to an idea of one God. Maybe there were other religions and there are still some religions that are polytheistic, that believe there are many gods. This you found more at the time when Judaism was, like, started here on the planet.
There were those polytheistic peoples, and there are a few still, but they are more worshipping gods in material form.
So this is the biggest expression, maybe, of materialistic mentality and how much mankind decayed in his spirituality and started to worship images and things like golden symbols. Golden idols, they were called, right? Yeah, yeah. But the
Richard: true religions are those who
Cláudia: worship one God, spiritual God. And we could have the Greeks, some Greeks, worshipping one god. And some of them said there was one major god and some other goddesses or gods.
And this was a mixture between monotheism and polytheism. But the three important religions in the world are Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism, Islamic peoples. Because they believe in the same God. And God is a being. God is not a quantic soup, as sometimes I say, of energy, beauty, truth, and goodness. It's not something vague. It's not something that you cannot, it's intangible.
No, God is a being, and God is tangible. Sometimes he manifests himself even physically, as he did with Jesus, as he does sometimes touching nature or manifesting himself through nature. And God, being a being, and being a perfect being, an infinite being, he is intelligence, he has intelligence, the biggest intelligence, infinite intelligence. He has feelings, he loves, infinite love, he's joyful, he is happy, He has will.
Richard: He probably has a sense of humor.
Cláudia: For sure he has a sense of humor. For sure he has.
Richard: He's very creative.
Cláudia: Extremely creative because he created everything that could be created perfectly, even though we destroyed a lot. A lot still remains perfect in his creation. And so this being made us as his children similar to him. So if we want sometimes to understand God, we have to understand ourselves.
And to understand ourselves, we must understand God. So it's a two-way thing, you understand? So sometimes people say, okay, so one thing is the love, spiritual love. You love God spiritually. And another thing is to love our fellow man. But this is another love. This is a human love. As if we could have many loves. And not that, I understand that the amount of love or the degree of love we have, we can have, depends mostly in our inner contact with ourselves and with this inner essence.
And also has a connection and a relation to the being we love. So the resonance, the vibration you have with a person that is more spiritual, will be much bigger, much more satisfactory a resonance than a physical understanding, a sexual one, which is, okay, that's a minute, seven minutes, 18 minutes, one hour, two hours, whatever, but that's it.
But a spiritual and psychological artistic resonance between souls, this has
Richard: inspired so many artists and so many religious people and theologians, even Teresinha do Menino Jesus, which is a French saint. French saint, yes.
Cláudia: And some, many others, men and women, that had this inner, intimate connection with God. So they were able to have this ecstasy, this enormous feeling of pleasure. In St.
Thomas Aquinas, he spoke about ecstasy even in a physical sense, because we are bodies and souls. We are not divided.
Richard: There was a medieval saint, I believe, Spanish, who wrote a poem called The Dark Night of the Soul about his exploration of his love for God. It's very powerful. Lorena McKenna, a Canadian singer, wrote a song based on the poem. And it's the expression of a saint for his love, of his love for this being called God.
It's very
Cláudia: powerful. You know something, Richard? We starve from, like we starve from God. We need his love so much, so much. We're starving. We are like orphans, starving. Lost in the desert. Lost in the desert, needing and always having this saudade. Saudade, you don't have this word in English. It's a pity
Richard: because in Portuguese you can't say. We miss, we miss.
It's a deep sense of longing.
Cláudia: Yeah, deep, deep, deep longing for this perfection, for this total happiness. Yearning. And total happiness, fulfillment and happiness, but beyond any possible imagination, is in God. So why not to start now, this way back to Him? Why not?
Richard: Why not indeed, Cláudia? Keppe's Science of Analytical Trilogy is all about helping humanity find its way back to God.
And I thought in honor of the Christmas time, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, not only the stockings hung from the chimney with care, that I'd play one of my favorite Christmas carols, this version from the extraordinary Chieftain's Christmas album, The Bells of Dublin, here with the Renaissance singers with Once in Royal David's City.
From all of us at Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, a very Merry Christmas to you.
