Gary talks about going to see the movie The Passion of the Christ on his audio program Secrets of the Immortal as well as in Your Immortal Reality - Murders Without Corpses. Gary describes the scene of people lined up around the block to get tickets to see this bloody, horrific movie that he says is so violent that it should have been rated NC-17 instead of R. So, he says people were like taking their nine, ten year old kids to go see this thing. And after the movie was done, Gary describes the looks on the parents’ faces as they were coming out of the movie theatre as if they were saying to their kids, '‘There, you see? You see what Jesus did for you? You see how he suffered and sacrificed himself for you? You guilty little bastids! Now what are you going to do for him? Well, you’re gonna be a Christian, right?’
Mikey's Note: Nine years of Catholic school as a kid, I can relate. LOL Fortunately for me, even though I had been baptized Catholic, Catholicism wasn't a part of my upbringing at home. So, I was able to 'tune out' a lot of the religious stuff that was taught in the classroom and the church, although I did have to take in enough in order to pass Religion class, but not to the point where I would have to go through 'recovering Catholic therapy' afterwards. LOL
Anyway, Gary goes on to say in the program, 'And there you have the makings of a very successful religion. Because, if you want to get people to do something in this world, then you make them feel guilty – that’s what makes the world go round. That’s why Christianity is such a successful religion and has over a billion members because they make people feel guilty about the death of Jesus and they are indoctrinated at a very young age.'
Mikey's Note: Actually, according to Wiki Answers, there are around 2 billion members of Christianity which is about 33% of the world's population. Additionally, there are 33,820 different denominations of Christianity - Holy shit, talk about screwing up a spiritual message! LOL Then again, the same thing has happened with the Course too; as Gary's teachers mention, 'In the seven years Helen was scribing the Course, and during the eight years she lived after that, it never once occurred to her or Ken that there could possibly be any other interpretation of the Course (purely non-dualistic.) But give the world a few years to screw up J's message and it's a wonder to behold.'‘People think that the Course is open to their interpretation. Yet if it were, it would be useless.’ But that's a story for another time. Getting back to Christianity, Gary’s teachers say, 'We’re not saying there isn’t some good in Christianity or that Christian people are not sometimes the salt of the earth. But their religion is a mixed bag, because the world that is a projection of the mind that made it is such a mixed bag. If the mind is going to be healed, then it needs something that is not a mixed bag.’
The message of the crucifixion has been interpreted by the world as a message of sacrifice. That is not the lesson J intended it to be. His lesson was one of resurrection rather than crucifixion. J says there is no death, and that the body is nothing. The church has confused the manner of his death as a call to sacrifice and suffer for God. That is incorrect.
It is not necessary for you to repeat the example of the crucifixion. As J tells you in the Course, ‘You are not asked to be crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them as false justifications for anger.’ Remembering that, all you need to do is understand the real lesson of it and apply it, through your forgiveness attitude, to your own body and your own personal life’s circumstances. Here is part of what J says in the Course in the section titled The Message of the Crucifixion. You will never find a more striking example of refusing to compromise on the truth.
‘Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. There is little doubt that one body can assault another, and can even destroy it. Yet if destruction itself is impossible, anything that is destructible cannot be real. Its destruction, therefore, does not justify anger. To the extent to which you believe that it does, you are accepting false premises and teaching them to others. The message the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely.’ A
He then goes on to say in that same section, ‘The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear: Teach only love, for that is what you are. If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are using it as weapon for assault rather than as the call for peace for which it was intended.’
J’s whole point was to teach the meaninglessness of the body, not glorify it. The focus should always be on doing your forgiveness lessons and going home, not on the level of form and the body, which cannot be spiritualized. People are always looking for vicarious salvation. They want to be enlightened by following an enlightened one and having it bestowed on them. It doesn’t work that way. In addition, there are so many people out there presenting themselves as some kind of a master and saying they’re going to teach you “mastery,” that it’s comical. If you drove a nail through the wrist of these people, it would hurt like hell. J really was a master, and he could feel no pain because the guiltless mind cannot suffer.
Resurrection is something that takes place in your mind even though you still appear to be in your body, and it actually has nothing to do with the body at all. The ideas of physical resurrection and physical immortality are not only fantasies, but totally unnecessary.
Here are a couple of passages from the Manual for Teachers on the resurrection. ‘Very simply the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the world’s purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself.' It goes on to say, ‘The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared, but gladly welcomed.’
The time will come when each seemingly separated mind has attained its enlightenment or resurrection. When everyone – not everybody, mind you – but every mind that has dreamed thousands of lifetimes has reached this state of awakening from the dream, that is the Second Coming of Christ.
The law of forgiveness is this, ‘Fear binds the world, forgiveness sets it free.’ The world feels solid to you because fear binds it. It didn't feel solid to J because he had forgiven the world. That's why the nails didn't hurt him as they were being driven into his flesh. Being guiltless, his mind could not suffer - and someday you will attain the condition where you cannot suffer. That is the destiny the Holy Spirit holds out to you when you forgive the episodic fantasies of your bodily addicted ego.
Even though it appeared to be a terrible attack, the crucifixion was really nothing to J, because he was so totally identified with the invulnerable Love of God, which he knew he really was, instead of illusions like the body. The fact that the crucifixion and J's supposed suffering for others on the cross are central ideas to Christianity is just an indication of how much his message was misunderstood and distorted. But don't expect to attain the same non-suffering level of accomplishment as J in your first year doing the Course. It's an ideal that can only come with a great deal of experience. The time will eventually come when you will never suffer. That is one of the long term payoffs of this spiritual path. Even while you still appear to be in your body, it's possible for you to attain psychological invulnerability.
As the Course says, 'The guiltless mind cannot suffer.' It blows the whole idea of glorifying sacrifice right out of the water. Because pain is not a physical process, it's a mental process, and if you healed all the unconscious guilt in the mind, then you couldn't feel any pain. That changes the message of the Crucifixion from the idea of worshiping suffering and sacrifice to a demonstration that if you were healed, then it would be impossible for you to feel any pain or to suffer. But suffering, like people now believe J did, is a hallmark of the religion that he had nothing to do with, but that was founded in his name.
It was never J's intention to start a religion. Whether then or now, the world needs another religion like it needs a bigger hole in the ozone layer. J was the ultimate follower in the sense that he eventually listened only to the Holy Spirit.
J considered himself to be totally dependent on God, yet this dependence was not weakness, as the world usually views dependence. Rather, the result was a state of unbelievable psychological strength. Things that would scare the stuffing out of strong people meant nothing to him, because they were nothing to him. Fear was not a part of him. His attitude was the same as if you were having a dream last night asleep in your bed, except you were totally aware of the fact that you were dreaming. And because you knew you were dreaming, you also knew that absolutely nothing in the dream could possibly hurt you, because none of it was true; you realized you were merely observing symbolic images, including people, who weren't really there.
You should never allow yourself to be harmed physically, or seek out danger or suffer in order to prove a point. You can still live a relatively normal earthly existence while being awakened slowly and gently from your dream. The crucifixion was an extreme teaching lesson. It is not necessary for you to go through it in order to learn from it. Remember, the Course is done at the level of the mind. If you’re a woman and a man is trying to rape you, kick him in the balls. (Forgive 'em later.)
Mikey's Note: Yes, please remember that the teachings of the Course are always to be applied at the level of the mind, and never on the level of form, or the physical. It's always about changing your perception, it's not about changing your behavior. Your behavior may or may not change naturally as a result of changing your perception.
When the Course talks about not judging your brother, what it means is that you don't condemn him. Obviously, you have to make judgments just to cross the street. The Course isn't talking about abandoning that kind of judgment. Without it, you couldn't get out of bed in the morning. One thing the Course has nothing against is common sense.
We don’t mean to be disrespectful, but we have to make certain controversial statements because there’s not exactly an oversupply of people in your society who are willing to point these things out. It is true, at the time, J was the most advanced spiritual person to ever appear on the earth. But everyone else, including you, will eventually attain the same level of accomplishment as him. There is no exception to this. Thus, J is not ultimately different from anyone else, and his attitude was that no one will be left out of Heaven, because there is really only one of us - not all these separate bodies as you are presently dreaming.
J was a savior all right, but not the kind who promoted vicarious salvation. He wanted to teach us how to play our part in saving ourselves. When he said that he was the way, the truth, and the life, he meant we should follow his example, not believe in him personally. You shouldn't glorify his body. He didn't believe in his own body, why should you?
A lot of Christians ask nowadays, 'What would Jesus do?' There's only one correct answer to that question, and it would always be the same. He'd forgive.
Links:
Mikey says, 'Guilty little bastids!'
Seinfeld: David Puddy is a Christian
Seinfeld: A Nun hits on Kramer - The Kovorka
Seinfeld: Jerry's Dentist Converts to Judaism
God Is....and nothing else is
J-DOG
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