Chapter 13: The Underworld
Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. - Ernest Hemingway
Do not take this chapter literally. It is pure fairytale. The other chapters are also fairytales. One day while working on this book, I was thinking about life as a mission to touch. My muse appeared to me and said, "When you die, you become what you are. For some people it is Heaven, for some it is Hell." I was not really sure why she told me this. I was thinking about life, not death. I think she trying to tell me how important life is. In some mythologies, what happens in death is a fable about life, not actual death.
I think the pure existence of a being has no form and cannot touch another being without a vehicle of touch. The soul’s essence is the desire to touch. The world is the vehicle the soul uses to touch. We are born, because the soul wishes to enjoy pleasures of the flesh. You had better touch other people while you are alive or else your soul will be dissatisfied and you will have wasted your life.
Your soul can construct another life, but this is difficult for the soul to do, unless it feels the rewards of its efforts. The more touch you feel, the happier your soul will be. Your soul will be better able to construct a happy life for you and your soul will live many happy lives. Another life your soul designs is someone else, part of you but not really you. The whole, true you is the biological being you are right now. Some people think salvation comes by rejecting the material self and pretending to be the soul. They only want to be their immortal part. These people are making a terrible mistake. To deny life would be worse than death. Your soul wants to live, to continue being the material self for as long as your life can last.
Your real self is your material self, the character. The character is made of events that happen. The material part of you can die, when the events lose the order that was you. Your mind is stored in your brain, which stops functioning when you die. Some people think death is the end, where you just stop existing; this is not completely true. You have an immortal soul.
The soul is a player who plays a character. Some people might think that the soul and the character are two different beings, as different from each other as two people. Perhaps your soul can go off and play someone else after you die, and the material self is completely gone after death, if this were true, you would have no afterlife. I don’t believe it is true. I think the material character continues to exist after death, even after its matter has fallen apart. The soul exists on many planes and is also the character.
All matter is made of events. You are happening as an organized form of matter. This organization is a process called life. The organization is a material event. Everything that happens becomes an eternal truth. Everything that happens in each moment is eternally written down in the book of the universe. This book is the spirit of the universe. Once something happens, it exists eternally as spirit. Matter creates spirit. Everything has a spirit, which is its character that exists forever the way it was. Some events might be more important to you than others. Your character is made of many truths, which are its spirit. The spirit is a record of the way he is. The soul is making this spirit part of himself by playing the game of life.
The red line of soul crosses the black line of matter. The material line is the order in which events happen. Time is passing through this line. As long as time exists events can happen. The creator is often pictured as Father Time. In Lucifer, no time passes. The eternal passes on the red line. One of the mysteries that advanced mystics discover is that the passage of time and eternity are not the same thing. The place where the lines cross is the moment, called EUOI. The soul, spirit, character, player, and all those other words I invent to confuse myself are ways of looking at myself in EUOI. EUOI is the moment right now and is all that really exists. On the material line are alternative futures that you can take, but the past is unchangeable. The past made the character. An actor plays your character. The actor chooses his steps, leading to the future. The actor is the part of you that is experiencing.
The actor continues to experience long after you die. When you die, your soul goes to Hell. Everything you do in your life becomes an eternal truth inside your soul. These truths are the fires of Hell. In Hell you come face to face with yourself. For some people that encounter is painful, for some, pleasurable. You will find some truths affect you more when you go to Hell, much in the same way they affected you when you were alive. Hell will be familiar to you. Your Heavenly self is ordered in a way that makes you want to touch other people. If you fail to touch, you will feel pain.
Our biological nature makes us to feel certain conditions as pleasure or pain. As humans, our social nature is an important part of our natural programming. This aspect of our individual selves remains as a ghost in our soul, even after we die it is a gift our soul receives because it lived a human life. Because of this gift, we will feel bad for people we hurt and good for people we helped. Most normal people have done plenty of stuff to keep the soul happy and will find Heaven in Hell. Few souls are ever punished. Only a few evil souls stay in Hell forever. The most painful pit of Hell includes the most horrible people who sinned against other people. This pit is full of cops, judges, prosecuting attorneys and anyone who tries to manipulate other people’s lives. They caused other people to suffer so now they will burn for all eternity. Do not become one of them. We should live and let live.
I have heard Protestants tell people that they will burn in Hell, if they are not saved. Protestantism is a fanatical, civilized religion. Normal people do not have to be saved and are O.K. the way they are. Christians believe in an eternal Hell of constant punishment. This concept appeals to a Christian’s perverted psychology. They enjoy wishing hateful things on other people. Actually, the Protestants are going to feel pain in Hell, because they make people feel miserable. They will feel badly when the truth of how they hurt people finally hits them.
Eventually, your soul will be ready to be born into the world again. Before birth your soul must construct a tree of life, which will be its next life. The soul must find its four directions. To find all these directions, the soul travels a labyrinth. In the labyrinth, the soul walks seven crescent passages, which are the seven days of creation. There the soul meets its four elemental selves, which will be its body. Multiply seven and four and you will get 28, which is the number of days in the life cycle. A person will experience many of these cycles while alive. In some creatures this growth happens in an egg. In placental mammals like us it happens in a uterus inside our mother.
You are born from the Earth. You can return from where you sprang by entering a cave or any underground chamber inside the Earth. Here, you can build a fire to represent the flames of Hell; it is a good place to think. Usually, the outlet to this labyrinth is covered with flaps called labia, which can be closed to keep any light from the outside from getting in. There are times a person might want things completely dark.
As you walk through the maze, you pass fire, then air, then water, and then Earth on the path of the Four Winds beginning with Spring. The Four Winds are the driving forces in your life. Your animate life begins at conception, which is Spring and birth, and the East Wind of fire. You continue to the South Wind of the Sun and air, your life force. You continue to water where you pass the door of life and discover the two sides of the West, birth and death, creation and destruction. Finally, you reach the North Wind, where your animate body becomes part life on Earth. You are born. The journey will continue as your life. Eventually your animate life ends, and your body’s material returns to the Earth.
The way the active forces act causes the elements to be the way they are. The elements cause the active forces to act the way they do. The year is a symbol of the active and elemental working together in a continuous cycle. The Tree of Life is your body and your environment, and no clear line separates the two. You are an elemental, who is acted upon by your environment. You are also an active force, who makes things happen in you environment. The environment that makes you what you are is partially created by you. The Earth is made of rocks, plants and animals, all powered by the Sun. Everything is both active and elemental; each contributes in some way to the whole. The Earth has existed long before you and will exist long after you, but you do contribute a part.
What you can do is limited by what you are, which is your place in your natural niche. We can never be anything except the natural biological being we are. If civilization ever changes us, we will no longer be human. A toy poodle is not a wolf, though supposedly the poodle’s ancestors were wolves, before civilization changed them. The toy poodle will never be able to live like a wolf. Fortunately people today are still biologically the same as our ancestors and can return to the wild. If we do not stop civilization, it might permanently change us. If this damage ever happens, the natural cycles will stop and we will no longer be human.
The cycles become important when you have a relationship with other people. The symbol of this relationship is the "year," which represents people making their lives what they are. This relationship is best when it is natural, the way we are made to enjoy it. We are biologically social, we must have other people to be complete, or else life would be incomplete. We simply cannot do it alone. The active forces have made your elements that way. When these elements are your guide, you will find that they make you do the right things, which will help you achieve a good relationship. Two people can join, and their circles can work together. people are on Earth to love and to be loved. Both people can give and take from the relationship what they need, and this sharing feels good. Each moment in life counts, because it only happens once, and how it happens will repeat itself over and over again for all eternity. You can make the moment count with a partner. The great "69" in the sky is the absolute reality inside us, as well as the absolute reality of the world we live in. Medieval Jewish mystics pictured this reality as a divine marriage. You are incomplete, till you discover your partner. Without a partner you are wasting your eternal moments. Each moment of touch is special in eternity. These moments are our own personal Heavens that our soul will have forever. Remember that as you walk through life on the black line, each step is eternal and each step counts.
The climax of a sexual experience is the orgasm, a biological feeling, which tells us that we’re doing good. But the soul only feels good if you are actually touching another person at this time. Touch does not necessarily mean sex, but I prefer it when it does. Touch is a sharing experience, which two people develop together. We get a rewarding feeling when socializing with other people. The soul really wants this feeling. The sex drive guides us to this kind of relationship. People who deny their sex drive are denying an important part of the social instinct. Sex brings people together. People who think sex creates disorder are wrong.
Some people learn a mythology and act out this mythology in a dramatic ritual In the form of prayer or simply a form of fun. I think we should do some form of dramatic ritual during each Sabbath, where we celebrate the Gods of the festival. Some people do dramatic sex rituals. They might imitate the union of the Earth Goddess and the Sky God, or some other myth, to awaken the Gods inside themselves. I do not rule out sex as a form of prayer, but I prefer sex that is done just for fun. I always found prayer boring. It seems to me that fun is a better way to celebrate Nature than any ritual. Anything that spoils the fun might actually be against Nature.
I remember a Catholic priest who once told me that I would feel depressed after an ejaculation, because it is an evil act. He showed me a rock falling down a hill, saying that there is no bottom and you keep falling into depression, if you follow your desires. When I actually did try sex, I did not feel depressed after the ejaculation. It made me feel good for a long time. I did not believe the priest. Someone who does believe the priest might have felt depressed because the ascetic priest psychologically programmed the person to feel that way. You can be brainwashed to feel anything, but only natural feeling will guide you to live a normal natural life. Catholic priests are just a bunch of frustrated paranoid men, who live without establishing normal relationships with other people. These men think sex is dirty or evil and pretend to get depressed after they have an orgasm.
Some ascetics have sex but have antisocial concepts brewing in their minds, which insult Nature. Perhaps they want to ridicule the Earth and their own material bodies, giving them a feeling of perverted power, because they hate the Earth and want to hurt it. These ascetics pretend energy passes through their bodies giving them a feeling of even more power. They offer this power to their ascetic Gods. They believe the sex drive has caused us to fall from grace, and they use unusual acts to make themselves rise. Ascetics punish themselves to train their will against the sex instinct. Sex is such an important part of Nature that ascetics feel a great victory over Nature when they deny their sex drive, especially if they can deny it while they are having sex.
An activity becomes a sin against Nature when it fights Nature, such as fighting the sex drive. This fight is not the same as masochism, sadism, masturbation or homosexuality. A person can practice any of those acts and still be part of Nature. Many homosexuals achieve a touching relationship with each other and are doing what their soul wants.
A Christian might think that certain sex acts are unnatural, believing that only sex for reproduction is Natural. It is interesting how suddenly Christians can become so concerned about Nature. Usually, they do not care if you cut down a forest, but show them two men kissing and they suddenly show you how much a Christian can hate. These Christians fail to see the importance of sex for fun, which can be a natural, healthy part of your psychology. What works for one person might not work for another. People are dynamic and complex. We cannot claim that one act is natural and another is unnatural. All we have is an opinion. Perhaps it is best that we do not automatically condemn people and become hateful like Christians.
People would be so much happier if they just let their ejaculations flow out, allow our water of life to touch a lot of people and not just hold it back to our selves. Sex is a sharing experience between two people. Someone who holds back any aspect of the sex drive is not allowing himself to be natural. To enjoy sex you do not need to have an esoteric knowledge. Just find someone and do it anyway you and that person want to do it.
The image of Shiva and Shakti is an example of a complex ascetic mythology. These two are shown having sex, and it looks like social touching, where people are accepting material desires, but it is not. They are not having sex for natural fun. They are having sex in order to fit an ascetic dogma. This image could be an unnatural perversion of sex. Their mythology includes channels inside the ascetic that he directs his attention through, which turns his mind away from the material world. He might use sex to stimulate his attention so he can pass it through the channels, but most of the time he meditates alone. Along the channel are spheres containing his mythology. He wants to rise from animal spheres below his waist through a rebirth initiation sphere to higher spheres of enlightenment above his waist. His Shakti is a fantasy that he rides up the spheres.
Some people think that the Hindu concept of Brahman is the same as the physical interconnection of Nature. Brahman is supposed to be a unifying force inside everything. Brahman is not the same as a my vision of Nature. Ascetics who turned away from Nature invented Brahman. A Nature loving mystic is looking at Nature and interpreting the meaning. A Nature loving mystic sees the spirit that is Nature. Brahman is supposed to be more than Nature. The ascetics who invented Brahman did not see the actual physical interconnections of Nature.
A Hindu might tell you to love the divine in people. Hindus love a fantasy, which probably does not exist, and do not actually love people. Hinduism and its civilized caste system is notorious for a lack of consideration for the real needs of people. Christians say that they love people, because they want to save his soul, but they refuse to accept the real person for what he is. You hate a person, if you hate what a person does. To love a person, you must love what he is. He is his character, and anything else is a fantasy.
People are things, no more divine that anything else. Some people say that it is wrong to call people things, since they do not see the value of things. They think things are supposed to be used. A wiser person would see the value of things; therefore he sees the real value of people. He does not see things as something only to use, but sees them existing for their own purposes. Such a person does not ride his Shakti to use her for his sick mind’s perversion. The forces of Nature actually ride him.
A Shaman may sometimes see a force that creates Nature, but that is not always important to him. Instead he can feel the forces created by Nature, the characters of his environment, that are his Gods. A person’s personal Hell includes truths of the world around him and also the truth of his place in this world. A Shaman can see beyond most people. It is a horrible, abnormal life. He lives in a Hell that is strong enough for him to see the Gods of Hell. The Gods have chosen for him to be that way.
The characters that become part of the soul are the only forms the soul has. The Eternal soul is made of all the characters that ever were or shall be. The soul existed in this form before creation, but it is creation that gives him this form. The God who created the material world is being created by the material world. I am not sure if this God is the supreme God or not. Some people say that the supreme God is another person. They think the supreme God is someone who can hear your prayer and cares.
All ethical, religious or political beliefs are the product of the unconscious attempting to deal with ones own sex life. The sex instinct thinks for us. In fact, there are no ideas. We get an illusion of conscious thought, because we imagine whatever our level of understanding allows us to imagine. Understanding consists mostly of mythological images, which can be intuitively understood allegory's of our experience of both the world outside and the world inside us. Our consciousness serves no other purpose but to allow us to explore the sexual meaning of each allegory.
Don't blame me after you go into the underworld. You might go in a saint and come out a whore. You may find your personal object and place it upon your alter. Everything that happens to you is your choice. And everyone gets what they want. The angel will say don't touch it. The devil will say you should. Just remembers that, no man should own more than he can carry.
The stuff I say about these gods is completely my own interpretation. These interpretations are not the same as what someone else might think they are. I once got some guy really angry because he thought my stories about Eshu did not match the traditional stories about Eshu. He thought I was Ignorant of the correct stories from Yoruba. He is right about me being ignorant of the traditional stories, but he is wrong to assume that his imaginary friend has only a limited true interpretation. I hate fundamentalisms, which is so narrow-minded. I am not trying to mislead people about other people’s traditions. Please feel free to learn the stories of Eshu from someone who knows better.
By the way, I do know a little about some so called traditional Yoruban temples. These elaborate schemes are set up to make money off of true believers. People pay thousand of dollar to get rituals that could be done for free. My religion is called Holy Anarchy. In this religion you invent your own interpretations of the Gods and you can change this interpretation any time you want. I’ve redesigned my Temple many times.
Some people think they know what they are going to get. These people set out on a project with great expectations as to what will happen. These expectations do not always happen. Ideas they were so sure about turn out to be false. Sometimes they never realize that the project is going wrong and they continue to follow their false ideas. Perhaps the problem happens whenever people want their plan is be true so much that they never consider that it could be false. Such people spend money on plans that will never work. The really dumb people give there money to a religion who claims to offer then easy solutions. They belive in Gods that will help them. These Gods never help them because these Gods do not exist.
Let me tell you about weak people. They think that a great cosmic mind would care about their pathetic lives. Faith gives them a reason to live. Prayer is like spamming God. He doesn't want it. He would rather not listen to any more of their whining. Strong people are those who have the cycles working inside them in a healthy way. They do not need to beg god for help.
By the way, I do know a little about the real Eshu. I do not learn it by paying money to some priest to get some elaborate prefabricated story. I got to know Eshu directly from Eshu. One day I noticed how ideas such as true and false are not always black and white. There is a gray area between them. While thinking about this gray area I began to feel a presence. I them used my Shamanistic skills to look at the presence. What I saw was not limited to my own beliefs. It had forms I never thought of before. It was the Devil.
I recently found a Grotto which believes that Satan is a real being who is understood through sorrow. Their misery is so intense that they feel it becomes necessary. Their revelations, tell them to spread misery. They delight in senseless destruction, especially senseless self destruction. To them Satan is the Master who made them Evil and guides them to be Evil. They have introduced me to some really good music from Scandinavian metal bands. The normal Adult reaction to these kids is to assume that they need treatment. Don't stop them. In some Shamanistic cultures, the highest law is to do what the Dream says, even if it kills you. Such cultures encourage their misfits to continue. They believe that to stop such people would deprive the tribe of what these people have to add to the tribes collective Dream. If these kids end up being domesticated we will never know what they could have been. In a way they will be dead.
The sign of the uterus represents a storm called Chaos. The study of how small changes affect dynamic order is differential chaos. Small changes are diluted by billions of other events, but remove one event and everything will someday end up somewhere far from where it would have been. The first law of chaos is - Provocation increases as its field expands from the original cause. It may seem to violate the law of conservation, but I am not talking about energy. The amount of energy is not proportional to the volume of influence. It may take a lot of energy to move a mountain, but the message to move a mountain can be sent with only a little energy. The theory of how the storm affects small events is integral chaos. Natural selection is an example of integral chaos.
Integral chaos and differential chaos are the two sides of the year symbol. You might wonder why I mix fantasy and facts. I am not just trying to examine the facts of the storm. I am trying to experience it and understand our role in it. I have come to the conclusion "It's all good." Accept this gift from the profits.
Stuff to think about
Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell. Notes of a Biology Watcher. Published by Viking Press, 1974. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/LewisThomas.htm
Dougal Dixon, After Man. a zoology of the future. Published by Harrow House, 1981. http://www.dougal-dixon.co.uk
George Orwell, Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Published by Secker & Warburg, 1949. http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/