Messages 2002

Saramago’s God.

May 10th, 2002

Received by H.

Cuenca, Ecuador.

What do we know about God? Very little, for sure, as I remarked in my last message. God is not accessible to the human mind, as man’s mind is not accessible to the animals’ mind. It is even worse. Between God’s nature and the human mind there is a substantial difference, not just a difference in quantity, such as between the intelligence of animals and men. The most developed animals can think. They can learn, plan, adapt themselves to new situations — that is what is commonly called “intelligence.” The chimpanzee that draws his unordered scribbles on paper is able to sketch forms like a circle, an “X,” a cross, and many more. However, it never ends up sketching a rudimentary face, as children do. When reaching a certain phase of their “abstract” development, it stops, while this continues advancing in humans. This is a subtle difference.

But with God, things are different. His nature is essentially different from human nature. And the human mind is, in its essence, the very same as the animal mind, highly developed, there is no doubt about it, yet it is still animal.

In many messages we have spoken of the animal mind and of the soul’s mind, without having defined those expressions. We will not be able to define these expressions in this message either, for the simple reason that language is the product of the animal mind, and the spiritual, i.e. what refers to God, escapes its description. Language already falters when it tries to describe the most common emotions. Nevertheless we have words to define those states of mood, and so, implicitly, we know what others are talking about or what we are reading, because we have experienced them in the flesh.

In order to describe God and to experience His presence it is necessary, therefore, to employ other means, which we call “spirituality.” It is not based on the mind, but on the soul and its perceptions — provided that, what we designate as “spirituality” is indeed genuine and not pseudo-mysticism that is satisfied with establishing unfathomable mysteries, without bothering to find out if these mysteries really exist or are just the product of human laziness. This laziness refuses to investigate beyond what is easily possible, and even prevents others doing so. And the mind, always eager to dominate man, joins in and supports this inertia, betraying its reluctance to lose control and open the way for a development on a different level — the spiritual level. Spirituality is the experience of the soul. You can only understand the typical vocabulary of this kind of experience when you have lived it in a similar way.

When man has hardly begun to investigate God, His nature and His existence, employing his significant intelligence, he comes acoss a serious problem. Where to start? He cannot see, he cannot touch, neither savor nor smell the object of his inquiries. How to take measures of the invisible and inaccessible? And if God is spirit, how can this be measured?

As a last and easy resource, the investigator analyzes ancient writings which claim to have been communicated by God, through inspiration. At the same time he rejects modern writings, which claim the same thing, because it seems that antiquity justifies a change in criterion.

The Portuguese writer, Jose Saramago, awarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature, a brilliant man and master of language, dedicated intense studies to the Bible, and he came to his conclusions. He even reinterpreted the gospels, retaining the essence of the biblical story, but adding a good dose of “realism.” In his work we find several statements on God which are surprising and provocative statements for sure, a selection of which we will analyze one by one.

1. God needs men in order to be able to be God.

I ask, what is the basis of the relationship between man and God? Before formulating this statement, it would have been good to investigate the background, I think.

2. Each man who dies is a death of God, and when the last man has died, God will not resuscitate.

Here I would have liked to read a definition of what is death. Yes, I understand that the author wants to express that God is the product of the human mind, only living in that mind, as a phantom or projection. And when man dies — and here it is clear that he speaks of a definitive death, of “ceasing to exist” — then the existence of God, too, will end, because the mind that nurtured it, does no longer exist. This, implicitly, has already been mentioned in the first statement.

3. Man forgives God anything, and the less they know him, the more they forgive him.

The less they know Him, the more they fear Him, without daring to blame God for what they perceive as “His work.”

4. God is the silence of the universe and man the scream that gives meaning to that silence.

God is the Love that floods the universe, and man is like the salt that, little by little, dissolves in the ocean of Divinity, giving it “flavor.”

5. God: an “all” torn out of the nothing, through which little more than nothing exists.

Once again, the atheist betrays himself, impelled by some unknown desire to set out to seek God, but whose mind was trapped in the ink of books.

6. God says: do not adore that stone, that tree, that mountain; they all are false gods. I am the only true God. Saramago comments: God, poor fellow, is falling into the flagrant sin of pride.

Oh, God, poor fellow… if pride is a sin, who committed it?

7. It is necessary to be God in order to like blood so much.

Definately, that is a justified conclusion, taking into account the story of the Old Testament, and Jesus’ mission, as the orthodox explain it, washing away with his blood our sins.

8. Jewish tradition considers the law received at Sinai as a contract between the people and God. Saramago claims that a decent contract should express and harmonize the will of both parties. “I don’t believe that one can affirm that this is the case: God imposed his conditions and the people accepted them.”

They accepted them, because they were the basic rules for living together, rules that, by the way, had been formulated much earlier in other cultures. The “Codex Hammurabi” established very similar commandments, without the supposed participation by God. If God is just the projection of human mind, why should we accuse the “phantom” of what man has expanded on?

9. Before Jesus, men were already able to forgive, but not so the gods. Forgiveness is human.

It is true, God does not forgive, He loves. God is not justice, he is Love. Accused and judge, man will be both at the same time.

10. When will the day come, oh Lord, when you will come to us and admit your errors in front of all men?”

This he may ask when he is near the Father, provided this question is still be a valid one for him, and not just a shameful recollection of a distant past.

A few days ago, we have spoken of the “other.” The problem of the supposed analysis of God is in its essence the problem of the “other,” whom man ignores, and upon whom he projects his own expectations. God does not forgive, because man does not forgive, God makes mistakes, because man makes mistakes, etc. And it seems so difficult to find features of love in God, when man himself lacks this property.

In the old times, when humanity was hardly able to extract iron from the red ore, it seems forgivable that they attributed to God whatever they could not understand. It is also comprehensible that they sought to justify their actions through recourse to God, that is to say, that “God had commanded them” to do this or that thing, for example, to annihilate the whole population of the conquered towns.

At the present time, it is incomprehensible how intelligent people can apply the same Bronze Age criteria to evaluate ancient writings.

Does God forgive? Well, God never has accused and will never accuse Mr. Saramago of blasphemy or slander. Therefore, there is nothing to forgive. He, however, maybe has much to forgive himself. Don Jose, although you deny God, although you accuse Him of everything, although you are mocking Him, the Father will always love you, and we will always love you. Your mockery will become shame, and your shame will give way to despair, until some day, a weak light enters into your loneliness. This light is love, and this light will remain. And when you develop in your new freedom, flooded by light, searching for that source which is giving you warmth and happiness, little by little you will learn to make out what you had investigated in vain during all your life.

We in the Celestial Heavens use the soul and its senses to know more of our Father, who opens up to us freely and voluntarily, without hiding behind “mysteries.” Do the same. This is the difference between spirituality and occultism. Do not try to measure light with ruler and a pair of compasses; do not try to investigate the Father with your mind.

This is all I have to say.

I am your brother Judas.