Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tl00290)

JIm,
When I say lies, I mean that quite literally.  Religious organizations have a
hisotry of being founded by people with some stroke of the divine whose ideas
are then totally perverted by the next generations until any truth that may
have been in them is eradicated.
We don't really know what the Buddha said or did.  All we have is the
writings of the followers, the same is true of Jesus.
As for being close minded, I have a mind like a steel trap.  Once it closes,
it never opens again and my mind closed on religious figures almost forty
years ago.  And it is possible to have enlightenment without the Buddha.
 After all, someone invented the concept, so why not reinvent it.
If I am stuck with the possibility of an authoritative approach coming from
anywhere, I don't trust anyone but myself to do it.  Besides, I already have
followers who think I'm semi-divine and it drives me nuts!  I even had one
young man see a vision of me while he was meditating and did not know it was
me until he described it to me.  That is a hell of a lot more scary than
anything I can come up.  But being in that unenviable and highly embarrassing
position has given me an insight on the kind of utter bullcrap that can
develop around these figures.
My opinion stands.  The Buddha would have been terribly upset by the things
his followers ended up saying about him, because the lesser stories, the ones
least likely to be edited, reveal someone basically pretty practical  when he
was lucid, which may have been rarely, and Jesus got what he deserved.
The only religious founder I have any respect for  is Mohammed.  I dislike
Islam, but I love the way he spread it.  And there is the little matter of
the houris, so when I get tired of Valhalla I may sneak over there.
In the meantime, I'm busy competing with Holy Elvis for the position of the
One True God and trying very hard to understand why anyone would believe
something just because someone else says it.
So to anyone who asks me, I say don't believe anything I say, don't believe
anything Buddha is reported to have said, don't ever believe anything a Xian
says ever, don't believe what Crowley said, you won't have to worry about
believing what Krishnamurti said because you'll never figure it out (even he
didn't know what he was talking about half the time, I'm willing to bet),
don't believe anything.  Get off your ass and start looking for yourself.
 It's out there.  We don't know what it is until we run into it and when we
do we can't describe it anyway, so good luck.
If that makes me close minded and illogical, fine.  I really don't care.  It
is better to have a closed mind than an empty head and logic is a fun
academic exercise which is utterly useless in real life.  There ain't nothing
logical about magick.  But it works, kind of like bumblebees flying.
Authority is worthless.

Chuck the Heretic