Special Podcast Series: The Modern Relevance of God - Ep. 6: Trouble from the Start

Welcome to Episode 6 of our Modern Relevance of God podcast series here on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. 

You might have noticed in our first few episodes, I've been mentioning the importance of the wisdom of the past to our understanding of the present. And especially in our understanding of God and spirituality.  

That's not been by accident. There were some smart dudes back then, and Norberto Keppe's work has been in part about going back and rescuing the correct knowledge from these great thinkers and sages throughout history. That's really not a modern view, I know that. We tend to be much more of the mind today that what went before was interesting, perhaps as an archaic allegory, but hardly relevant anymore in our digital app for that, do all your banking online, superiority. We just threw away all those guys with a dismissive shrug and a raised eyebrow. What could Aquinas or Plato or the Divine Comedy possibly teach us about the important stuff in life, like creating passive income or lowering our toxic exposure or reducing our carbon footprint? 

In Mrs. Kent's English Lit 12 class way back when — not quite Middle Ages but still a long time ago — we studied Milton's Paradise Lost. Studied the language and the rhythm, the poem's epic story and heroic nature. "Bloody long thing," I thought at the time. The poem tells the story of the war for heaven and of man's expulsion from paradise. Benjamin Ramm in his recent BBC article, Why You Should Reread Milton's Paradise Lost, declares it to be a powerful meditation on rebellion, longing and the desire for redemption. 

But I think we're missing a point here. Paradise Lost is not just an allegory about non-conformist, anti-establishment rebellion. It's a real story, about what really went on. A real event with real people. A story that continues right up to this present moment. 

And I know how that must sound here in the 21^st century. Like I've just suggested there was no moon landing, right? Well, stay with me! In this episode, we'll introduce a scientific explanation of the Biblical story of the Fall of Man, and see if we can't rescue the story from the clutches of ancient mythology and restore it to its rightful place as the real story of Man that we ignore and banalize to our peril.

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The True Spiritual Reset

It's July, and we're still in the middle of the pandemic. Actually, we've been in the middle of this for what, 4 months now? You ever seen anything like this? Of course not. Unless you're a Highlander who lived through the Plague.

This crisis feels different, doesn't it, from all the other global crises we've faced. The real ones I mean ... not the big screen inventions. Different because it's highlighting the dire situation we're experiencing in all areas of human life. Environmental, economic, health ... even the NBA ... we're all facing it. And as we work from home and avoid hugging our grandparents, the geniuses in Davos, who are largely responsible for leading us into this global mess in the first place, are now certain they can reset us out of it.

It's an unprecedented window of opportunity that's closing fast and may never open again, is how Prince Charles puts it, and those rounded Eton vowels hove in the air ominously.

I don't buy it. And if you do, I hope we can give you a better perspective. Forget their reset; let's talk about a True Spiritual Reset today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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The Inner Game of Virus Defense

It's week 8 of the quarantine here in Brazil. Restaurants and shops are still closed, they're taking temperatures before they let me in to the supermarket across the street, and no end in sight to the general Big Pharma orientation to lock down everyone, high risk or no.

It's an entirely materialistic response to a health condition that is not only physically solved, showing the clearly limited science that we are following worldwide.

Which point to the desperate need for a more comprehensive science ... one that can get to the real solutions for physical health problems, not just a face-mask-and-alcohol-gel-every-15-minutes solution like we're being offered now.

Norberto Keppe has been a leading edge pioneer in the psychosomatic approach to all disease. The power of his energetic medicine is impressive and offers us hope beyond Bill Gates, the WHO and Big Pharma.

The Inner Game of Virus Defense, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Calming Pandemic Hysteria

There must have been a "Eureka!" moment back in the late 1800s when, investigating an infection in the French wine industry, Louis Pasteur happened upon the discovery of micro-organisms. He must have felt the jolt of a thrill of realizing that he'd stumbled upon something really monumental.

He was perfectly aware of the concurrent research being conducted by rival French scientists, including the extraordinary Antoine Bechamp and even his good friend, Claude Bernard.

The separator of the waters between them, something that came to be as contentious as the War of the Currents between Tesla and Edison, was that his scientific rivals had reached the opposite conclusion: the body does not get sick as a consequence of an invasion of microbes from outside, but is instead sick in the internal system of the organism. Microbes appear as a consequence, not as the cause of disease.

Pasteur's self-marketing won the day, however, and his discovery underlies all of the paranoia and fear around contagions.

Calming Pandemic Hysteria today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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The Censorship of Natural

One of the challenges in our modern philosophy lies in the difficulty of acknowledging right and wrong, good and bad. We've blurred the lines so much it's almost impossible to clarify this in any absolute way. An artist puts a glass of water on a shelf and calls it an oak tree, and defends that it's an oak tree because he says it is. And there's no argument to be used against his declaration because that would be intolerant, politically incorrect. Hate speech even in extreme cases. The pendulum has swung so far in this liberal direction that you have 50 something gender choices when signing up for a new Facebook account.

Now I'm certainly not advocating the cleaning out of the society of anyone who doesn't agree with the traditional view of things, but I also can't really see my way to endorsing any opinion whatsoever as the new normal.

Some will certainly say I'm a dinosaur stuck in the 1950s for expressing that. And that, I suggest, is exactly the problem.

Dare we try to approach this in our program today? Of course we do.

The Censorship of Natural today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Even Psychopaths Feel Guilt

Back when I was a kid playing street hockey in my hometown, a couple of Dutch immigrant kids came out hoping to join us. They were carrying hockey sticks their father had made by nailing a piece of wood to long broom handles. These makeshift sticks were far from the sleek, black taped, store bought babies the rest of us were sporting, and my friends were lavish in the derision they heaped on the poor guys who retreated, humiliated, back to their rented house.

It was the shattered look on their faces that I remember even to this day. I felt so guilty, I stopped playing and walked down to their house to apologize.

It’s a powerful feeling, guilt. It can keep us up at nights. It can make us sick. A police detective here in Brazil told me he thinks guilt may be the reason criminals leave clues so they get caught.

Today, though, we’re counselled to mitigate our guilt. Not being able to manage our guilt feelings is actually considered detrimental to our mental health.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Even Psychopaths Feel Guilty, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Power and Demonic Envy

In Norberto Keppe's extraordinary book, Liberation of the People, he writes, "Humankind reckons among its numbers a few individuals who are completely sick. This includes those who have succeeded in attaining positions of social power." That's why the subtitle of his book is the Pathology of Power.

He wrote that in 1984 - a good year for books like that as Orwell prophesized. But surprisingly, no one has really picked up the torch and continued that analysis. No, most explorations or powerful people are somehow in awe of their accomplishments, failing to see the pathology behind their ascent to power. They point out the wrinkles but miss the rot underneath.

Keppe, now in his '90s continues to work to make us conscious that we are driven by the sickest among us, who form secret societies and influence the social structure to serve their needs rather than the people. It's a study that he has called sociopathology, which treats the social difficulties wherein the human being becomes a victim of a sick society.

Power and Demonic Envy, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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A Study of Temptation

Temptation. Like most religious words, that one's been banalized and reduced from its original meaning. It means literally a trial or a test. A moment in your life when you have a choice to be faithful or not.

Today, that's like faithful to a diet or a spouse, to a virtue or an ideal. But the original sense was to be tested in your faith to God. Something Job-ian - no matter what life throws at you, you stay the course.

But temptation is secondarily related to allurement or seduction to sin. And here we're into a less popular usage. Nobody likes to think in terms of "can't" and "don't" anymore, do they? "Who says I can't!", goes the language of modernity. "Who are you to tell me what's right and wrong?"

These are tricky waters. "You can't do that!" has been used to control and restrict by those wanting to remain in power, for sure. But is there something to this obligation aspect of temptation that deserves a more careful consideration?

A Study of Temptation, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Seduction by Evil

"The idea of being a victim of evil is quite a comfortable one," writes Norberto Keppe in his book, Psychotherapy and Exorcism. "But what's really going on," he continues, "is that the human being actually selects the type of evil he wants in his life."

Well, that's sobering. I hope this happens unconsciously because the conscious choice for evil seems rather terrifying. Keppe's view that we summon evil contradicts the common idea that we are victimised by it. Even the exorcists, those most graphic of illustrations of possession by evil, show the possessed as being unwilling recipients of the accursed spiritual invasions.

What Keppe is trying to alert us to here is the very real presence of evil spirits in the human experience, and our considerable role in giving them so much freedom to run amok on our planet.

But there's another aspect at play in this process ... the subterfuge of the demons. And that's not a once-in-awhile thing. It's constant.

Seduction by Evil, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Certainty of the Divine

A belief in immaculate conception, overcoming death with resurrection, divine miracles of creation … modern thinkers complain these tenets suffer from a lack of evidence. “Faith is a great evil,” they say, “That leads gullible human beings to open their minds so much their brains fall out.”

I respectfully disagree. Faith has been shown in studies to mitigate symptoms of depression, spiritual beliefs can help us deal with loss, disease and death, and even aid recovery. We also know that it helps deal with addictions. Great things have been accomplished with perseverance in the face of impossible odds, even at the risk of loss of life, and what is that if not an act of faith?

So just dismissing conviction in something divine simply because there’s not scientific proof seems unintelligent to me. And anyway, if we just look around us at the intricate design of nature, the complex way natural processes mesh together perfectly, we really have to be slightly moronic to rule out divinity.

The Certainty of the Divine, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.

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Human Resonance with Evil

The nature of good and evil. That’s a nice light topic for your next Sunday afternoon bbq! If I had a dollar for every time a friend wanted to discuss the nature of good and evil with me over the years, I’d have a cool … $3.00 in my bank account. Not a topic that comes up that often.

We’ve been considered victims of good and evil for much of our history. From the Biblical Job to history’s billions of casualties of some malfeasance or other, to the Vatican exorcists trying to free the soul of one invaded by demons, we’ve all had to suck it up in the face of circumstances we feel no control over.

A remarkable Brazilian philosopher, however, is trying to deepen our understanding of this. Norberto Keppe has proposed that evil exists, yes, but not as a natural occurrence. Rather, it is a choice. An unconscious one to be sure, and influenced by spiritual forces you have almost no knowledge of.

I know … still sounds like we’re victims, doesn’t it? Well, let’s talk.

Human Resonance with Evil, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.

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