My Country Is Called Earth (10 page)

Wednesday, July 8, 2076

On the eleventh day I went to talk with Mother Elizabeth, the other woman I had met when I awoke in the commune. She told me she was a priestess of the Gaian Catholic Church, a wife, and a parent. These are excerpts from our conversations:

“Your civilization has yet to discover how a man’s intents, beliefs, and desires shape his experiences.”

“Your people have got to stop killing each other, but they also must understand it is okay to die.”

“A day is like a life: You are reborn in the morning fresh like a child, you do your work during the day, and at night you are tired so you lay down to rest.”

“All time is simultaneous: The years 1992 and 2076 both occur in the spacious present. When you take into consideration simultaneous time and reincarnation, you can say that you’re as dead now as you’ll ever be. Or if you think of yourself as a visitor from another reality to which you will return after you die, death isn’t scary at all—it’s going home.”

“Everything is alive—a rock, an insect, an atom, this table—because all things possess consciousness. Consciousness can never be destroyed.”

“Since God is within all Its Creations, then Earth is God, and the Children of Earth are God; therefore, all things have rights, and their rights are sacred.”

“Some people have used the theory of evolution to excuse the ruthlessness of capitalism, but they were seeing nature as they wanted to see her. Anyone who opens his heart to nature knows nature is based upon cooperation. If there were brutal competition in nature as your scientists said, the world would not survive for an instant.”

“There was much discussion in your time about the conflict between science and Christianity over evolution, but few talked about what science and Christianity had in common: They both viewed man as the highest or most advanced creature on the earth and they both saw the world as a savage, selfish place.”

“Several centuries after Christ, Christian leaders put together a book they claimed was the Word of God, although it was written by many men, and they developed a dogma based upon the teachings of St. Paul: Man’s nature is sinful because he is born with the stain of the sin of Adam on his soul, and because the flesh is weak and under constant temptation from the evil world. God sent Jesus, His Only Begotten Son, to die for man’s sins so that man might have eternal life with Him in heaven. Only those who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord can be saved from hell.”

Elizabeth told me of a conversation she had with one of the few remaining believers in the old Christianity:

The Christian said to Elizabeth, “Everything in the Bible is true because the men who wrote it were inspired by God.”

Elizabeth asked, “How do you know this?”

The Christian answered, “We know the Bible is God’s Word because we have been blessed with faith.”

Elizabeth said, “There are people who believe in other Gods than your God, and they have their own holy books. How can you say your book is true and theirs is a lie?”

The Christian said, “All other religions except for Judaism worship false gods, and the Jews have failed to recognize the divinity of Jesus. Christianity is the one true religion.”

Elizabeth asked, “How do you know that?”

The Christian answered, “We know Christianity is the one true religion because we have been blessed with faith. If you want to be saved, you must ask Jesus to come into your heart.”

Elizabeth said to the Christian, “You tell me your book and your religion are true, and when I ask you for proof, you say your faith is proof. Faith is not proof: Faith is what you choose to believe. Your religion is arrogant, illogical, and intolerant. It is for people who are afraid to trust themselves. My God loves all kinds of people, and wants us to be strong and to take responsibility for our lives.”

Here are more excerpts from our conversations that day:

“Your generation must stop living as if you own the earth. The book of Genesis is wrong. God did not give man dominion over the earth. Those words were written by greedy men. We are supposed to share the earth with all forms of life. That is what God really wants.”

“The old Christianity taught that man should love God, and if he did not, God would send him to hell forever. Now what sort of a God is that? A cold-hearted, cruel God, not a God of Love.”

“The Old Testament cannot be the Word of God. God does not want man to take an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. As Gandhi said, ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’”

“How can the Old Testament be the Word of God when the God of the Old Testament commands the Israelites to conquer the Promised Land by the sword, and to kill every man, woman, and child in Jericho and in the cities of northern and southern Canaan?”

“I’ll tell you what kind of a God you find in the Old Testament: a God created by violent men to justify their aggression against weaker nations. That is not the true God, but only a crude god made in the image of a warlike people.”

“People in your time believed the Four Gospels were divinely inspired, when in fact they were edited versions of the original texts, rewritten in the fourth century to fit the beliefs of the leaders of the Catholic Church. Words were put into the mouth of Jesus. References to reincarnation were removed or altered. Mary was made out to be a virgin, because normal motherhood was thought to be unclean, due to the Church’s rejection of the world.”

“There were other gospels left out of the Bible, because they had Jesus saying things the Church found threatening. For example,
The Gospel According To Thomas
contains a passage in which Christ responds to a question from one of the apostles about the coming of the Kingdom of God: ‘The Kingdom shall not come by expectation. The Kingdom is spread across the face of the earth, and men do not see it.’ A profession of priests would find such ideas dangerous, because if God were already in their midst, there would be no need for a church.”

“In the early Christian centuries a decision was made to treat the stories about Jesus as historical facts. The Catholic Church later wrote the Nicene Creed, which spells out the beliefs of the Church. That Creed was the result of the victory of one faction of the Church over a group that wanted to view Jesus as a Buddha-like man: a human incarnation of God sent to remind us of the divinity of all creation. Today the Buddhist view has won over the Catholic Church. The Church teaches that we are all incarnations of God. To become aware of that truth and to live out of that knowledge is our task.”

Thursday, July 9, 2076

This is what Mother Elizabeth said when I asked her to talk more about science:

“Your scientists are men of great faith. It takes a strong faith to believe that chance and the laws of physics and chemistry designed and built the universe with all its complexities and wonders. If you put limits on what you will admit is real as your scientist do, if you decide to only accept what you can see, detect with your instruments, or fit into your theories, you force yourself into incredible conclusions.

“In order for science to be reborn, scientists had to realize that nature cannot be comprehended by dissecting it or by standing apart from it. Science now recognizes that the spiritual plane is the source of the physical universe. For example, our doctors understand that the beliefs and attitudes of an individual are more relevant to the cure of his sickness than the identification of any virus or anything else they can do for him. In your time, doctors were treated like gods. Now we know the patient is the god: The patient is the creator of his experiences.

“Your medicine uses self-hypnosis in the wrong way: It teaches people to look for symptoms of specific diseases. It also teaches people to fear they will become ill by constantly telling them there are many diseases waiting for the opportunity to attack them.

“In your day, many people believe medicine saved them from cancer or from some other disease. We think those people who survived their illnesses would have survived without doctors. We do not believe there are victims of any disease. We believe, as Jane Roberts said, that no one dies before he is ready to die.

“Now that men no longer fear death, they do not ask to be kept alive when they are spiritually and physically ready to let go. I understand that in your time some terminally ill people had themselves frozen in the hope a cure could be found in the future. All those bodies that were frozen have been thawed out and placed into your cemeteries. Our cemeteries become farmland after fifty years, but yours, because in your time people were pumped full of chemicals, are considered toxic waste dumps now.

“By burying people in metal or concrete boxes, your society violates a basic law of nature: The dead shall become food for the living.”

Friday, July 10, 2076

Mother Elizabeth told me that native cultures believe the entire earth is Holy Land. You don’t have to go anywhere to be in the Holy Land, therefore, because it is all around you. She said native cultures have a reverence for all life, and try to live in harmony with the world.

She said that our Western civilization, which wiped out most of the native cultures in the world, sees nature as an adversary; this attitude is the cause of the great environmental challenges we face in 1992. “Today,” she said, “mankind is at peace with the earth. The way the Indian relates to nature is a model for us.”

Indians see themselves as participants in the Great Mystery of Life, she said. The old Christianity, on the other hand, said that life was a trail of tears. The old Christianity condemned the world and declared that the senses and the body could not be trusted. Man was supposed to rise above his sinful nature; only then could he be saved.

“It was not man who was flawed, it was his beliefs,” she said. “Your religion told you the heart of man was wicked; therefore, many men failed to love themselves and in fact felt guilty to be alive. Guilt has it value—when you violate others or nature, for example—but if you believe you are an unworthy creature you will attract unnecessary and unpleasant experiences into your life and you will limit your growth.

“Your science, which was more influential than religion in your day, taught that life was without rhyme or reason: an accident in an uncaring universe. Your science also said that you were a naked ape, implying that your actions were determined by instincts and other inherited tendencies. And your psychology taught that man was a victim of past events, especially those in early childhood. The result of these ideas of science and psychology was that many men felt they were not responsible for what they did. Is it any wonder then that vandalism, violence, and disrespect for others were rampant in your society?”

Elizabeth told me the negative beliefs of our time had been replaced by such positive ideas as:

You are a worthy creature; you have a right to be here.

Each individual is responsible for his life.

The universe is designed to support your growth.

She said, “Today the Gaian Catholic Church preaches the true meaning of Christ’s teachings: God is on the earth, within Its creations. Since God is present on the earth, then life is blessed, and heaven is here and now.

“I know this may sound strange to you, but there could be no peace in the world before man learned to be at peace with himself. How could man trust his neighbor before he trusted and loved himself? I think man’s failure to trust his body and his own intentions is the reason for the military buildup after World War II.”

Saturday, July 11, 2076

To Sunday, June 28, 1992

There was a little ceremony for me in the central hall. It involved an Indian medicine man in native costume performing a dance and chanting: “Beauty before me, beauty behind me. Beauty to the left of me, beauty to the right of me. Beauty above me, beauty below me.”

After the ceremony I thanked my hosts for allowing me to stay with them and I said, “When I arrived here two weeks ago, I did not know what to expect. I believe now that I have awakened to a future I had imagined in moments of hope and inspiration. I will return to tell my brothers and sisters about this time, and do my best to make it a reality in my world.”

This has been a story from the world of dreams. It is a story of a future we can have, not one that must be. There are many possible futures; we have the power to choose which one we will experience.

If I were to sum up the message from this future in a few words, they would be: The challenges of today cannot be overcome until we realize we are not the owners of the earth and we are not superior to the other species on earth. The truth is that God made every creature in Its Image, and meant for men to share the earth with each other and with nature. When we understand this we will not destroy nature for profit or be insensitive to the rights of others. And we will not permit men to hoard mountains of wealth while others live in hunger and poverty.

The last thing Elizabeth said to me was that man does not have to go through all the suffering that Edward and Exellon told me about: We can change the world today, and not wait until we are pushed to the edge. She said to do this we must recognize that our mythologies—science and Christianity—are the main cause of our difficulties: A new mythology is needed to allow man to bridge the distances he has created between himself, God, and the world.

Appendix

Letter From The Earth

I am Gaia, your mother, and I have feelings and rights as you do. I give of myself freely, but you may not own me. I belong to all my children.

In your race to conquer the world, you trampled on the rights of native people. You looked down upon them, yet they understood these important truths your culture denied: That the gods dwell within nature. That man is part of the earth. And that man must share this planet with other forms of life.