Peeling Back the Onion of Religion - Understanding the ‘God’ Concept

Truth
All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer

Truth is a funny thing. It is like an onion. The onion has a harder outside skin and a soft inside kernel, with one layer superimposed upon another layer, hiding the inside kernel. Not until we can peel back the layers of the onion can we get to the heart of the onion, or the first kernel of truth. Not until we get to this first kernel or precept of truth can we say that we know the truth that will set us free, free from the ignorance of each layer, which hides the originating kernel of truth. To get to this kernel of truth we have to painstakingly peel back each layer of so called truth, and like the natural onion, with each layer that is peeled back it hurts the vision of our eyes, and we experience tears. So it is also with peeling back the layers of superimposed truth, we become one of those who are acquainted with tears.

At the time of the writing of this article the World Wide Web is able to reach a majority of educated mankind, and the collective knowledge or ‘universal knowledge’ that man has accumulated over the ages of the written record, can finally be accessed through the Internet, thanks to those good souls who have made this knowledge available.

Fortunately this knowledge is not located in one place, unlike the ancient Library of Alexandria, which was destroyed along with its contents, but located all over the globe in many places. This alone is indicative of the unseen hand of providence, revealing ancient treasures long buried, a precursor to the final revelation of truth that is yet to come, giving life to the end time prophecy of Daniel that “knowledge will increase, and man (the minds and bodies of) will run to and fro” – the initiating source of this prophecy being the concept we call ‘god’. Instead of the confusion of the many languages the reverse is becoming true; all languages are now becoming one. There is a definitive purpose behind this phenomenon of the explosion of information.

As a seeker of truth, as should be with all sentient peoples, I have searched this record diligently, only to find to my astonishment that what we have been told as the truth is in fact something altogether different – a distortion of the truth – superimposing purposely altered truth and misdirecting the real truth into something else, usually a doctrine and dogma that benefits those in power.

The real truth has been altered and massaged to suit those who held the true record under their control. Their reason for doing so is that once they had discovered the power behind the keys of knowledge, they would then keep the source of the power to themselves, thereby guaranteeing their position as the mediator of the power. These groups of men (and to a lesser degree women) were known as the Priesthood, or those who stood in the place of god, proclaiming their selves to be a god or at best, more godlike than those they controlled, making rules and regulations to govern the ignorant masses; the end product of such being position, power, and money – these three like unclean frogs leaping into a clean pond, polluting the reservoir of truth.

It is no strange thing to find that during the missing years of the prophet/messiah we know as Jesus (ages 14-30), as recorded in the ‘Life of Saint Issa’ (Issa being the Arabic version of Yeshua or Jesus); a manuscript found by a western explorer in a Tibetan monastery around the turn of the 20th century (is this the providential hand moving once more?), that it is recorded within that this Issa (Jesus) opposed the priesthoods of Egypt, Persia, and of India during his travels. This is consistent with the same attitude he had towards those of Israel. The ‘truth’ to him was something both simple and sublime.

Our ancient parents were at first hunters and gatherers, and as the respective civilizations progressed, they became a society of agriculturalists, then industrialist, and later in our age, technologists. As we are today, they were also observers, observing all that they could see around them. As ancient observers they had only nature to watch. They had the sun, the moon, the stars, the weather, and the plants and animals to observe during the daylight and the long darkness of night. Unlike us today they did not have the luxury of electric lights to illuminate the darkness of night, nor the access to television and other observable modern man made fantasy magic. Theirs was a simple and unsophisticated observation with a simple fantasy magic that they superimposed over the observable truths that they had discovered.

They saw that the sun ruled the day as a fiery orb and therefore must be a god for it gave energy to all that lived upon the earth, and therefore as a god was the giver of life to all life on earth. They observed that the weather consisted of winds and rains of all kinds and that these winds brought seeds from somewhere unknown, and that the rains, also from somewhere unknown watered these seeds and caused them to live again, from something that once appeared dead regenerating into a newness of life.

They observed the animals and their characteristics, admiring or fearing them for the various and unique powers of which they were endued. They watched the moon and the stars at night, in many cultures noticing that they appeared to them (at least from their earthly perspective) as animals or as men, naming the stars after the animals and their characteristics, or after the men of legend who had done exploits. They measured the times and seasons, separating the day powers from the night powers, the night heavens into groups of stars, and dividing one season from another, according to their cultures giving them the names and attributes of that which they had observed. They began to worship the solar, lunar and stellar ‘beings’ as gods. This was the beginning of Astro-theology – the first layer of the onion.

As time progressed, they who had acquired the knowledge of the times and seasons, and knowledge of the sun and moon and the stars, or the hosts of heaven, were viewed as the keepers of the secret knowledge – the shaman or wise men. The people came to them for reassurance of life in the here and now and of the hereafter in the realm of their gods – the heavens. This was the beginning of Religion – the second layer of the onion.

Quite naturally, as time moved on, the knowledge became quantified and codified, and eventually was written down in ancient forms such as cuneiform on clay tablets and later on papyrus or fiber tablets. It is from these ancient forms of writing that the subsequent layers of the onion appeared. It was quantified so that it could be passed on to the inheritors of the wise man/shaman positions in the societies, which later became known as the Priesthoods. The secret knowledge was also codified so that it could be hidden from the masses, for if the masses knew the secrets of the codes then they too would become like the shaman, no longer needing the priests for reassurances of the now and the hereafter. The shaman would effectively lose their position of power, and that which helped maintain their position of power, the acquisition of money, the latter being that which the shaman charged for the reassurances.

Again, as time progressed, the priests created stories, legends, myths, parables, metaphors, and allegories to hide the secret knowledge. Those with vested interests turned the story to the direction they desired, thereby creating the various religious streams of today. Those who wrote these created stories upon the cuneiform and the papyrus became known as the scribes, and those who actually knew the secret knowledge and the hiding of it, would at times call the pen of the scribes a ‘false pen’, as did the prophet Jeremiah. With each new telling of the story a new layer of the onion was created, and with each a slight deviation from the previous. Be sure to read part two.