Proof that Religious and Mystical Doctrines are Hoaxes

"Entering a difficult period in life, I turned to religion seeking answers. I faithfully accepted religious teachings and submersed myself on an eight-year spiritual journey -- only to discover that the enlightenment offered was a deception. I felt angry and betrayed."

Religious teachings are very seductive. They hold out the promise of wisdom. This is especially enticing to someone who has problems in life.

You think you are going to gain something extremely important. Religious teachings are filled with spiritual mysteries that need solving. And solving mysteries is something everyone likes to do. Indeed, mystery is a real drawing power of all forms of mysticism.

People who go into the spiritual on a deep level do so because they are seeking honesty, enlightenment, fairness. They desire a world where honesty prevails, where fairness and compassion are the rules. They're seeking an ideal way to live and deal with others.

But, what they don't realize is the ultimate wisdom they seek is really a hoax. For, what the dedicated student of religion eventually discovers is the core of religion is in reality non-existent. Those few dedicated students who reach this breakthrough either leave in disgust (a minority) or are made "masters" and "teachers" and continue to perpetuate the hoax. They rationalize... "the people", "the masses" need to believe in a higher power and need the guidance and morality provided by the religious doctrines.

After being a dedicated pupil of religious teachings for almost a decade, I was astonished when I finally broke through to enlightenment - realizing there was no higher power looking out after our lives. Even more astonishing is when religious students realize most of their leaders have also broken through to this same level. They know at the core of their teachings lies a hoax; there is no higher mystical power. Those students who struggle for years and finally break through are then made the masters and teachers themselves.

According to religious and mystical leaders, belief is good for the common people who need their belief in God and belief in guidance from higher authority. Thus, the hoax is perpetuated....Many religious leaders have invested too heavily in mystical doctrines to let everything crumble.

The religious teachings take one on a psychological path which involves learning a tremendous amount about human nature. You are strongly drawn into the hoax, often by reading books by others who felt they had a personal relationship with God. You read and study religious literature which affirms there is a God. So you become a very strong believer.

In reality, you're being told an untruth. There is no God. Some people may be deeply religious. Others may not be very religious. If they go into the literature and study it, then they become strongly religious. So you see, it begins with a lie that there is a God who will help you.

That's the hook behind religious teachings -- that there's a God who's going to help you. It's the essence of what attracts most people to religion. They're looking for someone or something to help them. In addition, most people want to believe in God and in heaven...want their consciousness to live forever.

The religious or mystic path is a process one goes through which can be compared to a scientific experiment. The scientist takes a theory and through objective experiment proves the theory to be true or false. The student of religion takes a religious doctrine, puts it into practice in his life, and proves to himself if the doctrine is true or false. The student's life is the experiment.

What the religious student discovers is religious doctrines put one in a double bind; something impossible to achieve. There are three major doctrines. One doctrine is to give up personal desire, which leads to a state of no motivation. Through experience, you learn this doctrine, if fully implemented, would literally result in death. Thus, it is impossible to achieve and is, therefore, in reality, anti-life.

The second doctrine impossible to achieve is to be selfless and at the same time develop spiritual character. The impossibility is illustrated below.

The third doctrine which also acts against your nature is to do the will of God...to have an authority figure over you. Over the years, as you live through real-life experiences and the experience of honestly, wholeheartedly trying to live by those three doctrines, you learn how false they are.

Each new insight is a shock to your intelligence. You cannot achieve what the religious literature tells you to achieve and be true to your own nature. It takes a long time to break through the hoax.

By acting selfless your emotions begin to rebel. Eventually your emotions rebel against someone else (God) making important decisions for you. Your nature is to grow and develop in order to become your own authority. And the state of having no desire is worse than death. Your emotions eventually rebel against all three of those doctrines. Through personal experience, each doctrine proves to be destructive to your own nature and psychological health.

What religious students call illumination (insights from God) are actually creative insights comparable to those of any creative person...whether he be a scientist, a businessman, or an artist. The scientist and the businessman know such insights are coming from within their own minds. The religious student thinks his insights are coming from God.

The creative process involves several stages. We can recognize the process at work in a scientist's experiment. This is the same process a religious student experiences by putting into practice a religious doctrine in his or her life.

By comparison below, two important concepts emerge. 1. The creative insights of the religious student or mystic come from his own mind and not from God. 2. The religious doctrine is tested in reality to prove if it is scientifically valid.

Immersing oneself into the religious doctrines and one-by-one testing each doctrine in reality, is the process one goes through to eventually break through the hoax and become a "master:"

The above shows how religious students break through the hoax. But most people who believe in God do not go into religion in such depth. They live on the fringes of religion and don't seriously apply the two major concepts that would eventually cause them to break through the hoax...the concept of giving up personal desire and the concept of being selfless. Instead they hold onto the concept of God and the concept of your soul living forever.

When you seriously immerse yourself in religion, your thoughts become so caught up in the religious ideal that you negate your true emotional response. But at some point your emotional and insightful, right-brain hemisphere is going to get through to your rational, left-brain hemisphere. And when it does, you will have broken through the hoax.

Consider how Zen Buddhism works. The way to break through to full consciousness for Zen followers is through a process of intellectual statements called Koans. The Koans also present the students with a double bind. For example, the Koan "One hand clapping" is to be meditated on and understood by the pupil. It makes no sense, of course, but the student tries to understand the mystery. The purpose is to confuse and to shock one out of their preconceived ideas...ideas that go against reality.

If you have enough intensity you'll eventually break through and realize what they're telling you to achieve goes totally against your own nature. But the real problem is practically no one achieves it. Look how religion is spread throughout the whole world. Nearly everyone goes into it but it's just a very, very few who go into it in such depth that they see the hoax and realize there's not a God or higher mystical authority.

In religion, Zen Buddhism, even the occult, an interested person goes into it like a dedicated student. One keeps studying, applying his lessons to life and keeps advancing to the next level. After many years a handful of them make it all the way, i.e., break through to the final level. That final level is realizing the whole thing is a hoax, there is no god or mystical power above you - you are your own authority. You see, that is the final "master" level the leaders keep telling their students to strive for - the realization that you are your own authority and that you should not, cannot seek guidance from persons and authorities outside yourself.

Well, I was never so angry in my whole life as when I finally broke through and realized the whole thing about a kind, benevolent god looking out for you is a hoax. Eventually I pushed aside the anger because in the final analysis, I was the one responsible for accepting the ideas in the first place..

My anger was because everyone who goes into religion or any form of mysticism reads books and studies the teachings of the religious/mystical leaders. Those leaders and authors break through and realize the hoax yet they don't come back and reveal it in their works. They keep their books and teachings on the market which entice others into mysticism.

To me, the deception is so immoral because everyone goes into religion in a sincere and honest way. They're seeking solutions to important problems in their lives. Yet they're enticed to go into a way of living which acts against their nature.

And so few finally break through to realize it's all a hoax. Many, many people live their whole life caught up living in a way they shouldn't be living, acting and doing things which go against themselves and their self interests.

So, people like me feel a tremendous anger at those teachers and leaders we trusted. For, they knowingly keep the hoax alive and perpetuate it. They're receiving a lot of adulation and are making a living off of their teachings and ministries and books. They have a vested interest in keeping the hoax alive.

I feel contempt for those religious and mystical leaders who've broken through, who've realized the hoax, but continue to promote it. For example, I know of two religious/mystical authors who did reveal the hoax when they finally broke through. One is Alan Watts, who revealed the double bind in Zen, and the other is P. D. Ouspensky, who revealed the hoax in religion. But most teachers, ministers, authors continue to promote and perpetuate their works.

What was shocking to me was when I realized most religious leaders, Zen masters, and occult teachers, are atheists. You know what they do? They rationalize. They say the masses need the concept of a higher authority to keep them moral. They put down the intellect of the general population. They say the masses psychologically need the idea of God. But the general population is made up of businessmen, doctors, lawyers, architects, teachers, blue-collar workers. They're not ignorant or uneducated. The general population is smart and self-sufficient. The leaders keep the deception alive so they can be looked up to as highly spiritual, as masters, as making an admirable and highly respectable livelihood.

It is extremely difficult to make the breakthrough. It took St. Teresa fourteen years and St. John of the Cross twenty-six years. I read a book about a monk and in his twenty-six years in the monastery only six others broke through the hoax. They were then promptly invited to teach. Of all the young men entering their monastery every year for twenty-six years only six broke through the hoax - realizing there is no higher authority looking out for you, only you can be your own authority in life.

But those "leaders and teachers", when they break through and become atheists, will never tell their followers what they learned.

Instead, they use hidden terminology. They'll call someone who has broken through a Master...one who has learned wisdom. They don't tell you the wisdom he's learned is an individual is his own authority in life. They can't tell you because then their whole profession would crumble.

So how can you know when a religious/mystical leader has broken through and knows the hoax? Because there are stages of learning a person goes through. You can recognize the stage a person is in. One who has broken through to the final stage of "enlightenment" speaks with authority and self-confidence. He does not emphasize earlier stages of learning which he has already broken through.

An example is a very well known religious TV personality. I was watching his television program. If you've been through the path, you know the lessons that are learned at each stage. A young man in the audience asked the TV minister if there had ever been a time in his life when he really doubted religion, when he experienced anger and strongly doubted God.

This extremely well known religious figure answered there had been a really dark period in his life when he struggled tremendously with that question. His answer was "I stand on the historical Jesus". He acknowledged it had been the darkest period of his life. The mystics call this period "The dark night of the soul" because they have realized there is no God.

The promises held out in the religious and mystical teachings all disappear when the hoax is realized. If you refuse to reveal the hoax, you can go on with your religious ministry. Realize, however, many ministers are just as in the dark regarding the hoax as are their congregations. They, too, have not advanced to the master level.

When reading a religious book you can tell by the way the author expresses himself/herself if they've broken through, i.e., they realize the hoax but they're still promoting it.

You see, there are different stages the mystics discuss in their books. As an example, there's St. Theresa of Avila who wrote a number of books. I know she broke through to the full realization.

The way I know is that she totally stopped reading religious literature. Her whole adult life was spent constantly reading and writing about the Lord. Suddenly, she completely stopped it.

Why? Because she realized her visions, her trances, everything was coming from her inner self. She didn't tell her confessor what she had realized. The priest, who had always heard her confessions, just could not get over why all of a sudden she stopped all religious reading...for that had been her passion in life.

That's one of the clues - she stopped all religious reading. I know she felt so tricked. When I read about her life I immediately knew what had happened. She didn't tell anyone what she had learned. In her time during the Spanish Inquisition she would have been burned at the stake.

Once a person breaks through the hoax to realize there is no higher authority looking out for you, you miss the relationship you thought you had with God. The thought that reality is all there is can seem cold. It takes away the mystery and love that communication with God provided. Reality seems very cold at first.

You can break down the religious path into four major stages. The first stage is when you're first brought in, when you first start thinking you have communication with God. Of course, that's very joyous. Because if you believe in God and you believe he's chosen to communicate with you, can you imagine how that makes you feel?

You experience a tremendous feeling of joy and devotion. It also gives you a lot of courage to think that what you're doing is right. In this first stage you are enamored with the idea of signs and miracles as taught in the Bible. But the euphoria soon passes. It passes because you start becoming more serious. Serious about learning.

Evelyn Underhill in her book "Mysticism" also envisioned four stages. I would like to use her grouping because they are so descriptive of what takes place. Her descriptions affirm the religious and mystical experience:

Stage One: Awakening of the Self.

• Preceded by a period of discontent.
• Usually a single and abrupt experience of conversion.
• It's usually sudden, intense, and joyous.

(Note: One quickly learns that seeking miracles is not what the religious path is all about.)

Stage Two: Purification of the Self.

• Purgation of imperfection in your character.
• Self-simplification and self-knowledge
• Contemplation
• Detachment and analysis

(Note: This stage involves following the will of God, self-sacrifice in a contained area, and giving up personal desires. This is the hardest stage to go through.)

Stage Three: Illumination of the Self.

• Awakening to consciousness of reality.
• Insights and a certainty about life.
• Has detached himself from his chief entanglements.
• Has re-oriented his life with a new and solid certitude
• Sets new standards of conduct and thought
• Introspection and turning inward deliberately to discern reality.
• Has not yet reached the goal.

(Note: This stage reflects that the ideas of self-sacrifice and giving up all personal desires have been rejected because of their harmful nature to character development.)

Stage Four: Unitive Life. Union.

• The goal reached. A profound change in personality.
• The mystics describe it as "The Spiritual Marriage".

(Note: At this stage you become your own authority and master. You recognize there is no God and the communication you thought you had came from your own subconscious. You are no longer "divided" but are "at-one-with yourself".)

The first stage is obvious...the decision to devote oneself to religion and claim its promises and "wisdom".

The second stage is the longest and most difficult. It is a psychological process that involves much self examination.

The second stage is one of meditation and contemplation. I know a lot of people say meditation is a form of making your mind blank and not thinking about anything. That's totally opposite of what actually takes place. You are supposed to relax. If there's something bothering or upsetting you, you push that aside. Emotions will color your thinking so you can't think clearly. The idea of meditation is to get calm and push away any emotional worries.

Then you start thinking about things that perfect character. You start examining your life and your attitudes. You read a lot of religious literature and examine the lessons they teach. The idea is to perfect your character, which means being honest, fair and compassionate.

Take sympathy and compassion. The religious idea of service to others has been so instilled throughout everyone's life. Yet, you begin to recognize how altruism can sometimes do more harm to people than good. We see an example in government handouts that have crippled generations of inner-city residents. You realize you can feel sympathy for people but true compassion takes into account not crippling them while trying to help them.

There are two major emphases in this second stage...to give up desire and to follow the will of God. But you come to realize over time no one really knows what the will of God is. Some say the will of God means that anything in your life is there because God allows it to be there.

You come to points where something you want to do appears blocked. That naturally happens through living life. But you interpret each block as the need to give up some personal desire.

Here is an illustration of believing you are blocked and being guided to give something up. Take my friend Mary. She loved sewing. She had also been drawn strongly into the religious literature. One day she wanted to make a dress and needed to go to the store to buy some cloth. It had been snowing all morning. There was snow and ice all over her driveway. But she was determined to go to the store, so she went outside and slipped on the ice. She hurt herself but got up and headed toward her car. Once again, she fell down - this time even harder. So she concluded, "All right Lord, you're telling me to give up sewing". Then she completely stopped sewing.

Like so many religious believers, she took that as a sign. But things like slipping on ice happen naturally. You're always going to have something which interferes with your plans at various times.

The seriously religious person is brought to a stage where eventually he or she just gives up all personal interests. That stage is the worse stage to go through. You have no motivation, no interests. I don't think anyone could go through it for very long. They would end up sick, physically or mentally. I know, I went through it. Just to do a chore around the house was draining...my arms felt physically heavy. I had never experienced anything like that in my life. In the end, one cannot live in such a state.

It's really something the way life presents circumstances to you. One day Jane, who lived near me, came over and brought a little Dell pocketbook on astrology. She discussed some of the psychological ways different people approach life. What she related was so interesting I got intrigued. The new interest brought me out of that crisis stage of having no desire.

Emotions are the fuel of our lives. If you have no desire, you have no motivation. There's no fuel or desire to do anything. All of a sudden the heaviness in my arms went away after I got interested in something particular. So that was a major breakthrough in my understanding and rejection of "giving up desire".

Rapidly following that insight came another major breakthrough. I was at a stage where one becomes very in-control of one's emotions. You're so guarded in your reactions and how you act with others. In an unguarded moment I had a major breakthrough concerning sacrifice. We had a dog and I got so furious with him I started spanking him.

That happened during a totally unguarded moment with my emotions. I was trying to house train him but he would not train. I had a huge mess to clean up in the basement because he would not use the newspapers. I started spanking him when I realized I was taking things too far. I was too angry, even feeling violence, so I just stopped.

While I was spanking him a flood of negative emotions came up where I felt like I could just strangle him. I went upstairs and realized why I was filled with such overpowering anger. It had nothing to do with the dog. It had everything to do with the idea of sacrifice.

Whenever you stifle your true nature, like justified anger or any other natural emotion, you do not negate the emotion. What had been happening in following the idea of sacrifice and humility was I had been stifling my emotions. They were going inward and being suppressed. In an unguarded moment those emotions had surfaced all at once.

I realized little old ladies who go to church and practice self-sacrifice all their lives are suppressing the same emotions of anger at being manipulated and taken advantage of by others. They too are capable of violence and rage in unguarded moments.

Religious teachings tell you to push aside your natural emotional reactions of anger and humiliation and show love and compassion instead. In reality, if something unfair or unjust happens to you then you need to address the anger or frustration.. If you don't, you suppress it. And the suppresion eventually harms your self-esteem.

So with me, a flood of negative emotions suddenly overcame me. I realized practicing sacrifice and being selfless, the two concepts religion says are central to perfecting character, are wrong.

Instead of building honest, genuine character, those actions result in the opposite. . . .In me, I suddenly felt an urge to kill the dog. "Lord," I thought, "where are those feelings coming from?"

I knew I was as spiritual as anyone else who went into religion as deeply and sincerely as I did. Yet if I could be filled with those violent emotions because of following the religious doctrines of sacrifice and selflessness then something was terribly wrong.

It's following the doctrine of selflessness and sacrifice which caused those emotions of rage within me. Those two concepts go against man's nature. So this realization was my first major breakthrough...coupled with the realization and rejection of giving up personal desire. Those two insights end the second stage of the mystic path. The religious student then enters the third stage with self-confidence and a new evaluation of reality.

The concepts of selfish versus selflessness are so basic to man's character and to his happiness that I want to elaborate on each. Many say selfishness is cold and leaves no room for compassion. I prefer to use the term self-interest because it does away with the negative connotation of a spoiled child. However, selfishness in its true sense is the correct terminology and definition.

The best way to grasp the differences between those two concepts is to demonstrate the character development and the behavior which results from each concept. The contrast of selfish versus selflessness can be demonstrated in the hero concept versus the coward concept. Everyone admires the hero. His characteristics are: strength of character, principled behavior, honesty, self-confidence, a healthy self-esteem, bravery and daring, self-respect, stands up for self against great odds, is compassionate and fair in his dealings with others.

Everyone despises a coward. "Wait a minute", you say. To be selfless is not the same as being a coward. Since religion holds up selflessness as an ideal, people fool themselves as to what self-sacrifice really means. Because we have been so instilled by religion that selflessness is moral, we fail to recognize the consequences of such behavior.

The behavior of the selfless person is the behavior of the coward. The selfless person puts others first and self second. He fails to stand up for himself. That action causes resentment and anger toward other people to build up. In addition, he thinks others can be sacrificed as he sacrifices himself.

The selfish person's behavior is identical with the hero concept. The selfless person's behavior is identical with the coward concept.

When working in accordance with his biological, emotional, and intellectual nature, man is a beautifully integrated whole. He is at one with himself. When man acts against himself in one of these areas he is at odds with himself and the consequences can be disastrous.

An extreme example of how destructive selfless behavior can be and how it can affect everyone in their daily lives is given below:

A few years ago a young boy about thirteen years old killed a neighboring child. No one knew why he had killed the little fellow. Not the psychologist who interviewed him, not the counselors, not his teachers, not his parents.

But it was self evident to me. The TV program on this tragic incident stated the thirteen year old had been subject to insults and humiliations all his life from his school peers. He looked a little odd. He had offset eyes.

About two weeks before the murder, the thirteen-year-old asked his stepfather what to do with anger. He was told to get it out in some kind of physical exercise, like a punching bag. The boy bruised both hands in striking the tree in front of his house, but that action didn't really address the cause of his anger.

He had a justified anger because of the insults and humiliations he had endured. But strong anger by itself does not create a murderer. His anger turned into violence because of the self-hatred he felt...the self hatred caused by not standing up for himself...not holding himself up as a worthy individual. In other words, he viewed himself as a coward and he hated the image.

Violent criminals are known for their lack of remorse toward their victims. They cannot feel remorse because they feel no remorse for themselves...they feel self-hatred and project that feeling onto their victims.

By comparison, take a person who is selfish. He stands up for himself, so no inner resentment builds up. He feels self-respect and extends the same self-respect to others. He has no desire to manipulate others but has the courage to be straightforward and honest in his dealings with others. Because he likes himself, he is capable of liking others and feeling compassion toward them.

In contrast, the selfless person lacks self-confidence and has a low self-esteem, because he lets others take advantage of him. Because he does not stand up for himself, he hides his emotional reactions and therefore is not honest with others. He manipulates others through kindness or "feel sorry for me attitudes". Although outwardly he professes compassion, inwardly he is filled with resentment and anger which really is self-hatred, self-hatred for his own cowardly behavior.

The religious person may trick his mind that selfless behavior is moral, but he cannot trick the natural biological and rational foundation of his inner self...his true essence as a human being. The religious person can never be centered and in harmony with himself as long as he "acts" selflessly.

He lacks self-respect and projects that same lack of respect onto others. He also thinks others can be sacrificed the same way he sacrifices himself. The anger and resentment he inwardly feels because of his behavior is projected outwardly onto others. He is definitely not compassionate...just the opposite.

What emerges from this picture is the inherent destructiveness of the religious doctrines. The Inquisition, the Dark Ages, the many religious wars are not aberrations but are direct results of following the doctrine of sacrifice and selflessness.

A contrast exists between the Hebrew religion and the Christian religion. The Hebrew religion has always held up the individual as the highest value. They do not accept self-sacrifice. That is why the Jews have always been so successful financially. Christianity introduced self-sacrifice as a major doctrine with Jesus...Jesus who sacrificed his life for the rest of humanity. And even here, the Christian Church misinterpreted Jesus's message.

To use a metaphor concerning selfless behavior, it's like a pot of boiling water on the stove and the top is tightly closed. The boiling water represents all of your negative emotions you have stifled. At some point the top is going to explode. Likewise, at some point your suppressed emotions are going to erupt. Examining those emotions makes one realize how destructive sacrifice is to building a moral character.

When a person becomes serious about religion, it's almost like going through college. You become so intense about learning the subject matter...that's your main focus. You are not questioning the doctrines. It took me five years to break through the selflessness doctrine.

During the second stage you have rejected a lot of tradition you know is not correct - cutting away a lot of church dogma which has nothing to do with spirituality. After each breakthrough, you reach a higher stage of learning. For example, at the end of the second stage I couldn't say selfishness was right because I was too caught up in religion. Instead, I said there's a higher selfishness...religion instills a strong prejudice against being selfish.

A higher selfishness includes the fact that you are moral and honest. You think of selfishness as doing things in your best interest with a sense of being moral. In other words, you don't take advantage of other people. So in my thinking, I turned it into a higher selfishness, which includes fairness and morality.

In actuality there's selfishness, not a higher selfishness. In context, Ayn Rand was the first to raise selfishness to the status of a virtue, along with honesty and morality. People who read Ayn Rand think selfishness is cold and does not include compassion. They are wrong...they do not grasp the full significance of selfishness.

You see, you can't just suddenly make too large a leap in a person's thinking. Selfishness is the opposite of selflessness. For religiously oriented people, realizing selfishness is right is a huge leap. You have to be able to gradually move from one stage of thinking to another.

Once you dogmatically stop acting selfless and begin to act in your own best interest you build self-confidence.

The second stage involves two processes. One process is becoming goal oriented. You are strongly focused and become very selfish with your time. So two processes are going on at the same time. One in which you practice selfishness and the other in which you practice selflessness.

The process of being goal oriented builds strength. And through self-knowledge you break with the selflessness hoax.

The religious student or mystic enters the third stage with renewed confidence. He has mastered the major hurdles, the false doctrines which led to psychological turmoil. He has learned to introspect and trust his own judgment. His new philosophy based on reality gives him a certainty about life.

But he has one more hurdle to conquer before he is fully his own master. He has to break with the idea of God. During the first two stages you're drawn in so closely by thinking you have communication with God. You really do feel you're having a communication with him.

In the third stage you break with the authority hoax. It took me three more years before I broke through. During the third stage you have completely broken with dogma but you still believe in God. So even though you know self-interest is correct, you still believe you are supposed to do the will of God.

But eventually, it just strikes you. You begin to realize as long as you allow the idea of a God who can tell you what to do, you'll never be your own master. You'll never be your own authority. The whole foundation of religion begins to crumble.

Most of the mystical literature I have read states you eventually give up the spiritual. You do come to realize there's not a God. That too is a false idea. In fact, the communication you thought was coming from God was actually coming from within you...from your own subconscious, your right hemisphere.

Finally, I was free to make my own decisions without any obligation to follow the will of God. My first reaction was one of joy and tremendous relief. There was also a certain sadness because the spiritual literature holds out many promises to those who achieve "unity" and none of those would be forthcoming.

Another emotion to work through was the feeling of being disloyal. Disloyal to Jesus and all he stood for. About one year after this discovery, my new knowledge was put to the test in reality. Would I make my own decisions concerning new directions in my life or would I fall back into the trap of letting blocks to my new directions win out. I had made three major decisions concerning vocation, relationship, and what to do with my new knowledge. As obstacles began to appear in all three areas an old emotion surfaced..."to give up desire". A huge emotional crisis took place within me. I experienced tremendous anger at the whole religious field.

During one's study of religious teachings and literature, it is constantly stressed how you have to give up personal desires. Over time that leads to a crisis. In the third stage you follow the philosophy of self interest. You build confidence and strength. Yet in trying to follow God's will, you meet obstacles and have to relinquish your will. So it all eventually comes together in a crisis.

One thing so devastating is that you prided yourself on your intellect. Your intellect does work correctly concerning life and honesty and being fair to others. All of which is psychology, it's all related to people and you know those things are correct. Intellectually you have built up a tremendous amount of knowledge and wisdom about life and people through experiences.

But then you still have something else going on, still believing in God and beliving you have communication with him. All of a sudden, it's like he's the authority figure telling you "No." To be your own person, to make your own decisions, you can't have an authority over you. Even the spiritual literature says you eventually give up desire for the spiritual. I'm sure everyone thinks, "Not me, I'll never give up the spiritual." But you do. For, you finally realize you're the one who thought you had communication. But the communication was coming from your own subconscious.

The reason the student does not recognize the insights as coming from his own brain but thinks they come from outside himself or from God is because the insights are so contradictory to his religious beliefs. The insights are opposite his religious thinking...so he does not recognize them as his own. He already believes in God so he projects the insights as coming from God.

In the late 1960s, a neurophysiologist, Roger Sperry, carried out experiments on split brain epileptic patients. Dr. Joseph Bagen did a daring experiment. He cut the corpus callosum between the two hemispheres of the brain which allows the two hemispheres to communicate. He carried out this procedure in severe epileptics, hoping to reduce the severity of the attacks. Then Roger Sperry carried out experiments on the split-brain patients. When I started reading about Sperry's work, I realized where the communication from God was coming from...the right hemisphere of our brains. That is a whole new fascinating area which we will get into later.

After you break through and realize there is no God, mystical thoughts and emotions still linger. You just have to push them away. For instance, it is stated in the religious literature if you blaspheme against God then something dreadful will happen to you.

I felt I should write about my realizations to reveal the truth. But then a tremendous feeling of dread came over me. That feeling was the result of religious guilt built into their teachings. Intellectually I had to push those feelings away because I knew they belonged to the hoax and had nothing to do with reality.

I did feel a tremendous responsibility to my friend Mary mentioned earlier. She started reading my religious books and would ask me about them. And at the time I hadn't completely broken through. I had just broken through the second stage but I still believed in God.

Mary was drawn into the religious teachings herself. She went into the spiritual as deeply as I had. I felt a responsibility toward her because she had confidence in me.

I remember one time she said, "Am I going crazy? Is it all in my mind or is this real?" I had to reassure her. Fortunately, she had previously been studying occult literature, so she was well grounded in self-responsibility.

Ironically, the occult preaches self-responsibility whereas religion says to put aside your intellect and go on faith. That's what you do when you accept the religious doctrines. You're putting aside your intellect and giving the religious doctrines a try.

After making the major breakthrough of realizing there is not a God, you also realize those noble desires people have of wanting to be honest, to deal fairly with others, and to be compassionate...all of those desires are coming from within persons themselves. But as a religious person, you project all of those characteristics onto some mystical God - as if a person is not honorable but God is.

You see, it's a real shame people don't claim those ideals for themselves. Instead, they project those ideals onto a God. . .as if by themselves they are incapable of achieving honesty, fairness, compassion.

After realizing there is no God and wanting to understand the "mystical phenomena" which convinced me I had communication, I begin to research studies done on the left and right hemispheres of the brain. According to Evelyn Underhill in her book "Mysticism", the mystical experiences involve voices and visions, also automatic writing.

In his research, Dr. Wilder Penfield of Montreal, Canada, carried out experiments locating the different areas of the brain and their functions. Using electrodes, he would stimulate different areas of the right hemisphere of the brain. When he stimulated a certain area within the right hemisphere, subjects would have visions of past experiences. When stimulating another area of the brain, subjects would hear auditory commands.

Dr. Penfield said the auditory commands always sounded like a man's powerful voice. One man said he felt as though it was his father giving him commands. Even women would hear an authoritative man's voice.

So you see, when primitive people were being guided by the bicameral mind[ 1 ], they didn't recognize those authoritative voices as coming from their own brain. It sounds like someone else's voice outside of themselves.

So religious and mystical people are fooled. The authoritative voice they hear during those visions is not God, the voice and vision is coming from the right-hemisphere of their brain.

St. Theresa would hear auditory voices. I heard it once; it was startling. It sounded like a man's voice, very loud. It was late at night, around 10 p.m. The back of my chair faced a corner of the room, so I knew there was no way anyone could be behind my chair. But the auditory voice was so masculine, so authoritative I had to turn around and see if anyone was there.

You don't hear it as you hear me speaking. You hear it inside your head. But it's so strong, as if someone out there has spoken.

It's very interesting what takes place in pursuing the religious path. Roger Sperry wrote in 1966 concerning his split-brain patients that what they experience in their right hemisphere seems to lie entirely outside the realm of experience of their left hemisphere.

The deeply religious student creates on artificial split between his two hemispheres by following the three doctrines of self-sacrifice, giving up personal desire and following the will of God. Those three doctrines, those three beliefs, he follows with his left intellectual hemisphere. But his emotional, survival right hemisphere rebels until eventually the right wins through creative insights which reveal how destructive those three doctrines are.

The core of religion is to perfect character and through perfection help create an ideal society. Yet, as we have seen, the three main doctrines of religion destroy character.

Scientific advancements in all fields of science have traditionally conflicted with religious beliefs. Each improvement for mankind has had to contend with religious prejudice.

Religion is a psychological issue. And because psychology is such a young science (starting with Freud in the late 1800s) the average man does not have enough information on what is psychological fact or fiction...what harms him or helps him.

With the move from bicameral thinking to conscious thinking man was, for the first time, able to introspect. With introspection a person can decide for himself if something is good for him or bad for him.

But, unfortunately, with consciousness man is also able to deceive himself...to deceive himself with false ideas. That ability for deception is why religious beliefs still flourish today.

In Part 2 we will discuss fascinating ways the right hemisphere of our brain works...ways that we are not even aware of.

[ 1 ] Bicameral Mind: The nature given two chamber mind, highly intelligent but immersed in the here-and-now. No ability to be objective, to introspect, or to think in terms of the past or future.

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