GOD IN A NUTSHELL

Image of God

Pantau,

As far as free will goes, it may in and of itself be totally illusory. But if I think everything is predestined and foreordained then I take no responsibility for any decision nor do I even feel I need to actually make a decision about anything. So regardless of the religion, if God knows what I am going to do then She knows if I'm going to be saved or earn good Kharma before I do anything. Therefore why do anything at all? In order to act, I must at least believe that I have free will and that my decision matters. I have to believe myself to be more than a marionette.
Viewing it from another angle, how can we believe God to be fair and just if She has consigned so many to lives of abject misery? Poverty, disease are still so rife in this world. If everything is foreordained then what kind of a god have we created when so many people suffer? Why create so many to merely wail in suffering? Did God decree that so and so be born into a life of wealth and ease while this other person would know only poverty, hunger, and disease?
I guess the crux of the matter to me is that lack of free will must mean that God is cruel and thus is nothing more than the child who pulls wings off flies. I would rather see a benevolent God who has given Her people free will and then waits with open arms to comfort those who seek shelter from the misery created by the clashing and interaction of individual human free will. As a child is never free from a parent so we are never truly free from God. We may wander astray, deny Her, etc. but ultimately must return to Her to find peace. It is, I feel, what we have done to the world, each other, and to ourselves that makes this so arduous.
Thus the question of free will is moot. It may not truly exist but to find any peace, I have to behave as if it does just as I must believe that I am of some worth and my life of some value.

Joel
(Pubished with permission of the author)

Dear Joel,

I think your questions and train of thought are as old as civilisation itself. And yet, nobody really has a clear cut answer or at least not an answer that can be scientifically explained.
Interestingly, most wise people who were the source of world religions believe in life before death and something after death, whether it be heaven, limbo, hell, reincarnation, Nirvana, whatever. Hence if so many smart men think that there is more to experience after death, there might be some truth in it.
I have no clear cut answer. I just don’t know. Yet in the past, I have been meditating often on this matter, questioning myself first: Is there a God, if so, Why, and What is God, and What is it all about?

On Happiness.

Nobody enjoys suffering, everybody desires happiness.
Though my personal happiness is being caused mostly by the fact that I do (to a large extend) have full control over my life, I don’t feel bothered by the fact whether or not I have free will. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I believe in God, but not as most people like to explain God. I see God more as the combined intelligence (and non-intelligence such as minerals, water, carbon, plastic, wood etc.) of everything in this Universe. In other words: we 6 billion souls make up a part of the entity we call God. Thus I am a small part of God. God created us in Her image: yes, I think that is a correct statement.
On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, I don’t believe in God. I think it is all a bunch of crap.
On Sundays I take a rest.

Three days a week I like to see God as a chess game. She gave us a platform to play out a game. She created us a platform called Earth with the possibility to include all possible outcomes, all kinds of scenarios. Yes, She is like a writer who is in the process of writing and She doesn’t really know how the story will end. She makes things up whilst writing, creating.
The free will can be explained by the fact that we can do whatever we want, choose beneficial over non-beneficial, good over bad. She/We can choose to write about good things and bad things, enjoyable things or disturbing things.

Now, first I want something to explain why there is hunger and misery and violence and death in a nutshell. We wouldn’t understand happiness if there wasn’t the opposite of happiness. How can we feel happy if we never experienced grieve, sadness, boredom, pain?
It starts as a baby, feeling happy when being fed, crying when being hungry. So, obviously, human beings, have the ability to experience the entire spectrum of emotions (even my father). Even I am sometimes hungry, and not because I don’t have enough money to buy food. If I wouldn’t feel hungry, I would not enjoy the food presented to me.

I observe that my life is not all about happiness, there are periods of depression, loss, sadness, deprivation, followed by all good things. If I feel bad, I meditate on Elizabeth Taylor, and think: my life could have been worse. If I think I'd rather be a Hollywood star, I also think, well, they may have millions in the bank, but most of that money goes to their therapists and bodyguards, and they have problems holding on to their spouses. So perhaps not the greatest thing to be.
And when the good returns, I am grateful. For if I would never feel unhappy, I wouldn’t recognise and appreciate my fortune.

So God created Black and White and the entire spectrum of colours in between in order for us to experience everything possible on earth, and since the 1950s, even beyond.
If everything was White, we wouldn’t see it, recognise it. There’s a need for Black, for without Black we wouldn’t appreciate White.

Is everything predestined? No. I don’t think so. Things are happening now, created now. By us. And it is up to us what we want to experience. That I would call free will. There need not be wars and hunger. We decide to experience violence and hunger and wars and all the bad stuff. That is not something forced on us. We create global warming, not God. She probably shakes her head when observing the decisions we take and the way we live our lives. We just make bad decision. There are only few people who know exactly how we could live in a world with lives worth living, despite the fact that some unpleasant things such as disease and death are unavoidable. Rather than loving and playing with each other in beautiful, simple townships surrounded by agricultural lands with organic food, we create disturbing cities, dirty air and water, and plastic use-it-once-and-throw-it-away-products "Made in China". Rather than observing the beauty of nature and be part of it, we destroy it and sit in office cubicles. We have created a world like a one-room house containing a dysfunctional family that shits in it own kitchen. Some children get fed, others not, some children are loved, others raped, while the father and mother are fighting wars. But we know better, we don’t have to live like that. It is our choice what we experience. Thus, I say, yes, it is up to us what we want to experience, we have free will.

Every day I can decide what I want to experience. Pineapple with yoghurt for breakfast or an omelet with cheese. Do I want to stay home and watch TV or write on my 5 year old laptop, or do I want to walk on the beach, meet my friends, see the sunset, have dinner with my loved-ones, dress in Tintin-style shorts and a black poloshirt, or dress in white as a Yogini, have 4 hour sex at night or 1 hour sex before breakfast, or no sex at all. It’s up to me. I can beat my children for no reason and make them hate me, or I can teach them, stimulate them, help them, play with them, make them laugh. I can smile at people I do not know, or look angry at them. If I smile at them, they smile back, which in return gives me a nice feeling. I can shout, and people will feel disturbed by me, but I could also choose to speak softly and beautifully and people will take a liking for me. I can choose to eat like a pig and become a fat blob of human, or can choose healthy food, exercise, swim, practise yoga, walk on the beach and keep my aging body similar to what it was when I was a model at age 21. So, I have free will, and I can choose everything I want.

But now you can say: do people who live in certain countries where there is no freedom of speech, no human rights, can they experience the same freedom, the same ability to choose? You, Pantau, you have money and a passport that allows you to travel to any country in the world. But what about that little girl in Isaan, Thailand, that serves as a hooker for western pigs to provide money for her entire family? What about the Nepalese girls that are locked up in closests in Mumbay, India, to serve as vaginas for middle class Indian men? What about people who are born with birth defects, one leg, cerebral palsy, cancer at 6?
Yes, Joel, that is a tough one to answer. The 6 year old boy didn't choose to get cancer, but maybe his soul did, in order to experience cancer at 6. Perhaps his soul had a fabulous previous life and now the soul wants to experience pain and death at a young age. In his next life, the soul may choose to have the life of a happy wife of a doctor, or be a truck driver in Texas with a very nice wife and who lives a long and satisfying life. Here, I don't even consider the workings of Karma.

I know girls who were able to escape their predicaments. I know Tibetans who crossed the highest mountain passes in the world on foot, being shot at by Chinese border patrol, at night, in freezing conditions, to experience some sense of freedom in India. I think even in the worst cases, we have a choice, we can run away, go somewhere else, conquer our fear, say no. Perhaps not always easy, but everybody must have free will, the choice to experience what they want to experience, or change their lives, even if it were just a little, move on, choose something different, slightly better.
It may not be easy, perhaps it requires leaving behind family, friends and country (which I did), but everybody has a choice.

A person in a desert doesn’t dream of a Ferrari but a bottle of water. A Hollywood star with 200 million in the bank and 10 room house dreams about a 50-room mansion, an Oscar an Emmy and no longer a need for a therapist.

So why does God have some children born in poor starving families and others in rich business families? Well, as I said before, it’s up to us what we make of this world. God has given us the freedom to choose. So we need to take some distance from individual sad cases and look at the bigger picture, look at Governments and Companies, look at how we as a whole play the Game. We can change this world into a better place, provided that we understand what is beneficial, and what is not, and it also requires enough people to shift the balance, to change Back into White.

However, bare in mind the symbol of Yin and Yang. The White body contains a dot of Black and the Black body contains a dot of White. In Asia they refer to this symbol as Tao, or Nature, or God. Interestlingly, this is the name I am refered to in Thailand, an abbreviation of Pantau. And that is really how the game is set up for us. It’s not static, it can change. In the Yin Yang symbol, both bodies are equal, but we can choose to make it alive, to make it change, to alter the size of the White body, make it bigger, make the black dot smaller. But even when the White body of Yin is 99% it will still contain 1% of Black. We will still age, we will still die, we will still feel moments of sadness, depression and unhappiness. If we wouldn't and couldn't feel that way, we wouldn’t recognise our state of Contentment.

So, I hope I have proven to you with the above that even with all the sadness and hunger and war, We have free will and God is not cruel. Whatever we experience is being created by us, 6 billion people in this world. We have all the tools, the voices, and the brains to change things, choose things, choose White over Black, Good over Evil. It’s up to us as individuals, and as world at large.

Now, having said that, I have some of my own ideas that I want to present in a nutshell. Nothing is real. Earth doesn’t exist. The Universe doesn’t exist. There are no such things at atoms, neutrons, electrons, and photons. Everything within the confines of the Universe doesn’t exist. It’s all an idea. One big invisible brain made of non-matter. Everything is an idea. That is God at work.

Love… Pantau