issue13

In the midst of a world where spiritual idealism is all but extinct and feminine mediocrity and worldliness dominates our every thought and action, Genius News strives to re-ignite the noble in Man; to reinvent the philosophic wheel and recapture what has always been best in the human character: Reason. Our goal with this publication is to reach out to those rare souls who have been blessed by Nature with sufficient consciousness to suffer for the nature of the world and for their own ignorance. We hope to inspire them into ever greater levels of idealism with challenging and provocative material suitable only for those with the loftiest of philosophic aspirations. Our aim is to encourage such ones to embrace the Infinite and walk the dangerous but rewarding path to Enlightenment - the path of the true individual.

The - [ - symbol will return you to this contents table from each major section.

Although Xmas represents a tiny part of each year, it is a festival anticipated for literally months ahead of time. Such is the depth of desire we humans have to escape reality and wallow in insipid forms of decadence. It is virtually impossible, unless one discards reason and decency altogether, to find any virtue in Xmas on any level whatever. The uglier a thing is the greater effort one must put in to disguise its unsightliness. No wonder, then, so much is spent on tinsel and lights and various adornments. If not for that it would be difficult for people not to focus on the underlying truth of the nature of this celebration of all things egotistical. In the following dialogue, some of those underlying aspects of Xmas are identified:

David Quinn: Christmas is a jolly old affair, a bit of harmless fun that brings people together and spreads some good-will through-out the world. Or is it?

Let's look at the basic principles of Christmas:

(a) It introduces a powerful illusion to children's minds (that of Santa Claus) which the adults dishonestly pretend is real.

(b) Children are bribed (with presents) into accepting this deception and, by extension, to value the existence of illusion in general. It brainwashes children into thinking that falsity is far more valuable and enjoyable than truth.

(c) The adults invariably conduct themselves with artificial bonhomie and pretend to be friendly with people whom they dislike and normally wouldn't have a bar of at any other time. They then compound this dishonesty by refering to their hypocritical behaviour as the "spreading of good-will"

(d) The adults try to soothe their conscience over their participation in the affair by linking the whole thing to Jesus. They call it Christmas (Christ's Mass) and deludely imagine that a pure, truth-loving person like Jesus would somehow give this orgy of emotion, self-deception and hypocrisy his blessing. What a dream!

Importantly, Christmas allows adults to escape the dreary routines of their everyday lives. For a few days they are transported to a magical, fairy-tale kind of world, one that connects deeply with their own childhood memories of Christmas. All the frustrations that have been building up over the previous year are thereby given an outlet.

After a few days of this, even the adults begin to tire of the artificiality of it all and soon they are yearning to return the "reality" of their humdrum lives. Suddenly, their dreary lives look appealing and attractive again. Their batteries are recharged and now they are ready to devote themselves to another year of slavery.

Thus, Christmas acts as a sort of linchpin to the preservation of modern society. Without it, people would quickly find their slavish lives intolerable and would start to press for fundamental changes to the way society was run. They would begin to seriously question their values and beliefs, and even challenge the core values which humanity has bound itself over the millenia. But no, Christmas rears its glittering head each year, just in time to put any thought of revolution to bed. Everything that is traditional, mediocre and base is reaffirmed once more. It really is the season of good-will!

One of the most noticable features of Christmas is the way it dehumazies everyone who participates in it. Almost at the tick of a clock, people magically turn into robots who mechanically follow the same rituals at the same time each year. It's as though some kind of subroutine is activated within them, whereupon they temporarily lose whatever spark of individuality they possessed and enter into a zombie-like state in which the "Christmas spirit" takes over. It's quite a spectacle to behold. Never do I feel more alienated and repulsed by the human race than during this time.

So here, then, is the ultimate purpose of Christmas - to encourage people to be happy with ignorance, non-individuality, herdliness and mediocrity. It forcefully pushes people at a very young age into accepting and valuing egotistical fantasy and encourages them to be repulsed by the merest hint of cold, lofty truth. It gathers together all the anti-wisdom and anti-Truth elements in the human psyche and celebrates them in the most joyous, heart-wrenching way possible. In other words, Christmas is a force for evil.

Yamori: As far as I've seen it's as simple as giving a very cheery holiday in order to associate "happy feelings" in the back of people's minds when they think of christianity and the current way the yearly sociatal rituals seem to be run...

although ironicly it has evolved into a lot of "anti-christian" concepts over time- Partying, greed, Indulgance ect.. mmmm indulgance.

I've always found it sad that we see a large chunk of people helping out their fellow human beings around Xmas time, only to revert back to their old crotchety selves soon after. It makes much more sense to be that "giving" year round or just not at all.

I tend to agree that it serves as a "saver" of current society.. A lot of people would truely start getting restless with the seemingly "death spiral" society we are in today.

But, on the other hand I still am in touch with my emotions and do find a lot of aspects of xmas enjoyable, particularly an excuse to be with my family and have a jolly old time with them.

Zagreus: It is hardly a force for "evil" as you have described it David, but you are right about the adults and their adult lies. Christmas is the one time of year allotted to gifts and giving and celebrations so as to avoid this tiresome practise the whole year round. It is for boring people who only feel comfortable giving anything if everybody else is doing the same. They will have nothing of themselves to give. It is for conservative well-meaning people who are at home in giving up a little of their money they work for at an agreed upon time, people who do not have much love to give but understand just how far a gesture can be misunderstood to their advantage. The less meaning christmas has at any one time, the better, and here you are bathing it in the splendour of such titles as 'evil'! You really think that which opposes truth and wisdom is great enough to be evil?! It is as though you haven't lived! David, just how familiar are you with zombie-like states?!

David Quinn: If Christmas was merely how you describe it here - a harmless celebration designed for conservative well-meaning people to express their feelings for one another, I could perhaps agree with you. But it goes much deeper than that. It introduces a powerful herdly force into children's minds while they are still young and vulnerable and cripples their development with false attachments and values. It's a socially-sanctioned form of child abuse and therefore evil.

And if "evil" isn't that which opposes truth and wisdom, then what is it?

Bondi: Well, I do not totally agree with the "summary" of David's starting opinion but I agree with that viewpoint.

I think Christmas nowadays is a kind of hypocrisy or masquerade: we want to show how we love and take care each other -- during one or two days; while we almost completely hate and despise (or at least do not care about) each other -- through the whole year.

Serpenteen: If Christmas was simply and attempt to experience joy, that would be fine. What I'm annoyed by is the preconditioned expectation others put on me. The gifts are pretty worthless and I don't like visitations that are more draining than fulfilling. Still this isn’t Christmas’s fault. It’s the people that are ignorant and evil. But they are like this all the time, and it’s just events like Christmas that really help the ignorance shine.

Actually this could be beneficial in exposing idiocy. One thing Christmas helped me learn is to not believe everything I'm told. I felt extremely stupid and gullible when I learned Santa wasn't real...

Life seems to be filled with similar (but less exaggerated) imaginary plays that we play out. Hopefully we can understand the true nature of these roles so we can enjoy them efficiently -- and not be mind-numb, robot zombies.

Words alone like "Merry Christmas" or "I love you" are usually superficial and should be viewed as such ( -- along with other traditions). It doesn't express much (beyond empty gratification), but it does indicate an inner desire for something, which hopefully can be further explored or fulfilled; and not continually misunderstood.

Sapius: David said: "(a) It introduces a powerful illusion to children's minds (that of Santa Claus) which the adults dishonestly pretend is real."

True, but it is not as powerful as you think, take yourself as an example. Surely one needs to experience "illusions" before one Realizes, through reasoning and logic, that which is Real. How would one know what is Real if one is not given the chance to experience "illusions" first. There is a systematic sequence of Causes, which cannot be breached, look for yourself; Nature has it designed that way, since we open our eyes in illusions. Don't tell me you jumped into Reality without Experiencing or Understanding what illusions are. So by what authority do you want to rob others the chance of Realizing it on their own.

There is a right time for every individual to realize the falsehood of “illusions” on his or her own. If you feel the urge to spread the Truth, and that others should do the same, then you have not realized any Truth at all.

You are trying to be just another Jesus or a Buddha, only that You think that you can do a better job.

WolfsonJakk: Christmas in America is a cheap facade of consumerism. Many children these days have not a clue of the origination of Christmas, nor of it's much older winter celebration traditions. Celebrations once mattered when there was still struggle and uncertainty in life; life and death. Now the only struggle for most Americans is how to balance their credit cards bills with their desire to heap undeserved cheap gifts on their children, and couch it in some sort of pseudo-religious/familial setting. It is a total sham.

Dan Rowden: The most salient feature of modern Xmas celebrations for me is the complete juvenality of it all. It is expressive of the desire to return to the safety of the childish mind. The emphasis placed on children with respect to Xmas is really quite astounding, from the celebration of Jesus as a babe, and not the celebration of his brith, which is a pointer the really important stuff - namely, the substance if his life - but an actual wallowing in the infantile.

This emphasis on children, even if taken in theological terms is absurd since the spiritual profundity of Xianity, even at the mediocre and mundane level of conventional Xian theology, is beyond the scope of young children to comprehend. So, what is the point of it all? Apart from the benefit derived by adults happliy returning for a time to all things childish, it also, as David Quinn pointed out, helps inculcate Xianity in the minds of young children, even if only on the level of immature sentiment.

I mean, just look at the vacuity of Xmax carols and songs! They have the temper and modulation of kiddie songs and nursery rhyhms and lullabys. The whole intent seems to be to lull people into a state of passivity and spiritual somnambulism, a state where Jesus represents not a symbol of how one ought live one's life, but of the warm and comforting arms of a mother.

Xmas is a time where people return to infancy and seek to suckle on the teat of the Christ-mother.

It is truly pathetic. [

It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.

I have nothing to declare except my genius. (Response to an American customs official.)

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

As soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist.

The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try and make oneself useful.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

I must confess to being guilty, on occasion, of causing people considerable agitation as a result of my proclamation that the world would be a far better place if there was considerably more hypocrisy. Despite their concerned bewilderment, I stand by this claim unswervingly. You see, genuine hypocrisy is something relatively rare in these times of entrenched pragmatism and spiritual and intellectual mediocrity. Genuine hypocrisy is not in itself a virtue, but all things are relative, and in this world, currently, it comes so close to holding that status that it may as well carry that designation if only for the sake of the positive effect it may impart.

A true hypocrite is one who upholds, or at the very least has a sense of some higher virtue, but who subsequently ignores or does not live up to that virtue. The significant thing here is that such ones at least have a sense of something higher; they actually recognise the reality of transcendent virtues, their inability to consistently live up to those virtues notwithstanding.

But in the world as it stands, the very notion of higher virtue, transcendent virtue, or simply living a truly principled life, is considered tantamount to presumptive arrogance! To authentically express one's principles is to show intolerance to others who do not share such principles, and in an era where relativism is the new theology, that is unaccetpable. It is horrible but true, that nowadays we are too pathetic, too unprincipled, too blind to the idealistic spirit to be capable of exhibiting anything remotely resembling authentic hypocrisy.

In a time which views all idealism as pretentious and arrogant folly, genuine hypocrisy shines forth as a beacon of hope and virtue. [

How is the matter of spiritual attainment to be adjudicated? Is the individual in a position to make a declaration such as "I am Enlightened", or must this judgement be made by an external authority, and if so, how can this be done? This question is pivotal to the whole issue of spiritual authority and what it really means to have attained knowledge........

WolfsonJakk: I proclaim myself enlightened. (Must I pay dues somewhere?) Also, while I am at it, I proclaim that I am the reincarnation of Jesus...Ahh, what the hell, I AM Jesus. Do I have more value in my words now?

David Quinn: You can claim anything you like, even enlightenment, but it won't sound convincing (to me at least) until your words reflect the nature of Reality.

Interestingly, the Zen system of Masters bestowing enlightenment certificates upon others also rests on a self-proclamation of enlightenment. It rests on the self-proclamation of the very first Master in the series. The first Master didn't have the benefit of someone else certifying him, which means that the subsequent chain of certfication rests on the very same self-claim that I make. Only it's weaker because it is based on hand-me-down belief, and not on the direct knowledge of one's own mind.

WolfsonJakk: I completely agree with your point about the certificate system. Give this type of system enough time and it will absolutely become corrupt (this happened long ago, IMO).

But I also have doubts about individuals proclaiming anything abstract about themselves. It is not open to the rigor of strict scrutiny by others. Again, understand where I am coming from. My initial introduction to Buddhism several years ago was in the Dojo where personal claims by young cocky, white belts are often met with a call to prove it; humility ensues quickly.

David Quinn: I take your point. Fortunately, the self-claim of enlightenment is open to scrutiny, both by the self-claimer himself and those who encounter him. The "objective" criteria by which to assess a claim of enlightenment is wisdom itself, the pure awareness of Reality. If that is lacking, then no proper assessment can be made.

Again, there is not much point in having your enlightenment-claim "tested" by an ignoramus. For the test to be valid, an enlightened judge is needed. But in order to be sure that the judge is actually enlightened, you would have to be enlightened first.

So there is no getting away from it. All genuine claims of enlightenment boil down to being self-claims. It is impossible to escape this.

WolfsonJakk: I have met many people who claim to KNOW a way to victory. Often these individuals are "travelers" in that they show up for a few weeks then disappear. They live and die by the method they know, often the latter.

David Quinn: That's true. On the other hand, longetivity isn't a guarantee that one's wisdom and method is authentic. Look at people like Kenneth Copeland, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Rajneesh the Orange People guru, etc - these are examples of "believers" who stayed the full distance and yet were incredibly deluded.

WolfsonJakk: It is my opinion that we each bring to the table unique experiences combined with particular heredity. It is true all roads, more or less, lead to the same destination (enlightenment), but there are many paths to there with many waypoints along the way. One should begin with where one is now rather than "start with the ideal and work your backward" as Vijay so eloquently put it.

David Quinn: That's a nice belief, but it doesn't really mean anthing. If a person isn't fully committed to the path of reason and whole-heartedly dedicated to the pursuit of ultimate understanding, then he won't attain enlightenment. It's as simple as that. Compared to this grand endeavour, the "many roads" of which you speak are like little scrawlings made by ants.

WolfsonJakk: If I were to train for Olympic weightlifting competition, perhaps the second worst training method (other than no work at all) would be to begin training with weights that will win a gold medal. It guarantees injury and frustration.

David Quinn: That's certainly good advice. When it comes to the spiritual path, one cannot suddenly live a life of non-attachment and awareness of Reality, just like that. One needs to slowly work one's way towards it, beginning with the path of reason. That is, the brain needs to be put onto gear and the great truths of life need to be uncovered. Otherwise, nothing of significance will happen, no matter how much effort you put into your spiritual practice. [

Note: Images and story titles appearing in this feature are not necessarily part of the original news items.

PETER Hollingworth should resign as the Australian Governor-General. His poor excuses for his inadequate reaction to allegations – later accepted in court – of pedophilia at the Anglican Church's Toowoomba Preparatory School, while he was Archbishop of Brisbane, is deeply disturbing.

It raises doubt about his willingness to fight for a principle – to do the right thing, rather than the convenient thing.

In 1987, Kevin John Guy, 36, was hired by the Anglican Toowoomba Preparatory School to be its senior boarding master. Principal Robert Brewster later admitted he knew he should have hired a married couple, but the school didn't have a house to offer them.

That wasn't his only miscalculation. Early in 1990, a school council member saw Guy kissing a student and told Brewster, who took no action after Guy denied it.

Just after Anzac Day, Guy sat next to a 12-year-old girl, let's call her A, during a video night and fondled her breasts.

He warned her not to tell anyone because she wouldn't be believed. Over the ensuing months he sexually assaulted her about 30 times for up to seven hours a night.

Weeks later, another student told her mother Guy had rubbed her inner thigh. The mother complained to Brewster, who replied her daughter had a "very vivid imagination". Then, on the night of November 9, the house mistress discovered A at 10.30pm with Guy in the Year 7 common room with the lights off. This time Guy said he was simply comforting the girl, and yet again Brewster believed him.

But the distraught girl had already written to her family pleading to be taken from the school. Her mother rushed to Toowoomba, and found her little girl crying.

But it was only three days later, on November 13, when another girl accused Guy of sexually abusing her, that Brewster says he finally realised the teacher was a pedophile. Even then, Brewster told staff this second girl was "the type of girl who makes up stories to get attention". But the police were called and, on November 30, Guy was charged. Hollingworth said it was on this date, three days after he attended the school's speech day, that he first heard the allegations.

Given that, it may be hard to criticise him for the way the school had reacted until then, even though it was his responsibility to hire the principal and appoint the school council. But it is harder to excuse him for what followed. For a start, the council decided to say nothing to parents about the crime, hoping, it seems, to avoid a scandal and to defend compensation claims. A recent statement from the Anglican diocese admits the council decided on legal advice to "say nothing publicly" but says it tried to protect the students and their families "from publicity and further anguish". Many parents don't believe that. Not when the minutes of a school council special meeting records the school's solicitor advising it not to pay the counselling costs of the two abused children because "it would not be of benefit to the school".

The evidence indicates the school was interested in a disgraceful cover-up, something Hollingworth denies. Guy, when he was charged, offered to resign, but the council said no. Rather than fight the charges, Guy gassed himself in his car on December 18, leaving a suicide note listing 20 girls at the school – including A – whom he said he loved, as well as others at a school at Mittagong in NSW, where he'd previously taught. Brewster said the note would have been given to the diocese, then headed by Hollingworth, who is yet to confirm or deny that. But the administrator of the Mittagong school last week said the Anglican Church had never informed it of the note's contents.
Nor were the Toowoomba parents made much wiser. They received a letter from Brewster telling them of Guy's "tragic death", but not of the allegations against him. Indeed, Brewster said Guy had been "the best thing to happen to the school since sliced bread".

The school nurse was so outraged that on Christmas Day, she wrote to Hollingworth saying the parents and students were being deceived. Three weeks later, parents also wrote to Hollingworth saying the school community should have been told of the events behind Guy's death. They also wrote to the local bishop, demanding Brewster resign over this "massive cover-up". It was then that A's psychologist, Joy Conolly, rang Hollingworth, begging him to help the girl's distressed parents.
His choice? He told Conolly, according to her evidence to the Supreme Court, that he was "very tired and needed a holiday and there was nothing he could do". Hollingworth has rejected "any suggestion that I voiced a lack of concern or disinterest in the welfare of the families" to Conolly. And he lamely adds he made "several unsuccessful attempts to contact one of the parents by telephone".

Hollingworth does admit his response today would be "different" but without saying how. But he maintains he was distant from the running of the school and legal advice convinced him it was "imperative that insurance coverage not be jeopardised". That defence looks highly suspect. For instance, in 1991 Hollingworth wrote to parents of the victims, assuring them he was monitoring the situation closely. The legal advice to him to admit nothing and say little to the parents was wrong in the deepest sense. If you believe in higher values – like honesty, honour, candour, repentance and our duty to defend the weak, just as Christ did – then such advice looks sick and weaselly.

Comment: Whilst the Anglican Church has always been rather secular in nature, it is almost inconceiveable that is had descended to this level of spiritual redundancy. Nowadays we have the money lenders preaching to the clergy. Jesus would no doubt be horrified. The question is how does a religious organisation that holds itself up to be a moral guardian and shephard to society, indeed, even the voice of God in the world, hope to maintain any credibility whatever when it runs to secular institutions for advise on how to proceed in matters that are explicitly moral in character? Surely they cannot have any such hope.

Detroit city officials today kicked off their "Ring in the New Year With a Bell, Not a Bang" campaign to prevent deaths and injuries from New Year's Eve gunfire.

Officials and representatives from White Castle restaurants encouraged Detroiters to ring bells at midnight Monday, instead of shooting off guns as the have in years past.

The Rev. Nicholas Hood III, a city councilman, said White Castle's 12 Detroit locations would give out miniature bells.

Speaking at one of the restaurants Friday, Hood said the campaign is not only an effort to prevent unnecessary deaths from stray bullets but also an effort to encourage the rebuilding of the city.

"I believe this campaign works," he said. "Every year since this started, the number of shots between the hours of 12 and 2 have declined. I believe that this campaign represents a human dimension to the bricks and mortar that are rebuilding this city."

Hood stressed that firing guns to celebrate the New Year is not something that only happens in Detroit. Deaths due to stray bullets have also happened in cities such as Chicago and New Orleans in recent years.

The New Year's Eve revelry has been a tradition since the 19th century, when farmers used to shoot off their guns to celebrate.

Comment: What can one say to that? I guess it gives a whole new dimension to the term "friendly fire". But it is extraordinary the risks we're prepared to impose on others all for the sake of a bit of frivolous pleasure.

- Burning Yule Log Wins Christmas TV Ratings in NY -

Friday December 28 10:35 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Show them nothing and they will watch: A television program showing only a yule log burning in a fireplace -- accompanied by a soundtrack of seasonal songs -- was the highest rated morning show in New York City on Christmas Day, the Nielsen television ratings service said on this week.

Titled simply "Yule Log," the show attracted about 611,000 viewers to WPIX Chanel 11 as it toasted the competition to finish No. 1 for the time period from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., Nielsen said. The closest competitor was WABC Channel 7's ``Good Morning America,'' which attracted about 532,000 viewers.

Betty Ellen Berlamino, general manager of WPIX, which is owned by the Tribune Co., said the two-hour yule log program was a remastered version of a WPIX staple from 1966 to 1989.

"Every year we get so many requests from people to bring back the yule log," Berlamino said Thursday. "People are looking for tradition. They're clinging to tradition this year. We thought this would be the ultimate in comfort television. ... The fire kept you extra warm this year."

She said the program received a warm response from viewers, many of whom called to thank the station for its hearty helping of Christmas cheer. But will the log be back for an encore flare-up in 2002?

"Absolutely," Berlamino said. "It was overwhelmingly successful. It got tremendous viewer response."

Comment: This is a perfect example of the kind of escape from reality people indulge in over the Xmas period. It is expressive of a tremendous desire to escape from the trials and pressures of everyday life. One could defend this on the basis of it being a necessary release of pressure that builds up in people through the year, however, none of these escapist periods consist of an attempt to stop and consider the true nature of those everyday pressures. It is just a wallowing in harmlessness and vacuity. It is merely a movement from one state of such vacuity to an even more active one, in the same way that the fool experiences foolish dreams each time his head hits the pillow at night.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Over 60,000 adults in Hong Kong wet their beds and a quarter of them bed-wet every night mainly because of work problems, a survey showed Friday.

While the sufferers made up only 2.4 percent of adults aged between 16 and 40, the survey found that more than half of them wet their beds three or more nights a week.

The survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong of 8,500 people showed that sufferers were most likely to wet their beds when choosing a job and or when they were worried about work performance.

Most also did not have tertiary education, it found.

"Very few people knew how to manage the problem, and less than half of the affected individuals have tried some form of therapy or sought medical assistance," the survey said.

Hong Kong is facing its second recession in four years and many face the prospect of job cuts or being laid off.

Comment: Perhaps may of them will find jobs in factories that manufacture mattress protectors, but this story is just too sad and pathetic to really be funny. It is symbolic of the madness and suffering inflicted upon societies as a result of material and herd values. It would be interesting to see what results would accrue should similar research be conducted in western countries like the US where notions of "success" are the heart and soul of the nation's drive. Despite the obvious puns that leap to one's mind, this is no piddling matter. These are the sorts of stresses that cause workers to walk into their workplace and gun down dozens of people with automatic weapons. Amazingly, there is little evidence that a change of mentality is on the horizon. We seem content to slowly destroy ourselves.

- Suspended Priest 'Does Not Believe in Xmas' -

Monday December 24 10:56 AM ET
By Alex Richardson

DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish Protestant minister who does not believe in Christmas or that Jesus was the Son of God has been suspended from his post for three months to "reflect on his statements."

Andrew Furlong, Dean of Clonmacnoise and Rector of Trim in County Meath, startled worshippers in his quiet Irish midlands parish when his unconventional views on traditional Christian teachings were aired in articles published on his Web site.

"I don't believe the traditional understanding of Christmas, that God took human form and was born as a babe in Bethlehem," he told Reuters on Monday.

Furlong, 54, who was ordained in the Anglican Church of Ireland in the early 1970s, said he has held his unorthodox beliefs for more than 30 years but had not shared them previously with his parishioners.

"With the deepest respect for others and their beliefs, to my mind Jesus, and John the Baptist also, were mistaken and misguided 'end time' prophets," he wrote in one article.

"Jesus was neither a mediator nor a savior, neither superhuman nor divine. We need to leave him to his place in history and move on."

Furlong believes a modern church needs to allow a diverse spread of views and allow members to challenge traditional teachings.

"Over the years the church has changed its view on many things -- slavery, divorce, birth control, the Latin mass," he said.

But his views have gone down badly with the Bishop of Meath and Kildare, Richard Clarke, who has ordered the priest to take a three-month leave of absence to "facilitate a period of quiet reflection during which he may reflect on his statements."

"My position is pretty uncertain. I am suspended and I may find at the end of the three months I will not have my license renewed," said Furlong, who for the time being continues to live in the rectory in Trim, around 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Dublin, and draw his salary from the Church of Ireland.

Comment: The most extrordinary thing about this story is that this fellow has held these ideas for 30 years and said nothing, choosing instead, apparantly, to go on offering teachings and propagating attitudes he regards as false or anachronistic. Although he may seem more liberal and modern than his peers, if I were one of his superiors I think I would suspend him just for his cowardice and dishonesty. [

It is inevtiable that any spiritual or philosophic aspirant will exist in state of conflict between the nature of their ideals and the practical reality of their everyday, worldly lives. They are not yet enlightened and so still possess ego and attachments. This conflict is part and parcel of the path to wisdom and cannot be avoided. The real problem arises when we seek to disavow the existence of such a conflict: instead of acknowledging our follies and weaknesses and imperfections for what they are, we try to deny them and claim that they are quite consistent with a life spent in earnest pursuit of Truth. Thus, the path to wisdom is lost to us and becomes indistinguishable from the complexity of our worldly desires and needs..........

Dan Rowden: It's always interesting to witness the dynamic that is created by a person who exists in a state of conflict between their worldly attachments and their higher ideals - to the degree that they possess such a thing. On the one hand they are egotistically attached to things like their wife and kids, their careers and reputation, their worldly possessions and security etc, and on the other hand some part of their ego perceives and suffers over the obvious egotism and mediocrity of it all. Thus, such a person lives a kind of duplicitous life where each aspect of their egos competes with the other for control and dominance.

These competing forces are constantly aware of the other and are at all times ready to make their own case and defend against a perceived threat. So, when such a person swings toward their idealistic side, the worldly side immediately seeks to impose itself and deal with the threat to itself by either extolling the virtues of that wordly existence, creating guilt in the individual, or by denying the very substance of the ideal itself. This results in the person proclaiming the virues of one realm, in one minute, and the other realm in the next, making a sham of reason in the process. It is by no means an enviable condition.

And when I describe this as a state of "conflict", I mean that in a purely logical way - that is, to indicate two competing but incompatible forces and states. It doesn't mean that the individual necessarily experiences real emotional conflict with respect to it. It's entirely possible for a person to switch from one compartment of their minds to another with no real logical connection between the two and without experiencing a twinge of conscience regarding it. The truth and virtue of what one feels in any given moment is paramount.

It's easy for a person to get stuck in this realm of existence for a very long time because neither aspect of their ego is sufficiently developed to take that person more authentically in one direction than the other; they basically spend their whole time in a state of vacillation between the wordly and mediocre and the ideal and lofty. Should a person actually expereince deep emotional conflict over this scenario, then scope for development exists. Most, however, never get beyond the suffering which is really just an egotistical insecurity that can usually be dealt with more than adequately by little more than a flurry of words and sentiment.

The role of a genuine teacher in all of this is that of bringing the nature of that conflict to the forefront of the mind of the one who exhibits it, keeping that mind as focussed as possible on the true nature of the realm of the ideal, thus helping to ripen their karma - one way or another. This process invariably increases the suffering of the individual who is already in some turmoil, but it is the pain of birth - birth into the human realm. They are the productive growing pains of the spirit.

David Hodges: I have certainly been in a state of conflict about exactly this, with no feeling of moving towards any sort of resolution other than giving up and resigning myself to the conflict.

At one point, I was about to get rid of as much stuff as possible and try to live simply. That never happened. I am not a monk. Part of the reason is that, when it comes down to it, I really like my stuff. I don't want to live without it. I really enjoy my motorcycles and my car and my basses and guitars. I like having them around; I like how they feel, and look, and sound. They are well-made, beautiful objects and I appreciate them. At times I even enjoy my career, which pays for these lovely objects that surround me.

Dan Rowden: Well, there's your answer right there. You haven't yet reached a point where either dissatisfaction with, or repulsion to, worldly pleasures and attachments has given you real impetus to pursue more lofty philosophic aspirations, even if you are able to recognise their reality. That's fair enough. It would be foolish to contrive anything here. It's just a simple fact of life that if one has not developed a healthy disgust for the world and onself and their egotistical natures, then there's basically no chance whatever of an authentic pursuit of wisdom occuring.

David Hodges: While I see wisdom and knowledge as an important goal in life, I don't see it as the only goal. To be wise, yet be miserable, would not be a good life. Happiness is an important goal.

Dan Rowden: Two things: 1) happiness is deluded nonsense; 2) one cannot be wise and miserable - the two are antithetical notions. Unhappiness exists where one desires happiness. That's how unhappiness arises. The wise person is beyond all that kind of thing because he is beyond the forces of such egotistical desire. The real question is what is happiness and what does it mean to have it? If one attains happiness by egotistical means, how is it that one retains it? Happiness is ephemeral because as soon as one has it, one begins to fear losing it, and in doing so one does indeed lose it.

David Hodges: My stuff does make me happy. This is not mere contentment or a sense of security. I have a great time, blasting down the road, slamming through the gears, blasting the stereo. It's fun. I am happy doing it.

Dan Rowden: "My perversions make me happy". "I have a great time beating women and shoving my dick in 5 year old girls. It's fun. I am happy doing it."

David Hodges: But if that's what makes me happy - well - what's wrong with being happy? Isn't that what everyone is looking for, in the end? Don't you seek wisdom out of the idea that wisdom, being wise, will make you happy? Can you honestly say you'd rather be wise, and miserable?

Dan Rowden: I would much rather seek wisdom and be comparitively miserable in the process than be a merry fool. It's a matter of conscience. And whilst I agree all purpose and values arise out of a need to fulfill egotistical desires, it doesn't follow that because two babes come from the same womb that the one who becomes a lascivous pornographer is of the same value as the one who becomes a sage. It doesn't matter from the point of view of Nature, of course, but we function on the basis of a discriminative consciousness and thus things always matter to us. If your current disposition leans toward worldly pleasure, and you're aware of that fact, then that is something, but there are yet things that you are not aware of and that is the crux of the problem.

David Hodges: I was living with a woman, and I booted her out, with a sense of great relief, and much looking forward to being alone. Within a few weeks, there was another woman there to take her place, far more womanly that the first; more feminine, much less intellectual.

Dan Rowden: That makes sense, really. Clearly for a while there your ego was pretty dissatisfied with the wordly aspects of your life and so you indulged in a bit of an excursion into the philosophic realm to a greater degree than you have, perhaps, done previously. But the key here is that the disatisfaction was really only to do with specific elements of that wordly existence and not the worldly life, per se. Given that, it was and is unlikely that the fairly extereme demands of an authenic philosophic existence will appeal to you, at least not until such time, if ever, that the "world" has nothing to offer you at all.

What is the attraction to a more feminine, less intellectual woman? An escape from your own mind? What does it take in terms of one's behaviour and the integrity of that to hold onto such a woman? To please her? Seems like a lot of hard work and bullshit to me.

David Hodges: I don't know about denying ideals, but I can not deny that I am a man. Men must live in some relation to women. To shut them out completely is not the solution.

Dan Rowden: Certainly men must live in relation to women. That's how the world is, but that doesn't mean embracing the feminine, encouraging and nurturing it and thereby cementing unconsciousness into the fabric of the world. One cannot be doing that sort of thing and hope to be taken seriously when claiming to have not abandoned or to be in any way still working toward loftier ideals. It's better to just be honest and say that such ideals simply don't occupy a signficant place in one's values.

David Hodges: Well, I don't feel there should be any conflict between "worldly" and "lofty". We are here, in this world, of this world, and we need to live in it as authentically as we can. Is not living, fully and authentically, a lofty goal?

Dan Rowden: Yes, indeed, we are here in the world and have to operate within it. That is undenibaly true, but there is a world of difference between acknowledging the practical fact of our worldly existence and entering into the spirit of the worldly mentality. It boils down to the choice betwen living in the world deludedly or wisely. That choice stands before all of us. It is stark and uncompromising. We want to have our cake and eat it too, but I'm afraid that just isn't possible. What happens is that we glory in our egototistical pleasures, ignoring all of the consequences of that, whilst casting an occasional eye to the idealistic dimension of life and satisfying ourselves that we are yet involved with it. We experience the nobility of it vicariously, like the token Buddhist who has a Buddha idol on their mantle and every time they look at it they feel as if they are following the Dharma. They then walk out the front door and live a life that is essentially no different from those who have never even heard of the Buddha.

I have no problem at all with people living honestly, and if that means living a mediocre, egotistical life with common worldly values, then so be it. Unfortunately, it is incredibly rare to find a person who doesn't justify that state of affairs by misrepresenting both the nature of what they're doing and the nature of the alternarive idealistic life. That I will always battle.

David Hodges: How can we turn away from the pleasures and sensations of a fine wine, a good dinner, a beautiful woman, and pretend they mean nothing? Can you lead an ascetic life, and really be happy? Isn't that turning your back on life?

Dan Rowden: I don't lead an ascetic life and do not advocate such a thing. How can I turn away from the things you mention? Well, what if they no longer bring me pleasure? More importantly, what if I no longer possess the elements of ego via which I would need or desire such things in the first place? The real question is not how one can turn away from such things, but why one needs them in the first place.

David Hodges: There is what is true - and that's important. But there is also what is good - and that is more important. Truth is just a starting point. First you must know the truth of the matter, than you can judge what is good, what is bad, what is right.

Dan Rowden: Exactly, you must know the truth of the matter, but that entails wisdom. Therefore, the pursuit of wisdom is paramount. That ought be the great ethical impertaive of human existence, don't you think?

Yamori: Very interesting indeed.... I too seem to have a similar problem with two "masters" of thought...

My egotistical and "true nature" side screams for me to go by Satanic philosophy (not a satan worshiper, a satanist, theres a difference, read it up! while my more idealistic side screams for me to be a socialist-anarchist type person... luckily these philosophies have similar structure so I have been able to pursue some wisdom either way.

WolfsonJakk: The bottom line is this: what relative amount of suffering is a part of your life. Buddhism is a philosophy that addresses this issue directly without reliance on emotional crutches or leaps of faith. It defines the root of suffering.

Dan Rowden: Indeed, and it defines suffering as ignorance. To truly understand this point is to enter into a mode where one suffers for one's ignorance, as such. This is imperative, for without this form of suffering, an authentic pursuit of wisdom is unlikely. When ignorance regarding the nature of Reality itself, causes one to suffer, one is on the way.

WolfsonJakk: We all suffer, emotionally and physically.

Dan Rowden: That's an assumption on your part. It is not a certain thing that everyone suffers emotionally.

WolfsonJakk: What method entails alleviation of the most amount of suffering?

Dan Rowden: Suicide?

WolfsonJakk: Should one neglect all wordly attachments, desires, and ego to achieve a kind of static state? One would not suffer in this case, it is assumed. But why would one want to live?

Dan Rowden: This "why would one want to live" is itself a question posed by the ego. It expresses an egotistical attachment to particular modes of living. It is, therefore, rather meaningless. More particularly, it fails to address the question of what life is and whether there is any fundamental difference between life and death in the first place. Which reminds me of a story about Diogenes that I have oft' quoted (or paraphrased, which is what I'm about to do).....

Someone once said to Diogenes, "What is the difference between life and death?" To which he replied, "There is no difference." The questioner then asked: "So then, why do you live?" "Because there is no difference", Diogenes replied.

WolfsonJakk: It would be a struggle to attain this state and to maintain it, and for what? The carrot in this scenario is a description of a transcendent, blissful state. But this psychological/emotional condition can be achieved without the need to be hermit.

Dan Rowden: I don't advocate being hermitic or not being hermitic. Being a hermit is usually just as much an expression of attachment as anything else. And you say it would be a struggle to attain enlightenment? So what? Anything less than that for the one who has attained the human realm and suffers for the fact of his ignorance will not suffice because anything less than the Truth cannot remove his suffering.

WolfsonJakk: To decide one thing is better than another is a form of violence and suffering.

Dan Rowden: So, you've decided that not deciding is better than deciding. You violent thug!!

WolsonJakk: To say I am right and you are wrong is the product of a mind with ego and subject to suffering.

Dan Rowden: Or a mind subject to Truth and expressing compassion.

WolfsonJakk: To live in a cave and experience the cycle of life and death outside is to experience suffering. The entity without needs is an entity that is unnatural. There has never been a life form on this planet that fits this description. Why would some intelligent minds strive for it?

Dan Rowden: It depends on what you mean by "needs". I have needs in that I need food and shelter and many other practical accoutrements to pursue my purpose, but these are not needs bound up in the delusion of the ego and therefore no suffering accompanies them.

WolfsonJakk: It seems the only solution is to learn the skill of dealing with this truth. The "static state" is a place I feel I can, and daily do, reach through meditation and thought (though some may argue I am only in delusion), but it is not a permanent state. I mix this with the attitude of a thief. I steal pleasure. I smile at my daughter as she grows, at making the people at work happy when a project is completed, etc. I understand pleasure brings pain. I understand I am dancing with death. But we all are, whether I work or live in a cave.

With the attitude of the thief, I can practice the control of my thoughts and yet come out ahead in the end. With skill and practice, it is no longer a zero-sum game. I steal small momentary pleasures then revert back to a calm, disengaged state. It has increasingly worked well for me for a few years now.

Dan Rowden: This is the language of the defeatest - the one who refuses to give up the comfort of the warm bed for the icy winds of the high hills of philosophic ideals, which is the proper place for anyone with genuine aspirations for the attainment of wisdom.

I imagine you're expecting to live to be 500 or so.

This calm state is just a contrived meditative technique you've learned over the years. The fact that you just slip back into the world of ego pleasure at will shows that you haven't authentically transcended the ego to any real degree at all. If you had, you would be entirely unable to play the theif as you do.

WolfsonJakk: What are the flaws in this life attitude?

Dan Rowden: They don't represent a genuine departure from ignorance.

Victor Danilchenko: The thesis underlying this whole thread is ridiculous. It's automatically assumed that there is an inherent conflict between one's everyday life, and the "higher ideal"; it is assumed that there is an irreconcilable dichotomy between the 'sacred' and the 'profane' -- a view popularized by xianity in occidental cultures.

Of course, this dichotomy does exist -- if your "higher ideals" are explicitly separated from the world. This is the case in xianity, and this is the case in drowden's "ultimate truth" lunacy.

David Quinn: The conflict that Dan speaks of is essentially a conflict between the striving for perfect honesty and the compromises one makes in order to lead an enjoyable, conflict-free life. The issue turns on how deeply and how perfectly one wishes to be honest. The moment you strive for perfection in this area, you are immediateley place yourself at odds with our society which routinely accepts dishonesty as a matter of course.

If a person is unable to perceive and appreciate the conflict, then it means that his striving for honesty isn't very far-reaching or genuine. [

The question is whether anyone has ever been, in any serious way, not sane. I have examined the history of the human race with care. Kant gives the impression that he liked the inconceiveable, but his books were too long; Einstein was interested in the Universe, but was bad at psychology; H.G Wells saw that research consisted of taking risks, but declined into sociology. My best candidates, therefore, are Nietzsche and Christ. It may be objected that their ideas cannot possibly be of interest, since one went mad and the other was crucified. However, I think we should not hold this against them: they may have felt a trifle isolated.

"Love thy neighbour as thyself": In fact, everyone does love their neighbour as themselves. They desire that he shall accept second-best as they have done; that he, too, shall be made to realize his limitations and "come to terms with himself".

The human race is so meglomaniac; they think you're being conceited if you say you're better than everybody else.

A human relationship is what happens when you know you can rely on the other person to be as dishonest as you are.

The human race's favourite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them.

One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.

Science arose by accident in the brief space when one great orthodoxy was loosening its hold and the new great orthodoxy had not yet reached its full strength. The first orthodoxy was that of religion which dominated the dark ages. The second orthodoxy is that of the belief in society, which is dominating the dark ages now beginning.

Earning a living is regarded as moral. This is because a person who is answerable only to himself may or may not be wasting his time; an employed person is certain to be.

Job satisfaction consists of knowing that you are not actually doing anything to increase anyone else's freedom.

Women are the last people to be trusted with children. Those who repress their own aspirations will scarcely be tolerant of the aspirations of others.

Marriage: there are less painful ways of committing suicide.

Men are children at heart and women are not. Women abandon themselves to society.

Women are like "sane" people in general - you can't imagine how they can bear to be like it, but the last thing they want is to be told how to stop.

Only the impossible is worth attempting. One is sure to fail at anything else.

The object of modern science is to make all aspects of reality equally boring, so that no one will be tempted to think about them.

If you stand up to the human race, you lose something called their "goodwill"; if you kowtow to them, you gain ...... their permission to continue kowtowing.

Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present.

Equality: It is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to make them appear equally clever.

Democracy: Everyone should have an equal opportunity to obstruct everybody else.

I cannot write long books; I leave that for those people who have nothing to say.

Humility means (to the human race) to desire what you can easily have.

Society, they say, exists to safe-guard the rights of the individual. If this is so, the primary right of a human being is evidently to live unrealistically.

The human race knows enough about thinking to prevent it.

Do the final steps towards Enlightenment involve a classical "leap of faith"? Does one leave reason behind in taking the leap into the abyss of the Infinite? Or does one fulfill the promise of that reason by doing so? Is any action based in reason or a direct consequence of it, not, itself, entirely reasonable?

Bondi: One has to leave behind everything, including reason, to contemplate and realise the truth.

David Quinn: If you leave reason behind, then how do you know that what you are realizing is the truth?

Bondi: In a word: as I conceive it, "super-rationalism" is a better phrasing than "extreme-rationalism". (Because the former suggests something that has transcended reason; while the latter suggests something that has pushed reason to an ultimate state among its natural barriers, to a little window for the whole world outside.)

David Quinn: I suppose the Truth could be called "super-rational" in a sense - but really, it is no more super-rational than is the colour red, or the sound of a flute, or indeed any experience at all. None of our experiences of the world is capturable by our concepts, words or logic, and the experience of Truth is no different. But then, that is not the function of these things.

The use of concepts and logic is akin to using a map. One needs a map to find the Grand Canyon, say, but it isn't the map's job to capture the essence and experience of the Grand Canyon itself. Once you reach your destination, you put the map aside and simply use your eyes and ears.

The path to Truth is no different. Reason takes you to the threshold, and reason also tells you how to cross the threshold, and only then do you put reason aside, cross the threshold, and experience the Truth directly.

Bondi: Yes - with not leaving reason, it is like glancing at the sea from its shores but not going into the waters.

Sapius: Yes, reason takes you to that threshold, and beyond, but then you Realize that there is no "threshold" at all, which divides "real" from "illusion". ...And "YOU" do not put 'reason' aside as such, for there remains no more an "I" then, and thereby "reason" has no more inherent meaning for you either, and Everything becomes Real again. This Experience cannot be explained.

WolfsonJakk: Does this not sound like a leap of faith, David? Substitute a word for another here or there, and you have an evangelical Christian.

David Quinn: It's only a leap of faith in the sense that you are not sure whether or not it is desirable to give yourself over to Truth. Giving yourself over to Truth is scary, because, from an egotistical point of view, entering into Truth is like entering into death. One needs to have the faith that a Truth-filled existence is a worthy form of existence, and one that can be endured.

As Kierkegaard once said: "To have faith is really to advance along the way where all human road signs point: back, back, back."

So genuine faith in Truth is completely unlike the "faith" possessed by a Christian. Christian faith is essentially an exercise in blind belief, wherein in the Christian believes in something that can't be backed by reason. True spiritual faith, by contrast, is an exercise in courage, wherein the spiritual person decides, against all "common sense", to follow, to the very end, what reason tells him is true.

As for myself, here is what one man told me: "The trouble with you is that you make men think. Men don't want to think."

It is swell if a woman is good at math or good at being a lawyer or doctor or has knowledge of science or history or business. What is not wanted is intensely focused intelligence -- what I might call philosophical compassion -- that is equal to or that surpasses his own. That is not comforting but discomforting. It can be alarming and threatening.

Most heterosexual men do not want to make love to a woman of such intense hardness. Even those who may initially find it to be attractive will back off.

This is prudent. They should back off. It is emasculating. They would do better to seek out the companionship of a more willing and more submissive woman; a romantic; a woman who wants children.

I think this is why, in part, older men are often coupled with much younger women. Younger women are still listening to the so called biological clock and that makes them more submissive than older women. Marsha Faizi

Weininger attacked mostly by women after the publication of his book. If he had wrote such an excellent work on the question of the sexes, women would not even understand what the hell he was writing about... Bondi

That is simply not so. I get "attacked" all the time by women/feminists for the things I say but barely a single one of them has ever understood my words. It doesn't need understanding. It is sufficient that one is perceived as being negative towards women or femininity. That in itself is more than enough to warrant an attack upon one's person, either by women or men. An actual understanding of what is being said is pretty irrelevant. What matters is that one immediately moves to protect one of the greatest emotional attachments society has - Woman.

You get the same kind of thing, but with a bit less vitriol, when you critically examine love or the emotions generally. No-one really cares about the spcifics of your critique; all they care about is that you have the gall to examine that which is apparently held to be sacrosanct. Dan Rowden

The very idea of a woman underpinning her beliefs with reasons is pretty meaningless, when you think about it. After all, women don't actually have beliefs. Rather, they become wholly aborbed into a particular point of view in the moment, and then, when the moment passes, they become wholly absorbed into another point of view, and so on ad infinitum. They have no consciousness of the relationship between successive points of view and thus no consciousness of whether the two conflict or not. To them, the moment is everything, their entire universe. As such, it is nigh on impossible for them to find the underpinnings for what they "believe" in because, by the time they come up with some plausible candidates, the point of view in question has long vanished from their minds. They have essentially forgotten what they were trying to underpin.

Woman's reasonings are regurgitations of what she has heard or read. Because she doesn't think, her reasonings tend to lack substance and quickly peter out. When she does sound convincing in her reasonings it is because (a) her source material was impeccable to begin with and (b) her absorption into the point of view which houses these reasonings is so complete, she ends up sounding completely confident. David Quinn

I think it's particularly easy to tell if a woman is flirting. The criteria being: She is alive. She is conscious. She is interacting with a male. If these criteria are met then the woman is almost certainly flirting (where "flirting" is defined as a woman using her sexuality to exercise inflence over a male). Dan Rowden

Genuinely intelligent people (or either sex) do not have successful relationships because they are unable to turn a blind eye to the true nature of love and relationship. To be successful in such things one must bury certain aspects of one's intelligence under the soil of emotional desire and ego. Intelligence cannot thrive and grow in such a medium because it lacks the kind of nutrients that genuine intelligence requires. Dan Rowden

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