God and Man ～Guideposts for Spiritual Peace and Awakening
ー Written by Masahisa Goi
Chapter 6⑤： True Religions and Mistaken Religions
Now, returning to the subject of the subconscious world, I shall talk about creatures, or beings, in the subconscious world who exert a harmful influence on the physical world.
In the subconscious world there are human beings who, though they have already left the physical world, are convinced that they still live there. These people believe that the death of the physical body is the end of a human being. Their preoccupation with the physical body is extremely strong. Although they have physically died of an illness or injury, they think, in the manner in which we usually dream a dream, about the people who were around them when they were in the physical world (their immediate family and their descendants). They fix their attention on those people and follow closely behind their physical embodiments. Since they are convinced that they, themselves, still have their own physical bodies, though they actually do not, their subconscious bodies alone cover their thoughts and wander in the physical world.
If the soul in the subconscious world is someone who died of tuberculosis, he or she still holds thoughts of tuberculosis. Therefore, the person he or she is clinging to will gradually be influenced by the thought and can eventually develop tuberculosis. The closer the friendship or blood relationship between oneself and the deceased, the more liable one is to be influenced. The same applies to other illnesses and injuries.
In cases where the deceased tries to take revenge for some grievance carried over from before his or her death, the resented person is liable to receive some trouble. In addition, there are souls who are abnormally interested in the physical world even though they have been transferred to the subconscious world.
There are also 'emotional spirits,' or 'animal spirits,' that exist only in the subconscious world and do not have the ethics or morals that human beings have. Since these spirits and creatures are far from being awakened to truth, they are very much interested in petty affairs. Instead of inquiring into their own divinity, they have a strong inclination to make a great fuss by causing some incident to occur, or they may desire to be worshiped. Therefore, when they see physical human beings who plead with God to satisfy their selfish cravings, and who depend upon miracles (note: people living in a certain stratum of the subconscious world can see well the affairs of the physical world), these spirits and creatures mischievously transmit thoughts to persons having a certain kind of mediumistic constitution. (These mediumistic people are people who either have a large subconscious body, which is the undergarment of the physical body, or whose subconscious body is easy for spirits to go in and out of.) Or, they might borrow the physical body of the medium and talk through him or her, saying: 'I am the god of such-and so.' Then they predict various occurrences in the physical world, which do come true in many cases.
There are a great many low-level and mistaken religions of this type.
In many instances, the founders of these religions are people with either an impressionable disposition or little scholastic knowledge. The reason for this is that intellectual-type people, even if very faithful, cannot help criticizing the words and attitudes of such spirits. This makes it difficult for the adhering spirits to freely utilize intellectual people's physical embodiments.
Low-level religious founders or leaders assume a very haughty attitude and speak in a vulgar way. Another thing they do is to predict things which it would upset people to know about. It would be all right to make predictions if the predicted event could be prevented by exactly following certain advice, but it cannot meet the divine intention to predict a future trouble from which a person absolutely cannot escape.
These 'spirits' are creatures in the subconscious world, and not Guardian Spirits or Divinities sent from God. These creatures pride themselves on surprising physical human beings just for the fun of it. They are like delinquent youths in the physical world.
One must not think that God is working through a person, or that a person is a god, simply judging from the person's 'miracles' of only making successful predictions or peeping into other people's minds. Even if a person's business has been improved by following the advice of the spirit (i.e., religious figure), this alone does not mean that the person has entered the road to spiritual awakening.
If one tries to cling to God only for worldly benefits one may risk losing sight of the road to one's divinity. If a religion fosters a base mentality of wishing to be saved by God without releasing the dirt that covers one's mind and without making the most of life, then it must be a mistaken religion.
And if a religion makes predictions that frighten people as a means of making them join the religion, then it is also a mistaken religion.
The original purpose of religion is to have people reach spiritual peace and awakening. If people's daily lives become uneasy or disturbed as a result of joining a religion, then the religion is doing harm to those human beings.
A true religion would have to be one that points out the way that lets people rise above their karmic causes and leads them directly to God, and it would guide and elevate them in that direction. A true faith would have to increasingly deepen and heighten the spirit of love and truth, and would inspire great courage for creating the full-scale harmony of humanity.
If a person becomes anxious or disturbed after entering a religion, either the religion is a wrong one or the person's faith is in error.
Even if one enters any true faith, one cannot immediately enter a state of spiritual peace and awakenment. However, the time needed for reaching such a state can be shortened to whatever degree, in proportion to the depth of one's faith and the seriousness with which one practices one's faith.
To be continued in Chapter 6⑥
Dios y el Ser Humano (Spanish Edition)
Deus e o Homem (Portuguese Edition)
