Karyn Posted August 14, 2022 Share Posted August 14, 2022 What ITC Groups Could Learn From Religion (7) Posted on 2016 February 13 by Mark Macy Note: Once again, this article is mostly just an interesting outline of comparisons of the various religions, and what we can learn from them to apply to ITC research. Most of the “meat” is in the various links to other sites. Why compare ITC groups and religions? For one thing, they’re both involved in other-worldly pursuits… spirituality. Also, while religion is vastly popular in the world, ITC (communicating with the other side through technology) is still on the fringes of human understanding and acceptance. But mostly, seven ethereal beings acted as gatekeepers for the high-tech communication bridge that our INIT group enjoyed with the other side, and The Seven made a distinction between ITC and religion: “We, The Seven of the Rainbow People, have decided to help and support the way chosen by you in INIT. It is the way of morals, which means to understand, to acknowledge, to devise, and to act. It is not to be mixed up with religion, which means to believe. The two can be complementary, but they are independent, one to the other….” (Read more about that message…) In other words, instrumental transcommunication (ITC), as practiced by INIT, is a means of getting reliable, other-worldly information from the finer realms of spirit, and then… understanding the information, acknowledging it, adjusting it to fit our world, and acting accordingly… … whereas religion involves believing wisdom of the ages that has been interpreted and edited to fit that particular religion. These are among the most prominent religions today: The maps and statistics come from wikipedia. Map sizes are intended just to give a rough visual impression of the size differences among the religions. The 4 bigger maps were drawn for Wikimedia commons by “M Tracy Hunter”, the map of Jews by “Skalskal.” All data is based on research from Pew Research Center. Hindus and Jews make up the two oldest religions still flourishing today, having emerged during that post-Atlantean era when superhumans (a.k.a. “sons of gods” or Titans or giants or demigods) still walked the Earth alongside “sons of men,” or regular humans. Lord Krishna and Abram (Abraham) were most likely superhumans whose job it was to spread wisdom to the humans. Even though Abraham is generally thought of as human by modern Christians and Jews, both Abram and Krishna were probably contemporaries of Thoth, the superhuman with Atlantean roots, and probably had the same “noble lineage of Gods and Giants,” as Plato liked to say, with lifespans measured in thousands of years. The three newer religions sprouted and evolved from the two old ones—Muslims and Christians emerging from the Jews, and Buddhists emerging from the Hindus… and there are certain similarities among the newcomers. For example: Buddhists Christians The Buddha (Gautama or Siddhartha or Shakyamuni) lived and died around 2,500 years ago. The Christ (Jesus or Emmanuel or the Nazarene or Savior or Messiah) lived and died around 2,000 years ago. Gautama traveled and taught in what is now northern India and Nepal. Jesus traveled and taught in what is now the Middle East. Today northern India is a region in conflict among countries (Nepal, India, China, and Pakistan) and religions (Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims) Today the Middle East is a region in conflict among countries (Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt…) and religions (Muslims, Jews, and Christians). Gautama was born a Hindu and tried to reform Hinduism, which accepted him into the long line of sages, but rejected his atheistic teachings of no God (Brahman) and no soul (atman). Jesus was born a Jew and tried to reform Judaism, which rejected him as one of a long line of legitimate Jewish prophets, and rejected his followers’ claim that he was the Messiah (savior). According to Gautama, the next Buddha will be known as Maitreya (meaning kindness or friendliness). Meanwhile… According to Christians, Jesus will be reborn into a Second Coming of Christ. Meanwhile… Buddhism has divided into various Buddhist branches , including Mahayana , Theravadin, and Vajrayana and various unique sects such as Zen, Nichiran, and Tibetan Buddhism. Christianity has divided into various Christian branches, including Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant, and many unique sects such as Baptist, Lutheran, and Methodist. Buddhists strive for detachment, wisdom and compassion while fostering the finer spiritual forces that reside within us humans… as practiced and taught by Gautama. Christians accept Jesus as their personal savior and pattern their lives after the life and teachings of Jesus, which center around poverty, humility, and strength through weakness. Mission and Motivation I’d say the basic mission of religion is to make the world a better place by helping people to understand higher spiritual principles and to detach from worldly thinking that can drag the spirit down. Each religion pursues that mission a bit differently: Followers of Eastern religions (Hindus and Buddhists) use meditation to look inward (to atman or vijñāna) for knowledge and peace. Followers of Western religions (Christians, Muslims, and Jews) use prayer to look outward (to God) for knowledge and peace. All of the religions (other than Buddhists) believe in a central creative force or principle in the universe (God or Brahman or Allah or Yahweh) and a creative spark from that principle within each of us (soul or atman). Buddhists don’t believe in God or a soul. Christians and Muslims have the biggest religions, mostly because they proselytize—pressure followers to actively recruit other followers—through the practice of mission work and da’wah, respectively. Jews have the smallest religion, largely because they restrict and discourage new followers. Either you can trace your blood lineage back to Abraham (in which case you’re a Jew), or you can’t (and you’re not). Hindus were traditionally like Jews, remaining exclusive to Hindu lineage. While they still don’t proselytize, during the past century Hindus have coalesced as a religion in response to proselytizing pressures from Muslims and Christians that have drawn Hindus away from their native religion. Today, anyone who follows Hindu scripture can be considered a Hindu. (Read more… ) Money, the ultimate symbol of worldly things, presents a bit of a problem for religions. While all religions agree on the importance of renouncing worldly things in favor of spiritual principles, it’s not easy for churches, mosques, temples, ashrams, monasteries, synagogues, and other religious institutions to survive without money in this money-driven world. So… all religions encourage the virtue of charity among their followers, suggesting that members share their wealth with their religious groups to keep things alive. Christians go a step further to encourage followers to tithe… which has come to mean giving 10 percent of one’s earnings to the church. Whether this tithing idea contradicts or bolsters the Christian virtue of poverty isn’t clear, but it is fairly clear that tithing is another reason why Christians today have the biggest religion. When many Christians give 10 percent of their income to the church, then church infrastructure can grow in the world… even if that focus on money starts to sabotage the spiritual mission of the religion. What an ITC group can learn from the mission and motivation of religions: The main thing is, an ITC group can’t proselytize. We have to be selective with our membership. The integrity of the contact field depends on resonance among the members. We all have to have a common purpose and purity of intention in order for the spirit group to be able to work with us and our technical equipment. Their life energies can work with our life energies and our electromagnetic energies only if everyone and everything on both sides of the veil is in harmony with each other… like radios operating on the same frequency. Does that include a belief in God and a deep understanding of spiritual reality? These things would certainly help but probably aren’t necessary. Atheists could probably work alongside Christians and Buddhists and Muslims as members of an ITC group… as long as their motivations are pure and they stay true to the mission, which is to sustain a communication bridge with the finer realms of spirit (that is, spirits residing on the third level working with us earthly humans on an ITC project coordinated by ethereal beings like The Seven). That said, atheists might actually have a difficult time finding harmony amid a group involved in spirit communication… unless they can assimilate the reality of spirits and afterlife into their personal worldview. . Funding and Support of Religions As mentioned in the last bullet item above, all religions foster the virtue of charity among their followers to sustain the religion’s worldly infrastructure, but some religions go further. For example: On one hand, Buddhists rely on charity to sustain the temple infrastructure, but donations must be motivated by the donor. There are strict Buddhist rules against soliciting money. On the other hand, Christians go far beyond charitable virtue by encouraging followers (sometimes pressuring them) to tithe. Particularly wealthy is the Catholic branch of the Christians. Jews, like followers of other religions, are in principle charitable and honest in their money dealings with others… but not always in practice. Jews don’t seem to be too troubled by money’s inherent worldly/other-worldly conflict. They reject wealth as the purpose of life, but accept it as a means to enjoy a good life. An ITC group, being spiritual by nature, can’t focus too heavily on worldly things, especially money, because our communication partners on the other side are all steeped in other-worldly laws and principles, and we have to try to stay in harmony with their attitudes and understanding. As humans (e.g. members of an ITC group) become more and more preoccupied by money or food or sex or lavish living or other traps of the carnal world, they become more out-of-tune with their invisible colleagues in the finer spirit worlds… and they begin to attract the denser, more troubled and confused spirits inhabiting Earth’s shadow world. INIT operated with great success for about five years by relying on charity, which is the ideal situation for an ITC group… or at least it’s ideal under ideal conditions. We founded INIT in 1995, then after several years, conflicts began to erupt among egos and personalities within the group, as so often happens to human groups… and those are NOT ideal conditions. As various members began to argue, our generous supporters quickly lost interest, and we no longer had money for annual meetings. Our main experimenters (especially the Harsch-Fischbach couple in Luxembourg) continued to support themselves in their experiments, and our writers (me in the States, Sonia Rinaldi in Brazil…) continued to support ourselves in publishing our work. But without harmony, everything quickly began to fall apart… the friendships… the communication bridge… the contact field… and the funding. So, what an ITC group can learn about funding is secondary to what we humans have to learn about resonance and harmony. Without harmony, there’s no amount of funding that will make ITC work. Management and Direction Here, religions vary widely: The Catholic branch of Christians has a rigid hierarchy spreading downward from the Pope and the Vatican to the many priests, churches, and cathedrals. Various Christian Protestant branches have hierarchical organizations. Buddhists are more decentralized, with the local monks in various monasteries at the top of their own hierarchies. The various local groups of monks, or sanghas, are united not by a central authority, but by their common quest to convey the teachings of Buddha to the world. Hindus have a hierarchy of castes and life stages that is traditionally entwined throughout the religion and society of India. The Muslims, similarly, are part of a religion that has entwined with society, so that the religious hierarchy, ideally, is equal to the social hierarchy. Management styles vary so much among religions that there’s little to be learned here to apply to an ITC group, other than perhaps…. Someday I suspect ITC will become so common and widespread that it will entwine with all aspects of society… much as religion does today for Hindus and Muslims. Humanity will enjoy a close rapport with the finer levels of spirit on a day-to-day basis, in all walks of life. For the near future, perhaps, ITC groups might have to be more like the Buddhists: small, local groups of researchers all united by the common quest to sustain communication with the finer levels of spirit, according to what we’ve learned from The Seven ethereals and the Timestream spirit group. I remember when our son Aaron was young, Regina and I thought it would be good to join a church. The pastor of a nearby Lutheran church visited us one evening, and when I admitted that I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of organized religions, he replied, “Don’t worry, Mark, we’re not that organized.” It felt right to join that church for a number of years, largely because of Pastor Dan’s sense of humor and friendly personality. (Also I got to join the newly formed church band because I could play the drums, something I had enjoyed doing since childhood.) Egos and Personalities Pastor Dan’s fun personality played a big part in members and families feeling good and thinking pleasant thoughts when thinking about their church… and I’m sure that can be said of many, maybe most local or neighborhood churches and mosques and temples and synagogues and ashrams: The egos and personalities of the preachers, ministers, ayatollahs, rabbis, and monks shape in a big way the feelings that followers have of their place of worship. Religious leaders can instill their followers with love or with fear… with acceptance or with intolerance of other faiths and other cultures. And it depends largely on the egos and personalities of the leaders. In the final article of this series I’ll explore what I believe to be the optimum way to deal with egos and personalities in an ITC group. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.