Freud and the Search for the Inner Kingdom

For my birthday last week an old high school friend gave me Freud’s The Future of an Illusion. Naturally I thought it was an odd gift to give an aspiring immortal and then I imagined that my friend felt the same way when I gave her my home-made copy of The Immortal Life.

The next thought was that I wanted to know why this eminent doctor of the psyche held religion in such derision. It isn’t every day that an atheist will tell me exactly why (s)he doesn’t believe my God and yours is real, and why (s)he thinks our way of life is so foolish. So I considered this gift a great chance to hear the argument from a very smart man, and therefore it was one of my favorite birthday presents.

To sum it up Mr. Freud said that religion, i.e. faith in God, was “a universal obsessional neurosis of humanity that arises out of the complex relationship one has with the father figure.” The idea of God arose from the need to “defend oneself against the crushingly superior force of nature and to rectify the shortcomings of civilization.” So, we cut loose from reality. To Mr. Freud, life and nature are so torturous that humans had to come up with this illusion as a solution.

So we little tortured people built this tremendous structure (the Synagogue, Church, Mosque or Temple) in which we support each other’s illusion and are comforted. Freud thought that it was a dangerous illusion for the same reason he thought all illusion is dangerous (remember he talked with people on a regular basis who had some powerfully dangerous illusions). Because Siggy was such a self sacrificing and benevolent doctor of the mind he was compelled to write despite the risk. Some of those powerful deluded people might think Freud equally wrong about psychoanalysis and his work might therefore be banned in many countries. Brave and caring that he was, Freud took the chance and wrote this book and Totem and Taboo too.

I spent most of my time reading with a hearty laugh welling up in my heart. It was clear that Freud had not spent much time objectively researching religion. Unlike an honest scientist he formulated his conclusion without any search for Truth at all. Even though Mr. Freud was a master mind-doctor he had no kingdom of God within to go to.

And that’s why I know that the inner kingdom of God is not a place that can be reached through the mind. Unlike Mr. Freud, I know that God is real because I have seen His light, and His amazing ways. The reality of His kingdom and His love are as obvious to me as the reality of this keyboard and monitor and of that tree outside my window. My only problem is that I want to go to that place where there is more of the eternal kingdom and less of this fleeting natural/political noise.

All the imagination in the world will not help me or you reach the inner kingdom of God. That might have been my problem when I wanted to go there so badly that I tried to think my way there and the fairies appeared. Don’t worry, I’ll find it! Maybe next week....

Kingdoms and Cities

Aspiring immortals want more than things that money can buy, even trips to Timbuktu, mansions and Maseraties , to go to the world where there is no longer any sickness, sorrow, or sighing...and that place to be forever and ever and ever. Such a place exists and will exist, but it takes ‘aspiring’ to be there and to go there.

I heard that if a person is not there, probably (s)he will never be able to find it. The directions defy even Garmen and Google. That’s why it is so important to be there now. Of course it doesn’t make sense to aspire to be where you are already...unless you either have no inner kingdom or you are not aware it.

Aspiring immortals serve ourselves best when we aspire to be aware of the place where the lack of sickness, sorrow, and sighing exists here-and-now as well as there-and-forever, that is in the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God has everything Good but clocks. Since there is no time in this kingdom, unlike in New York and Amsterdam, the kingdom is of course always Now. It would be ridiculous, impossible in fact, to have a place that exists only in the future that has no time.

Spinning around the sun makes time happen which is why all the places Garmen and Google direct us to have pasts, presents, and futures. The kingdom that is here-and-now, always-and-forever, without yesterday or tomorrow, is hidden from the sun and hidden from time.

This timeless kingdom enters a person via Holy Spirit filled water through the pores of the skin. Once inside, the aspiring immortal must tend it like any place must be tended even a room or a garden. The Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that anything if left to itself atrophies is as true for the timeless inner kingdom as it is for anything in Moscow or Mauritania. A higher force needs to step in to keep every little thing from going bad. I suppose that is also why aspiring immortals must aspire to what we already have. That is, because if we don’t we could lose it in a heartbeat.

To tend the timeless inner kingdom, the first step is to go there. Since the kingdom is in our very own hearts and souls, but away from the light of day, travelling there is very convenient. Going to the kingdom is simply a matter of not going someplace else for a little while every day.

Aspiring immortals who harbor the kingdom inside know not sickness for the same reason that real martyrs don’t really care when the enemy wants to chop off their heads or even when Jesus was hanging by his wrists on purpose. These people deny that small part of their fleshy selves to protect the kingdom and keep it inviolable. And they don’t know sorrow or sadness, well not really because who can be sad when all things bad are so damned powerless. And who can sigh when there’s so much to do to prepare for the purging.

Another difference between kingdoms and cities is the government. Aspiring immortals live in a God governing country even when those in the cities let us vote now and then.