Jay Weidner's Blog

 

The Long Emergency

Part One.

With

James Howard Kunstler

 

Jay Weidner:  Welcome back. I’m Jay Weidner. You can check out my films at www.sacredmysteries.com or you can read my articles and other weird stuff at my own web site www.jayweidner.com. Also check out my newest film Infinity: The Ultimate Trip: Journey Beyond Death with Neale Donald Walsch, Gregg Braden, Brian Weiss and many others. Also check out our new Qi-Gong series with Pedram Shojai, This is the most comprehensive DVD series on Qi-Gong ever.

We’re talking to James Howard Kunstler. He is the author of the great book, "The Long Emergency, " and another book that I really like, "A World Made By Hand, " which I think would make a great low?budget movie, if anyone is out there listening that wants to make a movie, that would be a great low?budget. Film.

James has really gone into this whole thing about the peak oil, and where we're headed over the next few years, and it's a real pleasure to talk to you. Are you there?

James Howard Kunstler:  Yeah, I'm here.

Jay:  Great. Hey, listen, I was wondering, have you ever read the book, "The Fourth Turning?"

James:  Yes, I have.

Jay:  Yeah, it fits in in with the real politic that you're talking about. I just finished it a few weeks ago. I was really impressed.

James:  Yeah, I admired it quite a bit. It's maybe not what it seems to be from its title. It seems to have a sci?fi odor about it, but in fact, it's a very serious meditation on the generational cycles of history.

Jay:  Yeah.

James:  And the various moods of history. I think that it's got a lot of truth in it.

Jay:  Last night, for the first time my wife forced me to watch, "Gone With the Wind." I really didn't like the film, but while I was watching it, I realized that it was a film that was made during the last fourth turning about the previous fourth turning, which was the Civil War. It was, of course, made at the height of the Depression, which was the last fourth turning, of which we're heading for the next fourth turning according to the book, of which I'm sure the audience is going, "Huh? What are we talking about?"

Basically, it's just this theory that about every 85 years, or one long generation, the United States goes through a major upheaval from the Revolution to the Civil War to the Great Depression to the Long Emergency, which is a great name for what is going on here. It's not a great depression, it's worse in some ways than that.

Let’s concentrate on the good side of things, but before we do that, let's talk about what you're talking about. A lot of people get upset when you say that there's a peak oil, and that the world is running out of oil, and that the oil companies will tell you that there's more oil on earth than we could use in a million years.

What they're saying probably is true, but you're saying something different. You're saying that the crude oil, or the sweet crude, oil that's easy to get to, that's what we're running out of, right?

James:  Well, in a way, though we're beyond that now. Yeah, I think what I wrote in the book, "The Long Emergency, " it was about the end of cheap oil. That was the point, the end of cheap oil. But I think we're seeing some other things. There have been quite a few developments since 2005 when "The Long Emergency" was published. The oil problem is still very much with us, of course it was never really about running out of oil, per se. It was more about the failure and instability of the complex systems that we depend on for daily life in America, in the space of these instabilities. In the face of these discontinuities.

By complex systems, I mean the way we feed ourselves ? industrial style farming. The way we do commerce and trade. The way we do transportation, the way we inhabit the landscape. All of these systems of daily life are going to have to change pretty severely in the face of the circumstances that are upon us. We're not prepared to think about that at all.

Jay:  No, it's a huge gap in people's thinking, and it's really almost ? I can't quite explain it ? it's almost like a psychopathic reaction to reality.

James:  Well, let me try to explain it, because I don't think it's that abstruse, really.

Jay: Okay.

James:  I've said this to many a college lecture audience. I think that we are in the grips of something that I would describe as the psychology of previous investments. By the way, this is not a completely original though, either. This is the same as the concept of sunk cost. The psychology of previous investment really means that you've put so much of the resources of your culture ? the collective resources ? you've invested so much of the collective resources in a certain system, a certain way of doing things, that you can't imagine changing it or letting go of it. That's what we've done, we've elaborated a system for daily life in America that is very rigid and unadaptable.

We've invested also, our national identity in it. Now we can't let go of it. I'm especially talking about not something abstract, but about a very practical thing. The living arrangement that we have in America, which is essentially the suburban living arrangement.

The investments we've made in that are so horrendous and gigantic, that we can't imagine having to live without it, or do without it, or change it, or even modify it much. We're stuck with these investments at the moment, and it's the biggest obstacle for us to think about what we really have to do.

Jay:  Well, I can't even imagine, actually. If you go out to Riverside, California or San Bernardino County, which is east of Los Angeles, you're dealing with about a 35 percent foreclosure rate. They're turning into ghost towns.. I wouldn't live there, and if someone is living there, they have my pity. I'm sure the crime rates are starting to climb. People have found a way to absorb the crush of what's happened in the last year. They had a lot of good stores, they had a lot of wealth. They're grouping together with their families, and they think that it's over when, in fact, commercial real estate is really getting into a dangerous position right now, where it could just turn into almost a chain reaction and they could just all be closed down.

We're dealing with this thing, and I don't think anyone really realizes what kind of change is really at hand, where it's truly going to be a cultural change.

James:  There's been one major change since I published "The Long Emergency, " or, rather since the Atlantic Monthly Press published it in 2005. That is that we destroyed the banking system, or as the banking system destroyed itself. And we now find ourselves, and this is really the larger problem at the moment, and it even has implications for the energy situation, but the larger problem is that we, we can't generate any more debt, we can't pay back any more debt at all levels, you know, the household level, the corporate level, or the government level. We are comprehensively broke and we can no longer run a revolving credit society and that's really the larger problem now. We may not, you know, we may find that we're out of capital before, well before, we're out of gas. And this has implications for the whole oil industry as well because what we're seeing is a lack of capitol to make investments in new oil exploration and development and a lot of the projects that we had hoped would be coming online to address the ongoing depletion, those projects are not going online, and we're not going to compensate for the ongoing depletion and this is going to have kind of an accelerating, snowballing effect. And I think it's a lack of capital may be what finally puts us out of business with oil rather than sheer depletion.

Jay:  Well let me ask you, if we get into a position like that, honestly, aren't we going to be so weak that we're either going to have what Gore Vidal thinks which is a military dictatorship, or the Chinese could take advantage of the situation?

James:  Well I don't think the Chinese are going to be landing in San Pedro anytime soon. And I also, you know, I like to say that I'm allergic to conspiracy theories. I'm especially allergic to grandiose theories. I think this idea that we're going to fall into a military dictatorship is kind of grandiose. If anything, I think that we will see that the federal government will become increasingly impotent and ineffective and that's exactly what we're seeing now. We just voted out the Republicans and we voted in a Democratic president and a Democratic administration and Congress, and you know, we are making the unhappy discovery that Mr. Obama seems to be just as ineffective as Mr. Bush was. I hate to add, I voted for Mr. Obama.

Jay:  Well yeah, a lot of people did.

James:  And I'm not sorry I did but cause I think he's a better quality person than the previous president but it shows how ineffective the central government really is. I don't really think they'll be able to organize any kind of a fascist regime.

 

The Jehovah Hoax

Part Four.

With

Archaya S.

Jay Weidner:   My name is Jay Weidner. You can check out all of our great films and videos at www.sacredmysteries.com. We have films with Alex Grey, Alberto Villoldo, Neale Donald Walsch, Gregg Braden, Brian Weiss, Terence McKenna and many others.

Acharya, I was wondering if you ever ? I presume from looking at your site and reading your work, that you've made the connection between ancient Egypt and Christianity and the strange analogies between Osiris and God and Horace and Jesus and Isis and Mary and Satan and Seth. I've quit saying Judean Christianity, I now say Egyto?Christianity because it's really more Egyptian than it is Jewish, isn't it?

Acharya:  Isn't it amazing? You just encapsulated it very well. Yes, you know ? yes, you were speaking of "Zeitgeist" earlier. In fact, that first part of the first "Zeitgeist" was an insignificant part by my book. So I have had to come out with more wonders material to assure the people who have seen that, that there was serious, scholarly, scientific evidence for the claims in that movie. That led to this companion guide which was a partial exploration of the Egyptian connections in "Zeitgeist." Then I wrote this massive study called "Christ in Egypt: The Horace?Jesus Connection," that goes into the details of ? you have this list of Horace born on December 25 of the virgin Isis?Mary, and all those characteristics that were so similar to the Christ myth.

I put together from thousands of Egyptian texts. It was a very grueling past. I went through them in a number of different translations, of primary sources. There are hundreds and hundreds of different primary sources, I scoured. Some of it, I translated from Egyptian.

But I'd compared all these different resources, like 900 sources, in my book. There are 2,400 footnotes. It shows where all of these elements come from, what they mean, and that they really are real ? these parallels, these comparisons, these similarities ? between Egyptian religion and Christianity.

This looks like the most obvious thing imaginable in the Mediterranean was to Egypt, and its massive culture and monuments. There were so much of it that they couldn't be destroyed by the fanatics who have come since which would include, of course, Christians and the Muslims. They haven't been able to destroy all of it. Although, of course, in this era, we are seeing even more degradation and destruction going on, unfortunately.

That's religious fanaticism for you.

Jay:  Yep.

Acharya:  But yes, these comparisons are very profound. The Egyptian religion really has much more meaning to it than just crazy people worshiping crocodiles, and ibises, and crocs, and so forth. Their spirituality was tied into the earth itself, but also the cycles of nature. For example, Osiris was a night/sun god, but also represented water especially the Nile. The Nile over?flooding every year was claimed to be Osiris fertilizing the banks of Isis to create a new life of Horace. This was daily Egyptian perception of reality. Everything was animated by the gods, by sentiments, by divinity. It must have been just completely extraordinary to live in such a mind set.

Jay:  I agree. I completely agree with that. I think that waking up every day and having time and space be sacred, as they understood. I can't even imagine what it must have been like.

Acharya:  You can see it in expression in these magnificent buildings that they were able to create. We still don't know how with things like the Great Pyramid of Giza and so forth, how exactly they were able to manifest this unbelievable building. Then to think, the Temple of Karnack, it's just endless, all these tombs and so forth. They all had this divine meaning attached to them. By the way, it's been estimated since there were half a billion followers of the Egyptian religion over its period of 3,000 years or so. So this is not an insignificant portion of humanity. And they had tremendous influence on the surrounding cultures including the Judean one, which was only a couple of hundred miles away to Jerusalem. Really, it was not far. There was this well?worn Horace road that took them from Jerusalem to Egypt.

So this isn't like saying, "Oh, how could they've been influenced. They were so far away. They had to cross a major ocean of several thousand miles." No, they only had to just walk by foot a few hundred miles, and they were right in the heart of Egyptian territory.

So to say that there was no influence on the ? that this massive culture had no influence on the Judean one is just like saying that the Jews live in a vacuum, completely untouched by anyone around them.

Jay:  Yeah, well I agree with that. I think the course of the Egyptian influence is much more prevalent than we've been led to believe, including even in India. It seems to have some Egyptian influence. Or maybe Egypt has some Indian influences. I can't really decide which way it went. It depends on who was first, and it's kind of hard to tell. It looks like India might have been a little bit earlier than Egypt, but I really can't say. Some people tell me that Egypt is 100,000 years old. That's certainly what the priest told Horiatis that it was over 100,000 years old, so we don't know. But I suspect it's probably much older than we can believe.

There are all sorts of strange things in Egypt, too. There's a large slab of black granite that has about 10,000 hieroglyphics engraved in it. We stuck a toothpick down into the hieroglyph and the toothpick went down two inches in the black granite. This hieroglyph was probably about a quarter?of?an?inch?by?a?quarter?of?an?inch big. Now you tell me how ?

Acharya:  You would think it's drilled.

Jay:  Yeah, I mean not even a drill could do it that clean.

Acharya:  Yeah I know it's amazing. I listened to my friend, a dear old friend, Christopher Dunn, talk about the various tool?making, tool marks and so forth on these different monuments. Yeah, it's really fascinating. You look at that and you think, "Well, this is an advanced culture." Now, if that's the case, then their ideation as concerned to philosophy and religion and so forth, must also have been advanced. This, to me, is the great unexamined factor that I think I bring to the table. I contributed to a book about ancient technology that had to do with the monuments globally of this Ablasian culture, if you will. This whole religion that I have put the pieces of this puzzle together, absolutely goes with all of these megaliths that we find all over the planet from Stonehenge to this great pyramid and even older monuments.

In the Americas as well, I'm sure you know all about these incredible massive buildings, constructions that they're finding in South America and North America, that are aligned, archeo?astronomically aligned, to various milestones that were important to the ancient world all over the planet. The solstices, the equinoxes, the phases of the moon, something like Stonehenges actually, is actually a sort of celestial computer.

Now, if you combine that knowledge, that archeo?astronomical knowledge, with their religious devotion, in fact, that these simple Stonehenge are temples, that's where you have what we are now terming "astrotheology." This is what their religion was.

They combined this incredible advanced knowledge of the planetary bodies and earth's relationship to them with a sense of devotion and worship. That's where you get this term "astrotheology." That's it in a nutshell.

It's all over the planet. We find remains of it. They're finding more and more, as you say, with this black granite slab. You were talking about the priority of India and Egypt when you have something like Mohenjo?Daro in Egypt, in the Indus Valley that is really quite incredible. But then you also have this, that Nabta, in Egypt that is now like 6,000 years old, that they've found archeo?astronomical alignments with this temple site.

So yeah, there's this pinball going back and forth as far as the antiquity goes and priority goes. But it's being pushed back all the time. The antiquity of man and a possible knowledge that is, so that's all these thousands of years, being pushed back all the time. It's really fascinating.

Jay:  Well, it is. And, of course, there are also the oomparts which are the strange objects that are found in the strata that really shouldn't be there. Michael Cremo's work and Richard Thompson's work...And there are other things too. They won't even do the proper archaeological dig, like in North America or South America, because the scientists are completely convinced there's no point in it because all life began in Africa.

Acharya:  Yeah, right.

Jay:  It's just cherry?picked almost, what they choose to do and look at, and what they choose not to do and not to look at. The idea that Christianity was really purportedly put up by Paul to be a control agent for the Roman empire, I don't see how that could even be called in to dispute, especially when you study Paul and there are suspicious things that Paul is doing all the time.

Acharya:  I agree with you.

Jay:  This is a guy I wouldn't trust for anything, Acharya.

Acharya:  I think this is something that you would really enjoy because you're visually oriented with all your imagery put together; I have this new product called the "2010 Astro?theology Calendar." You can really see this Christian overlay that you were just talking about. You can really see how they usurped all kinds of pagan holidays, that they overtook them, and tried to Christianize them and so forth.

Jay:  Yep.

Acharya:  When you look at this calendar and see the days and see how they've had this astro?theological pagan meaning previously. I think that that would be a fascinating for you.

 

The Jehovah Hoax

Part Three

With Archaya S.

Jay Weidner:  We're all going to return to the sacred earth, hopefully, before this collapse of the economy and the world is over. I think sometimes that is really the only answer. I think the virtual reality of this world is disappearing in front of our eyes. A lot of people that are not preparing for what's about to happen are not going to make it. Maybe this is the way nature cleans out the place or something. I don't know. But if you're listening to this, you should be aware of what's something. Do you take care of yourself physically? Do you take care of yourself spiritually? You need to learn the truth. That's really all that's important.

I have a friend who's quite a well?known intellectual. He tells me that the Age of Aquarius is coming here within the next two years, around 2010. He assures me that Christianity will be completely disappeared off the planet in just a few years because he thinks that it was completely a Piscean cultural phenomena, I guess you would say.

Acharya:  Yes. I believe that Jesus Christ is a mythical figure who was contrived by the priesthood in order to unify the Roman Empire under one state of religion.

Jay:  Yes, some theory.

Acharya:  Other than that, they differ with the details. Now, all this stuff, including what you brought up earlier about the old testament figures being mythical, this is only in my first published book which is called "The Christ Conspiracy: the Greatest Story Ever Sold." I delve into this notion that there is no historical evidence for Moses, the exodus, Abraham, Solomon.

Jay:  Yes.

Acharya:  Abraham and Sarah seemed to be the Indian god and goddess Brahma and Saraswati. I go into this kind of detail in "The Christ Conspiracy," as well as what you were just talking about, this whole Piscean, Aquarian timeline. That it appears, if you go and look at the meanings of these myths and you find out that they are astrotheological ? they have to with the sun, the moon, the stars and the constellations, and so forth ? that we are dealing with these ages, these procession of the equinoxes that's spelled every 2,150 years or so, the sun is back dropped by a new constellation at the horizon as it rises. That's called heliacally. That's where these age names come from. The ancients were pretty well aware, the more educated the priesthoods and so forth, they were pretty well of these various ages, both dated with the possession of the equinoxes and, in fact, of course they started to name them and chart them way back then.

There's a no man's land, so to speak, in between the different ages of a couple of hundred years or so. So I haven't really been able to get a straight answer from an astronomer as to when exactly these ages would change. Like they say, there's this, this comes in a sketchy period.

But around 2,100, 2,025, maybe more or less, years ago, we supposedly moved into a new age. The technology back then was different, obviously, than what we use today, this chart time and so forth. But there was this belief that we were moving in to the age of Pisces. That's why we have all of this discussion in the New Testament about fish.

These are the fishermen. There's the fish on the back of people's cars as actually an ancient symbol. There are the fishes, the communion food because when Christ is resurrected, He asked for fish. It's like, "Why would the resurrected God need some food?" This is a hint that we are dealing with this astrotheological development here.

Prior to that, we had Moses and he's destroying the bull worship, and kind of raising up a lamb. They're starting to slaughter fewer bulls in the Judaic practices and more lambs.

Jay:  As we go from Taurus to Aries.

Acharya:  Exactly. Then the calling of the shofar, the ram's horn, and so forth. There's this whole lamb stuff going on there. We find that in other cultures as well.

Jay:  That's right.

Acharya:  We find that other gods, they're associated with the lamb, with Krishna and Horace and so forth. All these motifs start to become very common and very obvious. They're much more interesting. The way they incorporated all these cosmic elements into the religious god and mythology of the day is much more interesting than the story of god coming to earth 2,000 years ago, and this little backwater is filling 90 miles, the area of where the gospel story supposedly took place. This tiny, little backwater in the desert region that does supposedly came to earth at that time. For a few years, he ministered for like two or three years and then was killed. And that's how God is going to fix the sins of the world. This story has really become corrupt and not very attractive or interesting at all. In fact, it's been a source of a lot of grief on this planet, to say the least.

Jay:  That's for sure, yes.

Acharya:  I don't want to see it replaced by anything worse either.

Jay:  No, I don't either.

Acharya:  The best way through all of this, as far as I'm concerned, is to know what this motifs stand for. That no culture has a lock on god. No culture is depicting accurately 100 percent. There also has to be room for this idea that we don't need to follow an organized religion. We do have innate morality. That will allow us not to destroy our neighbor in the name of religion, in the name of God. Not to try to enslave our neighbors and other human beings in the name of this God. As you say, if you studied the history and origins of religion, then you are free, really, of that belief because you start to realize there's a much bigger meaning to this stuff. And it doesn't have to do with one guy who's dictating rules, so we all have to follow or we're killed or whatever.

Jay:  Yeah I agree. I think it's beginning. I think books like what you're doing, the books that you're writing and things like these are really the beginning of the serious reeducation about what religions are. I think you're right, religions, especially Christianity, was created by the Romans to control populations because it was too hard. The Roman Empire was too big. I'm Jay Weidner. You're listening to "Smoke and Mirrors." We'll be right back. Thanks for listening.

 

The Jehovah Hoax

Part Two

With Archaya S.

 

Jay Weidner: I want to remind everyone about our great films and videos at www.sacredmysteries.com. You can also read my articles at www.jayweidner.com. We're talking to Acharya S. about her site is www.truthbeknown.com. We're talking about the origins of religion and Christianity and all sorts of good things. Acharya, do you know about this new book that, I believe it's in Hebrew but it's being translated right now. It's called "How the Jews Invented Their History?"

Acharya:  I don't know that one, no.

Jay:   I haven't read it, but this is a book written by the head of the history department at Tel Aviv University. It's the number one bestseller in Israel, and has been for a year now. It is being translated. This guy proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that there was no Moses, that there was no Solomon, there was no David, that the Jews actually rewrote their history to back?date it because they were so jealous of the Greeks. They back?dated it so it looked like the Jewish God was giving the scoop long before the Greeks. What's interesting about this though is the Jewish god, as you well know, is Yahweh or, translated into Latin or English is, Jove or Jehovah. But Jehovah is Jove which is Jupiter, which is Zeus essentially.

Acharya:  That's right, yes.

Jay:  So the Jews and the Christians have essentially been worshipping Zeus for 2,000 years. And they talk about us worshipping pagan gods and things. It just cracks me up. I mean, here it is. Their name is Jehovah. I have a church down the street from me called Jehovah Witnesses. They knock on my door and I tell them, "Oh, so you're the witnesses for Zeus." hey don't get it. It's right there in the title of their god. What Zeus essentially did, according to this book, was he fired all the other gods and made himself the only god. Really.

Acharya:  Well, that's the kind of what is called he?knows?he?ism, but they kind of shared, in the Olympic pantheon, they kind of shared powers and so forth. But he certainly was the top dog. He had the last word. But you see that they're always bickering amongst themselves, and the Greek gods, the big stories. It reminds me of when I was a kid. I was very fond of reading the stories of Greek myths. They were great. They were colorful. They reflected humanity in its many forms, good or bad. You didn't have to believe in them in this era. They weren't going to get you if you didn't believe in them, which is a little bit different from the Judea of Christian Islamic tradition.

If you don't believe in them right now, if you don't believe in Yahweh, Allah, God, the Old Testament, the nasty guy, then he's going to get you for even hell and even Jesus is going to torture you according to the New Testament and so forth. It never ends. There's always this threatening and jumping on your case.

So, the Greek gods, they're a little bit more playful and they're a little more accepting of the human condition, human nature. But at the same time, I didn't find the explanations of the myths to be all that satisfying. There's a lot of psycho battle. And yes, that's great. It's how teaching us about our inner spirituality and so forth, and our psychological make?up. That's great, and that's very helpful to humanity.

But there's also this whole hidden layer that almost never gets exposed, that is much more interesting to me because it goes beyond human neurosis and psychosis. And there's only so much of that that I can take. It's like watching a soap opera on a loop, endlessly.

But this grandiose cosmic theme that has been recorded in this nest is far more interesting after a certain point. It has to do with how profound is the effect of the sun on the earth, for example; how much we need the solar cycle for life to continue; the affect of the sun's rays in the moon, and having that second night light.

All these wonderful qualities of the sky, both day and night, as well as the earthly factors like the wind and water and so forth, they were all relished as something with meaning. To the point of having divinity bestowed upon them by the human perception.

I rather like that perception because it gives you the feeling of when you're, I always do this as an example because it strikes me constantly, and I still climb mountains and see wonderful views. I climb a mountain and I stood up there, and this magnificent sunset, and the waves of hills in front of me or other mountains, and the sky is a riot of colors and it extends out into the Cosmos for all eternity, for infinity, to plug your newest project.

So you can sit there and experience that, and really understand. That's the meaning that's trying to be conveyed by our most profound spiritual position.

Jay:  Yes. I completely agree with that. I think that returning to the sacred earth is probably the real way out of our predicament right now. My name is Jay Weidner. We're going to take a break. We're here with Acharya S. talking about religions and their lack of illumination maybe, even their lack of credibility in some cases. Anyway, I'm Jay Weidner. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening. Make sure you look up that article, "The Shining Shining."

 

Jay Weidner:   I want to remind everyone that my new film, "Infinity: The Ultimate Trip" is now out across the United States and showing, and to critical acclaim, I might add. If you're interested, go to www.sacredmysteries.com and see if you can find where it's showing in your area. Also if you want to read many of my articles they are up at my web site www.jayweidner.com.

To understand how to get out of the mess we're in, and to move into the future I think we have to understand our past. Our past is really almost an illusion. And almost everything that we've been taught is just not the way it really is. So I wanted to have Acharya S.

Acharya S. who has written all about the incredible subject of the history of religion.

She's written "Who is Jesus," "Christ in Egypt," and The Companion Book to "Zeitgeist." I think she had something to do even with the "Zeitgeist film." She has some very, very, very strong opinions about religion. Are you there?

Acharya S.:  I am. Hello. How are you?

Jay:  You are. Well, welcome to the show.

Acharya:  Thank you, but I like your intro to give a positive thing on this information.

Jay:  Well, it is. When I learned the truth about religion, my life got better. I think that that's really important to learn what it was that was going on back there so we can really begin to understand the, dare I say, mind control that we've been under for a couple of thousand years.

Acharya:  Oh, I absolutely agree. When you discover the origins of religious ideologies, traditions, motifs, myths, then it's extremely liberating. This information in its proper context is beyond fascinating to me. I find it just to be astounding, it gives me a reason for being, and it allows me to feel the thrill of being alive. So actually the way I'd like to present this information is that, I'm digging up a nursing fact that has long been buried. They could just be little facts over here and there, they may be major facts, but it's just a continual process of overlaying that are so incredibly interesting and so reflective of a very long process of human thought that dates back tens of thousands of years.

They very much define who we are in the present time. So in order to, as you said, to know where we're going, we need to know where we've been. And stripping off a number of misrepresentations, misconceptions, outright falsehood, and so forth, to reveal the pure innocent nature of a religious ideation, it goes a long way to restoring our collective souls, as far as I'm concerned.

Jay:  I like that. So, tell me, did the hoax ? or I shouldn't say a hoax. Let's not call it a "hoax" here. Let's hear your view on it. I don't want to put any presuppositions on. So, in your view, what are the origins of Christianity, for instance?

Acharya:  Let's put it this way. If you go back far enough beyond let's say the Christian religion into paganism and you start looking at the gods of older cultures, and you look at the attitude that we have towards them today and our interpretation of them, you see that, for example, I always use the example of Hercules because most people know about Hercules, this God?man, this Greek god?man who supposedly walked the earth ? and had all these adventures, throwing off supernatural powers and amazing strength, and a godly ability. He was half?god and half?human. So that story pre?dates with Christian era by hundreds of years. It developed in many different places, had about different flavors added to it, where it went all over the Mediterranean, with different cultures over a period of hundreds of years, so it's really this extraordinary tale, this mythology that developed.

Back 2,500 years ago, let's say, the people who are followers of this Hercules religion ? and there were many of them all over the Mediterranean and particularly in Greece ? would have considered this story to have taken place in real time. He was a historical character. They really believed he walked the earth.

Now today, we look back and we are taught from childhood ? and rightly so, I believe ? that Hercules is a mythical character, a mythical figure. And so, we don't have a problem with that. If I went up to you and I said, "Oh, Hercules is a mythical figure," you would not react in rage and start telling me that he is your Lord and savior, and I better be quiet, or I'm insulting your religion.

So generally speaking, that's not going to happen. And so, we have this going on this modern era that we look at that particular culture, in that particular god and so forth, and we say, "That's a mythical figure." Now, back then, 2,500 years ago, you could actually be killed for that. That would be blasphemy. And there was a capital offense associated with that. Today, we have no problem with this.

Now, so let's look at that character and see ? we'll look at all these correspondences he has for these figure. Son of God, mother is debatably a virgin but she certainly is a mortal and she was impregnated by a godly figure, the Father God, Zeus. He does these extraordinary, super?human activities on planet Earth, some of which could save humanity and so forth.

Then he has this struggle with the 12, this interaction with the 12 past Hercules and so forth. They have this most chief of the gods, the son of God with the 12. So you start looking at what does that reflect, because now we start finding this motive with the son of God with the 12, or the God they figure the divine man, whatever, with the twelve and all these other adventures. They're born of virgins and so forth.

So we're looking at that and we realize there's this archetype. The archetype actually is not meaningless. Like most archetypes, not all archetypes, certainly have meaning. That's what establishes them as archetypes.

Now, this one happens to have what has been termed "astrotheological root." It has origins in nature worship, observation of the movement, the daily and annually movements of the various celestial bodies including the moon, the stars, constellations, planets, and extending into who the earth itself and many other factors that the earth and the sun and the moon and stars contribute to and produce.

Then you have to start wondering why is this story, when it's applied to Hercules, Mithra, Krishna, Horace, Osiris, and various gods and goddesses throughout the world, why is that mythology. But then when a very similar tale with numerous details and motifs that are quite alike, these other myths, why is that taken as history when it happens in another culture which, in this case, happen to be the Jewish culture of the first century.

Now, that's to be taken as history. A large segment of the population insist that that actually happened in the third dimension 2,000 years ago when, essentially, we have a very similar story and pattern and a number of motifs in other cultures and it's taken to be myth. So, in reality, there really is no evidence that this took place on planet earth.

Jay:  Yes.

Acharya:  I'm referring specifically about the gospel stories, which I just sort of gave a general outline of.

Jay:  Yes.

Acharya:  There's no serious, credible scientific, valid evidence or proof of this happening in the third dimension in that part of world, in that culture. Indeed when you start examining the story n great detail, in its proper context, with all these other different cultures around using the primary sources in their original languages, wherever we can find them, and you look at the story in the Mediterranean, you start to see that this could only have been contrived in the same way that we believe the priesthoods of other cultures can try their myths. In other words, if we could just name these myths Zeus and Hercules and Krishna and Mithra and Horace and all these characters, I say these myths because that's what most people think, calling them myths means, but if we were to deem them myths, then we also must look at our own current sacred cows as being myths as well, created by the same processes or the same priesthood over and over again, the same story.