In Memoriam: Krimhilde, My Sister-In-Law

Well, we all knew it was coming, but when the text arrived from our niece Christine in Barbados we were still unprepared.  To hear that Christine's mom, and my sister-in law, Krimhilde, had died at 3:45 Bajan time yesterday morning, or 1:45 Colorado Springs time.

Krimhilde had suffered with Alzheimer's disease for the past two and a half years, with the decline slow at first then rapidly accelerating. On Sunday we received perhaps the most imminent notice that she wouldn't last much longer. This arrived via a text from Anthony -  Janice's brother - informing us that Krimhilde had lost the swallowing reflex.  Once that goes, we understand from the course of Alzheimer's it isn't long before the end arrives.

In addition, long before Alzheimer's had taken her thought processes Krimhilde had made it clear she wanted no extraordinary measures taken to assist her or prolong her life. That included giving any intravenous fluids, since of course without the ability to swallow she'd be unable to ingest even water.

That Krimhilde was a spiritually -oriented person has been clear from the time I first began posting excerpts of our conversations, in which I'd ask her various questions, i.e. on the purpose of life and ultimate issues and she'd give her responses.

For example, my conversation with her captured in my post of August 12, 2013.  A few gems:

Q.  Certain Christians of the extreme type would argue that if you don't accept Jesus as Lord and Savior you can't enter heaven. How do you respond?

A.Heaven is in the here and now. We make heaven where we are by expressing love in its highest form. Anyone who would impose or say that one is doomed, or damned because he doesn't believe such and such, cannot be expressing any love. Therefore, his god is already false. It is fiction. A real God - the one of Love  - doesn't send people to any hell for anything. This is what the ignorant do not grasp.

Q. But they would say they are still "saved" because they've accepted Christ as their Savior. They'd say you are in the wrong!

A. Let them say what they will!  It is obvious that if one has so much hate that he believes others - who don't believe as he does- must be sent to hell, then there must be a contradiction. One cannot have love and hate existing in the same Being, and to have a God that would send humans to hell for their beliefs is not a God that loves. It is a fiction that hates. I say it is a fiction because these people created it in their own minds.  If it were true that the God they worship is one of love THEY themselves would show such love in their lives, not with words but actions! They would feed the homeless and clothe them, they would donate their time selflessly to those with less than they have, instead of wallowing in their own self pity and hate.  You can always tell what type of thing a person worships by how he behaves, how he acts. He can say all he wants his God is real, real love or whatnot, but if he himself doesn't show that love it is a fraud.

Q. Well said. Why is it certain Christians, like fundamentalists and so on, get so worked up about Hell, Satan and damnation? It’s like that’s the only note they know how to sound.

A. That’s because their psychic or mental vibrations are operating at so low a frequency that only horrid, nasty things can be conceived of. “Satan” is the product of low vibrations and low mentality. Also, I could say, a brutal and inhuman mentality. Satan is inhuman, no? Thus, the mind that conceives him must likewise be inhuman and hateful. It cannot be one of love.  No higher spiritual person could conceive of such a being. It would be like an exalted master or saint thinking of ways to murder or rape. It’s outside their nature, and therefore impossible. Only a human very close to a bestial nature or disposition could be such a Satanist!

Q. A Satanist?

A. Yes! Obviously, if you believe in Satan and that he has as much power in the world, as many of these people claim, you must be a Satanist! You don't have to actually physically worship Satan to be such - just to hold him in your mind and use him as a cudgel against others!

Q. So in terms of the afterlife, you don't accept heaven or hell?

A. NO. Absolutely not!  I believe and accept reincarnation.Think of it! How crazy it is to have only one life to live, and one where you may be born with severe mental illness or from a terrible family or with infirmities, then be expected to reach heaven in that one life. It is insane! For example, if you are a backward peasant living in China and have never heard of Jesus does that mean you must go to Hell? No. That is stupid. It isn’t the fault of the Chinese peasant, as he has no control on where he’s born. The only justice system that makes sense therefore is karma (as you sow, so shall you reap) and reincarnation is part of it.

Q. So let me get this clear. Say I am a self-professed 'saved' Christian but display lots of hate toward many groups, including Muslims, Catholics, atheists, others,  then in my next incarnation I can expect a not so good life?

A. Yes! By the principles of karma you will then be born as one of those people you hated in this life, as a Muslim, a Catholic or even an atheist! You will then have to likely suffer the attacks doled out by the prejudiced that you dole out to them now, by word or deed. It is a way of balance. And until you learn the lesson to accept all people, irrespective of beliefs, you cannot progress!

Q. What about the Bible as a book of proclaimed truth?

A. As I've said before, those books were written by low vibration people living thousands of years ago, for other low vibration people. We are living in a more enlightened era where we know more. This means our more developed minds need more sophisticated sources. Reading those ancient books or bibles is like a college student groveling around in a nursery and still talking baby talk. Worse, the degraded level of the book writers, especially where they depict this “god” killing humans out of vengeance, is a reflection of their own base nature and desire for vengeance. Their degraded, low vibration souls hate so they write to make their god hate, like them. This bible god is no god of love.

The obsession with the 'good book' is based  on the anxiety to be right…..right, right, right….This impulse and need penetrates and suffuses everything. That’s why they clutch their bibles so closely, as if to worship the book itself. I believe they’d all have heart attacks if all their good books suddenly disappeared overnight. They wouldn’t know how to live, and their precious compass for living would be gone.
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In my post of July 1o this year I even noted Krimhilde's opinion of the evangelicals who are holding on to Trump's coattails.  Her quote was from the last extended conversation I had with her at a family gathering in Barbados in April, 2016.  She said in regard to these evangelical enablers:

 "They preach love and God's mercy to sinners, but their souls  have been degraded by  hate. This hate is against all others unlike them, whether immigrants, poor black people  or gays, or atheists.  So they seek to remake  their god hateful in their image.  They also knew they needed a strong  darkness to cover and protect their own hateful darkness so they used Trump to that end.  They really have sold their souls to purchase what they believe is spiritual security but is really selling their souls and faith to a human devil."


In May, 2012, Krimhilde sat down to a lunch with myself, wifey and my atheist friend Rick to discuss the concept of sin, e.g.





















Among the specific topics which came up were: 1) "original sin" and 2) sin in general.

On the first we all concurred that there is no such thing as "original sin" since infants can't enter the world with any such millstones. It was preposterous on its face so Catholic teaching on the matter was imbecilic, unenlightened. Original sin was merely a confection spawned from the brain farts of assorted theological idiots who took the "Adam & Eve" story literally. Humans are evolved apes and thus their behavior is totally explicable in terms of our Simian past and tri-partite brains composed of both more recent structures (e.g. neocortex) and more ancient ones (paleo-cortex, reticular formation).

The generic topic of sin overall, including the "seven deadly sins" was rife with much more debate, with Rick and I tending to the view that they didn't exist, period, and the word was simply invented to make humans ashamed of their animal selves, or their instincts - which yes, could sometimes go into overdrive. Krimhilde and wifey, meanwhile, leaned to a more moderated stance that 'sin' could indeed exist and cited mass murder, rape as examples. The atheist contingent, however, preferred to see those examples as aberrations or deviations. We disdained the term "sin" as too fraught with religious overtones.

In reality,  we generally all agreed that “Sin” is predicated on an exaggerated importance of humans in the universe. Thus, it elevates (albeit in a perverse way) the importance of humans in an otherwise meaningless cosmos. With “sin” the overly self-important and morally smug, self-righteous human has at least the potential of offending his deity – thereby getting its attention – as opposed to being relegated to the status of a cosmic “roach” (which any advanced alien sentience would regard us). "Sin" is thus an attention getter to a Big Cosmic Daddy.

As Rick put it, how could a tiny,  finite creature "offend" a supposed infinite Being? It was totally ludicrous.

Krimhilde agreed with Rick's assessment while also noting:

"Don't forget that for some religions, like Catholics, sin is used as a means of control, as with confession,  to keep the people in check and tied to the Church's apron strings."

For her part, Krimhilde - like me - left the RC Church many decades earlier. Neither of us had been prepared to remain hostage to fossilized relics operating in the Vatican's Curia - trying to tell us how to conduct our lives in a moral frame.  Especially when they couldn't control their own thousands of sexual predator priests.

Krimhilde, who was 84,  had always expected  to be reincarnated - most likely on a distant planet, and possibly in a parallel universe - requested cremation as preparation for that transition. However, a memorial will be held in her honor in Barbados sometime near the end of the month.  Janice will attend while I hold down the 'fort' over here.


See also:

Conversation with an Eckankar Adept

And:

Medicine & Biology | Peace & Justice

When Did My Mom’s Alzheimer’s Begin?

No, You Don't Want To Do 'Aftersex' Selfies

You really want your aftersex selfie to have Newt Gingrich's mug photo-shopped onto it then circulated with your gf?

There are so many reasons not to do "aftersex" selfies that it shouldn't be necessary to enumerate them. Start with the smug, solipsist nature of the "selfie" itself which embodies all the gratuitous self-infatuation that is poisoning this country - causing it to mutate into a bunch of navel-gazing zomboids with faces pushed into assorted small screens - whether of smart phones or iphones.  Let us also recall what Krimhilde, my sister-in-law and Eck spiritualist,  said:

"These are the creations and obsessions of the immature human, which remains steeped in narcissism, in self-absorption. No truly advanced or advancing human on the path to a higher spirituality takes a selfie. Our true motivation and mission in this life is instead to embrace selflessness. That means placing one's body in proper relation to one's spirit."

Wonder what she'd think of the 'aftersex' selfie?  It isn't difficult to imagine and the clue is in the last line of her comment.

But perhaps one isn't spiritually inclined. Then there are other reasons not to traverse the route of this benighted form of selfie:

1- Any instagram, any selfie can go onto the larger web, and can also be used in ways never intended by the original senders.  One such is displayed above with the aftersex selfie twisted into a mocking caricature by having photo-shopped the visage of Newt Gingrich into the guy's face. The poor girl friend is then stuck being seen with this GOOPr goober along side her, while the delirious face of the cat who sent the selfie is nowhere to be found.  (Let's also bear in mind a truly malicious person would use programs superior to photo-shop to superimpose the face of a terrorist onto the selfie, instead of Newt's!)

2- The GCHQ, NSA's Brit cousin, can snatch it up - as it does millions of instagrams, via its 'Optic Nerve' program. As the Guardian noted (Feb. 27), having gobbled up and stored millions of such images, including "sexually explicit" ones it's become increasingly difficult to keep them from the prying eyes of staff. While aftersex selfies are usually not explicit, one can picture GCHQ staff having some good yucks at the assorted ones captured that they gawk at before permanent storage. Besides, do you really want your aftersex selfie stored in some spook outfit's system for decades?

3- This ought to go without saying, but sheesh, if you actually have to post an 'after sex' visual maybe you aren't getting enough in the first place.  I mean why would you need the selfie? To remind yourself for the next 'dry' six months of what you haven't been getting regularly?  So then you can stare freely at the captured sex-satisfied smile and engrave it in memory until the next time?  Oh wait, it's not that at all, it's that you want to rub it in to your friends' faces how much you're getting and they're not! Again, a fool's errand! Most perspicacious people will still perceive you have to "prove" you are getting at least what THEY are getting! And they'll still end up believing that because you had to post it then you ain't getting what they are!

4- The aftersex selfie is gauche and uncool. No really cool person, at least  from a 60s perspective, would have to advertise having had sex.  A hippie couple from the 60s would view this manifestation not so much with disdain or judgment, but look at the senders with a mixture of pity and sympathy.  They'd also kind of tie it in with the perspective in (3).

5- Sexual relations, as Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts once pointed out ('Does It Matter?') are still a basic form of human intimacy. This extends not merely to the sex act itself but to the prelude to it (foreplay) and the post-coital phase which ought to include light banter, snuggling, cuddling - but not dispatching "selfies" to the digital world of 2 billion staring, peering, judgmental eyes.

6- The person who would violate the  boundaries of social propriety by taking an after sex selfie (also according to Watts) would be blind to what constitutes the off-scene or the "ob-scene" in human relations and situations, and hence would also be likely to send a selfie of him (or her)- self sitting on the crapper taking a dump.  Since the person lacks the social perceptions to see what ought to remain private in one domain (sexual), they'd likely lack it in another (bodily elimination) for which privacy is also warranted. (Of course, the exact analogy here would be the "post-dump selfie").

These are just some of the reasons the wise and mature person avoids taking aftersex selfies. Of course, the really wise and mature person avoids taking any selfies, period!

Congrats to Pastor Ryan Bell - For Trying Out Atheism!

Pastor Ryan Bell is now learning what it's like to be an atheist in America. He's learning that, contrary to the bollocks of a "free country", there may be penalties to be paid for expressing one's first amendment rights, for example. As people may or may not know, Bell announced on the Huffington Post on New Year's Eve his experiment to see what it was like to live as an atheist - at least for a year.

I am not sure one can "try" atheism, because one either is or isn't. He or she either has the mindset for it or not. It's not something you can "try on" anymore than one can "try on" Catholicism. (Although, true, many of us born into that religion are forced by accident of birth to 'try it' - though when we reach maturity we can make up our minds that it's not for us. As I related to my Mom - a firm Catholic- 25 years ago when she asked why I left Catholicism: "I felt I was wearing a suit that had shrunk and could no longer fit into it. I needed to get a suit that fit!" She liked the analogy and accepted it.)

Once having become an atheist, I experienced further change - in this case from being a "anti-religion" atheist in the mold of Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her American Atheists, to  becoming a more moderate agnostic atheist.  The moderate atheist in this sense is one who adheres to the original meaning of the term a-theist, absence of belief, as opposed to denouncing belief. This change was documented in the last chapter of my new book, Beyond Atheism, Beyond God.   Basically, it meant no longer screaming for the elimination of all religions, but rather adopting a more nuanced stance: that in an era in which knuckle draggers on the Right are attempting to halt every social justice advance - or attempted advance - we need all the allies we can get. It serves no purpose to alienate millions.

In any case, I do admire Bell's pluck and courage in at least trying to alter perspectives for a year, to understand how the unbelief part of the populace lives- and what we face. His intent, related on cnn.com, means:

He will not pray, go to church, read the Bible for inspiration, trust in divine providence or hope in things unseen. He’s taking the opposite of a leap of faith: a free fall into the depths of religious doubt.


Now, this is a heady mix even for a temporary atheist. Especially ditching the bible addiction, which I've always maintained is the first criterion for any person to move beyond reflex belief. If you are as truly confident in the existence of the "divine" as you claim,  you ought not require a special book as a spiritual crutch - especially the Bible - which as my sister-in -law has noted, "was written at about the level of eighth graders."

Not trusting in divine providence is, of course, implicit for the atheist - moderate or extreme. Thus, we operate according to the more evidentiary perspective that fortuitous events - say, such as surviving an airline crash, or a mass shooting, is a matter of dumb luck and chance. You happened to be in a safe seat, or were out of the line of sight of the shooter. It wasn't that "God" specially protected you - while allowing the others around you to be demolished or mowed down. That sort of magical thinking is the sure sign of an infant .

As for "religious doubt" that ought to be expected of any person pursuing a spiritual path. Not to doubt, not to accept the world as gray - instead of black and white-  is again to remain spiritually childish. Not doubting, as philosopher Alan Watts once put it, is to forclose your perspective and inhibit your own self-growth. It leads to a mental, spiritual dead end and stunts your vision. The world then becomes filled with enemies and caricatures of demons who must be fought to the death. Hence, the emergence of the religious extremist who would blow up an airliner or an abortion clinic.

Some Christian critics of Bell, however, believe he's doing the wrong thing.  According to one author on Christianity Today:

The issues Bell has with the church, and even his interest in atheist thought, doesn't require a turn to atheism.

This is true, and one can indeed just read atheist books, say like my own Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism, to get a handle on the basis for atheist thought.  One needn't "try atheism" as a mental position and live that way to grasp atheist thought. (Though it does help!) One can also work out any problems with his church, if there is mutual willingness to do so. The problem, however, is that one cannot experience what it's like to BE an atheist unless one lives as an atheist. Reading about atheist thought only gets you into a passive, armchair understanding - not a deep experience of being one.

Thus, had Pastor Bell not chosen to actually live as an atheist he'd not have known how easily he could have been released from his pastor position or fired from his adjunct professorship.  He might have suspected that the widespread meme: 'atheists are the most distrusted group in America' - was only hyperbole or nonsense. He may never have actually experienced it.

Of course, his former Christian cohort has rabidly denied all this and insisted none of those events bore any relation to Bell's choice to live as an atheist. Yeah, right, and Chris Christie was just totally surprised that thousands of commuters could have been inconvenienced by one of his staff who - somehow - believed that payback had to be delivered (by closing 3 of 4 lanes over a primary bridge)  for a Dem Mayor not supporting Mr. "Pillsbury Doughboy"  Guv's NJ re-election. Well, gullibility takes all kinds of forms.

This is displayed by one Xtian named Os, who writes:

"This is not true as many who are very close to this story know. I also think it is unfortunate that Ryan is being used here, with or without his encouragement I do not know, as a poster child for America's culture wars in a way that many would immediately recognize as deeply inauthentic if roles were reversed,"

Whatever. The fact is Os and his Xtian compatriots left Bell hanging out there in the wind with no financial  support. It was left to atheist Hemant Mehta (aka 'Friendly Atheist') to summon help from fellow atheists for Bell's support. So far well over $7,000 has been collected with more coming in all the time.

Bell, in his blog on Tuesday, wrote:

I am shocked and overwhelmed a the outpouring of support that I have received after Hemant Mehta (aka Friendly Atheist) asked people to support me financially. I am grateful. But just as I am leaving behind the fear and sometimes hate-inspired religion of my past, I am deeply uncomfortable about raising support by casting my friends in the Christian community in a negative light–especially one which is not true."

Again, I congratulate Bell for his courage, whether or not his experiment succeeds or whether indeed, he leaves Christianity fully behind and becomes a full -fledged atheist.

For Christians, the treatment of Bell ought to incite their own soul-searching concerning whether they can really believe they have finally found "the light" or, more likely, are still being kept in the dark about the true nature of their professed religion. To quote the words of my sister-in-law  Krimhilde again (from her May interview):

"If it were true that the God they worship is one of love THEY themselves would show such love in their lives, not with words but actions! They would feed the homeless and clothe them, they would donate their time selflessly to those with less than they have, instead of wallowing in their own self pity and hate.  You can always tell what type of thing a person worships by how he behaves, how he acts. He can say all he wants his God is real, real love or whatnot, but if he himself doesn't show that love then it is a fraud. "


I couldn't have put it better!