Kelvin Chin- A Brief History Of Spirituality Over The Last 7,000 Years
6 Oct 2022 · 81 min
In this episode of the Grief to Growth podcast, host Brian D. Smith interviews longtime meditation teacher and after‑life researcher Kelvin Chin. The conversation begins with a promotional segment about the Grief to Growth store, workbooks, guided meditations and other pay‑what‑you‑want resources for people coping with loss. The bulk of the episode focuses on the 30th November 2014 event organized by Kelvin, in which George Hammond delivered a three‑hour talk titled “A History of Spirituality on Earth over the Last 7,000–10,000 Years.” Kelvin explains the background of the event, the key participants (George Hammond, his sister Mary, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Jesus, John the Baptist, Jehovah, Shankara/Vyasa, and other ancient teachers) and the after‑life communications that occurred in George’s home after Mary’s death. He describes how these beings formed a group called “The Movement,” which generated a series of “projects” (the Jehovah Project, the Jesus Project, etc.) that aimed to guide humanity through the Judeo‑Christian, Islamic and Vedic traditions. Kelvin critiques how later figures such as Paul, the Roman Empire, and later canon‑forming councils altered the original teachings, leading to doctrines like omnipotent God, the crucifixion narrative, and the inclusion/exclusion of certain biblical books. He emphasizes a shift from guru‑based authority to friendship‑based guidance, the importance of free will, reducing cruelty, and “turning within” through meditation. The episode ends with reminders to visit the Grief to Growth website, substack, and Patreon, and an invitation to attend the upcoming Q&A on 30 November 2022.
Chapters
You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet.
I get that.
And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you.
Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian D Smith says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.
Everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today's a special episode. I've got with me my friend Kelvin Chen. And if you've listened to the show before, you might have heard Kelvin. He's been on a couple of times. He's got a lot of great stuff to say. I'm going to read his bio, then we're gonna talk about the event that he's here to talk about today. So he's an author and afterlife expert. His first book is called Overcoming the Fear of Death Through Each of the Four Main Belief Systems. And it's a non-religious approach to overcoming the fear of death. And his new book, Marcus Aurelius Updated: The 21st Century Meditations on Living Life, is a collection of 67 essays ranging from emotions, life principles, meditation, and the spiritual. I've read his first book, and I just started a second book. They're both fantastic. Kelvin is the executive director, and he's the founder of Turning Within Meditation and Overcoming the Fear of Death Foundations. He's an internationally recognized meditation teacher featured in Business Insider, Newsweek, Kaiser Health News. And he's taught meditation at West Point and in the US Army, including in the DMZ in Korea. He's been meditating for 50 years. He's taught meditation for 49 years. To thousands of people in over 60 countries. And his past life memories reach back 6,000 years. He's a graduate of Dartmouth, Yale, and Boston College Law. And he's lived in 7 countries. Kelvin also organized the 30th November event held in Alexandria, Virginia in 2014, where a talk was given by George Hammond, who gave the history of spirituality on Earth, in the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Vedic traditions over the past 10,000 years. I know that's a lot. That's what we'll be talking about today. And he's got— and he's— that talk was shared in quite some detail with him by the founders of those traditions, who are now all on the other side. So today, Kevin, or Kelvin, will be discussing how that talk came about, and what was covered in that talk, sort of a preview of you going to listen to the talk yourself. And then on Wednesday, November 30th of this year, this is 2022 recording this, at noon Pacific time, Kelvin's going to be conducting a Q&A on this talk. So after you've listened to this program today, go and listen to the 30th November talk and then join Kelvin for that talk again on November 30th. I know that's a lot. That'll all be in the show notes. But I want to welcome Kelvin Chen.
Great to see you again, as always, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, it's always good to see you. So, uh, tell people about the 30th November.
Yeah, so, um, It obviously happened on 30th November, but this was, as Brian D Smith said, 2014. So this is coming up on the 8th year anniversary of that talk. Um, it was held in near DC, near Washington, DC, and right across the river in Alexandria, Virginia, at the George Washington, uh, uh, Memorial, um, building there, which is a you know, a Mason, a Masonic temple. George, George Washington was a Mason, evidently. So we, we, um, rented that space, and, uh, a lot of people showed up, and it was live streamed. So it was live streamed worldwide back then. As Brian mentioned, there's a recording, there's a video of the talk that exists at 30thNovember.com, and you have to remember to put in 30th November. There's no spaces or anything, it's just 30thnovember.com, 30thnovember.com, and you can watch the talk. And what we're going to do today is just kind of give you a preview of the talk. And I thought, well, I'll give the preview in October now and give all of you a chance to watch this 3-hour talk that George Hammond, who I'll explain who he is and so forth in a minute, um that George gave almost 8 years ago now. And then I'll run a Q&A on the 8th year anniversary, as Brian said, at the end of November, you know, next month on 30th November, this coming— this year— in this coming— next month. So what's the talk? So basically, the subject matter of the talk is the history of spirituality on planet Earth over the last 7,000 to 10,000 years, ballpark, in those four major traditions: Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Vedic traditions. And I think most of you will recognize all of those—Judeo-Jewish, you know, uh, Christian, you know, Christianity and so forth, uh, Islamic obviously, and Vedic. Vedic if people here are mostly from the US and Europe are watching this, the Vedic tradition is what you would know as India, that part of the world. Hinduism comes out of the Vedic tradition. So the Vedic tradition is the roots of that. Also, many of you even here in the West, you know what Buddhism is. Buddhism comes out of the Vedic tradition. It's an It's a, it's an offshoot of the Vedic tradition. So Vedic is more ancient. So those four major spiritual traditions, we could call them Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Vedic traditions, pretty much account for most of the, uh, religions, the, you know, religious institutions on planet Earth today and for the last several thousand years. Um, I, I Wikipedia'd one. I don't know why I, I did this, but, uh, that's how Wikipedia said there's 4,000 religions on planet Earth. Did you know that, Brian? 4,000 religions on planet Earth. It's crazy. I don't know what they count as, you know, but, you know, some belief system that's X, Y, or Z, I suppose. But the 30th November talk focused on those four major ones, and, um, The way it came about, let me just talk a little bit about, um, you know, I made a list for myself here, uh, of kind of background points that aren't covered in the talk itself that will give those who are hearing this video kind of a leg up in terms of, you know, just people watching it cold. I'll give you some inside, um, you know, tips and, and, and, and, uh, kind of definitions of terms that George uses in the talk that, you know, will help fast forward you through understanding what he's talking about. So first of all, who's this guy George Hammond? So as I said, I organized— I helped organize the event. I was the main organizer of the event. George Hammond and I are friends this lifetime from Dartmouth College where we both went to school. He's a couple of years younger than I am. So I introduced him to uh, his meditation teacher this lifetime, uh, when we were at Dartmouth. Um, we've taught meditation together, we're very, very close friends, um, and we've stayed in touch all those years, obviously. But who is he in the context of this 30th November talk? I want to give you a little background on him that he doesn't get into too much detail about himself here in this regard. He is a former mergers and acquisitions transactional lawyer. So as you may have, you know, caught in my bio, I also was a lawyer. I went to law school and so forth. George went to law school and he actually, you know, went up the law firm ladder much higher than I did. And he became a partner in a global law firm doing major global mergers and acquisitions. Those of you don't know that term, mergers and acquisitions is what the term means. It's two companies getting together and merging, one other company acquiring or buying the other company. And these are very, very complex legal transactions. And he did, I think, I can't remember if it's $4 billion worth of mergers and acquisition deals over his 25, 30-year legal career. I say that to you because if those of you who know any lawyers or know any mergers and acquisitions lawyers who are doing global deals, you have to be very grounded. You have to have your act together. You have to be a very rational, logical, clear thinker. You have to be able to negotiate very complex deals, and you have to multitask and juggle like very complex ideas in your mind all at the same time. That's why I tell you that about him. Okay. Just as an aside, he, he worked, he was a senior lawyer on the, on the biggest oil deal in Russian history that was privatized in 2004. And the CEO of that company was put in prison by Vladimir Putin. And I guess where all the money went. But, um, so George has that background.
Okay, stay with us, we'll be right back.
You know, one of the hardest things about grief— most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to in the podcast, essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth.
I hope to see you there.
Very high-profile mergers and acquisitions lawyer, did a lot of those deals. I say that's to you because he's not a psychic. That's not what he does. That's what he did. He's not a medium, you know. Yet what happened in his house— again, keep in mind, he and I've been meditating for 50 years, you know, and, uh, he and I taught meditation together for many years back in the 1970s together. Before we both went to law school, of course. But what happened in his house that leads up to this 30th November talk was his sister tragically died. Okay, so many of you know, I help people with death and dying issues and so forth and so on. So this is, you know, an area, we'll say an area of life that I'm not unfamiliar with, death and dying. Well, I knew Mary. His sister was Mary, named Mary. Um, Mary Iber was her married name. Um, and, uh, I knew Mary from college, you know. She visited us when we were at Dartmouth and so forth. Um, she had had a heart problem evidently suddenly when she was visiting her son and her grandchildren in San Francisco. So, uh, she went in for an emergency surgery. It was a successful surgery. They sent her home, uh, to George's house to recuperate because he had an extra bedroom, so she could recuperate comfortably there. And she was going to recuperate for a few weeks and then get on a plane and fly home to Iowa where she lived. Well, she died the next day after she went to sleep at George's house. They went to wake her up the next day, and she tragically had died in her sleep. So, um, it shocked everybody, of course. Uh, she was seemingly on the road to recovery, etc., after a successful heart operation. Um, if, if you've had anybody die in your home, you You know, it's a little bit more complicated than just somebody dying in a hospital room. You know, you gotta call the police, and the police have to come and make sure everything's okay. Uh, you have to call somebody to take the body, and so forth and so on. So George had a number of logistical stuff, plus he comes from a family of 12 kids. So obviously all the siblings, they were all at that point prior to Mary's death, they were all 12 still alive, and they're all over the world. And so George— and some of them had flown in and left and so forth, and You know, Brother Gary had just driven away literally a matter of an hour or two before to go home in Southern California. And George has to make some phone calls. So point is, there's a bunch of logistics he's got to deal with. So, you know, a couple few hours later, he's taking a shower. And within minutes, Mary is talking to him while George is in the shower. And He knew it was Mary. It's— and those of you, um, I can say this openly and on your show, Brian, you know, because we've talked about these things and you talk about these things with other people, uh, people who have had any— had experience like this, you know, if you have a communication from a dead loved one, you know it's, it's them. You know, sometimes you're not sure. I, I get it. And, you know, and, and, you know, I've opened up to the other side since 1986, so I understand. At first I was doubting it, so forth. But after you've had enough of these experiences You kind of know. And, and if especially in his case, he— it was her voice. He heard her voice in his, in his head, and it was the same voice he had just been talking to when her body was still alive, literally, whatever it was, you know, 12, 15 hours earlier, um, in his living room. Um, and, and he knows the personality. And, you know, those people who have had these experiences in your audience, Brian, they know, you know, you know, it's Oh, it's that, that's their sense of humor, or that's the way they talk, or that's the language they kind of use. So there's a recognition is the point. So he knew it was his sister, and she gave him some instructions about how she wanted her, her, her, she wanted a unique funeral actually, which was, you know, required some research on George's part and calling certain people. And so she's, she's told him in the shower while she's talking to him from the other side. Oh, call this person. Oh, this person over here will— and these people didn't— George didn't even know him. They call that person and this person, and, you know, they'll be able to help you because they know about this special kind of funerals. And it turns out, he, you know, whenever, days later, you know, he called them, and it was right, you know, that, you know, whoever these people were he called did know about the special funeral arrangements, etc. That he had no idea about. So, um, but this conversation continued, and she evidently started asking him, hey, talk to, talk to our, my sister so-and-so, or our brother so-and-so. I wanted to tell him this. So she's giving him messages because Mary, you know, Mary's personality, Mary was very much of a caring, loving, and, um, you could say, um, somebody who, who, who liked to repair things if necessary. I would kind of leave it that way in terms of relationships. So she She was giving him message, those kind of messages. And, uh, and, and George could kind of tell, well, this is going to go on for a while. So he got out of the shower, dried off, and he laid down in bed, and she kept talking. So that went on for about 20 minutes. And then, um, I don't know if— I don't know if he gets into this level of detail in his talk here, but I'm going to give you a little bit more detail. Um, his, his, his mother and father come in and they talk. With him, she goes and gets the mother and father. Now, his mother, their mother and father have both died. They're on the other side. And again, they have a similar thing. So it's like, hey, talk to so-and-so, you know, one of the kids about, you know, oh, your father said this when she was 14 years old, and I've been wanting him to say this to her ever since. And now she's probably 50, 55 years old, you know, it's like, and so those kinds of parental messages were going. Uh, you know, George was getting fed those from the parents and so forth. So that went on another 15 or 20 minutes or so. So, um, meanwhile, George's wife is walking in and out of the bedroom, and she hears George. She sees George lying there in bed talking to somebody she can't see. Anyway, she goes out, shuts the door, and, uh, and then at some point, um, Mary leaves the scene. He can see this, you know, it's like a video clip he's watching, you know. He's— he can see Mary leave her, her energy body, kind of what he recognizes as her visually, and her energy body leaves, or she leaves the scene. She comes back holding Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's hand. Now, who is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi? Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is the Indian guru. Some of you may recognize his name as the Indian guru who taught the Beatles in 1967 to meditate. And, um, and he started the Transcendental Meditation movement and so forth. Uh, came out of India in 1959, started teaching meditation. Didn't even call it TM, Transcendental Meditation, back then. He just called it meditation. Then came up with the name some— sometime in the '60s, 1960s. Um, he's that guy, okay? Now, Mary, George, and I, first of all, separately but personally studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And we all had been TM teachers, Transcendental Meditation teachers. George and I for about 10 years in the 1970s, and Mary still since the 1970s to present, what, 2014 when she died. She was still very active in, in the organization. George and I left after 10 years. The organization went this way and we said, nope, see you later. And, and, you know, we still have, you know, friends in it and so forth and so on, but we, we didn't want to get into all the other things that they started getting into. But Mary stayed with it. Um, so we, we all have this connection from a spiritual standpoint, we could say, with Maharishi at some point in our 20th and 21st century lives. All right, that's the takeaway from your— you, the audience's standpoint. That's why Maharishi. Okay. He comes into the scene now. Oh, by the way, he died in 2008. So even though George and I haven't seen him since the 1970s, uh, in physical form, uh, biological form, he died in 2008. He's on the other side. Okay, 2014, this is when this whole event is happening, right? Um, so, but this was January 2014 when she— when Mary died. And so he comes into the scene and starts talking to George about ideas, we'll say, which we'll get into what some of these ideas were, ideas for this 30th November talk. And he wasn't calling it the 30th November talk at that point. It was just, I want you to talk, I want to share some ideas with you, basically. So this is like an old teacher. So many of you have probably had an experience similar to this. You have an old teacher who's died and gone to the other side. And may communicate with you and say, hey, Brian, you know, I got these ideas I want to share with you. And you may have a conversation. That's what that was at this point in George's experience. And then his sister Mary left the scene. And now it's just George and Maharishi talking, one of George's old, this lifetime spiritual teachers from the 1970s. And then Maharishi says, you know what, I'll be right back. And he leaves the seat and he comes back with another one of George's old spiritual teachers, Jesus. So now it's Maharishi and Jesus talking to George, sharing ideas, the three of them basically having a conversation. That's the way you— that's the takeaway you want to look at it. And just using, you know, 21st century English, there's a conversation going on amongst the three of them. And George gets into some detail, which I won't get into now, but I'll let him— I won't steal George's thunder from the talk. But he does get into some great detail in terms of what the experience of talking with them was like and what they looked like in this experience that he was having, which is lying on his bed there talking to him. And that went on for about 90 minutes. And other people came in because he had a bed, you know, he's lying in bed, he's got his nightstand, he's got his clock right there. So he glanced at it while he was talking to Sister Mary, so he kind of knew when approximately the thing, this whole thing started. And so it went on for about 90 more minutes with Maharishi, Jesus, and then, uh, Shankara is another teacher, uh, ancient teacher from the Vedic tradition. Those of you don't know, you can Google them, Wikipedia's name, it's S-H-A-N-K-A-R-A. Shankara and Vyasa, V-Y-A-S-A. So, um, also were part of this conversation. Now Shankara and Vyasa turned out to be the same person. Shankara, Vyasa— it was Vyasa in a previous lifetime, uh, many— I don't know if it's hundreds or thousands of years before— when Vyasa created the story which is known in the Vedic tradition. Some of you may recognize it at the name of it, it's called the Mahabharata. Within the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita. So many of you have probably heard, as I have heard, you know, before I ever knew anything about Mahabharata, I knew about the Bhagavad Gita. I had heard of the Gita, G-I-T-A, the Bhagavad Gita. So many Westerners will know, oh, I've read the Bhagavad Gita or parts of the Bhagavad Gita. I know I've heard of it or whatever, okay. The Bhagavad Gita is part of the larger, uh, scripture or book story, the Mahabharata, that was written by Vyasa. Vyasa in a later lifetime is Shankara. So now Shankara is part of this conversation in January of 2014 with George Hammond, Jesus, John the Baptist, Maharishi. I didn't tell you that. Maharishi was John the Baptist in a previous lifetime. Those of you know anything about the Bible, I am not a biblical scholar. So let's get this self-disclosure disclaimer right out up front. Brian, you want to ask Brian question about the Bible? Yes, Brian, you don't ask me. Okay, but I did not pay attention in Sunday school. I was a bad student in Sunday school when I went to Sunday school. But, um, Evidently, I hear, and I've since read, that in the Bible, it does reference that John the Baptist and Elijah— is that right, Brian? Elijah, the Prophet Elijah, right? So we're the same soul and reincarnated. Elijah was reincarnated as John the Baptist. Well, we now know that John the Baptist reincarnated as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and he's had other lifetimes too. But for the sake of this discussion, those are the relevant, uh, the 3 relevant lifetimes that Maharishi had. So you can see that there's starting to be a— we'll call it from your standpoint, the audience standpoint, hearing about this 30th November talk— there you can see the players are starting to line up in terms of their roles in the download, we'll call it. We'll just use 21st century language. The download to humanity over the last 7,000 to 10,000 years of the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Vedic traditions. So you got Vedic people in here, you got Shankara, who was, who was Vyasa, who wrote the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad Gita, and so forth, from which much of the Hindu and so forth and Buddhist, etc., you know, teachings come from. And then you have Elijah and John the Baptist, Jesus, etc. Okay. And now Jehovah enters the scene also. And Maharishi's teacher, who he calls Gurudev. So I want to define this term to you because George does not get into this in his talk. So I want to give you a sense of this for clarity purposes, you the audience here, because George mentions the name Gurudev, Gurudev. Those of you who understand Hindi or Sanskrit, Guru just means teacher. That's all that means. Dev just means exalted one, or it's a sign of respect is what it is. Really, in plain English, we would translate it in plain colloquial American English, we just say great teacher. Oh my great teacher. It's an honorific, it's a respectful term, Gurudev. If those of you who have had any other Indian teachers in your spiritual journey, We'll hear them calling their teachers Gurudev. Okay, so Gurudev is not a name, it's a more of a, oh, a sign of respect. Okay, George is using it more as a name in his 30th November talk because, uh, all of us who came out of the TM teaching only know, really only know him as Gurudev because Maharishi always talked about his teacher as Gurudev. So George is using it in that way. So just, just to So not— so there's no confusion there. His actual name, that person's, Maharishi's teacher's actual name was Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. Okay, so Swami is a title. Brahmananda Saraswati, he was a very— we'll just say a very high level, you could say high exalted, respected teacher In the Hindu tradition, in the Hindu Vedic tradition in India, he died in 1953. So but that's just a clarification of term when you hear that Gurudev, Gurudev, he's specifically talking about that person. So you got these players, I've laid out a few of the players, and then there are some others there that George will talk about. I want to define another term for you, however, that he uses, that it's good for you to understand what this term means. He uses— George, in his talk, uses this term holy tradition. Holy tradition, you gotta understand, coming out of any Vedic kind of guru teaching, whether it's the TM organization or some other organization, other gurus, teaching or whatever, is a term that's used just as a respectful term of the lineage. It's a, it's a reference to the lineage of teachers before, and we give respect to the teachers before. That's the idea, that's the thinking with, with the holy tradition. So I mean, I know within, um, in, in the Christian, Judeo-Christian world, you hear the word holy. And it tends to have a certain, carry a certain kind of religious kind of connotation to it. And I understand that, but in the Vedic tradition, it more means it's this respect to the lineage of teachers. Okay. So those are basically all the gurus who led up to Shankara is what is being referred to as the holy tradition. And they had a meeting on the other side when Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died. So let's— let me give you a little bit of this picture. Okay, so George gets into this a little bit. I'm going to give you a little bit more detail here. So again, I'm kind of just giving you, um, not talking about George's talk so much. I'm giving you more context so you have a, a place in which to place all of these ideas that he's going to talk about. Okay, so, um, As I said, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died February 2008. Um, when Maharishi died— okay, this is not in the talk, but I'm going to share with you because Maharishi has come to me since this, you know, well, he's come to me before he died actually. I had an experience with him telepathically before he died. Obviously, um, maybe not obviously, but some of you don't know I was an international leader in the TM organization in the 1970s. I was a national leader of the TM organization in Hong Kong. I coordinated 8 countries in, in Asia when I was in my early, mid, early 20s, um, and I taught meditation, as, as Brian D Smith said, in the U.S. Army in Korea and so forth and so on. Um, so I have a history with Maharishi, is my point, and I've spent alone time with him one-on-one in the room physically when he was in a biological body in the 1970s, many times. Been in a room with him with 25, 30, 100, 150 people, probably 1,000 times. So I've had a lot of contact with him before all of this, and then I've had contact with him since he died as well. Um, so here's what he told us, and he's told me, and he showed me kind of the picture of what happened. When he died in 2008, he pretty much thought he was enlightened. So those of you who know anything about spirituality, you hear this term enlightened, what does that typically mean?
We'll get back to Grief to Growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian D Smith is an author and a life coach? If you're grieving or know someone who is grieving, his book Grief to Growth is a best-selling, easy-to-read book that might help you or someone you know. People work with Brian D Smith as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian D Smith and what he offers at www.grieftogrowth.com, www.grief2growth.com, or text growth, G-R-O-W-T-H, to 31996. If you'd like to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/grief2growth, www.patreon.com/grief2growth to make a financial contribution. And now back to Grief 2 Growth.
In the Vedic tradition, enlightened means you are perfect, you have reached the goal of growth, of personal growth. And you are perfect. Everything you do is right. You know everything. It's just a world of perfect perfection. Okay. That's the belief system about this idea of enlightenment. Okay, whether you're Buddhist, Vedic, remember Buddhism comes out of the Vedic tradition. I'm just referring to it as the Vedic view. Okay. Well, George is a little bit more This is George's personality. He's a little bit more indirect. I'm a little bit more direct. He's a little bit more indirect. He says, Maharishi thought he had at least a 50-50 chance of being enlightened. No, Maharishi thought he was enlightened. Maharishi thought, no, this is it. This is it. I'm off the wheel of karma. There's a phrase that they use in the Vedic tradition. I'm off the wheel of karma. I don't have to come back anymore. That's it. Everything I've been doing all these lifetimes before and now this one, you know. I thought, millions— I'm responsible for millions and millions of people learning TM alone, never mind other kinds of meditation, but Transcendental Meditation alone, millions and millions of people. There were, you know, 20,000 to 40,000 people a month were learning in the U.S. when I was teaching in the 1970s. A month, every month. It was crazy, right? So Maharishi thought, oh, I'm enlightened this time. And he dies. He biologically dies. Again, we know from other talks with Brian D Smith and other people he's had on this show, we don't die die, you know, we, our soul continues, but our physical biological body, yeah, it dies. So that died, that part of Maharishi died. All right. And now he's on the other side. And the way I describe it, and you guys kind of can get at my personality, even if you're just watching this for the first time, I'm kind of an informal guy. So it's like Maharishi sitting there. And he's like, uh, what happened? Uh, still, uh, marshy. I didn't— I, I died. I, I could see my body down there, and, uh, I'm still here. I didn't merge. That's the idea with, with enlightenment, you see, is, is that if you physically, biologically die and you are spiritually— this is the belief system in the Vedic system You're spiritually, mentally perfect. You've worked everything out. You're perfect now. The belief system is that you merge, your consciousness merges with the ocean, the big cosmic soup that I call it, big cosmic soup. You're just, you lose your individuality. That is the belief system. You exist no more. As an individual. All right. So sometimes, actually, you and I talked about this briefly on a previous session, Brian D Smith. The idea of a water molecule merging with the ocean, I think, is not a bad analogy. But you got to understand the analogy. The water molecule still retains itself as a water molecule, even though it is part of this vast ocean of water molecules. So you could still feel connected with things. I do many times, you know, just— I've had that experience thousands and thousands and thousands of times. I, I have it now all the time, and I'm still in a physical body, last I checked. Yeah, yeah. Otherwise we have a new Zoom, a Zoom feature here, but I don't think we do. It's a, you know, it's a— it— that connection. So I do, I've not lost my water molecule-ness, even though I've had that, I get the connection. So I think it's a good analogy. It's, it's the analogy is misunderstood. The analogy of the water molecule, you know, rejoining with the, you know, with the ocean and so forth. It's not a bad analogy. It's misinterpreted. So the water molecule does not lose its individuality when it's connected with all other water molecules. It is not. Right? It doesn't stop being a water molecule, right? So that's the— so the, you know, that's a point of clarification you can interview other people on when they use that analogy. When they— when they say, well, we merge, I said, well, wait a minute, does the water molecule still exist? Yeah, it does. So that's that. So Maharishi is having that experience. He feels like, oh, I feel so open and expanded and connected. But I still remember who I am. I'm still Maharishi. I still remember who I was. And then, then this is again the Kelvin Chin informal version of the story that Maharishi showed me. It's like, it's like, it's like these guys over in the card table in the corner of the room over there, and they go, hey dude, Maharishi, come over here, uh, we need to talk. And it's Jesus and Jehovah and Shankara and about 10 or 15 or 20 other of these gurus and ancient spiritual teachers from all these traditions who are all sitting at this— again, I'm just making this up— they're sitting over here in the corner playing cards or whatever, you know, whatever, they're just sitting there chatting. But this is the Kelvin Chin, uh, institution of humor. Uh, and, and Maharishi goes, yeah, and they start talking and they have a— again, Kelvin Chin humor— they have a come-to-Jesus meeting and they, and they start fessing up with each other that, yeah, we didn't merge either. We thought we were going to— we didn't. None of us have merged. None of us. None of all of these spiritual teachers. Paramahansa Yogananda's over there, and there's a bunch of Buddhist teachers over there from, you know, the Buddhist tradition, uh, are over there. And they said, yeah, we didn't, we didn't merge either. We thought we would. We thought we were done. There is no done done. That's, that's one of the takeaways of the 30th November talk. So again, the, the, this group that you'll hear George refer to, that gave him this download of information of ideas, they call themselves the movement. And the, and the reason they call themselves the movement is simply because 7,000 to 10,000 years ago when they all started chatting with each other on the other side, so about humanity, they said, wow, if we could get any movement at all in a positive direction, we've accomplished something. So that's why they started calling themselves The Movement, evidently. And this talk, 30th November 2014, that you can see on the website, is the result of that discussion amongst those members of the movement that I've kind of elucidated, um, to you here.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's fascinating to me. And, and so to— and as someone who's listened to the talk, and it is, as you said, it's about 3 hours long, so I broke it up into chunks. I walk every morning, I listen to it. Yeah. Um, you know, there's some concepts I think we have, like when you mentioned Jehovah was there you know. And so a lot of Christians equate Jehovah with God, and, and God being a perfect being. Um, and so maybe you could clarify for us some of these, some of these characters and who they are.
Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about Jehovah a little bit here. So Jehovah— because I've had conversations with Jehovah since I had never had any conversation. Well, maybe I did, but I don't remember. Having had conversations with Jehovah before. Uh, but Jehovah, let's just say, let's get this out of the way, Jehovah is a very, very powerful being, okay? So anything you hear me say about Jehovah or Jesus or John the Baptist, aka Maharishi, or Shankara, or anybody, um, is not to, uh, reduce or lower in your minds. I do not intend to lower in your minds the, the, the power of their minds, okay? Um, at the same time, they are more like you and me than most of us probably would realize, okay? And I first started having that experience, quite frankly, in 1970s when, when I met with Maharishi. You know, was he a powerful guy? Yeah, I got a headache every time. Sometimes I was with him because I would just start releasing so much stress in his presence. Okay, but, but, but did he— did I see him make mistakes sometimes and just do things off the cuff? Absolutely. You know, I experienced them personally with him. So, you know, do this and it'll work out. When it didn't work out, and I said, well, how come? I, you know, I'm gonna do this and this and this, this worked out. He said, oh good, glad Good that you decided to do that. So I would change sometimes the way that he would say when I was national leader of this country's organization, TM organization back then, you know, I'd say, no, I'm going to do it this way. And he said, okay, how'd it work? And I said, well, it worked. He said, oh, good. I'm glad you did that. So it doesn't take away their power by that little story that I just told you. That's happened over millennia, okay, with each of them. All right, that said, Jehovah does not view himself as capital G God in the way that many of us do or did. All right, um, he's a very powerful mind, very powerful consciousness, soul, spirit, consciousness, whatever word you want to use. I use simple English, I just, I use the word personality or mind. He's very, very powerful, very wise, loving, all of that. That people probably know about him, think about him. I think those— that's all accurate. But does he have the answers to everything? No. And so that's what he means, capital G God. So he's not— he doesn't view himself that way. That said, he's okay if people want to continue viewing him that way. It's okay. He doesn't— he's not here to change. I'm not here to change belief systems. He isn't. George isn't. Uh, none of the members of the Holy Tradition are here to say thou shalt. That whole approach, the thou shalt approach that existed 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, has changed. That's one of the major messages of the 30th November 2014 talk, is this notion of free will, is that letting people figure things out And Maharishi convinced the other members of the movement, to his credit, in 2008, right after he died, he convinced them to be more open and transparent with all of us. And then they gave this download and they talked about the prophetic approach. For example, you heard, you hear that at the beginning, George, the 30th November talk. George talks about the pro— what was called the prophetic approach. Send a prophet down. And if the prophet down, uh, whatever, you know the math here better than the history, better than I do, Brian. You know, like how many thousands of years ago in the Old Testament, whatever, you send them, you send that prophet down and so forth, and they do this. Oh, and then people start listening. Well, what would the— what was some of those early messages? Well, basically it was stuff like don't kill other people, don't, you know, you know, love other people and don't kill them, you know. Because what they— the movement was trying to do was to initially you know, stop so much killing and cruel behavior, we'll call it, okay, we'll just put it summarily in that kind of category. And get people to move in a direction that's more communally helpful, you know, socially helpful. So hey, maybe you should get a job, that kind of idea, you know, that karma-dharma ideas kind of were born out of that. Hey, there's consequences to your actions, the whole karma thing. And dharma, oh, maybe you should do a job that's helpful for other people and take some stress off yourself and stop figuring, worrying about you doing the right thing and do something. You know, a lot of people were just sitting around. This was what, remember, we're talking 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. And so they were, the movement members were brainstorming these ideas. And so they would send out a prophet and say, okay, here's a message, we want you to go teach this. And they started teaching that message, and then they'd come back, and people were watching from the other side. Again, those viewers that— your audience, you have a large audience who knows that, or has heard at least, whether they know it from personal experience or not, that, you know, our loved ones can see us from the other side. So the movement members of the movement are watching what the prophet that they you know, who incarnated as a prophet. The soul incarnates as a prophet, comes down as Prophet so-and-so, whether it's Elijah or one of the other many prophets, the names of which you know, Brian, I don't. And, uh, and they, and they, and they, and they're spreading a message. Okay, fine. And they, and they're checking and say, well, how's that work out? You know. So then fast forward, what happened with Jehovah was Jehovah started seeing that We'll call them— George doesn't use this word, but this phrase, but I'm going to use this phrase with you guys, you'll know what this means. There were unintended consequences. There were unintended consequences of some of the principles that they were teaching, because some of the teachings would go off the rails, as they do sometimes. Hello, communication. You know, you're communicating to, you know, millions or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of humans. You know, it's like, you know, you sit around, you people have, you know, I'm sure you either know if you've done it yourself when you were in kindergarten, first grade or something, you sit around a circle, you know, there's 25 kids and they tell a story and you see how the story gets changed by the time 25 people tell the same story. By the time it gets to you, it's like nothing resembling the first hurt the first iteration of the story. Well, imagine that happening tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands or millions of times with some of these teachings. So it goes way off the rails. And this whole idea of karma— Jehovah saw this whole idea of karma went so off the rails that it wasn't just, oh, you got consequences to your actions, you should be more conscious of what you're doing, don't hurt people, and that kind of thing— to where people was feeling so guilty and worried that they'd have so many mountains of— the mountain of karma so many miles high that it would take them 100 million lifetimes to ever peck away at this, which was never part of the teaching initially, right? But that got added in. And so Jehovah, without saying anything— so let me explain something. This is another insight here for the listeners, because George does not get into explaining this in great detail, uh, in the talk. And this confused me actually when when I first heard the talk. So Jehovah talks about himself in this talk. Again, by the way, George is not channeling this talk. George was given a download, and I would visit George over that next 11 months when I was organizing the talk, and I'd fly up to visit him. And, and, and it started out like a, you know, a stack of notes like this, and then over the next 11 months he got more and more information, more information. Those of you can't see my finger, it's like getting bigger and bigger, and it's— and eventually had like an inch and a half to 2-inch you know, high, high stack of notes, start out about a half an inch. So he get all this download of information. That's what he's talking about in 30th November. He's not channeling like a psychic in during the talk. Okay, so, but in the talk, Jehovah says, ask George to say, ask George to say, he needs specifically, Jehovah specifically asked George to use these words, that Jehovah lied to the other members of the movement and started another project. We call it the Jehovah Project and then the Jesus Project. So I already talked about the Jehovah Project, which is the prophetic approach, right? Mm-hmm. And then later, the Jesus Project, which we'll talk about in a sec. But the point is that he left the— what we now know as India back 10,000 years ago, there were no countries, but that part of the world in the Himalayas, okay. Is where they would incarnate and do these experiments for the most part with the people in that sector of the world, let's say. And then Jehovah left that sector of the world and he went to Mesopotamia. Well, that's, you know, the Middle East, you know, Iraq, what we now know as Iraq, Iran, that area, okay? The Euphrates River, Mesopotamia, that area and so forth. Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, that area and so forth. And then, uh, what we now know as Nazareth, Jerusalem, Middle East, Lebanon, etc., Israel, and so forth. Okay, Syria, that area. All right, he left the Himalayas and went there, Jehovah did, and he did this Jehovah and Jesus project experiment. Okay, he says in the 30th November he wanted George to say, I lied by not telling the rest of you. It wasn't really a lie, lie. I mean, the way I think of Lai. He wanted that to be made clear, I think, for teaching purposes, for people who think of him as God, that he's, you know, he can't do anything wrong kind of a thing, to know that he was trying to help and, you know, and he didn't tell his friends because he didn't, he wanted to just, he wanted his experiment in the Middle East to be without interference from other people. I think that's, that's my interpretation. Okay. All right. I may be putting words in Jehovah's mouth here, but, but that's my takeaway. It's not really a lie, like, you know, it's like, hey, I'm gonna go do my thing. Because why? He saw, as I said, karma-dharma thing going off the rails, really creating suffering in people in what we now call the India Peninsula, Indian Peninsula. Okay, that part of Asia. So he did the Jehovah project, the prophetic thing. And that wasn't working as well as he thought. And then he started, he came and started the Jesus Project. That's where I got involved. So you know my involvement with the Jesus Project. So I'm not, you know, I'm like an outlier, you know, I kind of do my own thing. And, but I was brought in, I first met actually George, when he was part of this movement group 4000 years ago when I was an Egyptian priest. And he was in Egypt, obviously. But he was a Jew in Egypt at the time, George, that lifetime. But he was part of this project and so forth. Back then, I went off, I did my own thing and so forth. And then I got recruited back in on the other side to be part of the Jesus Project. So the Jesus Project was John the Baptist. And many of you know this from— this is This is somewhat described in the Bible. You know, not everything in the Bible is, you know, accurate. We know that because it was written many, many hundreds of years, um, over, over many hundred years, several hundred year period after Jesus died and so forth. And Paul really is the one who is the, is, is, is the, uh, is the father of Christianity, not Jesus really, uh, and we know that from religious history. But the idea is that, well, the actual concept of the Jesus Project was that John the Baptist would go in and plow the field, kind of start getting people thinking more inwardly and so forth. And then Jesus would come into the picture and they would work together. That was the plan. That was the soul plan. So many of you who are watching this know the idea of soul plan. So was there a soul plan on the other side? Yes. And we call it the Jesus Project, but you can call it whatever you want. We call it the Jesus Project. There was a soul plan for John the Baptist and Jesus to come in. Now, also, some of you may know just from your biblical studies that it's true that they were cousins. So their mothers were cousins, really. Elizabeth, who was John the Baptist's mother, and Mary— Miriam— Mary, we in English, we call Mary, but westernized, but Miriam, was Jesus's mother. Well, the two mothers were cousins, and so Jesus and John the Baptist, the two biological children, were obviously related. Uh, uh, interesting, um, George does not mention this in the talk, but I'm going to give you guys another little insight. Mary, John, uh, I mean George's, uh, sister who died in George's house, right? Mary, her, her birth name Mary Hammond, but her married name Mary Iber, I-B-E-R. Mary, um, in a previous lifetime was Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother. So there he is. There's all this, like, there's a lot of people talk about this idea of soul groups. You hear that a lot in a lot of these spiritual Communities will talk about that. Is there a reality to it? Yes, there is. You know, many of us come back. My kids and I have been together— my children this lifetime I'm talking about, right? We've been together and we have independent memory recollections of that, you know. So it doesn't always happen, but it— can it happen? Absolutely, yes. And so you'll see this— there's a lot of weaving in of personalities in this spiritual movement that we're talking about here. They call themselves the movement, that have worked together for many thousands of years, including many, um, including actually all of the 12 apostles and many of the 20 to 30 to 50 others who don't get any name recognition. They don't get any props in the Bible, right? They get— they're left out of the Bible. There's like— people don't realize there weren't just 12 apostles. I mean, yeah, there were 12 main apostles. Okay, fine. But there were like 20, 30, 40, 50 of us, right? Some of you who are watching this right now, if some of you— if this is emotionally what I'm talking about, if some of, if some of what I'm saying— and when you watch the 30th November talk, some people were crying in the audience when they were sitting there. I mean, just like, what, you know, why? Because you were there. You were probably there when all of this went down. And so I— those of you don't know me, you don't know how I work. I, I give people free phone conversation worldwide about anything. And so specifically, some people have found me just through the internet and contacted me because of some very, very close connection that they had with Jesus or John the Baptist or any of these players here, but especially Jesus. And why Jesus? Because those of us who were there when he was crucified, it was a shock, it was a horrific thing, and it has scarred so many thousands of people who witnessed it then, physically, biologically witnessed it. They were there, physically there. It scarred them so deeply that they've been carrying it around for thousands of years. And many of them reach out to me and have found me, and I help them kind of work through that. Yeah, it's a very deep scar. Um, so anyway, um, the Jesus-John the Baptist project went off the rails because of that. Well, first because of John getting beheaded. All right, that was not part of the plan. We have a soul plan to come down and teach, and Jesus is teaching, John and Jesus teaching together. I was first studying with John the Baptist back then. And then my brother Andrew said, hey, you know, let's meet this guy, John the Baptist. That's how I met John the Baptist. And then we were both students of his. And then John, John the Baptist, we keep calling him John the Baptist, because John was— there's so many Johns, you know, in the Bible. But John the Baptist, So, uh, we— John told us, go study with Jesus. When he met Jesus, and he— that moment he met Jesus, I have a memory, one of my very clear past life memories that I'm adding to my book that I'm writing about my memories now, um, is me sitting on, on, on, on, on top of a rock, like a huge rock, like it's like a, like a, like the size of a small house rock, you know, like a big huge rock. You know, 12, 14 feet big rock up on the side of a hill, very dry, you know, arid area there. And on a hillside looking down at a river, probably the Jordan River, whatever, you know, but who knows. But a river, and John the Baptist is standing in there, you know, like waist deep or in the water baptizing people. There's this long line of people, like, like, I don't know, 100, 200 people long winding up this path in this, you know, you know, from the river. And that was the day that, that Jesus was in that line. I didn't know which one he was at the time. You know, I'm just looking. I'm probably— I'm sitting on this rock, and I'm probably looking down like half a football field, you know, 100, 150 feet, something like that. I'm looking down. You know, uh, at least maybe 150, 200 feet down. I'm looking at John way down there in the river, and there's this long line of people, so I can't really see faces or anything. And, um, but that was the day that John told us he saw Jesus, and they looked eye to eye. And then they, you know, the eye— these people sometimes say the eyes are the window to the soul, you know. You look in, and I get emotional just saying this, you know. He looked in John looked at Jesus's eyes and he knew who he was. You know, they knew each other. They knew, oh, there you are. Yeah, yeah, take it a while. So, um, yeah, but that whole went off the rails, you know. It's just, uh, and, and so overcoming the fear of death was a big part of the message. That's one of the things that you'll hear George talk about in the 30th November talk. Let's just end this and you can, you can ask me some more questions. But, um, overcoming the fear of death, one concept. Uh, another concept is the turning within. I use the term turning within. George briefly mentions it in the talk. That's— I call my meditation turning within meditation now, right? I used to just call it meditation. Another concept is the transcending cruelty idea, getting— how do we deal with people who are abusive and cruel? And yet at the same time, we're not— we don't— we can't force people to do stuff that they don't want to do because free will still operates. So where does— how does the rubber meet the road there? So that's, you know, you've heard me talk about this in some of my teachings since, right? And the idea of friendship, friendship replacing the idea of guru or divinity worship. In other words, no master-disciple guru. Those of you don't know what that means, That means you're the disciple, the student does whatever the master, the teacher, the guru tells them to do without question. Blind faith, we call it. Okay, and the same thing with divinity. No, no blind worshiping. Jehovah now views his, his request— some might say, some of you might say, his demand, uh, for blind faith in the past a mistake. That in fact he views it as having set people who with very deep devotion towards him or others, set them up to be abused by others who are not so loving and kind as Jehovah. And so Jehovah now views that as, as a long-term mistake with a short-term loving goal. But a long-term mistake because it has set people up to who are very devoted to be devoted to everybody. And that you— and, and you— and, and the filter always needs to be up, in my opinion. That's Kelvin Chin language, not Jehovah language. That's my language. That we need to create boundaries when necessary and, and make appropriate choices, uh, when people are cruel and abusive or hurtful. Unkind, let's just say. So yeah, that kind of devotion works with somebody like Jehovah, but very few others, let's just say. So those are the— so some of the ideas. Go ahead, Brian.
Yeah, well, I, I want to say I did listen to the talk. It's been a couple years ago. I definitely want to listen to it again because there is, there's so much there. But I, I find the, the arc of the whole thing fascinating. And, and the idea of various projects and how it ties together the major religions that we know about. And it kind of busts some of our myths, like, you know, like Jehovah could be very, very good and very, very powerful. But we say, well, Jehovah is omniscient, and Jehovah is omnipotent, where apparently that's not really the case. And I think that's a kind of an important distinction for us to make. And, and you could see, like, some of the— as you're talking, and I, I love Jesus, I've always been a big fan of Jesus, and you can see him trying to get this message out, and it comes through the gospels a little bit, but then it gets crushed by the church, right?
Exactly. Yeah, Paul changed the teaching, and the whole Jesus dying on the cross for— to save other people and to free them of their sins and all that was a horrific, um, I'm sorry to say, I'll be very direct. I mean, it was a horrific, um, derailment of Jesus's teaching. It was never part of this. And, and, and to your point about being omnipotent, uh, if Jehovah was omnipotent, he would have stopped the crucifixion of his beloved Jesus. So they, they're not biological father and son, but they have They still do. They, they have a very close relationship, the two souls, the two personalities. They're very, very close. And it's as if father and son, Jesus and Jehovah, kill him. He would have stopped that if he could, but you cannot interfere with other— with the free will choices of— in this, in that case, probably hundreds and thousands of minds, all of the minds who were demanding that Jesus be King of the Jews were all complicit in Jesus's murder. I'm sorry, you know, but they were. And so, you know, there were a lot of, a lot of responsibility, uh, you know, to be passed around there for that, for Jesus's crucifixion. It wasn't just one person or two people, you know.
Right, right. Well, exactly. And, you know, I tell people, and I've been a Christian, I was raised as a Christian my whole life, and some of this stuff to just didn't make any sense that, you know, God killed his own son, or Jesus sacrificed himself. I'm like, well, if he was going to sacrifice himself, then why didn't he crawl up on an altar? Why did he have to be crucified?
That doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, Paul created that. And Paul is a very charismatic person. I remember Paul, and I liked him. And he agreed to be— you know, remember, you remember Paul, uh, never met Jesus. He never knew him. He was never in his physical presence. He never heard him talk. He came on the scene 3 and a half years after Jesus died. Um, but we, we, we, we shared Jesus' teachings with Paul, and Paul went out and teach— to teach, and he was a very effective teacher, uh, very charismatic, charismatic guy and so forth. But then he started— he went off the rails after he had this vision. And I think he may have had a vision, but it wasn't a vision. And he said somebody started calling Jesus Christ. That's when this whole Christ thing— none of us, we didn't never call Jesus Christ, you know. But, but, but that's a Greek thing, right? So Paul had this whole background in Greek. He's, you know, spoke Greek, read and wrote Greek. It's over, you know, it's from Tarsus, which is now Turkey part. And in his family, what, moved when he was 9 years old down to the area wherever in Nazareth Jerusalem-ish area, in that area, wherever, whatever town I can remember. But, um, he, he, uh, he inserted this whole concept, and he may have had a vision, and Jesus may actually have come to him and said, Paul, what the heck are you doing killing my people? What are you doing? Right. You know, one of my, one of my friends this lifetime who I've met fairly recently was stoned to death and remembered back then 2,000 years ago, and remembers Paul sitting on a stool leaning against a stucco wall with a smile on his face while he was being stoned. My friend this lifetime was being stoned 2,000 years ago, stoned to death for teaching Jesus's teachings. Paul was sitting there watching him. So I mean, really, so, so, you know, no wonder Jesus came to Paul and said, hey, what are you doing? But then Paul conflated that and expanded that into this whole notion that he derailed the teaching but created this great path towards what we know as Christianity today, which is not Jesus's teaching.
Yeah, exactly. So it, to me, again, as I hear this, it makes sense that there would be another go-rounds, right? And so these beings that some people worship as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all those, all those things, they're still, they're still experimenting, I think is the word you use. They're still, they're still trying to help guide us in the best path for humanity.
Yeah, and I, and you'll hear in the 30th November talk, again, teaser alert, Uh, you know, you'll hear when you watch it, those of you who haven't watched it yet, you know, you'll see that it, it, it, it going forward is an encouragement by these spiritual leaders of the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Vedic traditions to live our lives exercising our freedom of free will, and at the same time making choices that are less cruel. Because why? Because cruelty does not really feed our happiness, although cruel people— for cruel people it does in the short term, but long term it doesn't. Short term it works for cruel people, right? They make people feel terrible. Around them, oh, I feel better all of a sudden. But the, the, but the, but the takeaway, uh, one of the takeaway teachings that, again, these are— there's so much packed into this 3 hours. George can't get into the detail that I can get into in, in, in my— in the, in the subsequent talks. And we'll get into in the Q&A when we talk on 30th November, when people— after people watch this. But one of the things is to, is to just develop and turn within and strengthen ourselves from within more, more, more foundationally, we'll say. And therefore, the cruel aspects that we all kind of have— nobody's perfect— start to drop away. And so that's a takeaway that George just very lightly touches on, you know, in the talk, because he was running out of time. He thought it would be a 2-hour talk. And the other funny thing that you guys— you'll see me in the audience, we sit next to my kids. Um, but what I did was at some point, uh, I knew it was because I was looking at my watch. I'm like, wow, it's like 2 hours. It's like we're already like 2 hours. I was walking around waving at George to kind of get his attention. And so it's the— we had 5 cameras there, and the manager of the video crew was like waving it. He couldn't see us because the lights were so bright. He couldn't see anything. Yeah. And so, um, then finally he looked at his watch, and you'll see at the end he goes Oh my God, it's almost 3 o'clock! It's okay, George, we're trying to get your attention. Kids start throwing rocks at him, you know.
Anyway, well, there's a lot, there's a lot to cover. And even this conversation with you, we've gone, I guess, about an hour or so. And I could, we could keep going because there's so, it's so deep, and it's so rich. And for people that want to explore, really want to understand the history of their faith and where it came from, and how it was derailed. And it was Paul, but it wasn't just Paul, it was also the Roman Empire. Absolutely. Yeah, I, I, I, it's a really good point.
I'm glad you said that because it's not just Paul. Paul— and look, Paul also borrowed ideas from Zoroastrianism and this and that and probably other religions that we don't even know the names of because they don't have— weren't written down and so forth. People, people ought to realize that there was very little written down stuff back then. I mean, it's like, I researched this and anywhere from 1 to 15%, this is what the historians have estimated, 1 to 15% of the population then could read and write. And so closer to 15% would be probably the wealthier people, right? But most people are probably 1 to 3% of most of the masses could read and write. That's probably accurate. You know, that means 85 to 99% of the people were illiterate. So how did this— anything get around back then was word of mouth. And that's the telling the story thing around 25 people in a circle, except it's not 25, it's 25,000 or 250,000 people in a circle telling the story, right? So, so it's not just Paul, you're right. And then it's lots of other people. Look, there's Tertullian, there's Justin the Martyr, and there's all these that we know names of. There's like how many dozens and hundreds of others we don't know the names of because they were never written down by anybody, right? Scribed. Nobody scribed it. You know, there was no scribe. And so, so it was just all these ideas and ideas and ideas. And then, you know, comes together into this thing we call a Bible. They voted on that in around— they think it's around 360-ish. AD, right? You know, in Nicaea, you know, you got 300, 300 to 400 bishops, these leaders of the Christian church at the time, and they're deciding what the official Bible is going to be. Before that, it was all over the place.
Yeah. And they left out some good stuff. They left out the Gospel of Thomas, which is, is a beautiful book that should have been put into the canon. And other books that shouldn't have been in the canon, they did put in.
They did put in. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the Book of Revelation, for example.
Book of Revelation should never have been in the Bible.
Yeah, what is that doing in there? But it was a, it was, it was a, it was a dis— it was a what? It was a dispute, not a unanimous vote. It was a dispute, but they voted, and the 300 or plus bishops voted. And I don't know what the exact vote was, but, you know, it was probably like, you know, you know, you know, like 200 to 100. It was like not— it was not unanimous that to put the Book of Revelation in with Apocalypse and, and all this stuff. And who Yeah. And so, but it's in the Bible, so people think, oh, a lot of politics going on. And you're right, it's not just all Paul's fault, but he does need to own his, his, his role in this. And he really did, um, do a number on Jesus's teachings and, and do a disservice. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so, so yeah, if this— I hope this helps give you a little bit more context to the 30th November talk. When any of you in the audience, you know, go to watch it, it's 30thnovember.com. Um, and, uh, and there's a lot more stuff, Brian. Actually, we didn't talk about this, but just a quick one sentence on this. There's a lot of stuff on that website that's not just the talk too. You got to get the talk and you got the Q&A afterwards, which goes for another 45 minutes. And then, but there's other material on there. Oh, one thing I did want to mention, you know, um, there is a— and maybe you can put this in the, in your, uh, description on the, on the YouTube, uh, or wherever you put this, or, you know, wherever you put this across the, uh, put the link to the letter that I wrote. There's 3 letters that, that, that we, after the fact, we wrote this after the fact Maybe 3 or 4 weeks later, I wrote a letter, George wrote a letter, and John Moore wrote a letter. John Moore is a guy who sits— he's— you'll see him on the video, he's sitting in a white suit and he's in the front row sitting alone in the middle of this, you know, right in the front. Uh, I'm off on the side. John is sitting right there in a white suit. He and I and George did not know each other, and so he got a separate visitation from Maharishi and the movement, the group, holy tradition, teachers and so forth. Before, about 2 months before, I think September or October, before the November event, they came and told him he should, he should go and he should tell people this is for real and they should go. There are about, I heard, I later heard about from 20 different people around the world because they word got around in the grapevine that I was organizing it, 20 people I didn't know were telling me from England, Australia, that they were getting visitations from the other side saying, oh, you should check this out, livestream it or whatever if you can't go, blah blah blah. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, uh, those 3 letters that, um, that are on the website, but they're kind of buried in the website, it's under Maharishi's messages. You'll see a dropdown, Maharishi's messages, and then there you'll see the 3 letters from the 3 of us. Give people a context. That's why I suggest that people read those short letters from us first. Okay, give a little bit more context. That's all. It'll help. That's great.
Sounds great. Well, we'll put, uh, we'll put a bunch of links in the show notes because there, there's a, there's a lot of information here. Uh, it's, it's pretty dense, but I think it's, it's worth going through if you want to have some clue what's been going on in mankind for the last 7,000, 10,000 years. Why we have these different religions, why they seem to be evolving, where they went off the rails, and more, most importantly, what we need to be doing today, which I love this, this talk about, you know, more of a friend than a teacher guru thing. Make sure, you know, we exercise our free will, because so many religions take that away from us. You know, I see so many people saying, well, I can't do this because the Bible says, that that's not good, even though it goes against our common sense, right? We know this, you know, we know that that makes no sense, but the Bible says it, so that's what we have to do.
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yep, yeah. The going forward, the how do we apply some of these principles, that's what Maharishi— to answer the question, some people may say, how come it's Maharishi, Maharishi that, you know, George is talking in the talk or any— if you see on the website and so forth, it's because he's the one who inspired the others in the movement to come forth and, and be more transparent with us. That's why. So they said, oh, we're going to get— well, this Kelvin Chin terminology, 21st century English— we'll give you the branding rights, basically, you know, put your name all over it. Okay, fine, you know, that's why. But it's really— it's not his ideas per se, Margie's. It's he was the initiator of this. And then, okay, fine, that's why you see his name and you hear his name mentioned so many times and so forth. But it's really a joint effort, you know, by all of the folks. Awesome.
As always, great to see you again. Thanks for doing this. Um, and I look forward to seeing people on the 30th of November, 2022. Great. Yep, yep, yep.
We'll have a great Q&A. Great. Thanks, Brian. You take care.
Enjoy your afternoon.
Thanks for listening to Grief to Growth. Brian hopes that you find this episode helpful and will come back for future episodes. Brian's bestselling book, Grief to Growth: Planted, Not Buried, is a great resource for anyone who is coping with grief or knows someone who is. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support it, there are 3 things you can do to help. The first is to share the podcast with someone that you think it will help. The second is to go to iTunes, rate and review the episode. The third way you can support the podcast is by becoming a patron. Head over to www.patreon.com/grief2growth. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/grief, the number 2, growth, and sign up to make a small monthly donation. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus content and knowledge that you are helping to spread the message of grief to growth. For more about Brian and grief to growth, visit www.grief2growth.com.
Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 Lessons That You Can Learn From the Near-Death Experience Without Going Through All the Trouble of Dying to Learn Them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons. And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe that NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. Www.grief2growth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.
More from Brian


John Promised He Would Come Through in Music. Then Marcie Heard Him. with Marcie Dean | EP 499


Healing After Suicide Loss: Breaking the Silence That Keeps Survivors Stuck | Jayne Madigan EP |


Empath Energy Protection: How to Stop Carrying Everyone Else's Pain | Lisa Campion


Remembering PMH Atwater: The Near-Death Experience Pioneer Who Died Three Times | EP 496






