Speculations with and About God: The Book of the Joulum

By Allen C. Bien

Without meaning to startle the reader, I will tell you this may be one of the most important books ever written.
Topics of great and vast import are dealt with adequately and profound questions are answered. Questions such as: What is life? What is matter? When and how does an individual acquire a soul?
This work also briefly deals with universalist issues such as the coming into being of a religion with one God, an international spiritualsocietal fellowship bringing about one world, and the beginnings of one economic, political, and social system.
The book is generally intellectually friendly, a must-read for all that still quest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465387714

Allen C. Bien

The author, Allen C. Bien, is 76 years old and is a retired psychiatric social worker and psychotherapist. He holds an MSW degree (LCSW-C Licensure) and is a state eligible addictions counselor. He is a life-long freshwater fisherman and an avid and omnivorous reader. He has previously published a short story and one other book, Humanity Anonymous. He has for many years studied the social sciences and philosophy and closely watched and noted the foibles and fables of himself and his fellow men. Mr. Bien, at this point, prefers to use a pen name and withholds the revealing demographic information about himself. He may be contacted at [e-mail]

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Contents

Acknowledgement

Introduction

I Consciousness and Self-Awareness

II The Matter of Matter

III

IV

V

VI The Ambience: The Spirit of God

VII Joulum Theory—Good, Evil, and Justice

Karma

Free Will and Its Relationship to Joulum and Karma

Life: The Joulum

The Joulum and One World

The Joulum and One God

The Joulum and One System

Joulum Theory and Peace

Unity and Joulum

Joulum Theory and the Sciences

Truth, Beauty, and the Joulum

Epilogue

Postscript

This book is dedicated to all those that came before and all those that will come after on the QUEST.

Acknowledgement

Cover art by courtesy of C-KAT Studios, Baltimore Maryland.

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Introduction

For some unknown reason, I am moved to begin this introduction with a bit of humor or what passes with me as humor. Yes, I have been accused by several of my friends of writing relentlessly serious, heavy material.

Dare I plead guilty? Anyway, forward with the humor. Allons-y, march on.

Some years ago, when I was in college, I began placing what I considered to be an academic joke in every paper I turned in to my instructors. For example, in one course (African history), I read of the explorer Henry Stanley, the man who became famous by finding the missing Dr. Livingstone who was seemingly lost on the Dark Continent. It seems that while searching for Livingstone, Stanley was going up a tributary of the Congo River when his boat and crew were attacked by natives known to be cannibals. He and his crew eventually repelled the attackers, but here comes my academic joke. I wrote, Stanley not only did not want to be killed by these savages, but the thought of being both killed and eaten lent added zeal to his defense and greatly improved his marksmanship. My professor did not miss this funny. He wrote above the word zeal. Indeed!

Not very funny, you say. Oh well, so much for humor.

Now how did I come to write this work? As you know, if you read a previous book of mine, Humanity Anonymous, I believe I talk to God and God in turn talks to me.

Do I see or hear another indeed? Oh well, again I say, Allons-y, march on. Truthfully, I feel much of this book was, in a sense, dictated to me. I was, I believe, or I temporarily became a channel. Prior to writing this work, I prayed that God keep me and my childlike vain ego out of the endeavor, and I believe He, God, whom Bob Dylan once called the Captain of Us All, gave me the words and ideas contained in this book. You can believe this or not, as you choose, but if your doubt and disbelief inclines you to forego reading this work, I humbly request your willing suspension of disbelief as many other foregoing authors have requested.

I realize this book is very unusual, groundbreaking—

even perhaps a startling entity, but please read on.

Remember, the philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer once said, "There is a trait that will keep one in everlasting and eternal ignorance, and that is contempt prior to investigation!" (emphasis mine). So I dare say to you, I believe this book is Divinely inspired. I hope you agree once you have finishing reading it, but please, for now, reserve judgment.

I also feel this book has answers to age-old questions—questions that are material, psychological, and spiritual, and perhaps even scientific. It addresses the existential dilemmas of teleology and ontology (origin and purpose) and many related philosophical and theological issues and conundrums. What and why is man? Whence come the universe? What is life? What is matter?

This work, I feel, for now at least and for a beginning, adequately and accurately answers these questions.

And yes, you will meet the Joulum; a fortuitous, salutary meeting no doubt, or at least, I fervently hope so.

Joulum theory and the soon-to-be-proven reality of the Joulum’s existence can and will change the society and the world itself over time.

I have excluded no facets of present society in my last statement—nor even of academic discipline, no current thinking, religious or secular, no mores, and present institutions. We must, after all, we—men and mankind—we must grow up, lose our regressive impeding insane vanity and egotism, and stop feeling sorry for ourselves collectively and in our individual selves. We are all one, and a vain prideful individuality is only a very minute aspect, albeit an important one, of our overall being and our desirable unity, eventually.

I fear I have become serious once again. But to continue, one elementary question is as follows: How does one, perhaps long out of practice, approach God anyway, at least initially? What could be or is the appropriate enlightened or modern word and attitude? Here, I proffer saying a prayer or two just for practice and introduction. I suggest the Serenity Prayer, by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, which has become an Alcoholics Anonymous mainstay.

The Serenity Prayer

God, please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

Thy will, not mine, be done.

This is a wonderful beginning approach to the Higher Power. I have written, within a similar format, a prayer I call the Willingness Prayer, which may also be a good starting point for the noviate.

The Willingness Prayer

God, please grant me the Strength, Power, Courage and Wisdom to do Thy Will,

The willingness to turn over to Thee what I cannot do, and the Grace and Intelligence to know the difference.

Thy will, not mine, be done.

Here I say no. No more introduction, and as always and before and once again,

Allons-y, march on.

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I

Consciousness and Self-Awareness

The question is, can pure consciousness embodied, so to speak, in total being or total existence, perceive itself? Can pure infinite complete mind be aware of itself—it’s totality and utter wholeness? Can the ultimate and only complete beholder behold itself fully? In other terms, therefore, can God—the Infinite and the Allness—perceive, observe, and contemplate Himself (or Herself or Itself)? Alone by Himself, does He, the utter totality, possess self-awareness and complete consciousness of Himself and His supreme singular existence?

Not if He remains both—total allness and totally alone—so He, I believe, has informed me! Not by Himself can He be aware completely of His totality!

However, what if He (and/or She and/or It) creates with and in His absolute mind, others (another intelligence)—a number of others—which would, of course, at best be necessarily incomplete minds?

Those incomplete minds will, at some point, sense their incompleteness and, therefore, will all possess in and relative to their own limited consciousness and awareness—a psychic, mental, and spiritual fissure (a rift or split, per se). This will occur in each individual and in the entire collectivity (the social body) of these others—these incomplete ones. These incomplete beings or minds will become restless and, hence, once aware of their split, will be ever cognizant of this fissure. They will eventually experience reflection on, along with realization of, this crack in their self-awareness and being. This reflection or awareness of incomplete being will create a sense of, and the perception of, relativity (them and me or, more cogently, I and thou) and duality or, more accurately and specifically, a perception and the idea of dualities’ existence when reflected on by that individual through the individual’s incomplete mind. Each individual will thus stand alone psychically. Each individual will be able to contemplate, perceive, and observe his own thoughts, emotions, and behavior; in other words, each will gain self-awareness and self-consciousness—all based on the original creation of others, bringing into being and eventually into individual mental focus both relativity and duality.

Consequently, again because of the individual intellect’s original incomplete state or incompleteness, each other, now possessing self-awareness and consequent self-consciousness, will seek to become complete! It will seek to regain its being before its own creation as an other; He or she will seek to regain their unity and will ardently strive to gain an ideal—to realize, conceptualize, and make real a complete state for himself or herself.

This, the regained acquisition of a completed state and the healing of the rift or fissure will become, over time, a constant quest or goal, and an ideal, conceptual, and a reality state to be attained. It will become a goal or object of supreme desire. It may become, eventually, a rather frustrated but accurately perceived preoccupation, indeed, even and for itself alone. This quest may evolve into a passion or near frenzy in the effort of the others, the alone ever to complete themselves, with some calling its varied manifestations and institutionalized embodiment of this effort to become whole religion or religious. Thus, to some individuals, it becomes an attempt to grow into and enhance what is termed religious or moral or, particularly, spiritual growth. Thusly, man seeks God (man’s only hope for completeness and regained unity—if only partial) and the Godhead in order to unify and heal his awareness of and existence in relativity and duality and, once again, be whole!

As for the Creator, God, who is utterly whole in Himself and already complete, complete and whole, in what for man is a totally ineffable, unimaginable completeness and is an entirely pure, both monistic and absolutely holistic selfness. He is complete with self-awareness and possesses no self-consciousness within His totality as He fills everything and all voids.

Thus, this God’s Allness and solitary aloneness will alter, and God now receives (and desires) even greater self-awareness and self-consciousness from His necessarily incomplete creation (man—the other intellect). As He opens Himself up to receive this self-awareness and self-consciousness. God perceives man’s varied approaches to Him and man’s many opinions, thoughts, deeds, and concepts of Him—again, as humanity engages in its quest for God and unity. God’s awareness of man’s thoughts and efforts, His creational fait accompli, and resultant self-awareness become, if He desires, a type of completion for the already complete! It becomes retrograde for God, to some degree, and empirically and experientially what man says, thinks, postulates, and overall, advances about Him—the Divine, comes back to Himself, back to God.

From these offspring (the parts of God’s totality, the parts of Himself he reproduced) created from ex nihilo or whole cloth, as numerous intelligent individual cognitive developing entities and from these creatures and their ideas and concepts and even deeds toward and about their Creator, God, He Himself obtains His enlarged self-awareness and self-consciousness. He (God), thus, recognizes Himself!

Also, He leads and guides, in an ultimate sense, man’s search for Him—man’s very opinions and the flow of ideas and activities, but consistent with and adherent within an enclosed freedom; such as it is, He has granted mankind (free will) to a degree.

There may exist, beyond human awareness, creational bias. The Lord, overall, controls and directs man’s attempts to demonstrate their sincere desire for regaining spiritual unity by, within the quest, their engaging in a progression and/or opinions, cognition, and supplication worthy of Him. Again the Lord, to some degree, controls the quest.

Thus, one can actually and logically posit or adduce—much like the old saw about the tree that falls in the woods with no one to hear it fall (does it really fall?)—that God exists because man seeks Him and man exists from this point of view. This construction is counterintuitive and perhaps irrational, of course. More accurately, ideal being creates less than ideal being, which in turn defines and creates its concepts of and responses to ideal being—His traits and attributes and qualities (with some Godly guidance and direction).

Thus, one recognizes the idea of God obtaining His self-awareness and self-consciousness and even to carry this thought out, His purpose, at least partially, from His creation (man). God, as it can be seen in truth, needs man and desires man’s feedback as much as man needs God to heal and dissolve duality and, thus, become whole once again.

Now, God has recognized and realized Himself through man’s perhaps inadequate but generally sincere efforts to attain wholeness. Also, God the Lord has an all-inclusive need to express love and create, and at times and overall always in the ultimate sense, to guide mankind’s quest for unity and man’s individual and collective growth and evolution.

Perhaps a word of caution is due here. An individual that ponders these truths should realize they speak to only one miniscule part of the Godhead’s totality, a tiniest aspect of God that some terms the world mind aspect of the Lord; others call it the atman; some call it the overself; etc.

Again, one could posit carrying these ideas further and say if God absorbed His Creation (man) back into Himself (pure mind and total creative energy or whatever), He would lose a portion of His self-awareness and self-consciousness. Also, thus God, in a sense, has experienced alien-induced self-consciousness and self-awareness by His own hand and creation that made Himself incomplete! He has created an incompleteness in Himself, at least potentially and of sorts. This addresses only the question of self-awareness and self-consciousness—the quid pro quo beginning of origin of man’s relationships to the Supreme One—the Creator. I believe all of man’s collectivity and man’s total world add up to only an incredibly minute segment of God’s overall Being or the Godhead but, nonetheless, an important segment.

To sum up to this point, not only are we (man) a part of God’s totality and universe, but we—mankind— partially create, at least in relation to our own existence, His reality, His identity, His self-awareness, and His ideas and concepts of His qualities vis-à-vis man and His purpose to some degree and how they relate Him to us (encompassing ideas of good and evil, right and wrong, etc.). These phenomena occur as mankind experiences their own humanity and their relativity, reality, and duality. Again, the incompleteness in man gives rise to man’s self-awareness and self-consciousness that in turn, to the created one’s thinking at least, gives rise to the individual consciousness as origin of, at least, again partially, God’s self-awareness and self-consciousness.

Of course, God’s incompleteness does not, in any final sense, really exist! And His creations and creatures, if completed by loss of their duality (death or enlightenment) and individualism, attain unity only by God’s decree or general purpose, and evolve through destiny. These are only manifestations of God completing Himself, once again, giving up a portion of His self-awareness that, however, He has now experienced and will remember. He is recompleting Himself by decreeing unity for some and becoming, once again, the complete totality as humans revolved in and over alternating cycles of awareness and reality/realities over time.

God will reabsorb His human creation eventually—at least in some ways—but their conception about and ideas of His existence will remain within whatever individuality they will retain and, therefore, remain part of the Godhead itself permanently. (Eventually, all should be individual and collective individualized being.) Once this fact is accepted, realized, and internally engaged, all experience and existence—all mankind, one individual, or all of us—have the capacity and potential to lose their duality and their feeling or sense of incompleteness or separation: to fill up the fissure or schism that exists within them all and attain the sought-for restoration, reconciliation, and release—attain unity with God. Some people today call this state Nirvana; others, enlightenment, etc. It exists here now and while we are alive. All men are capable of