| may 20, 2007 (0059us) vulnerability of the metamorphosing crab |
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A motley of governement, but I don't laugh at it. Lately people said that Nicolas Sarkozy was a despot still in his cocoon, but people realize that as a politician he is not afraid of sharing power with others and even mixing them up. This I cannot dislike in days when France has got into the buffers on the economic, social and even ethical terminal. We have to reverse, switch to a new line and restart the train. If this is feasible, which no one knows for sure, what was Nicolas Sarkozy likely to do other than make up an administration both heterogenous and acceptable? This man is smart. He eclectic and openminded looks like he was the opposite of political integrism, accordingly the opposite of religious integrism. Which may give us Arès Pilgrims a chance to see our expectations of freedom of conscience unshackled by this governement's total respect for it or even by its prompting it, who knows? But let's not lose ourselves in daydreams.
 I've just watched the picture of the new rulers standing up on the stair to the Elysee palace. They look embarrassed like wedding guests who do not know each other. What has stricken me most: the women. Apart from Mrs Allio-Marie, that stands out thanks to a white café waiter jacket, you can't see the women at first glance, the complete opposite of wedding female guests. "There would be seven ladies?" I wondered first. My forefinger flowed over the picture slowly, and then I counted seven women. How discreet!Outdated responses of the opposition parties. Mr Hollande "starts the proceedings to evict Mr. Kouchner from the Socialist Party..." In this party the concept of man has gone back to the concept of the regimented man. Now all we can do is wait for the general election to be over (on June 17, 2007), because I doubt whether this administration can prove capable or incapable of setting metaphysics free before a new parliament take up their duties. The four late governments were afraid of metaphysics, because they used to think it posing a threat to both civil peace and the escap (Rev of Arès XXIII/4-5), that is, the beloved intellectual edifice, the reason in force, the "correct thinking." If Nicolas Sarkozy keeps his promises, the government are to show a right understanding that all of the forces of thinking and faith in this country are useful, and that discriminating against minorities, whatever, is harmful to the whole Creation, which has never ceased to create Itself through the Creator and through His image: the human co-creator. At any rate, to us Arès Pilgrims to believe is to create, which is why our faith is not deadlocked in a dogma, but is is forever evolving , just as The Revelation of Arès inspires evolution in us. For the time being, the government are as vulnerable as a metamorphosing crab.  |
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| may 7, 2007 (0058us) a new black king in Paris |
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All of men, even the men that lose their way, are children of the Father (Rev of Arès 13/5). In his own image of a Creator he makes them all cocreators of themselves and of the world, which they can be masters of and subdue (Genesis 1/26-28). Some men sadly subdue the world so much that they subjugate their brothers. This just goes to explain why Heaven's dwellers aren't feasting today.
The loving Father (Rev of Arès 12/7), who has never weighed anybody down, even if it has meant being forgotten and letting atheism emerge, laments the fact that the ambitious man weighs heavy on his own brothers, so that the night lies on them (Rev of Arès I/7-8). He bemoans the system once created by Adam (Rév of Arès 2/1-5) based on religion and/or its profane imitator, politics. The white king (religion, ideology) and the black king (politics, law, money, industry) a one and the same thigh (Rev of Arès XXXVII/14). The Revelation of Arès tells men in substance, "As you've been able to create evil, you can re-create Good, but creating Good takes absolute freedom (10/10), love, forgiveness, peace, confidence, long-suffering, replacing the law of the rats (XIX/24) or the law that has been with the law that will be (28/8), the Word of love and truth, which requires no decreer, or judge, or power whatever: You shall not be a ruler over anybody (16/1).  I have been told that, a short while before the presidential election, former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing said to a newsman, "France is a house with the doors locked, where people discuss in separate groups ignoring the other groups and even more whatever happens in the world outside the shutters closed." But this is, I guess, the situation all over the world, particularly over the Field (5/5-7) to which The Revelation of Arès sends us to remind men of the necessity of changing (28/7). Enclosed partisanship has sadly remained a chronic evil. This may be why realistic Nicolas Sarkozy, on the evening of May 6, had an impulse to launch into an enthusiastic hymn to the expectations that great changes are opening up before France now, while in fact they are obviously not. Great changes will be opening up before France, I am very positive about it, when we Arès Pilgrims actively carry out its spiritual rearmament. Even an economic disaster, not really implausible as yet, will not bring about a spiritual renewal, unless we fulfil an ample harvest of souls.Just a week before the 6th of May's final election we sadly saw half France curdle around Mrs Royal and half France curdle around Mr Sarkozy, notwithstanding events and speeches that for a few weeks earlier had brought us to think that a fresh, fluid, enriched milk, was likely to pep up this old French people hardened by their inner adversities. Their distinctive political identities had sounded like they had faded after the topics of pluralism and fraternizing were expanded by François Bayrou and echoed by Segolene Royal — unfortunately too abrupt an apparatchik in her conterspiritual manner to prompt us to vote for her — , and I felt intensely interested in this move, because it was proving to me that not everything had got lost and that the Father had reasonably come down back to earth, in Arès, to call on men to change. But the political hardening shortly before May 6 showed that the French would never regain brotherly love through political ways. They will regain it only if they are spiritually stirred. Mr Le Pen, as he was lamenting his defeat on April 22, said, "I thought that the French were unhappy. They are actually happy to be misgoverned, happy to be put into heavy debt..." But Mr Le Pen should have said, "...Happy, strangely, antinomically happy (the French are) to live in divisions which are just what politicians need, because politicians can't exist if they can't oppose other politicians, but which men do not need, because they will never gain happiness as long as they fail to gain love, forgiveness, social peace, spiritual freedom and intelligence. So we have to grow more and more careful to all the events. In 2007, the legislative election is to be more important than the presidential election. François Bayrou, albeit a politician and albeit we Arès Pilgrims are not expecting any ultimate solution from politics, will give the opportunity to elect a third political force to all the men that have long understood that making it emerge in Parliament is a matter of urgency. I have never stopped stating that, had the French Parliament really mirrored the French people's pluralism, the law that, in 1996, created the "Parliamentary Observatory of Cults and Sects" could not be decreed. That third force, if we help it appear — which will be difficult due to our electoral system —, and if it acts as real complementarity, will be likely to urge the power to stop ignoring a number of currents of thought, of faith and of various expectations. The Revelation of Arès states that politics cannot lead mankind to global happiness. Just take a look at contemporary history. This is corroborated: The 1914-1918 war. The cause of it? Politics! The 1917 Russian revolution and the tragical end of this 73-year experience. The cause of it? Politics! The 1938-1945 war. The cause of it? Politics. The attack against the New York World Trade Center, September 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The cause of it? Politics! Of that I will remind every politician that regards politics as necessary and even providential. Be that as it may, we know that it will take more than four generations to change everything, so we wish the new president of France a succesful future leading the country through the less unsettled ways possible, although we are aware that they will inevitably be unsettled. France's people will be in great need of all of the consciousnesses in the midst of them, notably the Arès Pilgrims' consciouscnesses, who are preaching "A Different Destiny" — The name of a spiritual mission of ours for non-politicized public life. |
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| april 1st, 2007 (0057us) when we kill the sphinx |
 Penitence! In The Revelation of Ares this word refers to the festive enduring time a man spends changing his life (30/11) by loving, forgiving, making peace, setting himself and the world spiritually free, by viewing everything and everybody with spiritual intelligence. That's the way I've come to understand the myth of the sphinxI have understood that what the sphinx used to challenge the passers to see and they used to fail to see was lying, untruth. Œdipus saw it, so the sphinx in a pique jumped down from her mount (2) and seemed to go extinct. The myth was just a prophecy, about which all of men would keep on forgetting until The Revelation of Ares appeared. Lying is the worst sin, so much so that  the Maker has not applied to anything but lying this paroxysmal phrase: the lie of all lies (the falsehood of falsehood, Rev of Ares 32/7), whereas he has never said the war of wars, the theft of thefts, the adultary of adultaries, the misfortune of misfortunes, because every war, every theft, every adultary and every misfortune has its origin in some lies.The sphinx is still to be conquered. The Day of happiness will continuously be delayed until the sphinx is conquered. It only remains for man to understand that lying is not to be an endless evil, for which men should forever ask God and their kind to forgive them. Ever since 1974, when The Revelation of Ares came to me, I understood that the new coat (Rev of Ares 1/1), that the new penitent was to put on, was no longer the piece of clothing of religious penitence, the robe of remorse and expiation, but the coat of Life (Rev of Ares 24/3-5), of self-re-creation, of the Light and Truth restored. Truth, man has been unable to see it for ages, because he has been unable to see untruth, lies. Does this argue against itself? No, it doesn't. The blind man cannot see the night dark or the day light. But Truth will be growing more and more perceptible to the penitent man, as untruth goes on more and more perceptible to him. There are lies everywhere, long made commonplace so much so men cannot see them anymore. Whenever men are told of lies, they act the stunned people, they reply that lies are the unavoidable circumstances, the normality therefore, of all of human affairs. A month ago, as I was talking with a pious catholic, I pointed out that the church's doctrine was just a bunch of arguable ideas, some of them gloomy (the atonement through the cross), some others fairylike (the works of the holy ghost),. He answered gravely, "You may be right, but if faith could not be expressed by something more or less intricate, she might become empty, become the gullible ones' simple faith. Is there anything more dangerous than emptiness?" I retorted, "Your answer sounds like you were unconscious of an alarming reality: The issue is not emptiness, but untruth, lies." Currently in France, the electoral campaign for the presidency is being in full swing. Lying is named pledge. Although they all have participated in governements, the leading candidates unembarrassedly state that the great deal of pain France has suffered is just misgoverning. But all of those mistakes will be corrected, prosperity and happiness will be back, if people elect the right candidate, that is, the candidate now speaking. "Alice" at the flexible pace of her bandy legs, in her huge flying crimson dress and blond wig , has promised people a dream rental system charge, combined TV, Internet and all that sort of thing? A number of "Alice" subscribers have paid the system charges for months and waited in vain for the hookup or a refund, but "Alice" keeps on crowing over herself as the best choice. "Nothing but some commercial lies," I can hear people say shrugging, "Insignificant lies!" To me there are no such things as insignificant lies; there are only lies.  As a penitent, a sinner therefore, I have been struggling against the lying reflex I've inherited from culture, which since immemorial time has made man heedless of the fact that the littlest piece of lying contains all of the organism—the mechanism—of the biggest lies just as a small butterfly contains all that made a tyrannosaurus and makes a venomous snake or a stinking cowardly hyena or an army of uniformed brutes invading a country so as to "bring its people democracy."What will among mankind restore global happiness lost ever since Adam's days is love of Truth which goes together with love of the neighbor. Now, "only one thing separates man from Truth: lying, which is more worrisome than greed, which modern socialism considers as the ultimate evil, because if the greedy man never told lies, he could recover from greed sooner or later." (the peroration of the 1995 General Introduction, The Revelation of Arès). Paul Klee entitled this work (3) "Empfindsame Jungfrau mit dem Massliebchen" (A sentimental virgin with a daisy, 1906). I have given it a different title, "Hesitation," because I seem to have constantly seen the girl, with her dangling right hand, still useless, on the verge of the cardinal decision of the human, who is about to come into adult life, telling herself, "Will I be true or a liar?" It does not matter what she is hesitating over; one is always hesitating before the true or before the false. The flower that she is staring at only helps her focus her thinking on the Core of the Cores (Rév d'Arès XXXIV/6). (1) Paul Klee, Büsser, Penitent, 1935. I have given this ashy ethereal work another title, "Soul". (2) Paul Klee, Katastrophe der Sphinx (The sphinx's catastrophe), 1937. Paul Klee is one of my favorite painters because of his capacity to express the inexpressible, to change the matter and the light in deep thinking. There has been in Bern, Switzerland, a magnificient museum dedicated to Paul Klee for a short while. I do not have enough time to go there and visit the museum , but my Swiss sisters and brothers have given me an album of the museum. I am very touched by their thoughtful gesture. |
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| march 22, 2007 (0056us) the world's thinking upside down |
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What can I tell of news that are just uncertainties? To me everything on earth looks unfinished or vacillating, pending conclusions or firm directions. I'd like to comment on men or situations really unlikely to change once again this afternoon. Unfortunately I can't.
 Europe's economic rise has definitely halted, its economy might even have begun declining. The future economic power has appeared easy to read on the labels and tags tied to anything I buy: Made in China, made in Taiwan, made in India, made in Indonesia, made in Viet-Nam, made in Japan, until I can before long read made in Russia, made in Ukrainia, made in Bielorussia, made in Algeria, etc. Whatever was made here is now made there. In 1995, on the presidential election day, I voted for obscure Chaminade, because he had said the only important thing: "In France the industry is collapsing to the advantage of Asia's industry, that is rapidly developping. This is where the problem lies." Yesterday I heard an engineer with Airbus say, " By contract I have to train Chinese engineers for the Airbus technology... Let's bet that China will make its own A380 in a few years." At the same time nothing is certain; the relocation of the big activities of man to the other side of the earth may well not have the large size and scope that we are scared about. Meanwhile, the relocation is on its way, however. The thinking head, that has been in the West so far, is passing to the East or Far East.I can't help but feel the world think upside down. Speaking of presidential election, I've been for days listening to people running for office, who each seem to be doing a headstand, their brains stuck in the past, but their feet fidgetting in the air. So much willing to be elected they are so that they keep well alive people's illusion that France has had only one misfortune until now: It has been misgoverned, but (if you vote correctly) it's going to live a life of wealth and happiness "by three years... maybe four." The very platforms and words I've heard about uninterruptedly ever since my boyhood. Just parish or municipality platforms. Where is the expansive replanning, strong and spiritual, that our country has been in great need for a good while? In the USA, George W. Bush is also thinking upside down, holding against a whole people who have eventually started realizing that a war is going on in Iraq, a war that will end up resultless, and that has been devastating the whole poor nation with hardships much more painful than those which Saddam Hussein imposed on it. Here I stop listing all the things that are going along upside down and the wrong way; I could fill a hundred pages with them. Yes, the world is going on its hands, but, just as Gribouille sought to escape a torrential rain by plunging into a creek and in a way escaped it, it may be that the mighty of the world like the pythia will sever they own heads in order to escape the worm (Rev of Arès XXXVIII/1) of the new hardships they are introducing into this big apple of a world currently. And the next thing is I turn out amusing! At least, I've had this left. |
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| february 27, 2007 (0055us) are the arès pilgrims cathari? |
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Lately, an anonymous E-mail said to me: "In a lecture on the Cathari at the Jean Renoir hall, you Brother Michel and the Arès Pilgrims were mentioned as the new Cathari. Which is not offensive to you and, I might add, even funny." I replied to ask the name of the city and the name of the lecturer, but my reply was returned right away. The reasons for it was "Unknown address." Even though I do not find it offensive that some lecturer has begun comparing us to the Cathari, I find it necessary that whatever distinguishes the Arès Pilgrims from those Good Men and Good Women of an earlier era be brought up.
If we absolutely must be compared to Cathari, we are, let's say, Realized Cathars in the sense that our Christian faith is based on the plain pure reality of the Maker's Word. This was not really the faith of the 11th and 12th century Mystical Cathari, tinged with gnosticism and asceticism. Our knowledge of catharism, like the knowledge of every religion once wrecked by persecution or forced abjuration, is not flawless. Most of its documents and records disappeared on the stakes lit by the crusaders that the pope and the king of France had sent out against the Cathari. What can be said of them, however? The Cathari used to see the Gospel's legacy lying in simplicity and goodness regarded as adequate to give individuals and then the world salvation. In this the catharistic faith and the Arès Pilgrim faith are similar, but unlike catharism, which seemingly proceeded from a rejection of the church long gone politicized, autocratic and corrupt, of which the Cathari used to be openly disdainful and even hostile, the Arès Pilgrims show no disdain or hostility to the church and all religions whatever, but they turn away from them only to go beyond. The Arès Pilgrim's faith is not even a return to basics stricly speaking, but it started three decades ago from future prospects made dynamic by The Revelation of Arès, a supernatural event that happened in 1974 and 1977. Both a Cathar and an Arès Pilgrim consider that it is only by its fruit that men can recognize good (Matthew 7/17-20) and that a human is only saved by his or her goodness and penitence, but what an Arès Pilgrim calls penitence a Cathar celled "rule of justice and truth" and performed in an ascetic and abstinent way, which suited the medieval inclinations. Unlike the "rule of justice and truth", penitence and the harvest (the search for every possible penitent lost in the world which has to be changed), the two keystones of the Aresian faith, bring about modern practical experiences and an apostolate in which honesty, love, forgiveness, spiritual freedom and intelligence, are far more important than austerity.  Here are other differences. There's no doubt that either the Cathar or the Arès Pilgrim is not interested in the alleged divine providence, which the structured religions claim they represent on earth. There's no doubt that both the Cathar and the Arès Pilgrim have a fixed stare at the origin of evil, so as to keep it off, but their respective views of the source of evil are quite unlike. On the one hand, an Arès Pilgrim is aware that only man is master of evil as well as good, just as explained by The Revelation of Arès. On the other hand, a Cathar used to see the origin of evil in the "fallen angels, whose leader was Lucifer," who all would have been pushed off Heaven and shut in men's skins, into which they would get regularly reincarnated. This is pure gnosticism. The Revelation of Arès unambiguously denies reincarnation (V/2) and never mentions fallen angels, whatever, as being the source of evil. This belief, which strongly smelt of esotericism, had led the Cathari to read the Bible in a dualistic reductionist way. So they had turned down the Old Testament as satanic and taken to reading only the New Testament. The Revelation of Arès, quite the contrary, urges man to re-read the whole Bible in its light and even the Quran.Some more discrepancies are notifiable. The Cathari had a sacrament of sorts, one called "consolament", a laying on of hands, which served as baptism, ordination, absolution and extreme unction. The Arès Pilgrims have no sacrament, at all. A Cathar considered Jesus as God's son, not in a trinitarian sense, certainly, but in an immaterial sense. He considered Jesus as a mere human appearance, an ectoplasm, which could not have suffered on the cross. Now, the Bible and The Revelation of Arès never vouch for a so-called immateriality of Jesus. A compelling proof of his materiality is the Jesus I witnessed in 1974, who stood in front of me in the flesh, unquestionably. The catharistic social organization of Arès too was very different. Like the Arès Pilgrims they did not have priests, but they had bishops, though poor and devoid of any secular power, and deacons, who were itinerant preachers, and a religious elite which they called Good Men and Good Women, those whom the Inquisition recorded as "the pure." The Arès Pilgrims have no hierarchy, no clergy, no elite: You are or you are not an Arès Pilgrim and your individual attitude on its own naturally circumscribes this identity. On the other hand, like the Arès Pilgrims the Cathari had no eucharistic theory of the bread shared out between believers. There is also some similarity as to the ultimate destiny of mankind, the Day when men return to their "luminous bodies" according the the Cathari and the Day that The Revelation of Arès depicts (31/8-12, 35/3). Opprobrium is another similarity. The public opprobrium that every spiritual minority has been held up to. The modern Inquisition is the collusion of the "antisect" organizations: ADFI, CCMM, etc., with the papers and magazines that are their devoted servants. We Arès Pilgrims are not subjected to the cruel martyrdom once experienced by the Cathari, I admit, but we are the butt of organizations which, had not the French constitution kept them from oppressing us, would readily have subjected us to extreme persecutions. The picture: The "pog" of Montségur (near Foix, Ariège, France), a place of Cathari's heroic resistance. In 1244, at the foot of this rock, more than 220 Cathari, male and female, who declined to convert to the catholic faith, were "burnt in a pale and stake enclosure... where they passed away to the fire of Tartarus." |
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| january 26, 2007 (us0054) father Pierre |
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Right before I posted #0054 I receive a comment. It is about father Pierre and kinder to him than my piece of writing. Here's this comment — I have taken the liberty of enhancing it a bit:
A very nice comment, isn't it? More laudatory that my piece of writing, because I once met father Pierre in the eighties and since then have grown less praiseful. I thought that he was a priest filled with absolute love. I found out that he was verging on the dualistic concept of the poor representing goodness and the well-off representing evil. I amazed by his manichaeism said, "You present yourself as a judge. Which is not a man of God's attitude, but a politician's attitude. Politics is in permanent need of opponents, but you can't be so! " He muttered something like, "I appeal to the Government or authorities, but I never appeal to the well-off." Then I told him that a man should not keep on belonging in the church, which the well-off have always supported, and enjoying the glamor of the cassock, when he is manifestly biased against some people whom the Gospels and even the church have never banished. Broadly speaking he retorted, "You don't know anything about it. The well-off are irredeemably selfish." I replied, "Are you stuck in the old days' concept that Heaven opens in front of the poor and Hell in front of the rich?" I pointed out that all of the rich were not necessarily wicked (Luke 16/1-31) and that some well-off persons might be as charitable as father Pierre and even in not so much hyped-up a way: When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing (Matthew 6/2-4). He shook his head. Then I pointed out that, in any case, the problem of good and evil did not fit in the very limited issue of opposition of the poor to the rich or of misfortune to happiness or of killing rifles to rifles slung over the shoulders, but lay elsewhere, a problem global and infinitely more profound which could be solved but only when the creature re-creates himself or herself by gaining absolute love, absolute forgiveness, absolute peace, absolute spiritual freedom. He giggled and put an end to our meeting. Seated in my car, I took down a few notes, "Materially speaking, an altogether unselfish man, but he has expertly limited his argument to the publicity-grabbing dualistic clichés. Hence a French-style loud mouth and, as only loud mouths are heard and even loved when colorful in this country, he has been heard. What coul be more natural? As for instant charity, father Pierre is a hardworking, efficient, good organizer... Well done! But no upheaving ferment or depth. No great change will ever come out of that kind of man. Which explains why they, authoritie and media, let him speak..." I added, "After all, today he may have heartburns or a backache." |
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Today I am thinking fondly of father Pierre (the French for Peter) as a brother. He passed away on January 22 early in the morning at the venerable age of 94. The leg of the Good man is to be four ages old, The Revelation of Ares says. Admittedly father Pierre was not the Good man in the strict meaning of the word in The Revelation of Ares, but he was a noteworthy whistler (VVVI/19). The Good, which has absolute value, does not belong in charity alone, but in a great whole made of values far more complex and extensive. Charity, however, has to be performed! Father Peter used to excel in it.| january 15, 2007 (0053us) an opposable right to housing? |
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I am wary of weird terms like "the opposable right to housing". I've been forever scared about something underhand they might conceal.
Opposable to what, by whom? To me a man does have or does not have a right to housing, period! Anyway, to begin with, a right to what kind of housing? If the right to housing is to be a law, with a deadline and some precipitate constraints therefore, it's to be feared that it will end up in buildings of a type everybody hopes is to disappear: "social housing" of the rabbit hutch type, that is, the very type they have been dynamiting for a while more or less over the country.  A Parisian social worker has sent me statistics not made out from forms with boxes to be ticked, but made out from direct contact with homeless people. Less than one out of three of the homeless who put up in the tents of "Don Quixote's Children" non-profit organization for the holidays (see picture), was in basic need of "a roof or shelter over his or her head." The others, more than two out of three, were badly in need of "a home", "his or her own home," "a nice cosy place." The difference is essential, it means that the problem does not lie in a matter of walls, but in a matter of heartwarming.The houses, that a sensitive man forms an idea of in his heart, are not staircases, doors and plumbing fixtures piled up. They are places of joy and good. Places of happiness. The Father has formed an idea of them for millennia; he reminded us of it in 1974: But whatever does the tempter offer, he who can create nothing, neither joy nor good? Have I not built cozy (or warm) houses (Rev of Ares 26/8)? Cozy or warm houses are not places where central heating, though perfectly likeable, would be fundamental. They are houses where the warmth of love, of peace, of freedom, prevails. Houses where it's nice living and which do not necessarily meet the requirements of the technical and sanitary agencies. What sort of law, what "opposable right to housing" could guarantee housing where it's nice living? No law, no right whatever could, because happiness eludes every definition of a code of housing procedure. But it does not elude the definitions of happiness that The Revelation of Ares gives a reader who will not just leaf through it. So a lot of the homeless, the guests of "Don Quixote's Children", a praiseworthy non-profit organization, were not animals in search of clean cages, but men in search of a home outside the door of which the child screams with joy (Rev of Ares XXVII/10), even though it was a hut open on to the magnificient Creation, surrounded by souls, goodness, bounty, laughter, mercy, freedom, spiritual intelligence. A lot of the homeless once lived in low-rent apartment buildings made of plaster and steel, low-rent apartment buildings which their young tenants, whose rebellion against the lack of beauty (Rev of Ares 12/3) is very uninhibited, quickly cover with graffiti so that they may look different from a prison. The low-rent apartment buildings have made a lot of the homeless turn homeless. What is "opposable" to "social issues" in politicians' rhetorics is all that we Ares Pilgrims urge the world to see, understand and be. Our mission does not ignore social issues, it spiritualizes them, because to the Creator and to us mankind is definitively, essentially spiritual. |
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| january 13, 2007 (0052us) a lull, and then it's taken off again |
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My blog turned out to suffer a lull.
There were three concomitants of that gap: A tremendous amount of work, wearing, in late 2006, A cold as much tremendous and wearing as the work, A couln't-care-less time, if only temporary. My idea that sending men as a whole — all the publics who read this blog — my wishes for them to live the lives they would like to live in 2007 was stupid, given that their own wishes are mostly different from, if not conflicting with, mine.  Why wish Saddam Hussein—my fellow human with all due respect to those who loathed him—to mend his ways and become a much less hard man? He was hanged and all I can do for him now is mortify (Rev of Ares 33/32-34).Why wish the Middel East peoples peace, as every people over there can't imagine peace but to the hurt of their rivals and opponents? Why wish George W. Bush that his dearest wishes come true, as he sounds as if he kept on hoping for good but through war? Why wish those standing for election to the French republic presidency, whatever ticket they're running on, that their wishes come true, as every one of them wishes but one thing: to be elected and see his or her opponents beaten? Why in 2007 wish every man on earth love for the neighbor, the strength to forgive every wrong, global peace, absolute freedom? Actually men, apart from... say... 3%, do not wish anything but endless revenge (Rev of Ares 27/9) on those different or simply luckier, the humiliating defeat of those whom they do not like and more stringent law and less and less freedom for those whom they fear. Why wish, et cetera, et cetera? I got over my couldn't-care-less time as well as my cold and late 2006's heavy bulk of work. As my faith has never disappeared and with good reason: I really saw and heard Jesus and then the Creator in 1974 and 1977 — this is without question — my great expectations have caught up with me. Though I am just a man, an old man — this too is without question —, I'm keeping it up. |
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| december 7, 2006 (0051us) sparing the world spiritual death |
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There is some spiritual life left inside every man on earth. Otherwise, how could the Maker hope that the world can change (Rev of Ares 28/7)? The problem is that spirituality has been reducing more and more to invisibility and inactivity. Should the decline continue, spirituality would die. Our mission is more than necessary, it is vital.
I read and listened to all that Mrs Royal and her rivals put forward for the PS (French Socialist Party) primary election days. I did not hear anything spiritual or even metaphysical. I did not hear anything spiritual from Mr Sarkozy or others, either. Hearsay tradition has it that Machiavelli was the inventor and teacher of political trickery and lowness, but it is untrue; he only described them, he showed, just as some others had showed before him and some others would show after him, including the Maker in 1974 and 1977, that there is no such thing as hope that man's spiritual essence could ever triumph over evil through politics or its mother, religion.  Hiding political evil behind democracy and religious evil behind toleration cannot prevent man's complete despiritualization — the sin of sins (Rev of Ares 29/2) — from occurring any more than sunstorms (photo) (Rev of Ares XVII/13, XXII/12-13, etc.), which the mass media are careful not to mention, will not be prevented from destroying our communications network and power tranformers some day. You do not eradicate evil by hiding it. It will be eradicated by penitence performed by a sufficient number of good men — the small remnant.Our mission is essential, but it is going to become all the more difficult because people are becoming blinder to what lies in store for man's future: dehumanization, way more serious than the economic setbacks, omens of which have already become obvious. There are now health and pensions organizations, soup kitchens, shelters for the homeless, humanitarian associations, but they do not keep man from dehumanizing himself. Man dehumanizes himself, because he despiritualizes himself. He keeps on thinking that he can replace love, forgiveness, peace, spiritual intelligence and spiritual freedom with laws and rules forever proved unfit to substitute for them. If man fails to be aware of what he is: a spiritual creature that owes his spiritual genius to nothing but his spiritual freedom, he is heading for a disaster, which none of political and sociological science will ever prevent. How could politics and religion change the world for the better by managing it on a day to day basis? Politicians attend to their momentary business very badly as a rule, then let their successors bulldoze the enormous residual sludge and settle the big issues of the future, which they likewise will not do, and so on. Religion from day to day keeps the great metaphysical concerns and the pursuit of miracles active; the faithful have way too short lives to force it to correct its mistakes. So man has continuously despiritualized and he is now crossing a critical limit. This is what The Revelation of Ares tells the world. Those who ask, "A new revelation...What for?" have not understood much yet. It's very hard to make it clear to the world that a great change is necessary and the Maker has put a small remnant of men and women who have no clout or power, but faith, in charge of that giants' prophetism (Rev of Ares 31/6). So they need giant faith! Let their faith increase in strength! They are not by themselves, anyhow, the Father stands behind them. They will do it. Alleluia!  |
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| november 12, 2006 (0050us) Tom Paine and I |
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At New York in 1998 somebody told me, "Brother Michel, the creative energy one draws from you and The Revelation of Ares is reminiscent of the social energy that Americans drew from Tom Paine and his manifesto "Commen Sense" in 1776.
 The likening came as a surprise. I had had a vague knowledge of the character, Thomas Paine (his detractors called him Tom), one of the founding fathers of the American independence... I couldn't see any similarity between him and me. Whats' more, I thought he was an atheist. I knew that he had been a rough, coarse, unkempt, man unlike me. Admittedly I knew that General Washington had ordered Tom Paine's words read to his exhausted, frostbitten troops so as to inspirit them before he launched a surprise attack on Trenton, but I also knew that Tom Paine would get on the wrong side of most of the great Americans of his time, probably, I imagined, because he might not be as praiseworthy as he had once seemed. I was unconscious that the 2d president of the USA, John Adams, when he had called Tom Paine's great manifesto "Common Sense" "a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous Mass," had used unflattering terms meaning much the same as the terms spoken by bourgeois opponents of The Revelation of Ares, and that the Federalists called TomPain "a loathsome reptile" , the same, but for the words, as some conformist clergy and politicians describe me.And the next thing was several books on Tom Paine were published during 2006, I don't know what they came out to commemorate. Now I can read the very words by Tom Paine that Washington ordered his army nearly paralyzed in the blizzard to listen to, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder ths conflict, the more glorious the triumph." The next morning the Continentals crossed the Delaware River and fought to a stunning, pivotal victory, after which the English army would be forever retreating until they re-embarked. How could I not realize then, all of a sudden, that the man in New York, in 1998, had drawn a parallel between the 1776 American patriots and our missionaries, There will be a time for their toil and eternity for their glory (Rev of Ares 37/9)? I have lately read that Tom Paine, whom I thought was an atheist, in reality was a non-religious believer, a scathing critic of the churches and clergy, just as The Revelation of Ares is. I was aware that he had dreamt of society with no government, but now I find out that he was vehemently critical of political power and law, just as The Revelation of Ares is critical. This is why he would be hated by the very men that had used his eloquence and ideas to become leaders. As for Tom Paine, he vould keep on refusing to hold a leadership, whatever, and would be contempted for that just as I am contempted by the system's men, who see my own refusal to be a leader (Rev of Ares 16/1) and give the Ares Pilgrims assembly a social structure and a hierarchy as a detestable, dangerous model. In conclusion, how deserving Tom Paine was! He did not have to be bending like me under the Father's knee (Rev of Ares 12/9) to be taught the Truth. He found it all by himself through his own intelligence. I most sincerely wonder why the Father came down and spoke to me, who had not a quarter of Tom's capability. |
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| november 5, 2006 (0049us) barbarity is alive and kicking |
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JUST TODAY SADDAM SENTENCED TO DEATH.
He yells to the judges (photo), "Long live the people and death to their enemies! Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies! Allah is great!" Allah is glorified any old how. So is Christ, whom Bush today at church thanks for punishing the tormentor of Iraq. And the system keeps going and invoking its gods, who are not our God, our Father who came back down to earth in Arès to call on man to love, forgive, live in peace and real justice that has never occurred in court. Saddam is going to be hanged. We immediately understand why safety precautions were enhanced in all of the airports in the USA and Europe a few days ago. That sentence in Baghdad and its plausible outcome: an increase in violence in Iraq and the world, were being expected by all the Western governments. We understand, as well, why Saddam's sentence takes place today, on the eve of public elections in USA. The Republican party, who are in no position to win, may be expecting some renewed esteem of the American people for George W. Bush's involvement in Iraq.  In any case, no one on earth believes that Saddam Hussein's conviction could ever relieve Iraq of the hardships in which the war has thrown it into. What's more, as far as the Arès Pilgrims are concerned, they do not believe that any death sentence, whoever is under it, wherever it takes place, could be regarded as an act of justice. It is nothing but barbarity applied to a barbarian. Nothing likely to curb barbarity ever. Every execution is an obvious attack on Wisdom that sent out to man that solemn Plea, "You shall not kill (Exodus 20/13)!"We are not supporters of Saddam Hussein, but we do not think that the gallows that he will die on will be anything but one more milestone on the grim long road to the endless revenge (Rev of Ares 27/9), which is a certainty to accelerate crime and murder much more than to restrain them. Why has Saddam Hussein been convicted and sentenced to hang? In the current case—we are told that a new case is to come up soon, before he is hanged (what's the point of judging Saddam Hussein again?)— he is sentenced for having had 148 persons executed in 1982 after he had escaped an assassination attempt on him in Dajail. And to think of 600,000 Irali civilians dying because their country has been invaded by the US Army and their allies! One wonders what sort of sentence should be pronounced against the men answerable for the invasion. |
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| november 4, 2006 (0048us) Truth takes to the street in London |
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"God has no religion" in Paris turned into "God belongs in no religion or politics" in London. On October 28 and 29 a party of apostles from France strode along Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and st-James Park. The Londoners sympathized with their views.
 No, that's not "populism", for which some Emails blame our mission. Being populist is seeking popularity by crying out loud that the world could get rid of all its problems just by getting rid of such and such a person or thing, in this instance religion and politics and their princes, their elite, their laws and institutions. The Ares Pilgrims don't view things from this simplistic angle. They think that "God belongs in no religion or politics", because he belongs elsewhere. He belongs in the heart of a penitent. It's in the man righteous (Rev of Ares XXXVI/19, etc.), good (30/7, etc.) and free (10/10) that God reappears in the world. So why isn't this painted on the banner? Because penitence, a word that today's people misunderstand or even fail to understand, can no longer meet the eye of the man in the street, who has lost a good sense of his inner tranformation for his own happiness and the world's happiness. This has to be spelled out to him, which needs a talk, even a short one. Hence the banner to trigger it off!Nevertheless, the mission issue "God belongs in no religion or politics" is no flytrap. It is a profound truth. Once the first impressions one has had in skimming through The Revelation of Ares are dispersed, when one buries oneself in the book seriously, one realizes soon that the Father does not distinguish between religion and politics. The Father considers politics as religion's offspring. Either, though it uses a different vocabulary, imposes its doctrine upon men: a dogma here, a constitution and law there, and either punishes the rebels for being sacrilegious. Either makes magnificient promises. Not only are the princes, the priests and doctors religious leaders and their staff, but also presidents, government members and high offices of state and politics. Besides, in The Book the Creator tells them apart only by the color, because they bring the same power to bear over mankind: the white king, the black king, one and the same thigh (XXXVII/14). And in The Revelation of Ares from end to end the Father does not see himself in either. Our apostles bring to England faith just as it has to be considered. Not a man's passive expectation of Mercy and Paradise traded for his faithfulness to his religion, but his active involvement in building a good world. |
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| october 24, 2006 (0047us) immense weakness (Rev of Ares 36/5) and "constructive ambiguity" |
 It may happen that politics has caused damage, which omens even worse damage, such that Mercy has to come to a compromise with evil so as to get man out of his mire (Rev of Ares XLIII/12).The reason, among other reasons, why the Father asks us not to appeal to his Mercy at every turn (16/15) is that the kind of mercy that men hope for rarely turns out to be that which the Father picks. So, today, Mercy might well come to the Middle East thanks to a man, James Baker, all the more unexpected because he was not especially beneficial or providential when he was a member of Reagan and George Bush Sr's administration. "Jim" Baker may be the wise man that George W. Bush Jr will pay attention to in order to resolve the catastrophic impediment in Iraq. The total number of civilian casualties of the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2006 has just been worked out: 600,000—actually a death toll range of 400,000 to 760,000—by humanitarian and medical organisations seemingly of great integrity. So enormous that it's incredible! George W. Bush has declared that 600,000 was an "untruthful and outrageous" number; he has asserted that the number of civilian casualties in Iraq had been 30,000, if that! Who is right? Who is wrong? We don't know. We are just aware that Iraq has been put to fire and the sword so much so that some "authorized voices" have made themselves heard muttering that Saddam Hussein should be called back , because he alone may be able to re-establish order and save a million to a million five hundred thousand Iraqi lives very likely to die. What's more, the toll in American and British military life (not to mention undisclosed losses) is getting alarmingly heavier day after day, so that General Richard Dannat, chief of staff of the British Army, declared on October 13 that the British troops should withdraw as soon as possible, because they had come to do nothing but stir up the hatred of the Iraqi people. Now and then President Bush still happens to deliver triumphalist speeches probably sincere. On October 22: "We will win a victory in Iraq. We only have to change strategy." A victory over what? Over terrorism? But Iraq has never gone into terrorist action and never granted Al Quaeda and Bin Laden asylum. We can see enough obscurity and misfortune in the situation to hope that the influence that reasonable Americans have started to bring or try to bring to bear on on George W. Bush will grow more and more imperious. Jim Baker, the one whose advice the White House may well end up following, fits in the realistic body as far as foreign policy is concerned. He represents all that George W. Bush feels strong aversion for and wants to fight throughout the world, and that you can sum up in two words, "constructive ambiguity." This doctrine by James Baker means something the Father in person knows, that is, times now and then happen when man has to negotiate with evil in order to dispel some ten times worse evil, tragic times when the huge weakness that nastiness constitutes with some kinds of humans should not be disregarded (Rev of Ares 36/5). A long way we have to go until the day when our mission has changed the heart of men enough to save them from coming to compromises with evil, but we at the same time realize that our mission is momentous. |
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| october 1st, 2006 (0046us) darfur |
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No, I'm not just tormented with the Middle East. I'm lamenting other sufferings, notably the agony of Darfur, where Westerners are not the warmongers for once.
Darfur is the west of Sudan. When talking with people I notice that scarce are those who can spot Sudan. In broad outline, it is a vast country in eastern Africa. It starts from Ethiopia and the Red Sea right across Mekka. Then it runs alonside Egypt in the north. It spreads to the west up to Chad, which—while we are on the subject—borders Darfur, and Central African Republic. In the south it runs alonside Congo Democratic Republic (formerly Zaire), Uganda and Kenya. And then it goes upwards along Ethiopia and the Red Sea, so it forever runs around the Nile. Its capital city, Al–Khartum, famous for a few Hollywoodian epics, is planted at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile.  Sudan's problem is not so much its vastness (5 times as large as France) as its economic poverty and more than anything its population's complex diversity. In days of old, though already multicultural, it was entirely black, its population more or less christian from the 6th c. to the 13th c. Later, the interbreeding between the blacks and arabs and the islamizing were increasing considerably so much so that we can consider Sudan as having been arabized and muslim ever since the 15th c. Nevertheless, a non-insignificant number of Sudanese has stayed christian or animistic (African native religions) and almost lastingly intractable to the muslim government for centuries, particularly in the south.Arabic is the official language, but 32 African languages unintelligible to each other are also spoken. It is easy to imagine the conflicts which have continually occurred among so heterogeneous a society where grudges and fears have been borne from ancestral times. And yet, in Darfur, it is not a non-muslim rebellion against the muslim government that has brought about ruin and desolation, but it is a war between muslim tribes overlapping with a war between local muslim ambitious men, the tribes and ambitious men being at the same time fighting against Al–Khartum's muslim power...An islamo-islamic situation so much intricate that it is practically impossible to depict it in a small blog entry. I can only sum up what all of the witnesses sadly and unanimously report from Darfur: massacres, ruins and deportations. About Sudan as a whole I add that the Arab or arabized part of the population literally colonizes the black part still attached to their African roots. So Al-Qaeda, whose key idea is that Westerners should by fair means or foul be stopped from proceeding with recolonization of the muslim countries, is caught out in obvious hypocrisy in Sudan where Islam colonizes the non-islamized peoples. The metaphor of the straw and the big log (entries #0042 and #0043) can be applied to Islam as well as Rome and any place in the world. As if Al-Qaeda contradicting itself was not enough, or because they may have run out of arguments to prevent an airdrop of blue helmets who may well (though it's quite unsure) Darfur's agony, Al–Khartum accuses the Westerners of planning to re-colonize Sudan. As a result, NATO itself, the general secretary of which is a black man, Kofi Anna (from Ghana), does not like to intervene, so Darfur keeps on being devastated. Just the same, Al–Khartum government has tried to stop the Darfur war, but has been unsuccessful so far. Some people say that the government is the kalachnikov supplier to the Janjawib (in Arabic: the devil's riders) militia that kill and persecute the poor Darfurite civilians. But other people say no, it's untrue, the situation is so thick an obscurity that no one can determine where the weapons and ammunition come from and that all that happens is simply and tragically caused by bloodthirsty brigands who shelter behind the Quran. In history we have already seen a lot of criminals sheltering behing the Bible, or Marx...Sin travels throughout the world with a multicolored umbrella over its head. This sad situation might come to an and when all of Darfurites are killed or re-enslaved? Sudan like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, keeps me awake. |
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