The Tower of Babel

People in our country often approach the bible from two major directions. One group sees the bible as the authentic word of God and sees everything written in it as infallible beyond question. They believe that every word was written in English by the hairy hand of God. I suspect that they take every written word of God without question; for, they do not want to give the deity any reason to be upset with them; and thus, send them to Hell.

Now, the other major classes of people appear to approach the bible with often a lot of hostility. And this reaction often results from their experiences with the first group listed, who felt that they knew exactly what behavior God felt was correct for everyone and often used their interpretation of the bible as a weapon.

Unity’s approach to the bible is different than either of these groups. In Unity we believe that the bible is a great work of literature and record of an ancient civilization. Yet, we interpret the stories in the bible allegorically or metaphysically, not literally. And in the bible we feel is recorded some of the greatest triumphs and failures of mankind. The individual characters and their experiences are interesting in their own right; but, beyond that is the knowledge that they refer to you and to me today.

Unity’s approach to the bible is different than either of these groups. In Unity we believe that the bible is a great work of literature and record of an ancient civilization. Yet, we interpret the stories in the bible allegorically or metaphysically, not literally. And in the bible we feel is recorded some of the greatest triumphs and failures of mankind. The individual characters and their experiences are interesting in their own right; but, beyond that is the knowledge that they refer to you and to me today.In the bible we have story after story of the wisdom of the ages. And, in those stories we learn so very much about ourselves. We also find that people are forever asking some of the basic questions about life itself; for instance, why are we here? where did we come from? how big is the galaxy? where, who and what is God? and why do we speak so many different languages?. You may have thought some of these questions were unique to you; but, they have been asked by multiple people throughout the ages, since mankind walked planet earth.

In this talk I’d like to address one of these questions: “Why do we speak so many different languages?” One of the greatest books of the bible, filled with multiple stories, is Genesis. It was a book that was written by multiple authorities, the Priestly group, the Elohim group, the Yahweh group, and the Deuteronomy group. In it there is a story that answers the question: “Why don’t we all speak the same language?” How many wars and misunderstanding have resulted from that fact alone? We must remember that the bible was written for a group of people in the Middle East and I do not mean New York. I mean Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, Jerusalem, etc. The people in these countries think very differently than we do; and yet, we are over there right now sticking our noses in their business, as if we have the answers for them. We are trying to make them think the way we do and that I’m afraid is never going to happen no matter what we may try to do.

Now, the Middle Easterners loved stories that were filled with all kinds of meanings. And, one such story was the story of The Tower of Babel, a story that has a meaning even in the obvious literal translation. If we look in the book of Genesis, chapter 11 vrs1-9 it says: “Now the whole earth spoke one language, one manner of speech, and it came to pass as men journeyed from the East, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and they settled there. And they said to one another, “Let us make bricks and burn them with fire and they had bricks for stone and slime for mortar.” And then they said, “ Come let us build ourselves a city with a tower, whose top may reach to Heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves before we are scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” And, the Lord came down to see the tower, which the men were building, and the Lord said, “Behold they are the people and they have but one language. They seem to have a reason to do this thing and nothing will prevent them from doing what they have imagined to do. Come let us go down there and divide their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad on the face of the earth and they ceased from building the city and tower. They could no longer understand each other and they called the city Babel, because it was there that the lord confounded the language of all the earth and from there scattered them among the face of the earth.” (Babel, Babylonia, same place) O.K. cute story, but let us take a look at its meaning metaphysically. Yes, the story itself was a good answer to the question, “Why do we not all speak the same language?” But inside the story itself are really all kinds of cool meanings. So let us play with it a little and see where it takes us. Now the phrase, “And, the whole earth was of one language and of one speech” What do you suppose could have been the one language? The one language was love. All of humanity, all folks everywhere were of one language, one speech, love. This describes a time when we are feeling at peace with all the world, as our true individual selves connected to Spirit. We feel smooth, balanced, at peace and life is good. And then the story continues, “As men came from the East”…Now, journeying from the East in bible code means that you move from the inner world of Spirit in the Garden in a place of peace to the outer 3rd dimension world of the human self, the world of the ego, the world of duality, of pain and suffering, a world void of peace. “The wise men from the East” has the same meaning. “And as the wise men came from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there”. Shinar is the ancient name for the city of Babylon, present day Iraq. Shinar really means two rivers, divided stream, divided mind, duality. We know that the land of Shinar, Babylon, has two rivers, the Tigress and the Euphrates. We all know that from all the fighting that has been going on over there and all the news reports. What that means metaphysically is that we leave that place of peace, our knowledge of our oneness with God and choose to live in a place of a divided mind, where we see duality, we see both good and evil. We see love and fear. Instead of knowing only love, only God or Spirit, we see duality everywhere and we judge. This is not a one time thing for you and for me. It happens moment by moment every time we choose to be upset or angry, every time we choose to move into criticism or judgment, any idea that essentially make us feel that we are separate from our God or Spirit. We’re always doing it. We may start out in a place of meditation with peace and harmony; and , then we go to the East, to the land of Shinar, the 3 dimensional land of duality and we become critical and upset. We start out in oneness with God or Spirit and then we move into seeing problems and suffering. And so they said, “Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. Use bricks for stone and slime for mortar.” And, then they said “Let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower, whose top may reach to Heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves.” Well, burnt brick was used for stone. Stone is fairly long lasting but burnt brick does not last very long at all. Metaphysically using burnt brick for stone is our substitute false beliefs for the truth. We affirm and justify our anger as being righteous. Yet, we are in a state of confusion, unreal and unstable conditions. Babylonia symbolizes our mixed and confused now material consciousness. We affirm and justify our greed as prosperity. We affirm our satiation as fulfillment. Satiation being our over eating, over drinking, over spending, over drugging, etc. We call it fulfillment; but, we are wrong. The statement “Slime for Mortar” means that we try to use laws instead of love to hold our world together. Love is a natural mortar that holds the Universe together. Slime or fear are merely unworkable substitutes that do not hold or work for very long. It is said that the language of love can be communicated without words, just watch your pets to see how easily that is done. Love is the one language; but , if we step out of love and move into any emotion rooted in fear, we no longer understand anything, not even our own thoughts and our own behavior. How many times have you said, “What was I thinking , when I said or did that?” If we can't even figure out ourselves, why we do something or say something foolish, how can we possibly judge another person's actions accurately? We build our lives with burnt bricks and slime, fear instead of stone and the mortar of love. We're getting better but we are not there yet. We still try to build a tower to Heaven with our logic, our reasoning, while at the same time we ignore or forget the truth that we are all one.

We entertain ourselves by reading more and more books and studying more and more theologies. We make the mistake of believing that these ideas are the truth, when they are only the shadow of the truth, instead of knowing that love is the only truth. Many of these psychological or spiritual books have great ideas to help you along on your path in life, but none of them have the whole enchilada. All the books and all the logic in the world will not bring you closer to inner peace, only love will do that.

“And let us make a name for ourselves...” they said. Well, what part of you wants to be better than others, to stand above others, to separate yourself? Your Spiritual self knows that all are one; but, your human 3rd dimensional self sees only the differences in mankind. That is why you want bigger houses or fancier cars or new more modern computers or fancier ipods. Does a fancier car or bigger home really make you better than someone else? I can tell you : “It doesn't”. How sad, how desperate one must be to feel that the person with the most toys wins in life. You cannot communicate with each other with your intellectual self ; for, the majority of your community is trying to one up each other, when love is not paramount in the program of life. Are you so afraid of not being good enough that you would stomp the other guy down to get to the top?

And that ancient story, probably 5 or 10,000 years old ends with God coming down from Heaven and causing all the people to speak different languages so they could not gang up on God. Isn't that just like us, we're the ones causing all our problems, getting into fights and wars and blaming it on God or Spirit. “Life happens through us not to us.” I'm going to restate that statement because it is so important for us to remember it. “Life happens through us, not to us.“ Humanity finds more and more ways to be pushy, to be demanding, to be greedy, to be essentially selfish jerks and then blames God for its mess. 10,000 years and we still have a lot to learn about life, don't we? That is the story of The Tower of Babel.

In “A Course of Miracles” it is said a little differently but it still means the same thing. We were one with Spirit, at peace in the garden and then we had a tiny mad idea that we could or would separate from God to understand who we really were. The big bang occurred and we landed in the 3 dimensional world that we think we see today. It is not real. It is made of burnt brick instead of stone held together with slime instead of mortar. It doesn't last. It is a Tower of Babel. It is filled with fear instead of love. Our only way back to the Garden is to remember and accept the atonement, the at-one-ment. It takes forgiveness, it takes love, it takes the hand of the Holy Spirit reaching down for us, it takes remembering that we are all one and we all go home together

Namaste,

Barbara