I’m sorry… I lied. Or at least cowardly failed to tell the truth, which would be something like “I know what you are, and I assure you in front of the Light that we would both spend our time more wisely talking to cauliflowers than each other.”

I need to take God more seriously when he “talks” to me. That is to say, when I know in my heart what God wants me to do. OK, it is sometimes hard to say what is God and what is just plain sanity. Like “don’t be polite to Mormons unless lives depend on it”.

The other day I met two of those excessively well-dressed cute boys, speaking reasonably good Norwegian, hailing me on my way to the bus. They wanted to talk to me about Jesus Christ. I think the irony here can be cut with a diamond saw, but being the polite guy I am, I stopped and talked with them. Not wanting to get into a religious discussion, I praised Jesus Christ for his contribution to western civilization, which it is safe to say would not have been anywhere the same – or even been anywhere – without him. No offense to Hermes and friends, but history just made a pretty sharp turn down there in the Middle East back then.

Needless to say, the overly polite missionaries gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon (which is supposedly completed my Mr. Mormon’s son, Moroni, but which was for some reason not named accordingly.) Since I seem to have displaced my previous copy – probably during one of the moves – I eventually accepted the book, and in return gave them my phone number. The local branch of God did not approve.

The book is, for lack of a better word, even more “moronic” than I remember it from the first time I acquainted myself with it. That is not to say that it is a bad document. It has much positive, which I believe is without exception lifted from the Bible, of which it is a rather obvious copy. My impression is that the “Mormons” – the members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints – are good people, by and large. They also count the Bible as Holy Scripture. Not saying that this makes them good people – there are some truly awful people who worship the Bible as if it were a god.

The thing is, even if I had the power to dissuade these missionaries from their path – which I can’t, since I am not that awesome, and since changing their religion would cause them to lose face, not to mention their friends, their jobs, their families and their future marriages – even if I could change their minds, it seems unlikely that I could change them for the better. That is not to say that there is no better faith than theirs. Mine is better for me, obviously, but it is also pretty personal and verging on unique. What I mean is, most organized religions would not really be an improvement in terms of living a happy, peaceful, friendly life which most likely would serve as good practice for a great afterlife.

Even in this day and age, most people are not very personal. That is to say, they don’t have a soul (psyche) that is very differentiated. Much like sheep (which incidentally have a very good reputation in the Bible) these people tend to look to those around them and run in the same direction. For such people to understand me and others like me is quite literally impossible. This is not a matter of me being “better” than them, but rather more capacious. A child of 7 may be morally superior to a 70 year old, but there are many things the child cannot possibly understand. In the same way, there are things an unreflected person cannot understand, even after a long life, because that long life does not include that particular type of experiences that a reflected, individualized person has.

Needless to say, people who only have experience of the 5th dimension (Blue vMeme) and below will firmly believe that this is very nearly all there is. They may dimly perceive that there is something more which may be attainable in this life, but that is the realm of prophets and such.

As I said, this is really the situation for all religions. I am sure the vast majority of Happy Science followers have the same sheepish attitude. Even among “Smith’s Friends” (not Joseph Smith, Johan Oscar Smith) there accumulated such people over the years, despite starting out with none of them and literally telling those who appeared to get out. I guess it can’t be helped. But I should have listened to God – or the voice of reason, since they agree heartily on this – and kept far away from this latest bunch.