Image by Khusen Rustamov
[The following is excerpted from the book "Apollo & Me" by Cate Montana.]
I dragged myself back to the present. “I’ve realized that having a body is wonderful and all, but it also gives me the disturbing sense that I’m separate from everything . . . and everybody. And that sets up a lot of problems.”
“Exactly the point I wanted to make.” He sat for a minute, staring out to sea.
“You see, in the abstract realms oneness is fundamental and inescapable. But here? The exact opposite holds true. Here everything appears bounded and divided, distinct and separate—that is what the body does. It tells you that you are separate and alone. And there is nothing wrong with that,” he said earnestly. “The perception of separation is inevitable and it gives a human being a sense of self. Fortunately, it’s not an illusion that lasts forever.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Being physical and being run completely by physicality is a phase, Ekateríni, a natural stage of evolution all intelligent species go through. And it ends—or at least it begins to end—with the arrival of the Christos stage of consciousness. Yeshua, the one you call Jesus, was one of the first on this planet to understood that separation is an illusion. ‘Treat your neighbor as yourself,’ he said. And he meant that quite literally, because from both the spiritual and the quantum perspective you are literally both of the same substance and one. Today your scientists, your physicists, are finally seeing the truth that everything is really energy and interconnected.”
He sighed. “Religion is the main thing still keeping people stuck on this planet. It enforces the continued belief in separation by posing God as something out there, far distant and better than you. And it pits people against one another, clinging to their opposing belief systems, instead of bringing them closer together.
“The gods have used religion to their advantage, keeping you at each other’s throats for far too long. Which is why I wanted to come back and have this discussion.” He leaned back. “Any questions?”
Any questions? A million of them. But at that particular moment it felt like my head would explode if I tried to digest one more massive insight.
He set his wine glass down and folded his hands across his stomach, looking contemplative. Finally, he roused. “What is the main question you are wanting to ask at this point?”
I swirled my wine, looking into its ruby depths. “I guess the main thing is, why come out with all this now? I mean, what difference will it make? Done is done.”
“Is it really?” He looked at me bleakly. “The vast majority of people on this planet still worship gods outside them even today.”
“Sure,” I said. “But we’re getting past that.”
“Are you?”
Were we? The weird political situation, the increasing public rejection of scientific evidence for everything from climate change to evolution, the stunning, inexplicable rise in popularity of fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the increased Christian influence in American government, the stunning increase in hate crimes around ethnicity and religion, walls being built against our neighbors—all of it pointed to a devolution in spiritual thinking and consciousness, not an evolution.
Apollo picked up the worry beads he’d left lying on the table and fingered them. “There are many gods still manipulating events and people to their advantage on this planet, Ekateríni. Always with the end goal of maintaining the source of their power and strength—the human emotions of fear and love directed their way.” He paused, toying with the beads. “Their survival depends upon it.”
Click . . . click . . . click.
“Most of the old gods are fading, yes. But in the West there is one god in particular that is actually growing in power on your planet. And it is the most powerful tulpa ever created.”
“What?”
“This particular tulpa is the projection of humanity’s ideas about Source itself and has been masquerading as the false representation of what is called the One God for a very long time on many, many planets. Currently it is busy here, manipulating the people of this world, accepting their worship, manipulating their emotions, driving them towards division and hatred and violence, leading them steadily towards creating global annihilation and Doomsday, what your Bible refers to as Armageddon.”
He looked at me squarely. “And that, my dear, is what I’ve come back to try to help humanity avoid.”
Waves of cold chills cascaded through my body at Apollo’s words—a sure sign that truth had been spoken.
“But,” I searched back through the day’s mind-boggling conversation. “I thought you said all the tulpas were taken over by the archangels in order to save people from their destructive potential?”
“We did. All except for this one.”
“Why not?”
“Ekateríni . . .” he paused, seemingly at a loss, then smiled a crooked smile. “Stop and think for a moment. We are talking about a mental projection of Source itself as a singular human being.
“Myself and all the other human-created gods over the ages, Isis, Ra, Sekmet, Osiris, Mithra, Odin, Ammon, Asherah, Baal, Nuozha, Taiziyeh, to name but a few, were created with specific attributes in mind—tulpa forms reflecting different principles and aspects of creation. But Source itself?” He shook his head.
“Humans took the mighty truth they finally intuited—that there is only one intelligence, one underlying principle, one Creator of all things—and they projected onto their idea of the One God all the terror and awe such a being would inspire. And because they only knew the world of form and flesh they projected the One God as a Big Man. And they gave him the white hair and beard that so often mark the wisdom of the elderly and terrible eyes of flame and a booming voice and immortality and unlimited power and the desire to rule.
“Because would not the One God rule over all things and creatures He had created?”
The hair rose on the back of my neck.
“No individual angel could step into those shoes. There was no matching frequency.” He shrugged helplessly. “Source itself is beyond such ludicrous imaginings. Which means there was no guiding intelligence, no archangel available to take this terrible form over and eventually control it.”
He stared down into the bottom of his glass, then downed the contents. “We—the Olympians and others—were bad enough. I’ve already described some of the horrors we perpetrated. But underneath our madness and initial lack of self-control there was always a solid core of sanity available to us. We still had memories of who we really were.
“We could not live up to those Ideals for a time—a very long time as it turns out. But those Ideals led us—at least most of us—back to sanity eventually. But this tulpa?”
He set his glass down and didn’t wait for me to pour, picking up the bottle himself. “It is a renegade and law unto itself and has no guiding spirit. As a result, it has evidenced remarkably little evolution over the millions of years of its existence. It simply lives to feed on human worship and fear in order to satisfy its lust for power and fulfill the purpose humans gave it.”
“Purpose?” I croaked.
“To rule as it sees fit over its domain and its chosen people . . . planet after planet after planet.”
There was very little wine left in the bottle and Apollo emptied it into his glass, drinking morosely. The air was getting cool as the sun dipped below the western horizon behind the house. But it wasn’t the dropping temperature making me go cold all over.
“Um, ” I already knew the answer but had to ask anyway. “I don’t suppose this creature has a name?”
Apollo looked up. “Of course, it does, and you know it well. Its name, my love, is Jehovah.”
Jehovah! The God of Abraham himself. I’d known from the outset who Apollo was referring to. But I’d held out hope it was a different being from the ghastly presence I’d tried so fervently to embrace . . . was it only three years ago?
It seemed much longer since my disastrous almost-love affair with a musician who, after a year and a half of passionate yet non-physical courting, had finally revealed his Christian fundamentalist beliefs. He’d kept them secret, talking my language of spirituality, consciousness and quantum physics, leading me to believe he thought about life and God as I did. But when our mutual feelings grew to the point of talking about a deeper, more permanent relationship, the truth had finally come out.
“I can’t be with someone physically who doesn’t believe exactly as I do,” he said.
“And what do you believe?” I’d asked, startled.
Turns out he worshipped the Lord God Jehovah who had, according to his view, taken the form of a man named Jesus Christ in order to come to Earth as a teacher and savior. If we were to have sex, we had to marry, and if we were to marry, I must give up my pagan ways, accept that I was a wretched sinner from birth and beg for Jehovah/Jesus’ forgiveness for being created this way and never stray from my worship of Him in order to be saved and allowed into heaven. Entertaining even the slightest doubt of Jehovah/Jesus’ supremacy and rule meant I was being tempted by the Devil and I’d be pitchforked into the abyss where I would burn for eternity. No exceptions, no mercy.
Impossible as it seemed now, such was my infatuation with this guy, I actually tried to find a way to embrace Jehovah without betraying myself and my deepest spiritual knowledge.
I had no knowledge of the fundamentalist mindset. To my dismay, I discovered that fundamentalism—Christian, Jewish and Islamic— was the fastest growing religious movement in the world and that a surprising number of American governmental representatives and senators were fundamentalist believers like my ex-boyfriend.
Fundamentalist websites hailed Jesus/Jehovah’s blood sacrifice as humanity’s only salvation, actually promoting the violent destruction of the world in the flames of Armageddon as the precursor to Jesus’ return and humanity’s only hope—which explained the solid conservative Republican core constantly voting to impede environmental legislation. That and install the Bible as the inerrant word of God in schools and other national institutions. And now that I’d heard Apollo’s explanation, I was more disturbed than ever.
If all this were true, a sizable portion of the world’s population—including much of the United States government—was under the sway of an egotistical, power-mad tulpa bent on retaining and increasing his power by initiating global destruction while parading itself as Jesus Christ and God Almighty.
Was I in some sort of weird science fiction movie or what?
I recounted my unpleasant encounter with Jehovah to Apollo as we drove to dinner. He listened quietly—indeed he seemed almost subdued.
“Jehovah is ruthless and cruel and exceedingly clever. He twists people’s natural love of goodness and purity into a distorted hatred for all things physical. He pits Heaven against Earth and man against woman. Sex, procreation, and the normal desires for pleasure all humans seek are made into vile temptations they have to resist in order to be worthy of his love and his heaven. And when people don’t succeed in rejecting the joys and natural gifts of fleshly existence—and almost no one ever does— then he has them.”
He sighed in the growing dark as I sped along the back roads towards Piso Livadi. “Fear, guilt, and shame are the most easily aroused human emotions, Ekateríni. If you can inspire those emotions in people, you own them.”
He was so right! My wannabe-lover Rick had been the sweetest man and a true musical genius. Oddly, considering what he believed, he was also one of the most intelligent people I’d ever met. But he’d been raised by strict fundamentalist parents and was tortured by guilt and an ever-growing sense of worthlessness and hatred for his humanity. His only happiness lay in believing his self-hatred and self-denial were pleasing to his god.
We motored the last miles in heavy silence. The subject of religion is horribly fraught with emotion and bitterly contentious. And everything Apollo had told me sounded incredibly far-fetched. Who would take this stuff seriously? How could I share what Apollo had told me and not be laughed out of the room or ripped to shreds on social media?
I finally found a parking space at the end of the quay facing the heaving dark sea. “I have one last question,” I said, switching off the ignition and turning towards Apollo.
“Only one?”
I smiled in the dark. “For now,” I amended.
He waited quietly.
“I’m confused about the whole Yahweh/Jehovah name thing. The original translation of God’s name in the Bible is Yahweh. Then about a thousand years ago the name Jehovah starts popping up. What’s the deal with that?”
“That is a very important question.” Apollo moved around in his seat to face me. “You have noticed how the god of the Bible is . . . what is the psychological word you are so fond of using to describe him?”
“Schizophrenic?”
“Yes. Exactly. One minute you have God saying Thou shalt not kill and twelve verses later in Exodus he says, Put every man his sword by his side ... and slay every man his brother. Have you ever wondered about this?”
“Sure. I think most people wonder.” I laughed mirthlessly. “I read somewhere that the number of killings God either does himself or orders done in the Bible is upwards to 25 million people. That’s a lot of blood on the hands of a god of love.” I shook my head. “Never mind the uncounted zillions of people condemned to burn in hell for eternity for not believing in him. If you have an answer, I’d sure like to hear it.”
“Then hear this. Physical matter is built upon opposing forces of positive and negative—protons and electrons. Yes?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Duality and opposition rule the physical kingdom. And when people imagined and worshipped the One God they ended up projecting him in two very different lights.” He paused. “Depending on their mindset, some saw the One God as the god of mercy and love. Others saw him as terrible, fearful, and vengeful. The tulpa that resulted contains both sets of qualities. It is a terribly confused, bipolar creation. And its acts and deeds reflect this dichotomy.”
My jaw dropped. It was such a neat explanation I wondered that no one had ever seen it before.
“Unfortunately, it is much easier to inspire fear and dread in humans than it is love.” Apollo shook his head. “It didn’t take this tulpa long to learn that lesson. Thus, its main focus is always to inspire fear.”
There was another one of our long silences as I digested this new information. Outside in the dark I could see waves breaking against the rocks beyond the nose of the car and a fine mist of salt spray gradually covered the windshield.
“But why the sudden name change a thousand years ago?” I asked as my stomach growled emptily.
“That one is easy,” he said. “Divide and conquer. Now, time to eat.” He reached for the door handle.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What do you mean divide and conquer?”
“Ekateríni, it could not be simpler. When the emotional power source looks like it may be running out of steam, the tulpa simply creates more factions, more conflict, more confusion, more argument, more names, more controversy, and thus more bloodshed and more pain and suffering to feed on.
“The name the tulpa goes by does not matter. All the fear, love and worship go to the same source.” He looked at me. “Get it?”
I nodded. Suddenly I wasn’t all that hungry anymore.
Copyright 2019 by Cate Montana.
Article Source
Apollo & Me
by Cate Montana
Across-time tale of deathless love, magic and sexual healing, Apollo & Me explodes the myths around older women and sex, the relationship between the gods and man, man and woman, and the very nature of the world itself.
Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as a Kindle edition.
About the Author
Cate Montana has a master’s degree in psychology and has given up writing non-fiction articles and books about consciousness, quantum physics, and evolution. She is now a novelist and story teller, blending head and heart in her first teaching tale, the spiritual romance Apollo & Me, available at Amazon.com! Visit her website at www.catemontana.com
