Original Sin Is A Lie: How Spirituality Defies Dogma and Reveals Our True Self

by Bob Peck

There is wisdom in every corner of the globe—how can the Source of All be restricted to one cul-de-sac?

If we believe we are originally sinful, we have no love for ourselves. When we have no love for ourselves, we have no love for others.

Though the world tells us we are sinful, sages throughout the ages have insisted that we are One—all parts of a magnificent whole.

the teaching we have today is two thousand years’ worth of “Telephone”. A Fully-Awakened Being taught Unity to disciples, who shared those stories for decades (called the ‘oral tradition’), Paul heard these stories and wrote his own takes about them, then they entered the gospels in their own assorted interpretations, and then centuries later Augustine makes his own declaration that we must all be inherently evil.

the realization that the Bible is not infallible has massive implications for breaking out of unquestioning religious obedience.

“The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.” ―Mark Twain

these stories were not chiseled in stone by a divine hand. They were several different story collections being told orally, that were written down decades later by different authors in different parts of the Greco-Roman world. It's actually quite reasonable that they have so many discrepancies.

Because underneath the layers of falsehoods and exclusivism and discrepancies, there is a mesmerizing, transformative message of Oneness, Self-Realization, and Love.

this book is not a Biblical studies textbook. It’s an intro to spiritual philosophy and an undoing of fear-based institutional falsehoods.

“To the masses who could not conceive of anything higher than a Personal God, he said, ‘Pray to your Father in heaven.’ To others who could grasp a higher idea, he said: ‘I am the vine, ye are the branches,’ but to his disciples to whom he revealed himself more fully, he proclaimed the highest truth, ‘I and my Father are one’.”

“You must know that there are different tastes. There are also different powers of digestion. God has made different religions and creeds to suit different aspirants. …The mother brings home a fish for her children. She curries part of the fish, part she fries, and with another part she makes pilau. By no means all can digest the pilau. So she makes fish soup for those who have weak stomachs. Further, some want pickled or fried fish. There are different temperaments. There are differences in the capacity to comprehend.”

There is a great deal of similarity between the lives of Jesus and Krishna. A discussion is going on as to which borrowed of the other. There was the tyrannical king in both places. Both were born in a manger. The parents were bound in both cases. Both were saved by angels. In both cases all the boys born in that year were killed. The childhood is the same. ... Again, in the end, both were killed. Krishna was killed by accident; he took the man who killed him to heaven. Christ was killed, and blessed the robber and took him to heaven.

I fully endorse listing Abraham, Moses, Muhammad, Confucius, Zoroaster, Laozi, Socrates, Plato, Adi Shankara, Kabir, Mirabai, Bahá'u'lláh, Meister Eckhart, Guru Nanak, St. Francis of Assisi, The Great Peacemaker, Anandamayi Ma, Ramakrishna and countless others as avatars, as extremely important divine figures, prophets, sages, saints, or as the Ba'hai faith refers to many of these, “Manifestations of God”.

We continually ‘cycle through’ a series of incarnations until we realize we are the Eternal Self, at One With the One. And by defeating or transcending this ignorance, we regain infinity.

We are only momentarily blinded by ignorance of our true nature. We’ve only forgotten who we are, taken a detour, thanks to the endless distractions of all these material stimuli. And the spiritual path, whichever way home that best suits our enjoyment and understanding, is the way we can be reminded.

“Once we become conscious, even dimly, of the Atman, the Reality within us, the world takes on a very different aspect. It is no longer a court of justice but a kind of gymnasium. Good and evil, pain and pleasure, still exist, but they seem more like the ropes and vaulting-horses and parallel bars which can be used to make our bodies strong. Maya is no longer an endlessly revolving wheel of pain and pleasure but a ladder which can be climbed to consciousness of the Reality.” ―Adi Shankara

religion is institutionalized spirituality.”

We can admire each path for its own unique offerings and spiritual flavors, but it is crucial to not get caught up in egotistic superiority that has plagued all religions and truly all of humanity.

“I have seen my Lord with the eye of my heart, and I said: ‘Who are You?’ He said: ‘You.’” —Mansur al-Hallaj

All this speculating and categorizing and book-reading and thinking and doing! You ever just, be?

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you.” —Leo Tolstoy

Meditation, or being rooted in the present, benefits our respiratory system, our cardiovascular system, our neurological system, our ability to regulate emotions, and our ability to reduce stress. These benefits are published in the most established medical journals in the world.

The world of industry, of economy, of responsibility, chides children for their naïveté. But the mystics recognize their effortless capacity for being in the here and now.

Ultimately, we have two choices: We’re either sharing with other people in an authentic way that reminds them of their own inner light, or to quote Terence McKenna, we’re “dithering while Rome burns”.

We’re all going to die. Initiate a genuine connection with as many people as you can while breath is going through the lungs.

"I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered. But that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being." —Byron Katie

“When you are content to simply be yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.” ―Laozi

When we comb through scripture with both an academic understanding of the history and a spiritual understanding of the symbolism, fear-based concepts like ‘burning in hell’ start to fall off. You see them for what they are: silly little fictions of fearful separateness that got added on top of original mind-altering truths of love & unity.