A MISSING INGREDIENT REDISCOVERED,

A FRESH TASTE OF HAPPINESS & HEAVEN

by
Fritz Springmeier

Twenty-five years ago I left the world's system and all my possessions for a fresh taste of happiness and heaven.  As I reflect back on what I had, it was so truly good that I want to share it with you today.

I love to sense things, smell things, touch things, taste things, and feel things. I love real life.  I see that modern man is so comfortable in his artificial world that he no longer even trusts his senses. He is afraid of reality. Recently, I heard about a scientific study that spent many tens of thousands of dollars to discover there are differences between men and women. Another expensive study discovered walking is healthy. Another discovered a mother's breast milk is healthier than other kinds of milk including modern formulas.  All these things should be obvious to the casual observer, but not to modern man who no longer trusts his own experiences, but must be spoon-fed truth from the system's modern day witch doctors (i.e. the establishment's authorities).

I believe that if Almighty God offered heaven to sinners in hell, they would reject it. They would not be comfortable with the reality of heaven, it would be too bright, too real, too good, much in the same way that most people despise the history channel to watch the soaps, the sci-fi channel or some other dramatized fiction. Time and time again, I've seen people choose movies with no basis in reality be picked over shows based in reality. Modern man loves his artificial world. He'd rather watch "professional wrestling" than Olympic wrestling and he'd rather watch Olympic wrestling as a couch potato than actually wrestle. No wonder X-rated video stores are successful in spite of all the artificial elements, including the viewing male passively not really doing anything, and the women in the screen's virtual environment faking their climaxes and enjoyment.

Yeshua (Jesus Christ) was big on children. He said that the Kingdom of God was like the children. When his disciples were getting into group politics and arguing who was the greatest amongst them, Christ's response was to hold a small child in his arms and physically stand in the middle of the arguing disciples.  Next he spoke, "Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives me."  Christ's words are pregnant with meaning. But I would like to address just one of the meanings implied by Christ. What you will be reading is not something that you would likely hear in a sermon.

To paraphrase Christ, if you want to have what makes your teacher great, then accept little children. (From other things Christ said, it is clear that he wanted his disciples to be like little children.) I believe he was pointing out something important here, and something profound. I believe his profound message has lots of implications. And I believe that one of the implications is how we can find reality and happiness. One of the things children lack is distrust of their experiences. As children we accept life as it is.

I think back to my idyllic childhood in Oregon and Nepal. It was great. I discovered funny slugs, dancing butterflies, swimming tadpoles, all kinds of neat trees, fun mud to roll in, interesting fossils, beautiful agates, forested hills, awesome snow-capped mountains, cool rivers, wind, rain, colorful birds, insects like daddy long legs, sand dunes, bees, sweet tasting sugar cane, garden pilfered strawberries and peas, leeche fruit, goats, horses, snakes, artistic pink orange sunsets, constellations in the night sky, rhododendrons and the enormous beauty of nature. I spent my first ten years of life as a child outdoors enjoying nature. We had no television. It was the thrill of innocence in touch with reality.

Dad's and my trek on the trail to Mt. Everest thrilled me.  It was exciting because of the real world I got to experience. I also loved to farm. Although modern farms are touched by technology and much of what happens on farms is designed by man, the basic idea of a farm is to assist nature. The farmer is linked to nature. My ancestors were farmers, and farming is in my blood.  The charm of a newborn colt, the majesty of a head of wheat, and the good feeling of rich soil in one's hands, these things are in my blood. In contrast to the farmer trying to assist nature, the city dweller has simply replaced nature entirely with an artificial manmade world. 

But the city dweller still has a longing for real life beyond his artificial world, and he builds parks and zoos to remember what he has replaced. He can go to the library or the Discovery channel and vicariously experience what he has replaced. The problem is that he likes his replacement images (such as fake flowers) more than reality, and he believes he is in touch with reality when in reality his replacement images are very little like reality.

The city slicker thinks that he suave and debonair, much more sophisticated than his country bumpkin. He thinks that he has much more than the native running wild in Africa. But what has modern city-dwelling man given up to get his artificial world? He has divorced himself from reality. He lives in the creations, the vain imaginations of his fellowman. He no longer experiences the full range of life, the pain and joy of reality of night and day. He sits focused in front of a computer screen or television screen much of his life in a controlled artificial environment.

As modern man divorces himself from reality, he no longer knows the relationship between his experiences and reality. Hence, he is dependent upon the gurus of the establishment to tell him that there are differences between men and women. And if they lie to him, and for instance, tell him that homosexuality is a normal event in nature, he doesn't know better and believes the lie.

Children have to be introduced and indoctrinated into artificial worlds. The children that Christ bragged about to his disciples were models of innocence. Even in Christ's time, mankind was busy trying to put their vain imaginations to work in building artificial worlds, such as their religious rules, their idols, and the artificial rich life that a few wealthy had as the results of having other men as slaves.  Modern life corrupts our enjoyment of reality. We filter our perceptions through our manmade filters.

A very young child (toddler) even today will enjoy a homemade toy as much as an expensive one. Later he will filter his experiences through a manmade filter, and prefer the expensive store bought toy.  In a similar vein, the Nepalese and Tibetan people I lived with in Nepal were some of the happiest in the world, because they didn't know what they were missing of the modern world. The people in India, because they had been around the British and Europeans tended to be very unhappy, they knew what they were missing. The Nepalese people this last decade are being modernized, and I can predict that they will become a very unhappy people as they modernize.  Are the American Indians happier now that they have experienced the modern society with its artificial environments, or were they happier before "civilization" came to them?

If we want to get back to reality, we will have to unplug the television, which is one of the strongest tools of the modern world to suck us into the world's virtual reality.  It may seem like we are giving up a great deal, but if it does, that just reveals how much we have been suckered into giving up reality for a virtual reality.